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My hope, and it may be a naïve hope, is that with the rise of AI will see more and more people be able to build the kind of digital experience that they envisio

My hope, and it may be a naïve hope, is that with the rise of AI will see more and more people be able to build the kind of digital experience that they envision, including social media experiences, because of the democratization of software engineering. That being said, what does it take to build a social media app using AI and also perhaps just as important to market it worldwide?

kurthr 1y ago
It feels like this is the optimism of early internet where "information wants to be free". We got a solid 5 maybe 10 years of that (up through 2k)?
cornholio 1y ago
If you can't build it with a bunch of junior coders, then AI won't help you. Social media is all about network effects and first mover advantage, one network turned textbook fascist and it's still going strong.
blendergeek 1y ago
I "hope" that will happen as well. It is a naïve hope indeed. Almost all current AI systems and all future ones I foresee, are made by large corporations that are looking to turn a profit. Enabling, ordinary "people ... to build the kind of digital experience that they envision" does not maximise profit. Instead AI systems will work for their owners to maximize profits by extracting revenue from the users. Some of this revenu could come from advertising. AIs could build ads that are far more personalized and convincing than anything we can imagine now. AI agents will work first and foremost for their corporate owners and will only do the users bidding if it benefits the owners. There is absolutely no reason to believe that it will be different this time and that now corporations will happily hand out everything for free and users will be empowered. I don't doubt that open source and freedom respecting AI will exist and that some will be able to use it. The great thing about free markets is that those who want to will be able to opt out. But it will always be niche and small just like it is now.
DeathRay2K 1y ago
Building the social media platform you want to see isn’t really the problem though. They are relatively easy to build, the hard part is making it valuable enough to attract users and earning enough to keep it running. Using AI introduces additional costs without solving the core challenge there.

kurthr 1y ago

It feels like this is the optimism of early internet where "information wants to be free". We got a solid 5 maybe 10 years of that (up through 2k)?

cornholio 1y ago

If you can't build it with a bunch of junior coders, then AI won't help you. Social media is all about network effects and first mover advantage, one network turned textbook fascist and it's still going strong.

blendergeek 1y ago

I "hope" that will happen as well. It is a naïve hope indeed. Almost all current AI systems and all future ones I foresee, are made by large corporations that are looking to turn a profit. Enabling, ordinary "people ... to build the kind of digital experience that they envision" does not maximise profit. Instead AI systems will work for their owners to maximize profits by extracting revenue from the users. Some of this revenu could come from advertising. AIs could build ads that are far more personalized and convincing than anything we can imagine now. AI agents will work first and foremost for their corporate owners and will only do the users bidding if it benefits the owners. There is absolutely no reason to believe that it will be different this time and that now corporations will happily hand out everything for free and users will be empowered. I don't doubt that open source and freedom respecting AI will exist and that some will be able to use it. The great thing about free markets is that those who want to will be able to opt out. But it will always be niche and small just like it is now.

DeathRay2K 1y ago

Building the social media platform you want to see isn’t really the problem though. They are relatively easy to build, the hard part is making it valuable enough to attract users and earning enough to keep it running. Using AI introduces additional costs without solving the core challenge there.