Notes on AI
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Notes on AI 〰️
Every medium has an uncanny valley
In 2004 The Polar Express was called dead-eyed and pushed the uncanny valley into everyday conversation. Five years later came Avatar, and people talked about Neytiri, not about how she was made. AI is at that stage now. When something still looks like AI, it isn’t the AI anymore.
Premium sameness
Two companies approached me with exactly the same idea: a team of characters, each embodying one brand attribute. A brand A-Team. Human and machine both pull toward the middle – what's new is the scale. The result is Premium Sameness: work nobody objects to and nobody remembers.
The new luxury isn't what's hard to produce
Luxury advertising ran on visible effort: cost is the message. But the reflex has changed – from "How did they do that?" to "Which AI tool did they use?" Soon anyone can make this on a laptop, on a Tuesday. The new luxury isn't what's hard to produce. It's what's hard to copy.
The fear of becoming irrelevant
My feed is full of "Claude killed [X]". We have seen this movie before: print, TV, the internet, social. But this time something is different. With AI you never reach the plateau of productivity. It isn't a destination. It's a subscription.