The Business Socializer 8-9-2023

AI turning Internet into a nightmare?, Taylor Swift effect, More TikTok riots?, When AI flirts, TikTok shows you how to sell on TikTok

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Is AI about to turn the Internet into a total nightmare?

We highly recommend that our readers take the time to read this excellent article in The Insider.

AI constitutes a revolution, social, economic, the whole bit, and the first outlines of this revolution are just now starting to come into focus.

The attached article explores what the Internet will look like when AI has taken over the Internet, when, as Europol predicts, “90% of Internet content will be written by AI.”

For the record AI is one of the reasons we have embraced the newsletter format. Not that AI won’t be writing newsletters (it is already), but if one opts for news created by humans it is easier to opt into trusted newsletters.

For many of us our most important news comes from trusted (human) sources via email. This trend could expand as AI takes over the broader Internet.

There are probably a half dozen really interesting points made in the attached article but one struck us particularly. AI right now is built on the vast mass of human knowledge compiled in this repository we call the Internet. AI essentially scrapes this information and smooshes it back together for us. But what happens when the Internet is filled with all of this smooshed information and then the AI scrapes this smooshed information? Does it produce an even better, more refined product, or does the Internet descend into some type of informational “gray goo”?

We figure it will be something in the middle. But what we figure could change pretty quickly these days.

(From The Business Insider)

As AI continues to wreak havoc on community-led initiatives like Wikipedia and Reddit, the internet will increasingly feel like it's engineered for the machines and by the machines. That could break the web we're used to now, Toby Walsh, an artificial intelligence professor at the University of New South Wales, told me. It will also make things difficult for the AI makers as well. As AI-generated content drowns out human work, tech companies like Microsoft and Google will have less original data to improve their models. 

"AI today works because it is trained on the sweat and ingenuity of humans," Walsh said. "If the second-gen generative AI is trained on the exhaust of the first generation, the quality will drop drastically." Earlier this year in May, a University of Oxford study found that training AI on data generated by other AI systems causes it to degrade and ultimately collapse. And as it does, so will the quality of information found online.

Licato, the University of South Florida professor, likens the current state of the web experience to the "dead internet" theory.

Click here for the article.

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Woman makes $16,000 making Tayor Swift friendship bracelets on Etsy

From the end of the world to the end of music.

We kid, there have been pop superstars way worse than Taylor Swift, but we must admit that we are are sick of our 19 year old insisting on her swifty mix every time we hop in the car. A man needs his Led Zeppelin and Merle Haggard you know what we mean?

We are taken by the juggernaut that is Talor Swift. It is massive. It is powerful. People, lots of people, are paying over a thousand dollars for a ticket to the Eras Tour. The Federal Reserve even did a paper on how Taylor Swift concerts were moving city economies.

That is impressive. We’ll bet The Grateful Dead did as much for the “underground” economy in its heyday as Ms. Swift is doing now above the table.

Regardless, people are riding the swifty wave in their own ways and because of the Internet they don’t have to camp out in parking lots to do it.

(From CNN Business)

The 46-year-old mother said she sold over 5,000 Taylor Swift-themed friendship bracelets on her Etsy shop this summer, bringing in about $16,000 in sales. “There were weeks that making bracelets paid more than my full time job,” Tompkins told CNN.

She is part of a group of Etsy shop owners who are selling Swift-themed bracelets for serious cash. Tompkins said she got the idea to sell them on her store, Pigtails and Pixidust, after she was left with dozens of bracelets she didn’t get to give away at the Taylor Swift concert in Arlington, Texas, earlier this year. Her daughter suggested listing them on her Etsy shop, which typically sells hairbows and headbands for babies and toddlers. 

“The Eras tour has made my business,” said Tompkins, who sells a 5-pack for $15. “I had very minimal sales before Taylor Swift friendship bracelets were a trend.”

Now she’s saving her earnings to quit her job and focus on running her Etsy shop full time. “I will continue to make them as long as people want them.”

Click here for the article.