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The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI
In a world of automated intelligence, our goalposts for intelligence will shift. We'll raise our quality bar for what we expect from humans. When a machine can pump out a great literature review or summary of existing work, there's no value in a person doing it.
Maggie Appleton • The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI
This leaves us with some low-hanging fruit for humanness. We can tell richly detailed stories grounded in our specific contexts and cultures: place names, sensual descriptions, local knowledge, and, well the je ne sais quoi of being alive. Language models can decently mimic this style of writing but most don't without extensive prompt e
... See moreMaggie Appleton • The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI
As the forest grows darker, noisier, and less human, I expect to invest more time in in-person relationships and communities. And while I love meatspace, this still feels like a loss.
Maggie Appleton • The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI
The final edge we have over language models is that we can prove we're real humans by showing up IRL with our real human bodies. We can arrange to meet Twitter mutuals offline over coffee. We can organise meetups and events and conferences and unconferences and hangouts and pub nights.
In
Markets for Lemons and the Great Logging Off, Lars Douce
... See moreMaggie Appleton • The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI
The dark forest theory of the web points to the increasingly life-like but life-less state of being online. Most open and publicly available spaces on the web are overrun with bots, advertisers, trolls, data scrapers, clickbait, keyword-stuffing “content creators,” and algorithmically manipulated junk.
Maggie Appleton • The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI
5. Show up in meatspace
The final edge we have over language models is that we can prove we're real humans by showing up IRL with our real human bodies. We can arrange to meet Twitter mutuals offline over coffee. We can organise meetups and events and conferences and unconferences and hangouts and pub nights.
The final edge we have over language models is that we can prove we're real humans by showing up IRL with our real human bodies. We can arrange to meet Twitter mutuals offline over coffee. We can organise meetups and events and conferences and unconferences and hangouts and pub nights.
maggieappleton.com • The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI
Before you continue, pause and consider: How would you prove you're not a language model generating predictive text? What special human tricks can you do that a language model can't?
Maggie Appleton • The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI
You thought the first page of Google was bunk before? You haven't seen Google where SEO optimizer bros pump out billions of perfectly coherent but predictably dull informational articles for every longtail keyword combination under the sun.
Maggie Appleton • The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI
Humans who want to engage in informal, unoptimised, personal interactions have to hide in closed spaces like invite-only Slack channels, Discord groups, email newsletters, small-scale blogs, and
digital gardens. Or make themselvesillegibleand algorithmically incoherent in public venues.
Maggie Appleton • The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI
This leaves us with some low-hanging fruit for humanness. We can tell richly detailed stories grounded in our specific contexts and cultures: place names, sensual descriptions, local knowledge, and, well the je ne sais quoi of being alive.