Severin Matusek

By volume alone, slop may be the most visible and successful by-product of the generative-AI era to date. It is also a hallmark of what I’ve previously described as a collective delusion around artificial intelligence—where the breathless hype and imagined future of building a godlike superintelligence and curing cancer collides with the dull... See more

The fundamental tension of narrative control in the networked era is that most companies impose a hierarchical brand management model onto what has effectively become a distributed, permissionless process. And when the emergent meme-space of networked media meets censorship-resistant infrastructures, brands take on a life of their own.

> be me > Alexandr Wang, born January 1997 > age 19, drop out of MIT > co-found Scale AI > "what if we label data, but mid?" > convince every LLM company that this is fine > 2016–2023 > flood the market with barely-labeled goat photos... See more

way of reaching understandings of what is going on , i.e. the foundations of world models and cultures in general.

My main concern is both the loss of authenticity, but also technological dependency, like relying on AI too might reduce an artist’s creativity. Think of the TikTok effect, or using Chat GPT too much. These systems are so easy and useful, but you do end up using your brain less at the end of the day.

But at least one thing has always felt clear to us: If you want to try and do something fun, strange and special on the internet, it helps to owe nothing to anyone but your readers.

AI offers creative professionals “a pathway to growing their careers by freeing up time to do more of the things only they can do.”

For Water & Music's inaugural collaborative research report, over 40 of our community members across industries, geographies, career stages and skill sets came together to try to make sense of the immense challenges and opportunities that lay ahead for music/Web3's future.