Severin Matusek

A literature which is made by machines, which are owned by corporations, which are run by sociopaths, can only be a “stereotype”—a simplification, a facsimile, an insult, a fake—of real literature. It should be smashed, and can.

As artist and AI collaborator Refik Anadol says, “This is pure collaboration , imagination with a machine.”

In movies, TV, and video games: cinematic universes. Studios have finally figured out that once audiences fall in love with fictional worlds, they want to spend lots of time in them.

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.

Robert Shiller coined narrative economics, arguing that stories drive economic behavior. I think we are in a new iteration of all of this where the stories aren't just influencing economic activity, they are the economic activity. Attention is a precursor to wealth (in many ways) and speculation drives it.

Social knowledge is thus more epistemically fraught than personal knowledge. However, it is critical to our ability to function and coordinate and, furthermore, it is what gives that ever elusive quality of “meaning” to our lives.

In the 21st century, those who control digital infrastructure control the conditions of possibility for democracy itself. Europe faces a choice: build sovereign technological capacity or accept digital colonization.