Modern Muses: AI BOTS
028. On being human in the age of AI
Hey, friends—welcome back to online-offline, a newsletter about technology, culture, and the future. Hello to new subscribers! I’m glad you’re here. Today, some thoughts in progress about culture and being human in the age of AI; if you have thoughts or want to chat, please reach out. If you haven’t already, please support my work by subscribing below. Now, let’s dive in.
I gave a keynote this month at Boys Club’s /brandnew summit during SxSW. It was my first talk in many years and I explored a new philosophy about the future of AI in culture. This is a summary of that talk.
The public
Two centuries ago, in April 1836, a woman was found brutally murdered in her room. Her head was bashed in and her bed was set on fire. The woman, Helen Jewett, was discovered by her madam in the early morning—you see, Ms. Jewett was a prostitute in a New York City brothel. One of her regular clients, Richard P. Robinson, quickly became a suspect based on witness accounts. Mr. Robinson was betrothed to another, an Upper East Side socialite, and maintained his innocence … Even though this case occurred nearly 200 years ago, we have all the details because it was sensationalized and received detailed press coverage in the New York Herald.
At the turn of the century, printing press technology was evolving and led to penny papers, which produced daily news for a cent. By using the general public as a muse, with true crime at the center of coverage, these penny papers grew readership and supplanted local papers. The New York Herald was an early pioneer and by 1845, it was the most popular and profitable daily newspaper in the United States.
Notably, these emerging media properties realized that “the common man would rather be entertained than edified.” Naturally, as motion pictures evolved from silent to talking films, the American muse became the celebrity.
The celebrity
A lot can be said about the emergent celebrity culture of the 1950s, but the most interesting trend that followed what we now call Old Hollywood is midcult (middle culture).
I’m thinking about Andy Warhol and his fine art paintings of Campbell’s Soup. He took something high-brow (art) and something low-brow (canned soup) and made it appealing to both groups. This seemingly small act acknowledged the middle class.
Similarly, one of America’s greatest fashion designers, Halston, signed a $1 billion licensing deal with JC Penney in the 1980s to make affordable and accessible collections of his high-end brand. It was controversial. But now everyone does it—the idea of midcult lives on in premium mediocre brands like Away Luggage and products that please the HENRY (High Earners, Not Rich Yet) contingent.
Midcult can pass itself off as high-brow to the untrained eye. The same cannot be said for masscult, which now goes hand in hand with mass media and pop culture.
Masscult offers neither emotional catharsis nor an aesthetic experience. It’s low-effort. It’s meant for mass distribution. It’s not entertainment, but a distraction. In masscult, everything is a commodity that’s mined for money. Masscult is anti-art.
If mass media has flattened culture, then AI will obliterate it. More on this in a bit.
The creator
I’d be remiss if I didn’t give a quick shout to our current muses: creators/influencers. Thanks to the internet and social media, almost anyone can shoot to stardom online and build a community of fervent followers. Distribution and reach are king, with video as the dominant medium. The fact that Mr. Beast has a company dedicated to content production rivals what some celebrities were able to accomplish under contract to MGM in the 1950s.
The bots?
All of this brings us to the present moment. And the future we’re slowly, but surely, realizing.
Did you know that some people are proposing to their AI girlfriends? Or, that AI girlfriends are now a viable option for people seeking emotional intimacy? (I want to, but I won’t go on a tangent about how prescient Her, the movie, was.)
AI bots are the next muses.
Beyond AI girlfriends, we’re seeing autonomous agents deployed across enterprises, autonomous cars in San Francisco and Los Angeles, robot attendants in parking garages, and better autonomous home systems—and this is barely scratching the surface. In the next decade, we will live and work alongside autonomous bots.
While no AI is truly anthropomorphic, it is made in our (human) image. Generative AI seeks to be as or even more creative and productive than people. But, culture typically rises from the youth, there’s no such origination with AI. Cultural artifacts and references are key to technology. If AI comes up with a meme, no one will care. Hypebeast Pope and Will Smith eating spaghetti were viral memes because of the context and origination. Both reference a cultural figure and our understanding of their place in the world. Technology will always rely on humans—for example, without the perceived human characteristics, AI companions wouldn’t be as accepted and popular as they have been considering their short time in the market. People want experiences that replicate their consciousness.
If AI muses take over, we will return to prioritizing craft. AI is masscult on turbo—making images, music, and even video will be pure commodity. There’s a creator on TikTok named Nara Smith who’s gone viral for making all of her meals from scratch. She made Oreos from scratch! Her content resonates because of the craft and care she takes with each dish. AI can write a basic novel, but can it express the depths of human emotion like Dostoevsky? AI can generate a video, but can it do pirouettes? With AI as the next muse, the way we live is going to drastically change akin to life after the industrial revolution.
As Marshall McLuhan aptly noted, “any technology gradually creates a totally new human environment. Environments are not passive wrappings but active processes.”
Further reading:
+ "Masscult and Midcult" (1959) Dwight Macdonald
+ "Avant-garde and Kitsch” (1939) Clement Greenberg
One curious thought your piece made me think of: imagine a future stage in the growth of AI where it has created its own culture that, while originating from the human culture, has now separated itself as unique to some “machine taste.” An example would be it (an AI bot) creating a meme that AI bots enjoyed, while humans had to ask the AI bots to explain and clarify its references so we could also be in on what is “cool.” Humans on the outside of what is “cool” and AI’s culture now holding some step above ours in the cultural hierarchy as defined by what is “cool.”