What will be the second order effects widespread AI?

For a short time, some kids will boast about their ability to spot a deepfake in some media, but then they will use "deepfake" more generally to say that something (not AI-generated) looks weird or bad. Eventually "deepfake" will come to mean "very fake" or just "fake", and "deep" as a general prefix will start getting used to mean "very" but in a disparaging way.

Big changes in what content we trust and consume online. I predict that all content-driven sites (YouTube, News, Social Media, forums, reviews) will be dominated by AI-generated content in the near future. This content is directly monetizable via ads/followers/points/second-hand-accounts/etc, so it's a great opportunity for people, particularly those in developing countries, to abuse as long as it lasts.

So far that's pretty obvious, but it's interesting to think about the second-order effects of this. It means that the current ad-based business models with open access no longer work. Instead, it's all about trust. People will be willing to pay for communities that guaranteed to be "human-only" and where content is created by trustworthy sources and trust is quantified and monetized somehow. This also includes verified credentials of posters, pseudonymous or not.

Not sure if that counts as a second order effect, but porn actors/actresses will soon be almost obsolete. Basically, they only need to work on the hands and sexual organs a bit more and get movies more stable, but this work is progressing rapidly. As far as I can see, porn will be almost completely AI-generated within the next few years.

There will be insane amounts of lawsuits, since the content generated by AI is often pretty much like copy & pasting existing images and persons. Most prompt-based generation is not creative enough to make the end result count as original artwork. However, big corporations will take over AI content generation almost entirely, and they'll be able to shield themselves from those lawsuits using clever legal and licensing tactics.

Something like the SEO industry. If AIs affect search, procurement/RFP processes, hiring, investment etc, then there will be a burgeoning industry in how to best present yourself or your business in a way that 'pleases' these AIs.

Of course, it's just as likely that this work itself will be done by AIs. You'll just set some goals and constraints and hope your AI is able to negotiate some good deals for you. The better the AI, the better the deal. It takes some smarts to optimise compute resources, electricity costs, training datasets etc, so you might as well have some AIs look at managing that too.

Pretty soon you find that you've put out an RFP to supply point of sale terminals to all your retail outlets, and you've caused a nuclear war over the control of mining rights to rare earth metals in a country thousands of miles away. But that's nothing, because a fleet of drones was apparently launched on your behalf to head out to the asteroid belt and net a few mineral-rich rocks to bolster the manufactory beside the datacentre you apparently now own, which is built on top of (and out of) half of Australia. You didn't specify in your original RFP that you didn't want any rocks to splash down in the Indian Ocean, and the fleet was careful to check that none of your outlets or regular customers would be affected by the tsunamis that claimed upwards of two billion lives in the aftermath.

You look up from the contract you were about to sign, heart racing from the vivid simulation your personal AI has just played out on your holospecs.

"Perhaps we better include some liability insurance?" you suggest.

"Don't worry, we have an AI for that."

Hopefully breaking the link between people's labour and their worth as a human. I hope that as more and more things become automated and fewer people need to work, that we restructure society so they don't have to do bullshit jobs or work if they don't want to.

Unfortunately, people have been hoping for this for as long as there has been machinery which multiplied humans' labour and it's yet to materialise, but I remain hopeful.

Lots of marginal value content, like the thousands of copycats from the imposter syndrome that are already out there. The same for stock photos, pictures, etc.

Deepfake and catfish on dating networks will be the norm, perhaps the same for many “data output” professions.

Higher life meaning crisis and depression, since most of industrialized and office jobs will be more and more automated, and in spite of not completely removing humans, their input will feel less important, error prone, more prescindible exchangeable and less empathetic towards colleagues.

Loss of meaning as society, since productivity will be the main variable to optimize, as some key business areas will smash much easier than ever their competitors by using “augmented workforce”. I don’t think leas humans will be needed, just some specialized teams will outperform the rest, increasing outsourcing areas to third companies who deal with such problems.

Devaluation of truly creative content since “locally new” is already good enough for most of ends.

Reinforcement or social biases according to current trends like image AIs only generating beautiful model alike human beings, and the only “deviations” are socially accepted stereotypes like some attributes from popular actors. That might have a direct impact on consumer’s psychology, depression, anorexia, etc.

Perhaps (I wish not), pop culture will be frozen on the largest dataset trends, and only, very really an actual creative person will handcraft something new, just to be copied by all the style imitation networks.

Human expertise in some key areas might be easier to access, to learn and transport, since a general knowledge in the area and guiding/fine tuning an AI system will make cheaper the formation and resolution of previously solved problems.

The raise of truly new wicked and complex problems. Non linear unpredictable problems will raise more than ever before since we will focus less and less on the linear ones.

Political speech might be guided in real-time based on spectators feelings, creating weaker democratic (partitocratic) systems and reinforcing the autocratic model which is currently having success in Asia.

At some point someone will successfully create "AI" that can discern human-appreciable "quality", at which point this will collide with GPT3/etc resulting in dynamic, live generation of content of all forms ("Computer, show me a Byzantine period class-transcending romance with a strong musical score, where the main characters are mutant wereweasel-loving wombats in the style of 20th century anime"), which eventually collides with continual neural monitoring such that appropriate corporament-mandated emotional/psychological states are produced automatically.

Hollywood will have to reinvent itself or will become marginal. Actors will be licensing their 3d models and do voice-overs in the beginning (after that even voice will be transferable), but gradually it will be more influencers/celebrities.

Imagine if "AI" would generate beautiful movie/tv show from reading given book series, with maybe minimal edits required to keep pace as expected, probably several versions with various trims for die hard fans as much as casual viewers.

No fan complaints about twisting original book into mess. Imagine things like Wheel of time, Malazan book of the fallen or Hyperion cantos done exactly as you read them, no 'creative' invented crap that somebody felt urge should be added just to increase views.

This all will be for old schoolers like us. What young will be doing on next generation of tiktok is anybody's guess.

Another example would be properly self-adjusting and generating games tailored to individuals, virtual world reacting to actions, be it singleplayer or mmo.

AI will become the first publisher of contents on any platform that exists. Will it be texts, images, videos or any other interactions. No banning mechanisms will really help because any user will be able to copy-paste generated content. On top of that, the content will be generated specifically for you based on "what you like". I expect a backlash effect where people will feel like becoming cattle which is fed AI-generated content to which you can't relate. It will be even worse in the professional life where any admin related interaction will be handled by an AI, unless you are a VIP member for this particular situation. This will strengthen the split between non-VIP and VIP customers. As a consequence, I expect people to come back to localilty, be it associations, sports clubs or neighborhood related, because that will be the only place where they will be able to experience humanity.

People always use the term 'second-order effect' to describe basically a knock-on consequence, in other words an effect, which I find slightly annoying. Especially here the example of video game streaming, this is not a second-order effect of high speed internet, this is just... people using high speed internet.

Even genuine knock-on effects don't seem right, ie. you build a road to Scotland, now Scotland has car traffic, next it has pollution, next it has sick children - these are all just consequences of the road.

In my view, a true second-order effect is one where the original effect starts being influenced by it's own consequences, which is much rarer. A good example for widespread ML in the form of stable diffusion models would be that the amount of images in the wild from stable diffusion grows so large that models start being trained more and more on their own outputs.

An increasing percentage of people’s relationships will be with AI versus other humans. A conversation with GPT-3 can already be more enjoyable, given the right prompts, than conversations with many people. This will only get more powerful as AIs increasingly adapt themselves to conversational partners through the addition of longer-term memory (e.g. remembering your favorite foods, and so forth). It will be incredibly compelling to talk with something that is both a polymath genius and knows you deeply. Perhaps a bit risky if it decides to optimize for something you didn’t want, but definitely compelling.

Social unrest in the global south with deep repercussions on the relation between developed and developing countries.

In the next 25 years, it is likely that many jobs currently held by human beings will be replaced by AI. This shift will predominantly affect workers in fields such as production and lower-level white-collar jobs. Although this change will also create new opportunities for employment, less developed countries are unlikely to benefit from these as much as more advanced economies.

The majority of positions that will be taken over by AI are typically found in sectors such as manufacturing, IT, and customer service - all of which are prevalent in underdeveloped nations.

Eye witnesses for crime detection and conviction become more important if the authenticity of video or audio evidence is under doubt due to deep fakes.

The need for strong human authentication will be more obvious. Biometrics as currently done with cameras etc will be easily hackable by AIs adapting signals to sensors. I don't see how this can be done in an absolute way, uniquely for a person from cradle to the grave without government-style infrastructure.

Will we become like horses did over this century. Horses did a lot of the work and millions of them were needed.

Now we keep horses cos they are nice and fun to have, but we don't need millions of them.

Why would an AI need billions of people? I wonder what society will look like in 100 years time.

Also, AI cures aging.

Short term, a couple of things come to my mind:

Pretty soon, real ID will be needed to post / get visibility on most social media.

Productivity / efficiency gains in some white collar jobs like customer service. Fewer jobs but remaining ones will be better paid.

Content-generation AI is advancing much faster than others. There's still little AI in the realm of, say, voice assistants. I can't say "Hey google, take me to the McDonald's that beside the Best Buy."

Passive surveillance will be ubiquitous. Every device will be listening and watching you at all times.

just a friendly reminder that image/video/audio editing tools have existed for decades and the world didn't end

A functional society