big fish, little fish, middle fish

on ecosystems

i don’t think these fish are okay

Because I was recently working on something about AI,¹ I was in a phase where I was talking to everybody about AI. I find that, among people who are generally skeptical of AI-generated material, a common sentiment is something like this: AI can’t kill anything good. This belief is one that I share, actually! But I think it also misses something important. To use an example from one of these conversations: suppose your local dentist office starts playing algorithmically generated muzak instead of Maroon 5. As you sit in that tooth-shaped chair, will you really feel any worse because you are not listening to human-composed plastic air filler? I think the answer is “no.” But the catch is that you’ll probably be living in a worse world for music.