Cory Doctorow on AI hype and the historic neutrality of platforms
→ The Reverse-Centaur’s Guide to Criticizing AI
Lots of great insight here from Cory, but I was particularly draw to his description of what I called the “political economy of hype” in a previous post on web3. What’s nice about Cory’s addition is that it addresses the topic from the perspective of publicly traded stocks, whereas I was interested in venture backed startups. The point is never-the-less the same, hype serves financial ends, and the intensity of a hype cycle is particularly ferocious when interests converge.
Adam Aleksic, author of Algospeak makes a great observation regarding use of the word platform. Platforms, or soapboxes, were historically neutral in that they allowed a speaker to rise above a crowd to speak directly to them. A modern day social media platform makes choices about the reach of the messages its users send, and, in-doing, so alters the nature of the communication too. I’d also add that, with an LLM increasingly part of the message to audience supply chain, new types of platform are getting in on the mediating game.