This should be the mainstream #marketing position.

@paninid Very well. The cafe will also have (microwaved) Thai food and be in a gas station.

Because that’s how American business actually works.

Oh yeah! And it’s at every interstate exit, displaced your favorite local joint from the market, and now that you’re captive, prices are tripling. Except in poorer neighborhoods where they’re quadrupling.

Thank us or we’ll call you a terrorist.

@paninid It should, too many people fail to understand the economics of information.

@paninid The ultimate irony would be if this post was written by AI. And that's the problem with the metaphor: the average schmoe knows instantly the difference between café food and pizza or Thai or sushi. They don't have to make any effort to pause and think about it. The best metaphor I can think of is fine art. People may not be able to distinguish the difference between Van Gogh and a knockoff of his work, but many of us are naturally going to be attracted to the art that has some heart and soul put into it, no matter how intangible that quality is. Yes, there are still going to be decision-makers who have contempt for their customers and believe they won't notice the difference, but they will largely fail. Not completely, but humanity, heart, and soul will win out.

@reiddragon

@LillaVee @paninid Very bleak. Sounds about right.

@paninid That's because the true product shipped by "AI" is not actually content but the promise of replacing living workers.

@paninid AI as explained by a Ferengi, like Quark explaining the logic of war to a Vulan.

@paninid except that all the cafes and the rare Thai restaurant share identical street-facing facades. You have to get into each one and taste the product to figure out if it's slop or written by a human.

@paninid this is such a brilliant way of describing the folly of AI in general. This is why I am utterly convinced that it (at least in its current form) will fail. It offers nothing of value, or at least nothing that justifies its cost. Eventually all the techbros will realize this and stop pumping money into it. It has to turn a profit eventually.

@paninid It’s a bit like shouting to the void. The people on power now treasure mediocrity & ”good enough”.

The irony is that CEO’s are actually selected for bullshit generation themselves. How you make it in that world is spewing intelligent-sounding bullshit faster than can be debunked. So we have what they built.

@paninid unfortunately, this presumes that a lot of people employed to create content are there because their creative skills were needed. The reality is that many are / were employed to write slop. "50 words on dog food brand X", "Clickbait headline for video" etc.

Human slop is being replaced by AI slop.

For clarity, I think this is shit on many levels. No one wants slop, however it's generated. I'd guess that few people love writing slop. Now it's fully automated...

@paninid ... To stretch the analogy a bit: the high street already had 10,000 cafes on it. None of them made much money. Then overnight, all of those cafes became almost identical, and started losing money at a slightly slower pace. The human run Thai restaurant / bodega / 24hr bagels did well for a while.

Of course, it's much more nuanced and complex an analogy could ever reflect. Sigh

@paninid the only real value is in using AI to make trump look ridiculous.

Alas, after he dies, it will lose even that minor value.