When I read Hamish McKenzie’s recent post, The AI revolution is an opportunity for writers, I felt deep foreboding. Something like the pity a scarred English veteran of the First Boer War might have felt as he watched young Englishmen, full of martial spirit, tramp towards troop ships embarking for Flanders.
I think AI will cause a massacre of writers and media outlets before the end of the decade.
First, a disclaimer.
I think McKenzie, in cofounding Substack, has done the global media landscape a crucial service. As Special Assistant to the President on Technology Policy Tim Wu made clear in The Attention Merchants, the ad-driven content creation model had a horrific effect on the quality of online content. It also crippled what used to be a thriving freelance market for content creators by shuttering the small and medium-sized outlets that were freelance writers’ bread and butter.
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