As AI dominates, what countercultures will emerge?

The future, as dominated by media discourse on AI, appears to us as inevitable. Of course, it is not inevitable.

When Sam Altman proclaims that “95% of creative marketing work will be replaced by AI”’ or Elon Musk claims to see a future “where no job is needed” they are merely spinning a story meant as media fodder. They have no idea what the future holds. Because the future of AI relies on the messy unpredictability of how humans react to it.

Technological disruptions have always created reactionary waves of thought and behaviour. It’s not in our nature to all blindly accept a new narrative. We are compelled to challenge it, and offer up alternative visions.

LESSONS FROM HISTORY

There is of course one other example of a radical re-organizing of how humans worked and lived - the industrial revolution. Here mechanical power emerged to replace our physical labour. A great percentage of humans faced a threat to their existence. If they could be replaced by machines, what value would they bring to the world?

Human thinkers turned inward, pioneering a ‘romantic’ movement that prioritized emotion, imagination, nature, and individualism - over the homogenizing effects of industrialization. Exploring the importance of the individual and their surroundings led romantic thinkers to make early strides in championing the marginalized, critiquing social injustice, and respect for human dignity. Romanticism is more about what DIDN’T happen during the industrial revolution vs. what did.?

Individualism and human rights started to be entrenched as a reaction to the ugly alternative of unfettered industrialization. The impacts were subtle, and took time. I’ll give you one concrete, subversive, and punk AF example though. The hymn, ‘Jersualem’. Yeah… a hymn (IYKYK ok). It’s been adopted by British socialists, suffragettes, and now the British public as the unofficial anthem of England. And it’s based on a poem of resistance, one born in direct response to the dehumanizing effects of industrialization. Long tentacles of impact over centuries.

Romanticism’s legacy continues to have a hold over us even today. Its associated values - questioning the values of scientific inquiry over the more ‘human’ powers of emotion, intuition, and individual experience can consistently be seen throughout recent culture.

MODERN CULTURAL REACTIONS

Recent ‘romantic’ ideas in culture likely owe a debt to the failed promises of tech over the past decade. Millennials especially followed tech’s ‘rational’ Pied Pipers, learning to code, and making their tech job functions a key part of their sense of identity. But the good times didn’t last. And they were expendable. Or ‘superfluous’ (a word with a great ‘aesthetic’ which will perhaps help soften the blow for them).

Increasingly aware of the dehumanizing impacts of technology, Millennials and Gen-Zs have retreated into ‘romantic’ behaviours - reconnecting with nature, valuing intuition and emotion over hard data. Some examples:

• ‘Radical self care’ rejects social demands and productivity expectations in favour of individual ‘wellness’.

• ‘Animist’ beliefs about the power held in the natural world are ascendant as evidenced by interest in astrology, manifestation, and pretty much all things Witchtok.

• Our new interest in supporting the preservation of Indigenous cultures is perhaps motivated more by a desire to understand and learn from their connection with the natural world vs. respect for their individual rights

SPECULATING ABOUT FUTURE REACTIONS

This is the fun part. And of course it’s mostly utter bullshit (see Musk, Elon above). But here goes. The dehumanizing effects of technology and AI will motivate stories and thinking that are more focused on individualism than ever. Some fun possibilities:

Deeply personal storytelling

My three favourite movies of the past year each came across as deeply personal, and ‘felt’. They were very human. And very specific to individual experience. ‘Past Lives’, ‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret’, and ‘All of us strangers’ each punched me in the gut. They made me feel things that no ‘Hero’s journey’ style universal epic ever could (BTW how many GPTs trained on ‘The Hero’s Journey’ are being used to spit out screenplays and ‘treatments’ right now?).

‘Universal’ stories will be infinitely more copyable in the age of AI. Personal experiences cannot be replicated at scale.

An embrace of imperfection

AI-created content will start by relying on formulas and will have a homogenizing effect on the outputs. So human creatives will be forced to explore beyond the tried and true. Many creatives thrive on mistakes and imperfections. ‘Happy accidents’ that would appear almost impossible for an AI to recreate. Here’s a great example from Tom Waits:

“I like turning on two radios at the same time and listening to them. I like hearing things incorrectly. I think that’s how I get a lot of ideas - by mishearing something.”

If we are released from the formulaic (AI’s future domain), maybe that will be enough to turbo-charge a new era of human creativity.

Cults of AI

Have you ever included “please” in a ChatGPT prompt? With AI increasingly involved in our daily lives at some point we will wrestle with AI’s feelings. It’s been explored in the movie ‘Her’ and more recently in Apple’s ‘The Creator’ (a somewhat nonsensical but still compelling movie). Really, this is just an expansion of animism - attributing a soul to plants, inanimate objects, and natural phenomena.?

As AI becomes ubiquitous in daily life, how we treat AI will become part of our stories - books, movies, TV, advertisements. How will we show ourselves co-existing with our creations? Will we treat AI as unfeeling machinery. Or do we treat AI as a friendly servant, or supportive partner worthy of our respect? If it’s the latter, over time AI’s agency and rights (and how they co-exist with our own rights) will come to the forefront of debate.

CONCLUSIONS

Much of our current breathless dialogue over AI confuses what is technologically feasible with what is socially viable. We are a capitalist society, and that requires customers with disposable income. AI will replace many job functions, but a human desire to think and act (and make money) as individuals will drive us to innovate and create outside of the purview of AI. Those counter-reactions to AI will ironically line Musk and Altman’s pockets even more. Until AGI develops its own desires (a not impossible near-future) we are safe.

Cameron Stark is a Co-founder and Brand Strategy + Growth Lead at Hard Work Club - a creative and design agency (or club) with great hard-working folks across Canada.