The Return Of The Gatekeepers?

The Internet removed gatekeepers. Will Generative AI now bring about their swift return?

I was recently enjoying an article on professional networking,?10 Networking Trends To Watch In 2024 Based On Industry Experts. The writing was clear; it was easy to read. The statistics were insightful. I even liked the clean design of the page. Then got to the last of the 10 trends:

? ? ?Trend 10: Next-Gen Wi-Fi Is Here

Next Gen Wi-Fi? For a few minutes I scratched my head as I wondered what this blurb on higher data rates and lower latency had to do with professional networking. And then it hit me.

This article had been entirely created using Generative AI.

Trend 10 did not match the others because the AI model had not?been able to retain coherence over the full length of the article. It confused wifi networking with professional networking. The article is likely full of hallucinations,?and likely entirely untrustworthy. This article's sole purpose is to game the search engines to drive traffic to the site.

I had been made a fool of!?

In the meanwhile, it's tax season here in the US. I emailed my accountant. I got an auto-reply from him that included the following:

Due to the volume of useless emails that I receive, your email may never be seen. If it's important then I recommend that you use our Client Portal on our website.

The Internet was supposed to free us of gatekeepers. Many even considered gatekeepers "evil", bloating the cost structure of the final goods that are delivered to consumers.

• With the advent of blogs, X (Twitter) and similar platforms, if you wanted to write something for the world to see, you didn't need to get a book deal or convince someone at a newspaper to give you a column.
• With YouTube, if you want to broadcast something, you can do so without going through the heavy commissioning?process that TV shows undertake.
• If you want to sell your art, there is Etsy. If you want to find work, there are job boards. If you want to offer courses, there are the likes of?Coursera and Udemy.

The Internet removed gatekeepers, but the range of choice that that the open Internet has made possible in almost every aspect of our lives has been getting increasingly difficult to manage.

With Generative AI, the cost of creation - whether they be articles, videos, product designs, recipes or emails - is now almost zero.

With Generative AI, it seems likely that gatekeepers will become necessary once more.

This past week, Midjourney - a leader in AI generated art - released its most requested feature, "character consistency". It's now possible to use AI to generate several different versions of the same person, dog or car in different scenarios or poses.

This may be the final nail in the coffin of the comic book industry. Now that almost anyone can make a comic book, how do I know which comic books are worth my time? If Open AI's Sora does the same for video, how do I know which videos are worth my time??

And, as I learned from the professional networking article, I am already questioning which articles are worth my time.

I can't help but think that we're soon going to be returning to an existence that some of us might remember prior to the Internet era, when we relied on trusted TV networks, trusted newspapers, trusted referrals, trusted certifications... and other trusted gatekeepers.

What do you think? How do you think people will manage the tidal wave of options that is being unleashed upon us? I'd love to hear your thoughts on the comments.