When the Dam Breaks

Sooner or later (and likely sooner than many people may be comfortable with), someone is going to use generative automation to create something that's objectively "slop" (here defined as low-effort engagement bait), and it's going to be good enough that it stands just far enough from the pile that it generates a decent amount of revenue for its creator. That, I think, is the point at which it will be off to the races. Hoping to recapture that lightning in their own bottle, people are going to crowd into the space, hoping that they, too, will be able to rise above the tide well enough to strike it affluent, if not rich. Using this one standout example as a proof of concept, there will be a general idea that with the right idea, it will be possible to gain broad recognition.

But in addition to huge amounts of slop slurry, I suspect that this may also create a dearth of public ideation. There are any number of people who have already come to understand that ideas, in and of themselves, are valuable. (With patent trolls, I suspect, doing a lot to contribute to this.) Once people have the idea that computers can handle most, if not all of the execution, I expect the understanding to gain even more traction. (Especially if it turns out that our just-good-enough slop example turns out to not be an original concept on the part of the creator.) This will result in something of an unwillingness to openly discuss new creative ideas, for fear that they'll be "stolen," and someone else will use them to create something.

While "original character - do not steal" was something of a meme from its inception, one does come across the occasional person who seems to legitimately believe that whatever it is they've come up with is so creative and different that it has some real financial value. I think that someone managing to turn an idea into income with the help of generative automation will turn that I idea from a joke so something mildly mainstream. After all, it's not like most people are intellectual properly lawyers, or otherwise understand how such systems work. Disney protects its characters as if lives depended on it, so someone thinking that their great new idea for a videogame character or superhero could set them up is not wholly unreasonable.

And that creates an incentive for silence. Of course, it's not just fiction that would have this incentive. As I noted previously, a company with one human being and some number of agents is easily replicated by anyone with access to the requisite number of agents. And so that also gives people a reason to be secretive, at least until they can pull the trigger on their new enterprise, and have it running smoothly.

Whether or not it will actually turn out this way is an open question. And I'm bad enough at predicting the future that the simple fact that I think it might could be the single biggest reason to think it won't. But, at least for now, the incentives seem likely to fall into place.