Collecting Information, creating content, mass-communicating – sound familiar? That is what AI does. And more: We seem to resignedly accept the fact that Twitter is now a bot-infested propaganda tool where political agendas, mis-information, defamation and agitation are the proclaimed News people digest. Worse, they consume it like fast food and make decisions based on it. Meanwhile, the information rebels among us are trying to figure out whether they are arguing with paid demagogues or bots. The latter have not only taken over X, but have also entered chat rooms. There they discuss and argue not only for political parties, but indeed in favour of brands and products. Bots. Discussing with you and telling you to change your consumer taste.

This is the true information age: machines having access to all data and governmental data-driven control systems (which is why Musk did spend such an outrageous amount of money on a loose cannon like Donald Trump). Carole Cadwalladr calls it a repressive engine in a state that will ultimately become – or already is – a techno-authoritarian surveillance state. These days, the US are screening Facebook accounts to determine whether foreign applicants pass the MAGA test which grants access to American universities. Peter Thiel’s Palantir does this and much more with the data collected by DOGE.

The outlook on scientific levels isn’t much better. This raises an essential question: From whom should artificial intelligence actually learn from? AI constantly produces new content that is to a considerable degree initiated by poor prompts and based on unverified or false information. By doing so, however, it pollutes its own biotope and gene pool. Or rather. it descends to digital cannibalism and developing a type of digital BSE. At the dawn of the new millennium it was only discovered later that cattle should better not be fed their own corpse parts processed into super-proteins. Not polemics here, but what can Intelligence actually learn if the material isn’t intelligent?

This is why companies such as Scale AI and Scurge AI exist and are the hottest thing on the market. They stand behind or rather below the colourful hype surrounding ChatGPT and similar technologies. These companies label and curate data that is used to feed and train all major AI models. A relatively simple task that, however, only humans can perform. To achieve such output, these companies work with thousands of contractors, often freelancers:

• In data labelling, people tag images, evaluate texts and correct AI outputs
• RLHF (Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback) teaches AI models what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’
• Quality control ensures that AI training data is high-quality and unbiased

And it’s a lucrative business model too. Young people get recruited from colleges to categorise data. The modern student job is basically a kind of production assembly line in a virtual factory, the end product being sold on to OpenAI & Co. for double the price. Brave new world.

Dudley Lynch and Paul Cordis in their book The Strategy of the Dolphin pose the question: what comes after constant innovation (which can be imagined as an ever-increasing frequency of sine wave amplitudes)? Their theory: the return and repetition of inventions. That is indeed happening in music, which at some point became creatively exhausted. Today’s charts already consist largely of borrowed melodies and grooves. Similar situation in fashion. And, of course, dissertations.

So then, what kind of innovation can AI deliver if it isn’t even intelligent? Should it even be expected to? Or is the real data reserved for the Lamborghinis among AI computers, their coders and investors for strategic means. Meanwhile, the rank and file lower class inhale recycled data waste in some kind of AI McDonald’s. A scenario that, judging from what we see on X, is frighteningly real.

And so it is not religion but AI that is opium for the common people. Add to that South African Mars explorer and amateur anthropologist Elon Musk, who threatened in one of his X announcements to completely rewrite history using X-AI. An intelligent reworking of our human and cultural history. Redefined amd politically modified by the very techno-oligarchs who, in this brave new world and together with their political patrons, decide what is art or culture, what is politically expedient and what is not. This is doesn’t sound very intelligent but rather like digital propaganda. In this context, we shouldn’t even think about true and false anymore. So much for intelligence.

Content is no longer created for humans but for systems

The same trends active on commercial level. SEO guru Jono Alderson describes a machine-driven digital reality in one of his brilliant articles. Today, users are no longer exploring the internet to scan search results or compare reviews. Instead, they delegate decision-making to artificially intelligent intermediaries. These systems take a question, assess the situation and deliver a single result – an answer, a product, a decision.

This means that content is increasingly being created not just for humans, but for systems. This new content is no longer seen directly; it is analysed, summarised and repackaged elsewhere.

According to Jono, we are entering a fundamentally different paradigm in which intelligent systems mediate how people discover, evaluate and interact with brands. Whether it’s an LLM that summarises answers, an AI assistant that makes recommendations, or a multimodal agent that facilitates purchases – in the new digital experience world, websites are no longer searched by customers; it is the systems that evaluate and make the decisions.

As a result, retailers and salespeople now face machines that take over both marketing and purchasing decisions. What used to be a competition for visibility is now becoming a battle for inclusion.

And that brings us back to the daily AI hype in marketing. On LinkedIn, GPT Prompt & Frame Charts for digital jobs and job searches are now posted at a frequency reminiscent of prime-time bidding wars with banner ads. On X, the American president already has the duration and historic title of a war ready before it has even ended. And sends it into the social mist where it gets reproduced and reposted by the trillions. That is the digital age. History is being written while it happens. The wet dream of any propaganda expert.

There is no more deliberation in development. Instead there are solutions to problems that haven’t even been explored. And that is the real problem: we no longer think for ourselves; others think for us. Entrepreneur Mikael Pawlo sums up this situation in sombre terms: this new version of the Internet will no longer be open. It will be personalised, predictable and closed. The Internet of the future will no longer be searchable. You won’t go there anymore – it will come to you. Summarised, evaluated, commented on and tailored to your personal preferences. And, increasingly so before you even ask for it.

Back to AI for the layman. Yes, AI-driven techniques are getting better and better, no question. Nevertheless, I still need to be a trained designer, photographer or producer to recognise where AI creations become boring or downright wrong. To intervene and apply common sense, human knowledge or simply humanity.

We are being bombarded with artificial creations that look and sound anything but natural. On top of that, we digest information that has not only been compiled from God knows where but is often invented. By idiots who post it on the Internet picked up by an AI that doesn’t recognise or check it. Or has generated the crap itself, just like you would programme a bot. Here, too, there are apparently the same price and quality differences as with chat and service bots.

Speaking of which, from now on we’re not only discussing complete automation of creative services, but also government services. That’s right: advice, assistance, decision-making, social services and health-care. With that degree of inhumanity, insensitivity and obvious lack of depth and realism? You have to be kidding. Or not.

So let’s return to Ms Cadwalladr and her view of the political and social hype surrounding AI: it’s bullshit. It’s not inevitable – and we can stop it. If we trust our senses. Okay, in an age when people blindly walk into busy roads because they’re staring at their mobile phones, it seems unimaginable. And maybe it is. But what will be the result?