Covid Accelerated Virtualization, Fast-Tracked Generative AI
Welcome to Our New "Post Covid Epoch": Increasingly Isolated, Artificial & In Need of IRL
Welcome to your Thanksgiving week brAIn dump! I’m thankful to all of you for reading and reaching out to share your thoughts. This week’s newsletter is a special edition that features a different kind of “mAIn event” — I ruminate about our new “Post Covid Epoch” and what it means for young people (based on the thoughts of actual young people). It’s an era marked by fast-tracked virtualization and accelerated generative AI. Then, it’s the “AI Litigation Tracker” — updates on key generative AI infringement cases by leading IP law firm McKool Smith.
And now you can follow me and my daily updates and musings on Bluesky via this link (with my longer posts continuing to be on LinkedIn via this link).
[NOTE: No newsletter next Monday. Am taking one week off to reflect, not just write. Next newsletter coming December 9th, featuring my interview with one of the hottest startups in the world of generative AI and media/entertainment — ProRata AI.]
I. The mAIn event - Welcome to the “Post Covid Epoch” (& the GenAI Transformation It Unleashed)
“I don’t feel anything in the modern world.”
If you’re young right now, that ironic line from the new song “In The Modern World” by Dublin rock band Fontaines D.C. may pretty much sum it up (if you don’t know the band, you should; they’re one of the hottest bands right now for all the right reasons).
So does this following quote from Ella, an early 20-something at NYU who just happens to be one of my son, Luca’s, best friends.
“I’m not missing anything if I don’t know about it.”
Our Post Covid Epoch
Welcome to the “Post Covid Epoch.” You and I who are well into our professional lives certainly know about it. But — depending on your own individual stage in life — we who are already “fully formed,” don’t really “get” it. Many of us consider Covid to be a thing of the past — that society has moved on — and that we are largely “back to normal.”
But those born in the 2000’s — like Luca and Ella — really know what post-Covid really means. To them, it means that life is “starkly different” than what it was pre-Covid (and this past election only underscores that point to many). “It’s impossible to relate pre-Covid to post-Covid living,” Ella tells me. And she’s not alone. There’s a widespread “general trauma” that defines their cohort, they say. A trauma that we, as a society, have not come even close to appreciating.
Luca first told me about this new “Post Covid Epoch” moniker after it was used and discussed in one of his NYU film classes — as a way to define society for his generation at this point in time. He described “pod living” — this new Epoch’s shared generational concept that virtually any individual need can be satisfied, virtually.
Why leave your apartment? Just pick up your phone to get the “pick ups” you need. Food? Yup, got that! Your phone can bring it to you. How about the stimuli you need to fill your days? Yup, your phone’s got that too — endless streams of it. TikTok, Netflix, pick your flavor (endless varieties exist after all). For many, the phone is the single lifeline — literally, the line to life — to just about everything, including family and friends (who are increasingly virtual, of course). Given this now fully realized virtualized reality, workplaces had no choice but to go along for the ride. Work from home, great!
But is it really, especially for young people? That’s frequently where bonds — real lasting bonds — are formed. So here we are, post-Covid.
But are we really “post” it?
Covid Accelerated Virtualization
Covid forced this kind of pervasive virtualized reality that seeped into virtually every aspect of young lives — not to mention the accelerated isolation and generational “malaise” that flows with it (that’s Ella’s term, not mine). Dating is down. The rate of real (non-virtual) friendships is down. There’s an acknowledged epidemic of loneliness. Statistics bear this out (I checked on all those fronts). And here’s the tricky part. This Post-Covid reality for the Post-Covid generation — which you and I may find to be sobering — isn’t necessarily bemoaned by the young people in the midst of it. After all, this is just "the way things are” — the only reality this cohort knows. So, understandably, many may be just fine with it. What else can they do?
Remember, “I don’t feel lonely in the modern world.” Right? (I didn’t reach that surprising realization, Ella and Luca shared it with me.)
Covid served as the great accelerant to take society’s level of virtualization to an entirely new level. Yes, we were already going there. Smart phones and the resulting heads-down in-your-face (literally) social media they bred certainly seeded the path to less IRL social contact and interaction. But certainly not this fast.
Here’s just one example. Yes, we already had Zoom, Google meets, Skype video and the like. In fact, we had quality live video chat available to all of us for decades (I ran one such company, SightSpeed, that we sold to Logitech in 2008. Our video chat was as good 20 years ago as it is today). But it wasn’t until Covid that we were forced to use it — essentially forced to get comfortable with Zoom and others of its ilk as part of our standard communications arsenal. And now, here we are. My days are spent Zooming and Teams-ing away (I rarely have audio-only calls anymore). The number of IRL meetings is also way down. Covid did that.
Virtualization Accelerated Our March Toward AGI
And this great accelerant of Covid — and the forced and pervasive virtualization that it wrought — likely set the stage for society’s significantly accelerated march toward artificial general intelligence (AGI). Remember, ChatGPT was unleashed less than 2 years ago! Yes, of course, we’d be on this AGI path already. But would we have come so far in so little time? I highly doubt it.
Bit here’s the dirty little secret about it all. A lot of people kinda like it — like the increasing virtualization of our lives. After all, Covid took out a lot of the work out of the “work” of being a fully functioning, actively participating member of IRL society — with all of its attendant personal, social and workplace pressures and risks that go with it. The post-Covid haze, malaise and forced acceptance of virtualization prepped many to almost unwittingly avoid the “discomfort” of returning to IRL (real life).
That’s why Ella, Luca and countless others from their generation will call their era the “Post Covid Epoch.” To them, everything is radically different now in ways that are measurable — and in ways that are not. And it’s the things you don’t know — and don’t even realize — that are the most difficult things to measure. Remember, Ella told me that. “I’m not missing anything if I don’t know about it.”
The Power of IRL
There’s a certain cold comfort that comes from staring down at your small screen, rather than looking up to make eye contact with people as they walk by. But some of those micro-connections — some of those ephemeral moments — may have become lasting relationships or led to life-changing opportunities IF ONLY those IRL eyes simply looked up and “met.”
Similarly, there’s a certain cold comfort in our Covid-accelerated relentless march toward AGI. In the world of media and entertainment, AGI’s precursor in the form of generative AI certainly gives us powerful new tools to create faster, cheaper and simply “differently” — to virtualize our lives even further and cocoon our work from the comfort of our own homes. GenAI can even lead to greater creative “democracy.” I buy all of that — and see the power of much of it.
But maybe Luca, my brilliant young filmmaking son, said it best. “Life is more beautiful living naturally. That’s why movies don’t celebrate phone usage. We inherently know that life — real life — is more interesting to people.”
Virtualization certainly has its merits. AI does too (candidly, I’m not too sure or thrilled about our breathless and largely unguarded quest for AGI). But there’s a certain inescapable form of humanity and natural beauty that uniquely flow from IRL experiences, IRL personal and professional relationships, and the creative hard work (and micro-decisions) that flow from largely non-virtualized, non-generative, IRL art.
Let’s never lose sight of that. If not for us. For them.
Thanksgiving this week is a good place to start ….
[POST-SCRIPT 1: A tragic post-script to all of this is the recent story of a young 14 year old boy who sought refuge from IRL in the virtual world of a Character.AI chatbot — and with “whom” he built an overwhelming relationship. He commit suicide when his virtual world overtook his real world and his chatbot asked him to “come home to me as soon as possible.” He shot himself moments later …]
[POST-SCRIPT 2 — A personal one: As I thought about all of this, I just happened to be driving to the concert of one of my favorite bands as a young boy growing up in Minneapolis, Minnesota — ELO (Electric Light Orchestra). One particular ELO song especially moved me — the song “2095” (written and sung by the band in 1981). In the song, the human protagonist essentially turns to an AI companion/robot for affection, connection. And the storyteller asks the human, “Is that what you want? Is it really what you want?” We should ask ourselves the same thing as we relentlessly march toward AGI. “Is that really what we want?” By the way, the concert itself was epic and underscored the power of IRL and real human friendships — I reconnected with my dear friend Bob Meylan, with whom I started my career “back in the day”.]
II. AI Litigation Tracker: Updates on Key AI Infringement Cases (by McKool Smith)
Partner Avery Williams and the team at McKool Smith (named “Plaintiff IP Firm of the Year” by The National Law Journal) lay out the facts of — and latest critical developments in — the key generative AI/media infringement cases listed below via this link to the “AI Litigation Tracker”.
(1) Raw Story Media v. OpenAI (about which I wrote at length a couple weeks back via this link)
(2) The Center for Investigative Reporting v. OpenAI
(2) Dow Jones, et al. v. Perplexity AI (about which I wrote at length a couple weeks back via this link)
(3) The New York Times v. Microsoft & OpenAI
(4) Sarah Silverman v. OpenAI (class action)
(5) Sarah Silverman, et al. v. Meta (class action)
(6) UMG Recordings v. Suno
(7) UMG Recordings v. Uncharted Labs (d/b/a Udio)
(8) Getty Images v. Stability AI and Midjourney
(9) Universal Music Group, et al. v. Anthropic
(10) Sarah Anderson v. Stability AI
(11) Authors Guild et al. v. OpenAI
NOTE: Go to the “AI Litigation Tracker” tab at the top of “the brAIn” website for the full discussions and analyses of these and other key generative AI/media litigations. And reach out to me, Peter Csathy (peter@creativemedia.biz), if you would like to be connected to McKool Smith) to discuss these and other legal and litigation issues. I’ll make the introduction.
And check out my firm Creative Media and our AI-focused services
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