Decline in creativity and innovation
In a bleak future marred by the relentless march of profit-driven automation, the Philippines witnesses a stark decline in creativity and innovation. Entertainment and creative industries fall victim to the encroaching dominance of AI, stripping away the artistry and originality once cherished by human creators. Driven by the pursuit of profit, people relinquish control to algorithms, sacrificing ingenuity at the altar of popularity.
A landscape of sameness emerges, as record charts echo with the monotonous drone of algorithmically optimized tunes, devoid of soul and diversity. In the tech realm, websites and apps become indistinguishable clones, crafted to meet cookie-cutter standards rather than human needs. The distinction between human and AI contributions blurs, with the essence of human creativity lost in the algorithmic churn.
Yet, amidst the sea of homogeneity lies a darker truth: a lack of thoughtfulness pervades the content of this future era. Marginalized groups suffer as AI tools, lacking nuanced historical and cultural understanding, churn out misguided representations and commodify Indigenous practices. Women bear the brunt of gendered assumptions, as AI-driven biases reinforce societal norms and perpetuate harmful stereotypes.
In this dystopian reality, the vibrant tapestry of human creativity unravels, replaced by a bleak landscape of algorithmic conformity and dehumanizing content.
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Filipino artists, once vibrant with diverse sounds and voices, now churn out homogenized melodies and lyrics, all thanks to the suffocating grip of TikTok's influence. Stripped of their creativity and individuality, musicians find themselves trapped in a relentless cycle of conformity, pandering to the algorithm's demands for viral hits at the expense of artistic expression. As the cacophony of indistinguishable tunes fills the airwaves, the soul of Filipino music fades into obscurity, drowned out by the relentless march of algorithmic uniformity.
Selected Quotes
If everything that we do as humans, everything that's made by humans for entertainment purposes--songs, games, art--if ever that is taken by taken over by technology, maybe AI, that would be detrimental, because who would have pictured that robots would be the one creating art and human workers were are going to be the ones working in factories. If the entire entertainment industry gets taken over by AI [or technology in general], there would no longer...be creation of new stuff.
I think we need to grapple with [this question]: how do our attribution systems work? There are even a bunch of scientific papers these days where you can see lines like "As a language model..."; I mean, these are scientific papers published on journals, right? So we will have to contend with a world where either we accept that almost everything we create will or could have been assisted by an AI model, and is not fully wrought from human hands. We could try to resist as as much as we can, but if you want me to be realistic, I'm not sure if that's still a viable option. Maybe it was 2 years ago, but with so many like people having access to [ChatGPT]...you can just get the existing trained thing, and then you can fine tune it for your particular needs. You don't need the the original data anymore. So yeah, I think it's too late for that.
We won't care about...saving what is...historically important; what we'll only constantly think about is what can give us profit, what can save it, etcetera. Which to be honest, it will probably lead to...people just constantly being left [on] their own, in a hypercapitalistic [and] hyperlibertarian kind of way. As in...dog eat dog world. It's already that way anyways, and it's just gonna get worse. I don't know, I think I just had that realization last year when I saw people talk about...the issue with Apo Whang-Od and [Nas Daily]...And people saying "Isn't Nas just making [cultural tattooing] more profitable for Apo Whang-Od?" That's not the point, honey; that's not the point...Or like when people talk about...let's say the Aetas and their right to their land, saying that: "Doesn't that fall under eminent domain?...If it benefits more people in society to use that, shouldn't we be using it?". But that's not the point. Like they're people; you can't just think: "if I can use it, why not?"
And you might see [AI] affect design and UX in the same way...it will probably start recommending you particular ways to design things that are probably gonna get more cookie-cutter as it is...I mean, at, at this point, almost every website and every app already looks the same, but it's gonna get even more generic in the next two or three years as people will stop researching. And at this point now, in the Philippines, people already don't do user research enough, right? People don't really do user research enough, not even [UX practitioners]...[L]ike...the amount of shit...I see from...UX designers in the Philippines saying that doing research is such a Western idea, and that it's not for us. You have to find time, honey. It's not my problem. But yeah, we don't really do user research, and it's gonna just create more cookie-cutter shit...you're just gonna make assumptions and more assumptions and more assumptions about what you're designing and who you're designing for...that's gonna happen globally, probably.
Indirectly, I would say...for the lack of a better term, the people who are really the most affected in general are people who are already marginalized as it is. And I'm not even talking about me being quee,r or the LGBTQ community, because to be to be fair, a big chunk of the visible LGBTQ community in Manila is very upper middle class. But a big chunk of your...low middle class...I'm not using class ABCD because that's a false dichotomy that the Department of Economics [made up]...[and] your indigenous people will be affected because AI will probably start generating assumptions about culture and their culture, or assumptions about let's say how lower class people work, play, etcetera. And if there is some lazy marketing executive, we'll probably run with that, and you know, start selling more cigarettes that way, or start selling more whatever that way...
When you talk about being marginalized, it might actually affect women really hard. Because there's so much implicit bias when it comes to [being in the] workforce, [where] people might start making assumptions. Like let's say, if you're trying to sell it to women...I'd start making assumptions about how to sell to women, and that can create like a big societal [and] cultural problem of what we push to women, and what we push to young children [or] young women that way.
I feel like, oh, no, puro "Raining in Manila" yung music. Joke lang, sorry, that was unserious. I don't like that song now. I used to enjoy it but now it's overplayed. Sorry, that was not serious at all.
But ultimately, [for people] just living their daily lives, not necessarily embedded in like critical computing conversations, AI just provides so much benefit. Like [for example,] ChatGPT [is] so easy to use....[There is this new] app, they [offer]...AI-generated headshots and high school pictures...and I saw that was really trending in the Philippines too. Like there is so much...easily perceived benefit and social benefit of using these technologies, that like it makes it so easy to not consider any of the harms. So I would say...I see this type of technology being introduced by bigger corporations without this critical lens, making it really easy for...I mean, this is not specific to Filipino people, but like making it really easy for them to like depend on AI as like a part of their social media content curation...content consumption...content generation, like even making the things that they push on social media, and really...themselves feeding the algorithm that is already knowing them and manipulating them.
...[C]reative industries are actually at risk if they're not able to...[adapt to AI tools] fast enough. [And] anything that is low complexity and low uncertainty is at risk of automation, like pressing buttons in [an] elevator kind of job, right. So any menial task [will] automate the hell out of that...[B]ut I think what was an unpleasant surprise was that AI had encroached on white-collar work first. Like we were worried...we were kind of looking at factory workers, things like that. Self-driving trucks as the place...Actually the physically robotic AI is...still in development as you know, right. But the digital...like those creative agencies, generative AI...happened first. So completely...unaware creative writers, artists, advertisers, journalists are getting hit. And again, if they don't adopt and adapt AI...I don't see a bright horizon for these guys, unfortunately.
