[nopinsight]

>> Unfortunately, I suspect we will get a two-tiered system, where the "middle class" (whether that's disappearing is another question) can afford human content/human support/etc, and the working class are forced to endure poor experiences with AI generated content and so on.

Due to the economics of information, this is unlikely for contents. The cost to watch Avatar is often quite close to a local film with <1% its budget. The most interesting clips made by content creators (Ted Talks, Veritasium, MrBeast, etc.) are accessible to everyone with internet access. There will be some price differences based on access points (theater vs TV vs phone) or resolution but not necessarily the content itself.

I also suspect the best contents in the future will be co-created by humans and AI.

[danpalmer]

This is a fair point, a different way of looking at things.

The way I was thinking about it was, for example, newspapers going online behind paywalls, YouTubers/Podcasters creating paid content on Patreon in order to fund their activities.

On the other side you get Buzzfeed creating AI generated quizzes (rather than news), and YouTube/TikTok content farms with AI generated scripts. Both of these are ad supported, so free to the end consumer, and therefore more accessible than a Patreon/NYT/etc subscription.

[nopinsight]

Articles from The Economist, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times are better and also more expensive to produce than those from Buzzfeed, which justify their subscription fees. What if editors of such caliber could leverage AI-assisted tools to scale their efforts and create high-quality content at a lower cost?

While it's true that, even with advancements in AI, top-tier content uniquely shaped by the individuals or teams behind it will still be more costly to produce, these are likely to get cheaper over time as AI improves. As a result, high-quality content will probably become more accessible.