[darkwater]

Well, that was a recent invention anyway - at least in Europe where I live. TVs did not really reach most of the households until late '70s and the shared pop culture based on movies (mostly from US), cartoons (mix from Japan and US), advertisements (usually national) was created quite fast.

It's not an immutable fact of the human society.

[mantas]

On top of that, I wonder if it wouldn't be for the better. 100 years ago many regions had distinct cultures. 200 years ago pretty much each village had a wee different culture. With slightly different fairy tales or songs and so on. Nowadays the culture gets standardised at a massive pace. If generative AI could put a stop on it... That'd definitely be an improvement.

[voidpointer]

Maybe you have a point there. An optimistic outlook would be that AI allows people to create content that can compete with the polished, mass-produced, standardized stuff without the prohibitive budget requirements. The pessimistic view is that it leads to more isolation, where everyone only "creates" for themselves.

[mantas]

I don't think it would be worse isolation than consuming standardized mass-produced content. Even a simple prompt, thinking what you want and so on is already the beginning of a creativity. Turning on TV/Netflix/whatever is not.

Unless the problem is people isolation in way, that people would not consume standardized content that also, to some extent, standardize their mind. But in that case it's an isolation problem even without AI when people check out from mass culture and entertain themselves. Wether entirely solo or in small fringe subcultures. Which is kinda isolation if you look from 19th/20th century point-of-view when name of the game was to normalise all the regional cultures into bigger bodies of people. But is such isolation the wrong or a good kind of isolation? I'd lean towards the later.