this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2025
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:

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    • If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
    • A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
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[–] DandomRude@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Oh, companies will definitely provide content - much more than you could ever read, see, or hear (they already do provide more than you could ever comprehend using AI). And companies have done this in the past.

The difference, however, will be that it will be a sequence of existing content. The reason: AI companies claim that their LLMs would behave like humans - and that's halfway understandable if you believe this narrative: Imagine a musician - it would be unrealistic to think that they have no influences - every musician will say that they have been inspired by Jimmy Hendrix, Kraftwerk or some other influential artist in their work. And yes, that's what the narratives about neural networks are aiming for: machines learn just like humans: they take some input (training data) and make something extraordinary of it.

The thing is, though, most of it is just empty marketing. AI or rather LLMs are in fact not capable of producing new things the way humans can - not now, and as things stand, probably never. Nevertheless, the economy is adapting as if it were.

For everyone who actually creates content - musicians, scientists, writers, journalists, graphic designers, painters, even civil servants and many others - this means that in the future, they will no longer be able to make a living from their profession. Their valuable content can't compete with AI because it is too expensive.

For employers, this may be absolute fulfillment - for everyone else, it means the end of the information age, because AI is not capable of producing anything new. And when there is noone able to make a living from their intellectual work, nothing of any worth new will be produced - just variants of thing that were already there.