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Forbes
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
AI Demand-Shaping And The Frictionless Rub Of Solipsistic Efficiency
In 1897, painter Frederic Remington wired New York Journal publisher William Randolph Hearst from Cuba with bad news. There was nothing to see, no war to illustrate. Hearst's infamous reply: 'You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish the war.' The apocryphal anecdote endures as a cautionary tale of media's power to shape reality to its owners' interests. Broadly speaking, historians agree that the sensationalist reporting of Spanish atrocities in Cuba and the mysterious sinking of the USS Maine, which typified the Yellow Journalism era, contributed to the U.S. decision to enter the Spanish-American War in 1898. Hearst and other publishers, like Joseph Pulitzer, saw circulation spikes from their vivid, lurid, and constant coverage, facilitated by new technologies that brought battlefield color to readers at telegraphic speed. Narrative precedes truth. Sensation succeeds substance. Today, emerging feedback loops echo Hearst's telegram, with campaigns to shape consumer demand through prescriptive analytics and generative AI. These are mostly tolerated when used for dynamic ticket pricing and for brand lore development, less so in propaganda campaigns. But what if the demand were being created before there was a product? In late May the Chicago Sun-Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer published 'Heat Index' a 'best of summer' guide insert with, among other fun tips, book recommendations. Those recommendations included reviews and plot summaries, as might be expected from such a feature. The problem, which readers discovered when they sought out their beach reading, was that some of the books did not exist! Chicago freelancer Marco Buscaglia admitting using AI to create the 'Heat Index' book reviews and to not checking against hallucinations. He was working for King Features Syndicate, a unit of Hearst—yes, that Hearst—which apparently did not fact check the recommendations. Neither did the newspapers that published them. FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder Both the Sun-Times and Inquirer have since retracted and apologized for the list, but not before it had circulated widely creating interest, clicks, and even demand for books that no one wrote. Until they did. Since the 'Heat Index' publication, dozens of versions of its fake books have been published and sold through Amazon. The sloppy journalism portends a cost-effective, less-human creative process in the not too distant future; one that speaks to dystopian fears around AI. Here's a modification to the 'Heat Index' story (*only 1 and 5 were added): I call this solipsistic efficiency, a media logic where content generates its own demand, based on individualized tastes, in a closed loop, detached from real authors, real experiences, and external verification. It's not about deception in the traditional sense. It's about removing the inefficiencies of reality to create a perpetual, self-driving consumer experience in which authenticity exists only as a marketing metric. In such a media ecosystem, the uncertainty about what's real becomes a valuable hook. Remember James Frey's A Million Little Pieces? His 'memoir' sold better after being exposed as fabricated. The author admitted as much in a Vanity Fair interview discussing his new book, which (spoiler) he used AI in part to craft. The thrill of maybe-it's-real, maybe-it's-not becomes a form of marketable mystique. We see this across contemporary culture: One of this season's hottest Apple TV+ shows, The Studio, brings viewers inside an uncanny Hollywood featuring actual A-listers playing caricatures of themselves. The show captured 23 Emmy nominations (including five of the six for Guest Actor in a Comedy Series) as well as public fascination for an industry of smoke, mirrors, and greed. The fascination is driven by the tantalizing question: Is that what Hollywood is really like? How real were Martin Scorsese and Ron Howard's performances? In music, French streaming platform Deezer estimates that AI-generated music accounts for 18% of all uploads. This July, The Guardian ran the headline 'An AI-generated band got 1m plays on Spotify.' Where is the line between artistic merit and metadata optimization? It's gotten to the point where The Atlantic's Ian Bogost recently wrote a screed titled 'Nobody Cares If Music Is Real Anymore.' Everyone I've asked says they still do care, provided they know. But if you don't know it's fake, then does it actually matter? For several months the Australian Radio Network featured (without telling listeners at first) an AI DJ named 'Thy' (pronounced 'Tee') across several of its stations. NBC Sports recently unveiled an AI-voiced narrator for NBA games, modeled after Jim Fagan, the deceased, hall of fame voice nostalgically familiar to anyone who watched games in the 1990s. Audacy sports talk radio host James Seltzer (WIP 94.1 FM) characterized the trend as professionally problematic, during a recent on-air broadcast, while acknowledging such tech will be difficult to prevent. AI-driven demand and the opacification of reality are dominating media narratives and perplexing media scholars. This summer, Maggie Harrison Dupré of Futurist reported that 'USA TODAY is publishing automated sports stories that serve as SEO-targeted vehicles for sports gambling ads, toeing ethical lines and blurring the boundaries between sports journalism and the rapidly growing sports betting industry.' The demand to bet on a game may be shaped by AI-generated coverage of it, and with platforms like ESPN, earning from both its news content and its sports book (ESPN BET), such lines are at best questionable. We all know it's here and rapidly advancing, but even experts are perplexed about what to do. 'We can't fight it, and we'd be crazy to try to,' Rowan University Journalism Professor Carl Hausman told me. He stresses the importance of media literacy in education, 'so we don't end up hallucinating ourselves to death.' Last week I attended the 108th Association for Educators in Journalism & Mass Communication (AEJMC), an academic conference for national and international media scholars and practitioners. 'AI' was the talk of our four-day, San Francisco conference, appearing at least 273 times in the 246 page program. Research presentations, panels, working groups, and late night discussions unpacked a range of AI fears and fantasies with many practical and bounded conversations about the future of journalism and how to use AI and generative engine optimization (GMO) to improve curricula. Even its most ardent detractors admit artificial intelligence is increasing efficiency and saving money. From decisions about crop management to gene therapy to real-time translation for financial news wires AI is 'paradigm-shifting technology akin to the internet,' according to Ari Moskowitz, Content Marketing Director at Conviva, a leading platform for real-time performance analytics of apps, streaming platforms, and AI agents. Since the wheel, and probably before it, our human drive to get more with less effort is why we create technology. But for some, the consequences of AI signal a systemic, dehumanizing transformation, where generative systems mimic not just content, but the entire ecosystem: creator, reviewer, performer, promoter, consumer. Cultural artifacts now exist because someone made them and/or because algorithms detected a space where they should exist and then filled it. Even the once-stalwart security of a computer science degree is reportedly under assault, with AI replacing entry-level coders. Such efficiency may be a goal of Open AI and ventures like Meta's Superintelligence Labs. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly paying record salaries to poach engineers who will 'fast-track work on machines that could outthink humans on many tasks.' In a world where $100 million AI engineers are prompting the future of our social, cultural, and professional experience, the trajectory appears to be solipsistic efficiency: a frictionless, perpetual system tailored to create and satisfy our individual wants before we knew we had them. Even a $100,000-per-year engineer, who may now be out of work, would tell you that such a concept violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics. After all, energy cannot be created from nothing, and systems trend toward entropy. But solipsistic efficiency simulates energy through perception. You feel like something was created. Time was spent. Meaning was produced. But in reality, the loop simply confected noise based on prescriptive analytics into a temporarily convincing form shaped to some strategic, synthetic engagement protocols. The extent and time-horizon for such an existential shift will depend not only on AI's advancement, but human choices about we value and who we are. The latter variable is confounded as AI-generated content saturates the mediascape and feeds it back into what we consume. According to science fiction author Storm Humbert 'AI was engineered to solve a problem: shifting creativity to wealth while shifting wealth away from creators.' There's a kind of cultural entropy inversion at work: the more content we generate through closed AI loops, the less value it contains. Can this process increase understanding, connection, originality or is it just more frictionless production, more viral polish? On one hand authenticity has never been more prized. Because of that though the suspicion of inauthenticity becomes part of the draw, like a world reoriented to the ontology of professional wrestling. Is that book real? Is that DJ human? Did AOC really say that? When every artifact can be faked, doubt itself becomes a form of engagement. We click to solve a mystery that grows harder to solve by every click. To be clear, this isn't a Luddite argument against technology. AI has real potential in augmenting creativity, accessibility, and speed. I've used it to help organize, shape, caption, and optimize this article (per Forbes guidelines). But the feedback loops it can create—especially when paired with platform incentives and weak editorial oversight—risk replacing meaning with momentum. We need friction and provenance, to put it bluntly. We need platforms and publishers to invest in verifiability and authorial transparency, and to reward editorial standards as well as GEO and SEO. We need algorithms that foster human connection, not just predictive profitability. And we need cultural gatekeepers—critics, educators, and institutions—to ask not just is it engaging, but is it real? And why does it matter if it's not? Friction and inefficiency are, in some ways, what make us human. Instant transportation between destinations means sacrificing the journey. What would The Canterbury Tales be if the pilgrimage from the Tabard Inn to the Shrine of Thomas Becket were instantaneous? Solipsistic efficiency doesn't directly violate physics. But it violates our ability to know what's real, what's worth preserving, and what, if anything, actually happened. Once the guardrails of reality are gone, the laws of physics no longer exist, at least not to our perception. The Hearst telegram was about manufacturing war. These new loops manufacture demand, legitimacy, and cultural weight—not because of what the content says, but because of how it was engineered a priori. You furnish the engagement; I'll furnish the reality.
Express Tribune
22-03-2025
- Politics
- Express Tribune
From pressuring and isolating to bullying Iran
Listen to article When events are filtered through time and space, they give us patterns that help us formulate future projections. In international relations, resembling current circumstances and arrangements with past patterns greatly aid in drawing comparisons and forecasting the emerging conflicts in the world. The worst conflict that the world has dreaded since the culmination of WWII is a third world war. Such a war can never take place without US participation. However, with an anti-war US President in office, should the world still dread the coming of such a war in the near future? One thing peculiar about the large-scale wars that the US has fought in the past is how it was attacked and drawn into these wars. Nobody was sure that the US would declare war on Spain until the US battleship USS Maine exploded in Havana Harbor in 1898. Only when the British Ocean Liner Lusitania was sunk and resulted in the death of about 2,000 people including 128 Americans that the US was sucked into WWI. Isolationism was being practised as a principled foreign policy goal until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Dec 1941 pushed the US into WWII. If 9/11 had not happened would the US have led the global war on terror? The world sits on a tinker today and when one looks at what is happening around one of the global hotspots, Yemen, in the Indian Ocean between Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, the projected picture seems scary and the historical patterns start forcing us to imagine and construct a storyline not dissimilar to how the world ended up experiencing world wars. Houthis support Palestinians and would not back off. Americans cannot tolerate Houthis damaging the Israeli interests so they will intervene as is evident from the recent US precision strikes at targets in Yemen. Saudi Arabia which was spending $3 billion per month in the past to fight a war in Yemen doesn't mind US military strikes against Houthis who Saudi Arabia considers Iran's proxy. Fixing Yemen favourably fixes the Sunni-Shiite struggle for dominance and control in Saudi Arabia's favour. As the plot of the story in the Middle East thickens, the emerging villain in the eyes of the Western world is not Israel but Iran. What happens to Iran between now and the next two months — given that President Trump has given as a deadline to Iran to reconsider joining a nuclear agreement — will determine what kind of war America is likely to fight — another unnecessary war like the many it has fought previously, a war of deliberate choice that aims to degrade Iran and end its nuclear ambition once and for all, a preventive war of self-defence that ensures deterring both Yemen and Iran and forcing them to back off from their idea of harming Israel, or a war of attrition which may result in accidents like USS Maine, British Ocean Liner Lusitania in the past or a large scale Iranian drone attack on Saudi oil refineries. Would the stage then be set for another global war? The long-term consequences of the great power's actions and even their inactions in the past had deep global impacts. When Europe was devastated after WWII, the Marshall Plan instituted Europe's economic revival, subjecting rest of the world to learn an important lesson - political settlement always precedes any economic growth or reconstruction. In theory, this lesson can be applied to the entire world but in practice, its application remained continental and confined only to the continent of Europe. Today, the Trump administration talks of displacing the residents of Gaza to neighbouring countries, taking over the responsibility of rebuilding Gaza, and handing over better living conditions to these people but disregards the prospects of any political settlement that may precede such actions. This will not work and as long as any political accord remains elusive, violence in the Middle East will persist. Houthis attack Israeli shipping in the vicinity of Yemen because they support Palestinians. The continuity of such attacks is related to Israel's insistence not to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. The ceasefire deal is stalled and Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians in renewed air strikes. This is not a pushback but an incentive to Houthis to further target Israeli interests. Americans blame Iran for backing Houthis and the American maximum pressure campaign is designed to end the actual source of this Houthi backing but the developing scenario is taking a global shape as the other two great powers, Russia and China, are keen to continue to extend the economic lifeline to Iran. How can any maximum pressure campaign against Iran succeed when the other two great powers don't join such a scheme and are ready to bail out Iran? It sounds so familiar, when we recollect how WWI commenced with Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia, and Russia mobilising forces to aid Serbia. Germany invaded Belgium, and Britain came to the rescue of Belgium and France aiding both Britain and Russia because of the treaty of alliance. If Israel attacks Iran's nuclear facility, wouldn't Iran retaliate? Consequently, if Americans support and aid Israel, would Russia and China remain far behind in supporting Iran? During the Cold War, George Kennan's recommended grand strategy of containment was used as one order sought to overthrow another. As the communist order crumbled so did the Soviet Union. A similar strategy of containment may once again be used. But this time it may be used by the Axis of Resistance to contain the US-Israeli primacy and the constant endeavours of both these countries to manipulate, control, dominate and exploit Middle Eastern geopolitics. President Trump has already cautioned Iran that it will be responsible for any attacks by Houthis in the future. The Americans and Israelis both are working on the hypothesis of Iranian weakness. Both consider Iran to be truly weak and vulnerable in its current condition. Iranian proxies Hezbollah and Hamas are badly bruised after the Israeli military campaign; and Syria the longstanding primary logistic route for sustaining Iranian proxies has been compromised. Israel considers that attacking and degrading the Iranian nuclear power plant at this stage would give them a clear advantage in this small window of time in which Iranian proxies after suffering many casualties are weak and in a process of regrouping and rebuilding. The next two months will be crucial and the Trump administration should do well not to force a war upon Iran. Had Britain and the US not conspired in 1953 to remove the democratic government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, Iran could have been a great democratic success story today. Pressurising and isolating Iran has turned out to be failed US strategies to change Iranian behaviour. Bullying Iran won't work either. The Trump administration's best shot would be to give diplomacy a chance. Iran may relent if sanctions are lifted and it is allowed to come out of international isolation. What is the harm in trying that - revert to the status quo if this fails.
Chicago Tribune
15-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Today in History: Female attorneys allowed to argue cases before Supreme Court
Today is Saturday, Feb. 15, the 46th day of 2025. There are 319 days left in the year. Today in history: On Feb. 15, 1879, President Rutherford B. Hayes signed a law allowing female attorneys to argue cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Also on this date: In 1898, the battleship USS Maine mysteriously exploded in Havana Harbor, killing more than 260 crew members and bringing the United States closer to war with Spain. In 1933, President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt escaped an assassination attempt in Miami that mortally wounded Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak; gunman Giuseppe Zangara was executed by electric chair the following month. In 1950, Walt Disney's animated film 'Cinderella' premiered in Boston. In 1961, 73 people, including all 18 members of the U.S. figure skating team en route to the World Championships in Czechoslovakia, were killed in the crash of a Sabena Airlines Boeing 707 in Belgium. In 1978, boxer Leon Spinks scored a massive upset as he defeated Muhammad Ali by split decision to become the world heavyweight champion. In 1989, the Soviet Union announced that the last of its troops had left Afghanistan, after more than nine years of military intervention. In 2005, defrocked priest Paul Shanley was sentenced in Boston to 12 to 15 years in prison on child rape charges. In 2013, with a blinding flash and a booming shock wave, a meteor blazed across Russia's western Siberian sky and exploded, injuring nearly 1,500 people as it blasted out windows. In 2022, the families of nine victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting agreed to a $73 million settlement of a lawsuit against Remington Arms, the maker of the rifle used to kill 20 first graders and six educators in 2012. Today's birthdays: Actor Claire Bloom is 94. Songwriter Brian Holland is 84. Jazz musician Henry Threadgill is 81. Composer John Adams is 78. Cartoonist Art Spiegelman is 77. Actor Jane Seymour is 74. Singer Melissa Manchester is 74. Actor Lynn Whitfield is 72. 'The Simpsons' creator Matt Groening is 71. Model Janice Dickinson is 70. Actor Christopher McDonald is 70. Football Hall of Famer Darrell Green is 65. Actor Alex Borstein is 54. Hockey great Jaromir Jagr is 53. Olympic swimming gold medalist Amy Van Dyken-Rouen is 52. Actor-singer Amber Riley is 39. Rapper Megan Thee Stallion is 30.
Boston Globe
15-02-2025
- Boston Globe
Today in History: February 15, USS Maine explodes in Havana Harbor
In 1851, an angry crowd stormed the federal courthouse in Boston and rescued Shadrach Minkins, the first escaped enslaved person seized in New England under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. Under the law, northern authorities were required to help owners recapture enslaved people. Minkins, who had escaped slavery in Norfolk, Va., and fled to Boston, was tracked down by his owner and arrested by US marshals. After he was pulled from the courtroom, Minkins was hidden in a home on Beacon Hill, then ushered onto the Underground Railroad to Canada. Advertisement In 1879, President Rutherford B. Hayes signed a law allowing female attorneys to argue cases before the US Supreme Court. In 1898, the battleship USS Maine mysteriously exploded in Havana Harbor, killing more than 260 crew members and bringing the United States closer to war with Spain. Advertisement In 1933, President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt escaped an assassination attempt in Miami that mortally wounded Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak; gunman Giuseppe Zangara was executed by electric chair the following month. In 1950, Walt Disney's animated film 'Cinderella' premiered in Boston. In 1961, 73 people, including all 18 members of the US figure skating team en route to the World Championships in Czechoslovakia, were killed in the crash of a Sabena Airlines Boeing 707 in Belgium. In 1978, boxer Leon Spinks scored a massive upset as he defeated Muhammad Ali by split decision to become the world heavyweight champion. In 1989, the Soviet Union announced that the last of its troops had left Afghanistan, after more than nine years of military intervention. In 2005, defrocked priest Paul Shanley was sentenced in Boston to 12 to 15 years in prison on child rape charges. In 2013, with a blinding flash and a booming shock wave, a meteor blazed across Russia's western Siberian sky and exploded, injuring nearly 1,500 people as it blasted out windows. In 2022, the families of nine victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting agreed to a $73 million settlement of a lawsuit against Remington Arms, the maker of the rifle used to kill 20 first graders and six educators in 2012.
