Narcissism, Friendship, Pornography and AI, pt. 3

Part One, in which chatbots become our pools.

Part Two, in which Zuck wants to own your friends and the future.

Rod Dreher has been highlighting concerns around AI - even linking it to demons - in his substack for years. He highlights a Rolling Stone story in his latest post and extends to his discussion of the short story, "The Basilisk" which in its metaphor echoes the origin of Black Mirror's name. From the short story by Paul Klingsnorth:

There is a reason they call it “the web,” Bridget; a reason they call it “the net.” It is a trap. We have built the means of our own enslavement, at their suggestion. Now we are all carrying a portal to the underworld in our back pockets and handbags, and we are entirely unguarded against whoever chooses to step through it.

In his post, Dreher also highlights an interview with Andrea Long Chu, a radical transactivist, who highlights the role pornography plays in narcissism (unpurposely) and the trans movement:

Almost every night...I was going on Tumblr to look at...porn. I'd discovered it [sissy porn] by accident one night, scrolling lazily down a pornographic rabbit hole...Pornography is what it feels like when you think you have an object, but really the object has you.

Imagine the hyperfuel pornography created to fulfill every whim through AI-generation can have in this world?

The internet's ability to create niche communities is well-documented. Individuals with specific interests - or in the sexual world - fetishes - could no explore or see its presence out of their own minds in a world with limited social connections. The virtual world and its proliferation of messaging, social media, networking, and anonymous posting lead to these individuals connecting - creating positive (e.g. it is way easier to repair and make projects on your own) and negative (it is way easier to share child pornography) subcultures.

AI Generated

In an AI-dominant internet, these subcultures become even more personalized. For subcultures tend - like the Protestant Church - to fracture into smaller and smaller groups over disagreements. Now imagine if the smallest group is not you back by yourself as the True Believer of Subculture X, but you and an infinite funhouse mirror of AI true believers and yourself - interacting and celebrating the true essence of Subculture X, forever and forever.

Now turning this concept to pornography, the desire for novelty and the brain's adaptation to habituation has non-startling results:

In one 2016 study, researchers found that 46.9% of respondents reported that, over time, they began watching pornography that had previously disinterested or even disgusted them.

This was certainly controlled in the real-world media environment of the past, the one limited to printing presses, video cassettes, and three channels on the TV. The internet era has certainly ignited a broader and deeper pornography addiction in our culture. What will the AI era do to it? When you aren't limited by search results but simply what you can prompt?