The Intrinsic Perspective
There’s been a string of recent news of big tech corporations doing—or at least testing—things that can be described as “pretty evil” without hyperbole. What’s weird is how open all the proposed evil is. Like bragging-about-it-in-press-releases levels of open.
A few examples suffice, such as the news this month (reported in Harper's) that Spotify has been using a web of shadowy production companies to generate many of its own tracks; likely, it’s implied, with AI. Spotify’s rip-offs are made with profiles that look real but are boosted onto playlists to divert listeners away from the actual musicians that make up their platform.
Meanwhile, child entertainment channels like CoComelon are fine-tuning their attention-stealing abilities on toddlers to absurdly villainous degrees.
It’s a small TV screen, placed a few feet from the larger one, that plays a continuous loop of banal, real-world scenes—a guy pouring a cup of coffee, someone getting a haircut—each lasting about 20 seconds. Whenever a youngster looks away from the Moonbug show to glimpse the Distractatron, a note is jotted down.
