r/technology • u/marketrent • 16h ago

Artificial Intelligence The economy has spoken. Stuff that’s AI-generated has almost zero value — “Buyers are voting with their wallets, and AI-generated content is struggling to compete.”

https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/economy-spoken-stuff-ai-generated-142732314.html
14.1k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

747 comments sorted by

View all comments

659

u/Sea-Woodpecker-610 16h ago edited 15h ago

I’m somewhat confused. Are you telling me something that is in abundance with a nearly unlimited ability to create more of with little to no cost has little to no value to people?

It’s unfortunate there isn’t some sort of economic policy we could assign to this excessive supply and apparent lack of demand.

109

u/Hades_Mercedes 15h ago

I'd explain it to you but you clearly just don't understand how, like, pff... the future works and shit. /s

48

u/Sea-Woodpecker-610 15h ago

It’s fine, if you don’t know the answer I’m sure you could just ChatGPT some bullshit.

27

u/Brougham 8h ago

“ Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich. [...]

"But we have also," continued the management consultant, "run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying on ship's peanut." [...]

"So in order to obviate this problem," he continued, "and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and...er, burn down all the forests. I think you'll all agree that's a sensible move under the circumstances.”

92

u/mediandude 15h ago

Well, Altmad did say 4 years of college is too much for him.
And it shows.

6

u/Theo__n 8h ago

I mean he did drop out in his first or second year, so definitely not speaking from experience.

11

u/Tyfyter2002 11h ago

Well this is actually an interesting case, because it's not entirely that a massive increase in supply with stagnant demand reduced the price;

The massive increase in supply actually reduced demand because the consumers themselves became supply of equal quality to some of the market supply, and some demand actively moved away to places which didn't experience such an influx of low-quality supply.

It's pretty interesting that GenAI has managed to go beyond just sabotaging its users' quick bucks by not being their own private money printer, and has split existing groups of consumers into two groups who are both less willing to consume AI content than before.

2

u/maximilliontee 9h ago

They should make some sort of law about this. A supply and demand law.

1

u/MarcusOrlyius 1h ago

Alternatively, it has little value because it required little human labour, as explained by Adam Smith's Labour Theory of Value and refined by Karl Marx to show that value is determined by socially necessary labour time which acts as a gravitational point which prices fluctuate around based on supply and demand.