What is the value of an idea? I am not sure we know the answer to that yet. Up until the past few years we never really dealt much with raw ideas. What we dealt with were ideas that had been realized to some extent, given a form that we could appreciate. The process of giving form to ideas weeding out many, and refined the rest. It took time, skills, and if you lacked either outside involvement. All three of those worked upon the idea itself to forge into something stronger than it was initially.
Now we have generative AI, I have an idea, and I jot it down, and a few moments later it is finished. There hasn’t been enough time for me to think about it, it is ready to go now. What is the value of that? Before I had to invest in time, energy, expertise, capitol, something! Now the investment is a few keystrokes, and a minute or two waiting at most. The rest of the process belongs to a machine that knows nothing of investment, or of value. The machine is mindless thinker carrying out orders without question or concern.
An entire economy could collapse as a host of professionals are replaced by a machine, and by a artist whose only contribution, qualification, and virtue is that they had an idea. Most everyone I know has ideas, and can write a decent description of them. Are they good? I am afraid very shortly no one will know anymore.
I have an idea! The value was never in the initial option, but in the ability to realize it by one’s own capacities. The idea cost nothing, and so was worth nothing. The idea existed immaterially and so had no real material worth. There might be a lot of good ideas that were never worth anything because they could not be realized. Now there be a lot of good ideas buried under bad ideas that were realized because the realization cost little more than the idea itself. I think we losing value, not gaining it.
