We're in the Napster Phase of AI

In the very early 2000s, peer-to-peer file sharing apps like Napster allowed people to digitize their music libraries and share them with the world. In a matter of two or three years, recorded music went from being something that you’d buy on a physical item (CD, vinyl, cassette tape) to something that was freely available on a whim.

There are strong parallels between today and the Napster years, and thinking about what happened to the music industry may help us to chart a path out of the devaluation of all human creative efforts that’s happening right now.

Napster changed the music industry, because music no longer had value from being tied to physical objects (CD, cassettes, records, etc). People’s tastes changed too — you’ll listen to Leonard Nimoy sing “Proud Mary” once if you don’t have the pay for the privilege.

The shutdown of Napster didn’t end file sharing — many people still do it, with the knowledge that what they’re doing is legally questionable or plain illegal. But, most people today use streaming services that are sponsored by subscriptions and advertising and where some small amount of money eventually makes it way to musicians.

Musicians and record companies knew that it would be impossible to artificially control distribution of digital files. The new model changed the way musicians earn a living (or not) but didn’t completely eliminate the value of recorded music. For music consumers, the shift from pirating music to paying a monthly subscription or listening to ads felt like a fair compromise.

Writers and computer programmers are at the forefront of the new creativity devaluation. We wrote all the content and code that was used (without our permission) to train generative AI models that are now threatening our livelihoods. These models make it possible for anyone with access to an AI chatbot to crank out sentences on any topic and to whip up websites and software. The ease of content generation has caused many people to throw any sense of moderation and good taste out the window.

Just this morning, someone emailed me a badly-written and obviously AI-generated essay about one of my books which included the following paragraph:

“This isn't about changing a single word of your clinical and clear prose. It’s about ensuring that the quiet relief your readers feel after reading your chapters is an experience made available to everyone currently wandering the decentralized wilderness without a compass.”

I don’t want to be the person who crushes an enterprising young person’s dreams, but sending an unsolicited and unclear AI-generated pitch to an author isn’t going to work — and I wrote back saying exactly that.

Today, I still have access to the music I downloaded using Napster, but I pay a monthly subscription to Apple Music to be able to listen to it. I’m proud to say, however, that I have no desire at all to listen to Leonard Nimoy sing ever again.

I don’t have any faith that there will be legal cases or regulations that will put an end to free content generation, bad taste, and bad content. But, I have hope that we’ll all become more savvy and that in another 10-20 years we’ll look back at this time and laugh about how naive we were and shake our fists at all the garbage we generated and consumed. And, just maybe, we’ll still have a need for human writers.