At the risk of being overly optimistic: Number 4 is an interesting inflection point that could potentially (hopefully) sow the seeds of it's own destruction (or at least radical transformation?)

Which is to say, the move from 3 to 4 strikes me as a move toward "real human interaction," owing to the fact that the "content" there is much less prepackaged Kardashianism and much more "real person sharing real thing."

Hence why I think 4 to 5 is very far from a sure bet. I'm not sure even what Pure AI could even meaningfully signify here.

If content-generation AI is given sufficient resources and training input, I think 4>5 is pretty much guaranteed.

The recommendation systems that power "algorithmic everyone" are not optimizing for real human interaction, or real people sharing real things; they're optimizing for the absolute most engaging content that they can find.

This is Kardashian-killing because no one person or brand -- not even Kim -- can create the most engaging content in the world on every single post; and even if they could, they can't do it at a rate to fill an entire feed.

Sufficiently good recommendation systems kill the Kardashians because they can crawl through an ocean of user-generated content and find the winners.

If you combine a sufficiently good content-generation AI with the data you glean from the world's best recommendation system, you can just create the most engaging possible content, without even knowing what that would be.

> Which is to say, the move from 3 to 4 strikes me as a move toward "real human interaction," owing to the fact that the "content" there is much less prepackaged Kardashianism and much more "real person sharing real thing."

I believe we are well into number 4 and let me tell you, neither the "person" or the "thing" feels "real". Everything is so contrived, scripted, architected, and manufactured that the entirety of social media feels like The Truman Show at this point.

So, my take is the following: I still believe that it's all getting "more human," and that this isn't necessarily mutually exclusive of "contrived, scripted" etc. The difference is "Kardashianism" is filtered through big media selling ads, vs. e.g. "TikTok" -- at the point of creation -- is filtered through nothing but the sensibilities of the creator and mostly stays what it was at the point of creation. Ergo, much more human.

I don't think that "Algorithmic Everyone", the one you're phrasing as "real human interaction" is really either everyone or real humans. Instead, it's turning a handful of Kardashians into a million Kardashians. The number of performers, and niches, vastly grows but it's still all performance.

I think that's one reason that a lot of kids love TikTok but adults generally can't stand it. Kids are looking for sources that show them how to act. TikTok is basically a giant tips channel. Here's how to be silly, here's how to dance, here's how to be a goth... It's like an enormous highschool, but if the highschool were completely made up of amateur actors trying to get the most attention.

"the replacement of humans with machines will continue until morale improves"

My AI-generated content is being virtually consumed and clicked on by thousands of AI readers. No actual people in the loop. Happiness increases.

I also have an AI that filters out AI generated content so I only see things sourced directly from people I know to be people. Granted, Cortana sometimes slips and gets it wrong and lets through something that obviously came from an AI... Hmm... I wonder how that happened. Happiness decreases.

I'm so glad the gap between "we can keep very-long-term records" and "AI now dominates content creation" is going to be large enough, even for very recent things like video games, that I'll have enough excellent "content" to last multiple lifetimes without ever having to pay attention to the AI stuff.