Who’s Behind the Keyboard – You, Me, or AI? The New Content Era

The relentless rise of AI-generated content impersonating human creativity threatens to overwhelm us with low-quality information.

From AI-written books to algorithmically generated YouTube videos, a deluge of machine-produced content makes it hard to find the high-value information and art worth our limited time and attention.

But this is not an entirely new phenomenon.

We were already dealing with information overload in an increasingly digital world.

Services like Blinkist and rise of shorts on YouTube, Tiktok to help summarize and curate shorter content.

But AI takes the scale and potential deception to a new level.

To stem this tide and elevate human creativity, we need both improved technology and emphasis on human discernment - augmented by incentives to drive adoption.

A few promising approaches:

Influencer and Curator Curation

Leveraging discerning influencers and curators to highlight noteworthy, high-quality content amidst the AI clutter could be a potential option.

If provided incentives like reputation, exclusive access, and monetization opportunities, their wisdom could effectively guide others.

A scalable way to leverage human judgment.

AI Summarization and Preview Tools

Developing enhanced AI summarization, snippet, and preview tools people can use to quickly validate if a piece of content merits full attention.

For example, short synopses of books or preview clips of videos.

Useful technology if focused on aiding human assessment, not replacing it.

Stricter Platform Guardrails

Implementing much stronger guardrails and vetting by platforms like Amazon, YouTube and Medium before allowing content distribution, to verify genuine human authorship and creativity versus AI impersonators.

Legal obligations or revenue share incentives could motivate more rigorous checks.

Badging and Exposure for Human Creators

Designating certain sites or sections exclusively for "Verified Human" created content.

Badges indicating human origin aid discovery and provide exposure incentives for human artists and writers trying to stand out.

Collective User Ratings and Reviews

Empowering users to rate and review content to highlight repetitive, derivative or nonsensical material indicative of AI-generation.

Incentives like rating weight and badges could encourage the crowdsourced oversight.

The key in navigating this new information landscape is combining the scale and speed of technology with uniquely human strengths like creativity, wisdom, and discernment.

We need improved algorithms and tools, but guided by the ethos of elevating human imagination and intellect.

If platforms, influencers, creators and users all play their parts - aided by proper incentives - we can stem the AI content tide.

The deluge may never cease, but with vigilance, we can separate the bots from brilliance.

Our creative spirit and pursuit of quality endures, even in the digital age.