I highly recommend Ross Douthat’s recent NYT Op-Ed, which I think lays out–as clearly as any single piece of writing so far–the challenge ahead for culture. Setting Ross’ particular arguments aside, I want to take his provocation to expound a bit more on a point I’ve made in a prior post on AI–and one that I find myself making to my smart friends often now:

If you want to flourish–in nearly any sense of the word–over the next decade and beyond, you need to be spending significant time thinking about what you want out of all this change that’s coming.

The only alternative is settling for living in a more homogenized and cheaply-generated culture (what Ross appropriately deems “slop”). We are quickly moving toward the “Abundant” future that Silicon Valley has been dreaming of for years, where things–not just physical objects in the world, but also cultural things like television shows, music, etc.–will be unbelievably cheap and easy to make. Ideas will be brought to life at record speed, and barriers to innovation will continue to shrink.

That this new explosion of content will be, on average, quite bad is not a novel issue. Already in the streaming and social media era, we have seen products that were once amusing (Facebook, Netflix, etc.) devolve to slop as the lowest common denominator prevails. This has always been the challenge of mass culture.

The issue will be that the things in life which are genuinely interesting to you will become increasingly difficult to find. Consider the “recommended for you” algorithms on sites like Netflix and Hulu. Once a useful guide to content similar to things you’ve previously enjoyed, these sections are now just another place for the platforms to promote their own-brand content. Now, imagine multiplying the show releases at a dizzying rate. We will be buried under slop.

But there’s potential amid these challenges. After all, won’t the AIs be just as good at improving the quality of media as they are at increasing the quantity available? Of course they will! In fact, better than any author/writer/actress/etc. you’ve ever known, they’ll be capable of tailoring content to your exact preferences. They’ll be able to make any cultural artifact you can ask for.

The challenge is that we’re already forgetting what to ask for, and the incentives are not in place for anyone to ask for us. We’re already losing our sense of “taste,” our ability to imagine ex ante what we’d like out of life. Things are moving so quickly now; it’s easier than ever to simply float the mainstream. And so, at the risk of sounding alarmist, I’d like to join Ross in his call to fight against extinctions.

We cannot avoid these changes. With AI in particular, the impact is coming and it will be real and lasting. But we can still harness these changes to our advantage. Like reading Shakespeare? Talk about it with GPT. Like baking? Try enhancing family recipes with suggestions from Claude. Like hanging out with friends? Have your favorite LLM design a board game for you all to play and enjoy.

But if you’re waiting around on these LLMs to come and tap you on the shoulder and say, “hey, would you like to discuss Civil War history?” …it is never going to happen. What will happen is a deluge of distraction.

Ross worries about the extinctions of cultures, and I join him in that worry. But there will be no asteroid coming for French New Wave cinema. Instead, one fan at a time will quietly, unknowingly lose touch with their interests.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We are being handed a gift that will likely usher in an era of abundance across a number of fronts. But if we are to create–not just comfortable–but meaningful lives for ourselves amid this abundance, we’re going to have to be more intentional than ever. And it’s going to have to start now.