Welcome to The Era of Generative AI
A new frontier for humanity
This Substack is about Generative AI.
I believe that Generative AI's impact on society will be so profound that I conceive of it as a new stage in human evolution: ‘The Era of Generative AI.’
It will be an age where our understanding of human intelligence, creativity, and experience will go beyond the wildest reach of what we imagine possible today.
2022 was a watershed year for Generative AI. Over the last twelve months, advances in this nascent field of artificial intelligence have become exponential. These developments will break through to the mainstream in 2023. As a result, there will be an increasing and urgent need to understand how Generative AI will change what it means to be human.
I’m a researcher/author following ‘Generative AI’ since its early inception about five years ago. My background is in geopolitics. Over the past two decades, I’ve worked on global events, including Brexit, the invasion of Ukraine, and information warfare.
But when I first encountered Generative AI – I knew that this would be the story of our lifetimes and that I would have to try and tell it. So, in 2020, I released the first book on AI-generated content, Deepfakes. In addition, I have been speaking about Generative AI at events worldwide and advising exciting start-ups in this space.
I intend this Substack — The Era of Generative AI — to tell the story of a tipping point in human evolution. I am not trying to write an academic treatise. Instead, I want to explore this topic — the most critical and fascinating tale of our times — in a way that everyone can understand.
My objectives are to
Analyse what Generative AI means for humanity
Make Generative AI accessible to everyone
Build a community to explore this story with me
To do this, I need your help.
Anyone can subscribe to The Era of Generative AI for free when I launch on December 13. While there will be no paywall initially – you can support me directly by paying $7 a month or $70 per year.
You can access The Era of Generative AI content via email and online. In addition, you’ll get to watch and listen to my podcast, where I will interview the pioneers building this space. (I have a big one dropping later this week!) You’ll also soon be able to participate in subscriber-only community threads and in-person meets.
Full disclosure: this is a one-woman show, and I intend to use as many Generative AI tools to help me produce my content as possible.
Finally, I am interested in hearing from you. Whether you are pioneering research, building a company, or thinking about Generative AI too — let me know about your work. I would love to speak to you.
Join me as we journey into The Era of Generative AI.
Nina
Great initiative, and a great sequel to the keynote you gave in Brussels at the IAPP's DPC2022 last month.
As someone working in policy and compliance, I'll be watching this space very closely. I'm afraid the next frontier of digital regulation is not at all where our policy makers think it is: clearly engines like DALL.E can at the click of a button conjure up out of thin air all the paper mountains that our legislators believe will make for accountable and trustworthy use of AI, and we can easily end up with perfect synthetic evidence of all-round compliance without a single word of it having anything to do with reality. How about disposable instant deepfake distributed ledgers to make anything look authentic now, and disappear a minute later?
So in truth I'm a lot more concerned with things like: What, if anything, should and could be done to preserve human dignity, social cohesion, or legitimate authority in the face of maliciously used generative AI? So much to rethink, so much change to effectuate! I don't know if I'm feeling thrilled or terrified.
In any case, I'll be looking forward to reading this substack, hearing more of your talks, and, who knows, maybe to engaging in person as well someday.
Nina, thank you for your work to help with step one: understand. I look forward to reading and hearing from you. Since Christmas is coming up, allow me to add a couple of topics I would love to hear your thoughts about (and am happy to actively discuss them with you):
1. Considering the digital society, who will profit from generative AI and how, who won‘t? What’s needed to shape this transition for the best?
2. How will public service make use of generative AI and what are prior requirements?
3. Questions about ethics and copyrights
Thank you, Lena