From Scribes to AI: Navigating Information Revolutions
From Scribes to AI: Navigating Information Revolutions
How history's lessons can guide us through the AI content explosion
In the early 2020s, the internet was already a bustling ecosystem of content. But in November 2022, OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT, with its uncanny ability to generate human-like text that was a stark departure from previous AI models. Positioned as a free research preview, ChatGPT exploded in popularity, amassing over 100 million users in just two months and sparking a new era of generative AI tools. ChatGPT single-handedly thrust AI into the mainstream consciousness and changed the tech landscape, at least for now.
It's common now for tech enthusiasts and doomsayers alike to speculate on how GenAI might reshape - or potentially destroy - the internet as we know it. The concerns aren't unfounded. In 2022, humans created roughly 97 zettabytes of data. With GenAI tools now churning out content at unprecedented rates, that figure is set to skyrocket. We're witnessing an information boom that makes the data explosion of the early internet era look quaint by comparison.
But this isn't the first time we've grappled with an information revolution. To understand our current predicament, we need to look back at how our information ecosystem has evolved, from the scarcity of hand-copied manuscripts to the abundance of the digital age. It's a story of adaptation, innovation, and recurring challenges - a story that might just hold the key to navigating our AI-augmented future.
The Manuscript Era: Information Scarcity
In the early 1400s, books were precious commodities, painstakingly crafted by hand in monastic scriptoria. A single volume could take months to produce, with scribes hunched over parchment, meticulously copying texts letter by letter. This scarcity of information wasn't just a matter of production speed - it was a fundamental feature of the era's information landscape.
Vespasiano da Bisticci, a renowned Florentine manuscript seller, exemplified the exclusivity of this world. His clients included Lorenzo de'Medici and the Duke of Urbino, for whom he sourced and produced exquisite, hand-crafted manuscripts. These weren't just books - they were status symbols, objects of art, and repositories of knowledge accessible only to the elite.
The scarcity extended beyond books. News traveled slowly, often by word of mouth or via handwritten letters. Knowledge was concentrated in universities and monasteries, with access limited to a privileged few. This information ecosystem was stable, controlled, and deeply hierarchical.
The Printing Press Revolution: The First Information Bloom
Then, in the mid-15th century, everything changed. Gutenberg's printing press burst onto the scene, sending shockwaves through Europe's information ecosystem. The impact was staggering. Before the press, a skilled scribe might produce a few hand-written copies of a book, or at best, 40 hand-printed copies. Gutenberg's press, by contrast, could churn out 3,600 pages a day. This wasn't just an improvement - it was a quantum leap in information production.
The scale of this revolution is hard to overstate. It's estimated that in the span of less than four centuries following Gutenberg's innovation, European book output skyrocketed from a few million to around one billion copies. This exponential growth in information availability transformed society, education, and culture.
The impact was profound and immediate. In 1499, just a few decades after the press's invention, Italian humanist Polydore Vergil wrote that "printing made its start to no less profit than the general amazement of humanity." This wasn't hyperbole - the printing press was truly revolutionary. In fact, Time Life magazine would later dub Gutenberg's innovations in movable type printing the most important invention of the second millennium.
The Age of Anxiety: Unease in the Face of Information Abundance
As the printing press revolutionized the information landscape, not everyone greeted this change with unbridled enthusiasm. A wave of unease swept through intellectual circles, with scholars and scribes alike grappling with the implications of this new technology.
Desiderius Erasmus, the Dutch humanist, embodied this ambivalence. Initially, he embraced the printing press, working with renowned printers to disseminate his work widely. But as time went on, his attitude soured. Erasmus grew increasingly concerned about the quality of printed texts, lamenting the errors that crept into mass-produced books. More profoundly, he worried that the classics - the bedrock of humanist education - would be drowned out by a deluge of contemporary publications.
This fear of market saturation wasn't unique to Erasmus. Venetian scholar Hieronimo Squarciafico voiced similar concerns, painting a picture of a world where quantity would triumph over quality. The worry was that discernment would become impossible in a sea of mediocre texts.
Consider Federico da Montefeltro, the Duke of Urbino. A passionate bibliophile, he maintained two separate libraries - one for his prized manuscripts, and another for printed books. This physical separation speaks volumes about the transitional nature of the era, as the old information ecosystem grappled with the new.
Perhaps the most visceral reaction came from those who saw their livelihoods threatened. In 1474, a scribe named Filippo de Strata made an impassioned plea to the Doge of Venice, begging him to remove printing presses from the city. De Strata's language was apocalyptic, calling print "the plague which is doing away with the laws of all decency." His concerns weren't just economic - though job security for scribes was certainly on his mind. De Strata saw print as a moral threat, arguing that writing was "nobler than all goods" and needed protection from the "deception of print."
The Echo of History: GenAI and the New Information Deluge
As we return to the present day, the parallels between the 15th century's printing revolution and our current AI-driven content explosion are striking. Just as Filippo de Strata pleaded with the Doge of Venice to remove printing presses, today's writers and content creators are sounding alarms about the flood of AI-generated material inundating the digital landscape.
Erik Hoel's blog post, "Here lies the internet, murdered by generative AI," reads like a modern-day lament that could have been penned by Erasmus himself. Hoel paints a bleak picture of our digital future, describing it as "a garbage dump" where AI-generated content overwhelms human creativity and authenticity. His concerns echo those of 15th-century scholars who feared that quantity would triumph over quality in the age of print.
Now that generative AI has dropped the cost of producing bullshit to near zero, we see clearly the future of the internet: a garbage dump. Google search? They often lead with fake AI-generated images amid the real things. Post on Twitter? Get replies from bots selling porn. But that’s just the obvious stuff. Look closely at the replies to any trending tweet and you’ll find dozens of AI-written summaries in response, cheery Wikipedia-style repeats of the original post, all just to farm engagement. AI models on Instagram accumulate hundreds of thousands of subscribers and people openly shill their services for creating them. AI musicians fill up YouTube and Spotify. Scientific papers are being AI-generated. AI images mix into historical research.
Erik Hoel - Here lies the internet, murdered by generative AI
The scale of this new information deluge is staggering. According to OpenAI's founder Sam Altman, ChatGPT alone is generating about 100 billion words each day. This explosion of content dwarfs even the exponential growth that followed Gutenberg's innovation, when European book output rose from a few million to around one billion copies in less than four centuries.
Just as Hieronimo Squarciafico worried about the market being flooded with low-quality texts, today's critics are concerned about the proliferation of what's being called "slop" - mass-produced, AI-generated content that threatens to drown out human voices. Hoel's description of AI-generated scientific papers and historical research mixing with genuine scholarship eerily mirrors the fears of Renaissance humanists who worried that classical literature would be overshadowed by contemporary publications.
The anxiety extends beyond just the volume of content. There's a growing concern about the authenticity and value of AI-generated material, reminiscent of how Federico da Montefeltro separated his prized manuscripts from his collection of printed books. Today, we see similar distinctions being made between human-created content and AI-generated works, with debates raging about the relative value and trustworthiness of each.
Navigating the AI-Augmented Future: Lessons from the Past
As we stand at this crossroads, with AI poised to reshape our information landscape just as profoundly as the printing press did centuries ago, the echoes of history are impossible to ignore. The same fears, the same anxieties, and the same fundamental questions about the nature of knowledge and creativity are resurfacing. Yet, it's crucial to remember that we've navigated similar waters before.
The printing press explosion of information that we've discussed wasn't the first time humanity grappled with the implications of new information technology. In fact, this anxiety stretches back to the very foundations of Western philosophy. Socrates, as recorded by Plato in "Phaedrus," expressed deep concerns about the impact of writing itself on human cognition and wisdom:
And so it is that you by reason of your tender regard for the writing that is your offspring have declared the very opposite of its true effect. If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.
What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only the semblance of wisdom, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much while for the most part they know nothing. And as men filled not with wisdom but with the conceit of wisdom they will be a burden to their fellows.
Plato's Phaedrus
Socrates worried that writing would ruin people's memory, allowing them to hold vast amounts of information without true understanding. He feared people would think themselves knowledgeable when, in reality, they were merely skimming the surface of wisdom. It's a concern that feels remarkably prescient in our age of Google searches and AI-generated content.
Yet, writing didn't destroy human memory or wisdom. Instead, it became a tool that amplified our collective knowledge and allowed for the preservation and dissemination of ideas across time and space. Similarly, the printing press, despite the fears of scholars like Erasmus, didn't drown out valuable knowledge in a sea of mediocrity. It democratized learning, fueled scientific and cultural revolutions, and ultimately expanded the horizons of human understanding.
As we face the AI revolution, it's natural to feel a sense of vertigo at the sheer scale and speed of change. The volume of AI-generated content being produced daily is staggering, and the implications for how we create, consume, and value information are profound. But history suggests that this upheaval, while challenging, is also a necessary part of our technological and cultural evolution.