Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
Authenticity wins as content floods
What stays scarce
The creative spark is probably the last thing to be automated, and right now almost everything AI makes is derivative. That leaves two qualities that will matter: authenticity and creativity.
Why human skill matters
The Culture series of novels and Player of Games work as a thought experiment for that future. In it, people value human skill, and one theory is that they value actually seeing a human authentically play a game. A handshake in a deal works the same way, because looking the other person in the eye still matters.
Real conversations with experts who made real decisions are prized for the same reason: they are not derivative. A print of any Monet is available, yet people still love standing in front of the water lilies in Paris, because creativity plus authenticity means something even when infinite watercolors of lilies are free.
AI content today
Not everyone discounts AI content today, since a viewer can like it just as much as any other content, and it keeps getting better. The competition will come less from AI than from people doing the same job with AI.
Why do people prize originals over perfect copies?
Philosopher Walter Benjamin argued in a 1935 essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, that a copy lacks the aura of the original, its presence in a particular place and time. Monet's large water lily panels hang in two oval rooms at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris, which opened them to the public in 1927. Reproductions of them are everywhere, and visitors still travel to stand in those rooms.
How does The Player of Games treat human skill?
Iain M. Banks published The Player of Games in 1988 as part of his Culture series, set in a society where artificial intelligences called Minds run nearly everything and humans live in abundance. Its hero, Jernau Gurgeh, is a celebrated game player. The Culture sends him to the Empire of Azad, where a complex game called Azad decides who holds power.
Why do people still watch humans play chess?
IBM's Deep Blue beat world champion Garry Kasparov in a match in 1997, and chess engines are now far stronger than any human. Top players train with engines, and commentators use engine evaluations to explain a game as it unfolds. The international federation FIDE has run a human world championship since 1948.
More from The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
