non LLM-assisted post

Let's talk AI.
But before that, let's go back to year 2012. We're having a conversation over a cup of some cold brew coffee at the newly launched Starbucks (first ever in India) inside the heritage Elphinstone Building at Horniman Circle, Fort Mumbai. You own a phone with QWERTY keypad with screen size of 2.8 inches.
Your primary device for consuming YouTube videos is your PC. Your iPad is slowly taking over though.
Your primary source of media entertainment is cable TV or a movie theatre.

You don't believe me when I tell you that in just 8 years:

1. there will be a set of people who make a fortune by talking to a camera
2. your primary source of media entertainment will shift to OTT platforms
3. first, your mobile device will become primary source of media consumption and then your TV [YouTube Viewing on TV Now Surpasses Mobile, Desktop in U.S.] -- that is, if India follows trends in the US. At the moment, mobile devices remain consumer favourites in India.
4. thousands of content creators will sprout from all regions of the world to produce and express their stories with low production budgets and easy access 5. to the viewer market, thanks to YouTube, Twitch, etc.
6. you might develop a parasocial relation with one / some of these content creators.
7. you might spend more time consuming small creator content on YouTube than movies or series from large production houses.
8. advertisement industry sees a massive shift in strategy, budgets, and spending.
9. hundreds of thousands of small businesses across the world are able to market themselves with capacity to reach buyers like never before.
you hear about many good creative products from small businesses because of social media platforms, perhaps some of your favourite products are from these small creators.

I can go on all day about these shifts. The point is, all of this has happened because of smartphones, dropped internet prices, and social media platforms.
There are two sides of the story, as is for any event. But I am going to focus on not being a doomer in this blog post.

Very few, if anyone, could predict this in 2012.
From where I see, digital revolution empowered creators.

You could be a small shop creating custom hand-made leather shoes or sweaters or a delicacy not cooked in your city or jewellery or healthy fruit-veggie smoothies... You can now access the market with ease, you can advertise your product with a fraction of the budget it would have required before the digital revolution, and you have a multitude of logistical start-ups that will solve your logistical problems to deliver your products to your customers.

AI will not be very different in my opinion. Gen AI will ultimately empower creators.
Note -- empower doesn't necessarily mean make better. There are many average / poor content creators, businesses, and products that spend on marketing themselves on multiple platforms. You just avoid them by looking at their ratings now.
This post is purely based on anecdotal experience, so there is a bias here. YouTube gave so many small production companies a way to express their creativity and tell their stories. The Viral Fever, All India Bhak**** come to mind. While their dissolution is sad, the reasons behind it weren't creative. TVF especially told stories that were so profound, they could put large production houses in India to shame -- which quite recently isn't that big of a challenge, sadly. Some of my favourite TV series are from these production cos just because they were written, produced, and acted by people who weren't necessarily stars, at least back then. I could easily connect to their shows because it circled around people from perhaps the majority socio-economic class (at least from the pool of people who had access to shows).

What can AI bring?
1. for learning, it's a revolution. Imagine having a teacher with you 24x7 that can answer your queries about a subject. Sure, LLM is not perfect—but neither is a professor, or a school teacher, or online forums. Published subject books are not going anywhere. I cannot overstate how much it has helped me understand subject matters just because I can throw questions at it, and even request example-based explanations—not one, but multiple types of examples. Prompt I used earlier this week: why is my celery worker complaining of unregistered task, can I create two celery apps in two containers with the same name with the same task and expect worker from one container to consume the task from redis? No doc was going to help me with this—it had to be either Stack Overflow or Discord.
2. for small-time content creators, if gen AI provides us with a low-cost animated movie-gen agent, it means they can tell their stories and distribute them to millions—who probably would connect with it more than big movie houses. Just like what happened with long-form content and OTT.
3. for people who want to build their products but cannot afford experts, it would mean you can roll out your product, or at least an MVP, without having to hire professionals—at least during early stages. Example: I wanted to build ClosetX and FlexPlay (sports app) for a long time. But what I struggled with was time. I needed to carve out time to learn JavaScript and Android / Apple mobile app development to be able to code the front end. I had no issues with building backend. I did the classic "I will handle business and backend if you build the front end for equity" with lots of people. Lots of devs liked the product idea, but none worked on it. As a creator, that's what you struggle with a lot if you don't have funds to bootstrap your company or have pre-seed to build an MVP by hiring people. It's either a failure on my part to express the vision, or it indeed is a bad idea. Hundreds of prompts later, I built a reasonable front end, learnt JavaScript, and kinda ended up liking JavaScript. Even without an LLM, I think I can build decent front ends? Maybe.

Still— I think it's too soon to say anything, but I think and hope that gen AI will bring the same revolution for creators. Whether it's music, animated content, or other products, creators will be empowered to create.

What does it mean for thousands of jobs that might be or are at risk? I'd probably be as clueless about your concerns about traditional marketing, cable TV companies, and conventional creators under the beautifully hand-crafted wooden ceiling supported by Malad stone walls.