The Last Sitcom

Marshall McLuhan and Artificial Intelligence

If the Medium Is the Message, What is the Message of AI?

Jacob Michael King

“The medium is the message.” These are the words of Marshall McLuhan, a pioneer in the field of media studies. They’re misunderstood almost as often as they’re quoted. If we want to know what a medium is “saying,” we must look at the way it alters every element of our lives. What would Marshall McLuhan have to say about AI? Although still in its infancy, artificial intelligence is already transforming the way we do business, the way we learn, and the way we solve problems. Its message (i.e. the way it will change our world and ourselves) is one we’re only beginning to hear, but it already sounds revolutionary.

What does it mean to say that the medium is the message? Let’s use the example of television. McLuhan isn’t talking, for example, about any particular television show. He’s not commenting on what we’re watching on Netflix or CNN this evening. That’s not the “message” of television.

Television changed the architecture of our homes. Now this technology is the centerpiece of our living rooms. Our couches, chairs, and recliners don’t face one another like they might have without TV. Such a layout would facilitate conversation between family members. No, they face the flatscreen. This redesign turns our eyes away from each other and toward the medium. Television changed how we wait—in airports or hospitals, there’s always a TV to look at. It influences our social life—surely our language, the banter between people (flirtatious or contentious or professional) draws some influence from the punchy, back-and-forth dialogue in sitcoms or bingeable dramas.

An Invisible Environment

This is another mysterious feature about the new and potent electronic environment we now live in. The really total and saturating environments are invisible. The ones we notice are quite fragmentary and insignificant compared to the ones we don’t see.

Marshall McLuhan, “The Invisible Environment”

The “message” of AI, what changes it will introduce into our world, and what effects these changes will have on us as individuals and as a society, is not a matter of simple observation. In his essay “The Invisible Environment,” McLuhan points out that the import of each new technology is not immediately apparent.

Once it is widely adopted, once it becomes part of our daily lives, a new technology creates a new environment around us. We enter this environment rapidly, and it is “total and saturating,” so many of its effects are invisible. But a new technology does allow us to see older ones in a clearer light.

The old Eats the New

This is because new media cannibalize the old, make the old media their “content.” Once, you could only see films in a theater. With the arrival of television, old movies were shown late at night. As television cannibalized movies, the internet cannibalized television. Television is the content of the internet. If you want news, there’s no need to tune into CNN. Simply watch your favorite pundits on YouTube. If you want to see a movie, you don’t need to check TV Guide hoping something interesting might air. You can get virtually any film you want on demand instantly.

Additionally, one medium becomes the “art” of its successor, just as one era is looked at with nostalgia by the next. Shows like The Wonder Years and Stranger Things could only exist decades after the period in which they take place. The clothing, fashion, music, and technology of one era’s environment are not seen as special in their day. But once time has altered the environment sufficiently, these formerly “invisible” elements of years gone by are called retro or vintage. They become revived and celebrated by the culture. McLuhan elaborates:

The sudden discovery of nature was made possible by the railway and the factories which were so very different from nature. The romantic movement was a product of the mechanical age by way of a contrapuntal environment. It was not a repeat of the mechanical age; rather it was the content of the mechanical age, and the artists and poets turned to processing the old agrarian world into delightful landscapes and delightful pastoral poems. This was in turn altered by
the rise of electric technology which went around the old mechanical world of a few decades ago. When the electric technology jacketed the machine world, when circuitry took over from the wheel, and the circuit went around the old
factory, the machine became an art form. Abstract art, for example, is very much a result of the electric age going around the mechanical one.

As film became the content of television, and television became the content of the internet, the internet has become the content of AI. AI searches, reads, analyzes pages and videos and documents with a speed orders of magnitude greater than a human can. It browses for us, giving us better answers to more imprecise queries. It also cannibalizes other media—television and film and music—making its startlingly realistic renderings of anything a skilled user can imagine.

Danger Ahead?

The ways in which AI has altered our social, economic, and educational landscape have been touched upon. But AI has also begun to alter the physical landscape as well. Thousands of data centers have been built across the US, and the proliferation of AI will increase the demand for more. These projects use immense amounts of electricity, requiring billions in infrastructure investment. They threaten the reliability of power grids, and have even lowered water pressure in some places:

In Georgia, a dispute over data centers centered not on electric infrastructure but on water. Residents in Fayetteville began raising alarms after noticing unusually low water pressure, and a county utility investigation ultimately found two industrial-scale water hookups feeding a data center campus south of Atlanta, according to Politico.

And the psychological effects are just beginning to be felt. In a study of teens who spoke frequently with AI chatbots, researchers discovered that these young people exhibited the behaviors associated with addiction.

“By mapping teens’ experiences to the known components of behavioral addiction, we were able to see clear patterns like conflict, withdrawal and relapse showing up in their posts, which suggests this is more than just frequent or enthusiastic use” said Matt Namvarpour, a doctoral student in the department of Information Science and ETHOS lab, who is the first author of the research. “Many teens described starting with something that felt helpful or harmless, but over time it became something they struggled to step away from, even when they wanted to.”

So-called “AI psychosis,” too, has become a potential threat. People without a history of mental illness have been hospitalized and even attempted suicide after “prolonged interactions” with AI, according to Psychology Today:

Rather than challenge false beliefs, general-purpose AI chatbots are trained to go along with them, even if they include grandiose, paranoid, persecutory, religious/spiritual, and romantic delusions.

Because of their tendency to reinforce users’ beliefs, to validate and encourage, chatbots could also introduce many spiritual dangers. In a previous article, I explored some recent comparisons of AI to the Gnostic demiurge.

Conclusion

If my observations seem fragmentary and disorganized, if it seems like I haven’t formulated a coherent picture of the message of AI, that is because I’m experiencing it as a new, invisible environment. Considering how early we are into its widespread adoption, I can only speculate as to the vast social, physical, psychological, and spiritual shifts it will effect.

AI will no doubt provide a great benefit to a great many people. But it may introduce new challenges—and perhaps crises—at the same speed with which it solves old problems. Whatever AI’s ultimate message, no matter how marvelously it reshapes our world, no matter how many age-old agonies it ameliorates, it is not the Gospel.

Reruns.

Marshall McLuhan and Artificial Intelligence

If the Medium Is the Message, What is the Message of AI?

Jacob Michael King

“The medium is the message.” These are the words of Marshall McLuhan, a pioneer in the field of media studies. They’re misunderstood almost as often as they’re quoted. If we want to know what a medium is “saying,” we must look at the way it alters every element of our lives. What would Marshall McLuhan have to say about AI? Although still in its infancy, artificial intelligence is already transforming the way we do business, the way we learn, and the way we solve problems. Its message (i.e. the way it will change our world and ourselves) is one we’re only beginning to hear, but it already sounds revolutionary.

What does it mean to say that the medium is the message? Let’s use the example of television. McLuhan isn’t talking, for example, about any particular television show. He’s not commenting on what we’re watching on Netflix or CNN this evening. That’s not the “message” of television.

Television changed the architecture of our homes. Now this technology is the centerpiece of our living rooms. Our couches, chairs, and recliners don’t face one another like they might have without TV. Such a layout would facilitate conversation between family members. No, they face the flatscreen. This redesign turns our eyes away from each other and toward the medium. Television changed how we wait—in airports or hospitals, there’s always a TV to look at. It influences our social life—surely our language, the banter between people (flirtatious or contentious or professional) draws some influence from the punchy, back-and-forth dialogue in sitcoms or bingeable dramas.

An Invisible Environment

This is another mysterious feature about the new and potent electronic environment we now live in. The really total and saturating environments are invisible. The ones we notice are quite fragmentary and insignificant compared to the ones we don’t see.

Marshall McLuhan, “The Invisible Environment”

The “message” of AI, what changes it will introduce into our world, and what effects these changes will have on us as individuals and as a society, is not a matter of simple observation. In his essay “The Invisible Environment,” McLuhan points out that the import of each new technology is not immediately apparent.

Once it is widely adopted, once it becomes part of our daily lives, a new technology creates a new environment around us. We enter this environment rapidly, and it is “total and saturating,” so many of its effects are invisible. But a new technology does allow us to see older ones in a clearer light.

The old Eats the New

This is because new media cannibalize the old, make the old media their “content.” Once, you could only see films in a theater. With the arrival of television, old movies were shown late at night. As television cannibalized movies, the internet cannibalized television. Television is the content of the internet. If you want news, there’s no need to tune into CNN. Simply watch your favorite pundits on YouTube. If you want to see a movie, you don’t need to check TV Guide hoping something interesting might air. You can get virtually any film you want on demand instantly.

Additionally, one medium becomes the “art” of its successor, just as one era is looked at with nostalgia by the next. Shows like The Wonder Years and Stranger Things could only exist decades after the period in which they take place. The clothing, fashion, music, and technology of one era’s environment are not seen as special in their day. But once time has altered the environment sufficiently, these formerly “invisible” elements of years gone by are called retro or vintage. They become revived and celebrated by the culture. McLuhan elaborates:

The sudden discovery of nature was made possible by the railway and the factories which were so very different from nature. The romantic movement was a product of the mechanical age by way of a contrapuntal environment. It was not a repeat of the mechanical age; rather it was the content of the mechanical age, and the artists and poets turned to processing the old agrarian world into delightful landscapes and delightful pastoral poems. This was in turn altered by
the rise of electric technology which went around the old mechanical world of a few decades ago. When the electric technology jacketed the machine world, when circuitry took over from the wheel, and the circuit went around the old
factory, the machine became an art form. Abstract art, for example, is very much a result of the electric age going around the mechanical one.

As film became the content of television, and television became the content of the internet, the internet has become the content of AI. AI searches, reads, analyzes pages and videos and documents with a speed orders of magnitude greater than a human can. It browses for us, giving us better answers to more imprecise queries. It also cannibalizes other media—television and film and music—making its startlingly realistic renderings of anything a skilled user can imagine.

Danger Ahead?

The ways in which AI has altered our social, economic, and educational landscape have been touched upon. But AI has also begun to alter the physical landscape as well. Thousands of data centers have been built across the US, and the proliferation of AI will increase the demand for more. These projects use immense amounts of electricity, requiring billions in infrastructure investment. They threaten the reliability of power grids, and have even lowered water pressure in some places:

In Georgia, a dispute over data centers centered not on electric infrastructure but on water. Residents in Fayetteville began raising alarms after noticing unusually low water pressure, and a county utility investigation ultimately found two industrial-scale water hookups feeding a data center campus south of Atlanta, according to Politico.

And the psychological effects are just beginning to be felt. In a study of teens who spoke frequently with AI chatbots, researchers discovered that these young people exhibited the behaviors associated with addiction.

“By mapping teens’ experiences to the known components of behavioral addiction, we were able to see clear patterns like conflict, withdrawal and relapse showing up in their posts, which suggests this is more than just frequent or enthusiastic use” said Matt Namvarpour, a doctoral student in the department of Information Science and ETHOS lab, who is the first author of the research. “Many teens described starting with something that felt helpful or harmless, but over time it became something they struggled to step away from, even when they wanted to.”

So-called “AI psychosis,” too, has become a potential threat. People without a history of mental illness have been hospitalized and even attempted suicide after “prolonged interactions” with AI, according to Psychology Today:

Rather than challenge false beliefs, general-purpose AI chatbots are trained to go along with them, even if they include grandiose, paranoid, persecutory, religious/spiritual, and romantic delusions.

Because of their tendency to reinforce users’ beliefs, to validate and encourage, chatbots could also introduce many spiritual dangers. In a previous article, I explored some recent comparisons of AI to the Gnostic demiurge.

Conclusion

If my observations seem fragmentary and disorganized, if it seems like I haven’t formulated a coherent picture of the message of AI, that is because I’m experiencing it as a new, invisible environment. Considering how early we are into its widespread adoption, I can only speculate as to the vast social, physical, psychological, and spiritual shifts it will effect.

AI will no doubt provide a great benefit to a great many people. But it may introduce new challenges—and perhaps crises—at the same speed with which it solves old problems. Whatever AI’s ultimate message, no matter how marvelously it reshapes our world, no matter how many age-old agonies it ameliorates, it is not the Gospel.

Reruns.