I would rather not be overly blunt, but some things are too obvious to hide. So it may be better to be upfront at the very start of the article – that might help avoid self-censorship later. The uncomfortable truth is this: the more laws Brussels passes about data and digital life, the less sense it all makes.
The General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, was at least a logical conclusion to two decades of experimentation – the problems were known and had been building up for years. The next stage – the attempt to rein in Google, Microsoft, Apple and Meta – resembled trying to discipline other people’s children in an overcrowded playground. The result is always the same: an argument between the parents.
Now the next act has begun – an attempt to regulate generative artificial intelligence, which no one can really define, explain, or defend against.
The last time Europe tried to write laws about technologies it did not yet understand was at the dawn of the internet age. That is precisely why there are so few European children in today’s digital playground.
Brain rot – another thing we did not invent
Meta AI and Sora have lately become both a source of delight and outrage for everyone who has either a podcast or an opinion. Rarely are they the same people, but they have quickly split into worshippers and critics.
The most frequently quoted regret in our profession is still: we promised flying cars but delivered 160 characters. OpenAI rewrote this formula – it promised to cure cancer, but so far has only nudged the problem of brain rot a little further along.
I have not yet managed to run Meta AI or Sora on my phone, so I rely on screenshots from more successful people. In both cases, the new algorithms come wrapped in special products that are perfect experimental labs for both the provider and the user.
And both sides matter. In 2010, posting pictures of your breakfast on Instagram seemed irresistible; the filters heroically hid the lack of skill. The warm “likes” from friends and relatives encouraged us until reality was being photographed from billions of angles at once. It was – damn – wonderful.
Of course, every new medium goes through its childhood diseases. There was the “omelette era”, when breakfast photos reigned; the “oversharing age”, thankfully brief; and finally – maturity, when the generation that grew up with technology learned to turn social network posts into a personal brand and a thread of distanced intimacy. A whole industry of online photography courses has blossomed – proof that we live in the century of maximal photography.
So we should not expect anything particularly tragic from the era of AI‑generated video either. We are already used to posting images without worrying whether they are good or bad. Now that same lack of responsibility will let people give form to their imagination, ignoring any lack of skills – at least for now.
We have also seen where unregulated creativity leads – especially when it ends up in the hands of a US president and is turned against Democrats who are blocking the budget. The result is always the same: a carnival with sombreros, moustaches and patriotic mariachi, celebrating the impossibility of political cooperation.
The medium creates its own power
TikTok appeared out of nowhere – more precisely, from China, which Silicon Valley once considered barren ground for social innovation. Yet here we are – the most addictive form of entertainment in the world was born in a place everyone thought was unsuitable for creating joy.
OpenAI can just as easily create competition for Meta; Google already feels it.
Although OpenAI sits at the vanguard of science, what really matters is that it is fundamentally a product‑oriented company. The more users it attracts, the less progress each subsequent LLM delivers, and the more its product roots show. The chatbot is already openly threatening Google’s monopoly on answering questions – a fortress that no one had been able to conquer for 25 years.
This may seem frightening, but it proves that in the digital world competition is still alive – and dangerously fast. What no one could challenge for decades, a 200‑person team shattered in two years.
The reigning champion of dependency, or “stickiness” as the industry euphemism has it, is still TikTok. Its genius lies in an algorithm that diagnoses our weaknesses (cats, sneakers, handbags) and serves up a personalized buffet of temptations. Previously, addiction hid in the interface or in a loop of social rewards; now it is simply programmed in.
Sora, for its part, can create that same TikTok magnetism entirely from scratch – without a single human being holding a camera.
Among its new features, one stands out in particular: cameo mode. It allows anyone to create a digital avatar, keep the copyright and control, yet still appear in the video. Simple, clever, and yet another reminder that OpenAI thinks in terms of products, not scientific publications.
The second innovation concerns recommendation algorithms. None of the major platforms lets users steer their feeds using natural‑language instructions. If Brussels truly wanted to be useful, it could pass laws in favour of such transparency – but that would require more engineers than lawyers in Europe’s corridors of power, which sounds like science fiction.
A recommendation system you can talk to is, paradoxically, more human. It lets you tell the algorithm what you actually want – a rare privilege on the internet. If YouTube could one day offer its vast trove of useful content instead of the endless distracting kind, civilization might still have a chance.
OpenAI even promises to introduce “doom‑scroll” breaks. It sees Sora as a tool for content creators – which, of course, it will not be. Since time immemorial, every platform has initially promised a golden age of creativity, but it always turns out that commercially successful creators are as rare as politicians with high moral standards. Yet today almost everyone is a photographer with a permanent solo exhibition.
Does anyone still have agency?
Sora and Meta AI will continue to top up the endless entertainment buffet. A century ago, a person could go to the cinema or put on a record; today we can lose ourselves across ten platforms before we have even had breakfast.
But it is precisely this consumer appetite that funds research and growth. Advertising and subscriptions keep the laboratories of progress running. Chip technology was financed by watches, tape recorders and personal computers – modest devices that eventually made silicon small and powerful enough to guide rockets. The founders of Intel were not saints of science – they were merchants of curiosity. Their bet on consumer technology paid off – both for Moore’s team and, even more so, for consumers.
Yet human attention may prove to be the only limited resource once the new AI infrastructure is complete. The ability to focus attention and direct our intentions – that is the final frontier where we do not need technology. Perhaps that is exactly why mastering it is even harder than mastering artificial intelligence.
Originally published at https://inc-baltics.com/sveiciens-un-pateiciba-briselei/
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