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Recently unredacted legal documents and depositions in the New York Times\u2018 lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI revealed something extraordinary: executives knew full well of the destructive powers of AI when they rushed to launch products featuring the tech in the wake of the explosive success of OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT.<\/p>\n
Internal Microsoft documents quoted by the newspaper\u2019s lawyers<\/a> warned of an ugly reality now playing out across the entire economy: \u201cdoom loops,\u201d in which AI monetizes the work of human creatives while undermining the economic systems that funded their work in the first place.<\/p>\n \u201cOur AI content strategy has started a \u2018doom loop\u2019 that will hurt the performance of our models and the entire web at the same time,\u201d one internal Microsoft document reads. \u201cIt is highly unusual that an end-product threatens the economic foundations of its essential suppliers, but that is the situation we have created for our LLM business with respect to its \u2018content supply chain.’\u201d<\/p>\n The closer you look, the more you see doom loops everywhere. Journalists, for example, used to publish work under the assumption that online platforms would drive readership to them. But now, tools like ChatGPT and Google\u2019s Gemini simply summarize their articles without sending readers to their sites, sparking a crisis that seems poised to wipe out the independent media<\/a>.<\/p>\n Similar stories are playing out across other industries, from music to filmmaking. Writ large, many are concerned that AI will eventually be strong enough to wipe out huge numbers of jobs, creating a situation in which unemployed consumers won\u2019t have the funds to support the economy.<\/p>\n The irony, as the Microsoft document pointed out, is that the AI industry is a snake eating its own tail: the very products that it\u2019s pushing on users rely on fresh cultural content even as they destroy the economic incentives to create it.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also a dire situation for the open web, which recently celebrated the macabre turning point<\/a> of being dominated by more AI slop than human-authored content. As companies \u2014 most notably Google \u2014 are fundamentally changing the way<\/a> users interact with the web, more and more newspapers, media outlets, and local news stations are seriously struggling to make ends meet.<\/p>\n Worse yet, as the legal documents in the NYT\u2018s copyright lawsuit showed, insiders admitted that the entire operation is built on theft.<\/p>\n \u201cMillions of people around the world will soon consider large models \u2018hoovering up\u2019 all their work to be an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions,\u201d an internal Microsoft document admitted. <\/p>\n Plenty of other creative industries are also feeling the pressure as AI-related doom loops continue to undermine livelihoods. According to the latest data from the US Bureau of Labor statistics, it\u2019s a bloodbath \u2014 with more than 200,000 jobs in \u201ccreative\u201d industries<\/a> having been lost over the last four years alone, roughly the time since OpenAI launched ChatGPT.<\/p>\n AI-generated music is rapidly crowding out<\/a> human-produced tracks on streaming services, forcing platforms to figure out where to draw the line. Some have implemented hard and fast rules<\/a>, while others continue to allow users to exploit algorithms with slop<\/a>. <\/p>\n Hollywood studios are also doubling down<\/a> on AI while protesting actors struggle to have their voices heard<\/a>. Many of them fear that their likeness or voice could soon be rendered worthless, representing an existential threat to their livelihoods.<\/p>\n Even the job market is embroiled in its own doom loop. More and more desperate job seekers are turning to AI to brush up their resumes and manipulate AI-powered job portals, while recruiters are drowning in a wall of almost identical applications.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve got this tragic situation where each side has a problem,\u201d applicant tracking system company Greenhouse CEO Daniel Chait told Wired<\/a>. \u201cThey\u2019re using AI to solve their own problem, but in ways that make the problem worse.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd so more AI use begets more AI use, to no one\u2019s benefit,\u201d he added. \u201cThe more it\u2019s happening, the worse it gets.\u201d<\/p>\n Similarly, the use of AI in the classroom has skyrocketed, with students using the tech to complete their homework, offloading their cognitive faculties to the machine. Meanwhile, their teachers are using AI to come up with assignments, slowly effacing the human in the loop. Educators who bristle at the idea of using the tech are finding themselves at odds with school administrators.<\/p>\n The effects AI has had on education has been nothing short of a disaster. A recent study<\/a> by the Brookings Institution\u2019s Center for Universal Education concluded that the risks of using generative AI in education massively outweighed the benefits<\/a>. The associated dangers have never been more apparent, with educators warning that college students are rapidly losing the ability to read<\/a>.<\/p>\n Proponents of AI, including OpenAI and Microsoft\u2019s lawyers in the ongoing New York Times lawsuit, argue that AI brings something new to the table. They argue that the output of AI models is sufficiently differentiated from the original content it draws on, falling under \u201cfair use,\u201d a longstanding doctrine in US copyright law.<\/p>\n Whether this argument will hold up in court remains to be seen. Besides, we\u2019ve already seen companies, like Anthropic, settle for billions of dollars<\/a> after being found to have violated copyright laws.<\/p>\n But considering how the tech is simultaneously undermining the very economic systems that produced the data they need to exist in the first place, that may not be a winning strategy in the long run.<\/p>\n By ripping out the carpet from underneath many parts of the economy \u2014 and reaping all the financial gains from it \u2014 the AI industry is trapping itself in a doom loop of its own creation, a cynical strategy that won\u2019t benefit anybody but those at the very top who kicked the ladder down behind them.<\/p>\n