Forgive this weirdly philosophical comment: In a year of dark thoughts I found yet another horror to contemplate, after reading a legal paper on the idea of the marketplace of ideas.

A core concept underpinning our shared market place, is that its not about facts, its about ideas being exchanged.

Critically, that exchange creates friction, debate and downstream of all that - society. I've commented elsewhere how the marketplace is broken today, and why.

But with GenAI, theres a new, twist, that I can barely contemplate.

See, our conception of this liberal democracy based society, exists in that exchange between people. Even a crappy exchange, is part of the process of learning and building our ideas. My half formed ideas, your half formed ideas, everyones ideas.

We have considered what happens when your ideas don't get heard.

But in no place, did we consider what happens when we bounce our ideas into a machine, and that machine talks back. And if that machine talks back in a manner thats can be as good as what a person might write or text. Your half baked idea goes into the machine, you get text back that helps you get to a fully baked idea.

But the counter party is the machine. Not a person. The way those ideas have been bouncing around, has changed.