Setz likens AI to enchanted fish, warning of creative erosion and authenticity quests
Using the German fairytale 'The Fisherman and His Wife', Clemens J Setz argues AI is becoming an enchanted fish that grants instant creative wishes, eroding desire, effort and what it means to be creative. Young people will outsource creativity and companionship to AIs, producing emptiness. Society may respond through decadent quests for ‘authentic’ experience, contrived scarcity communities, or pervasive guilt-driven self-denial that moralises technological consumption.