Remember when we all watched the same TV shows and read the same news? Those shared cultural experiences used to bind us together. But the internet changed everything, giving us endless choices and new ways to connect. While it empowered niche communities, it also fragmented our shared experiences. Advertising became the default business model to consume free (or affordable) content online. To succeed, companies needed to know if an ad was relevant to you. This drove innovation in personalization, with ML delivering it at scale. More personalization meant more engaging ads, and more engaging ads meant more profit. But it didn’t stop there. Personalization extended beyond ads to the very content we consume - shaping our social media feeds, content recommendations, and even search results. This deep integration of personalized experiences fueled years of R&D in AI and ML.

These advances laid the groundwork for foundation models, like GPT-4, that are now revolutionizing content creation. These models can generate human-like text, images, and soon, videos. Where algorithms once showed us existing content, AI now will create new, engaging content from scratch. We’re already seeing AI-generated videos of celebrities speaking languages they never learned or realistic images of historical scenes. This is just the beginning. Soon, AI won’t just recommend content. It will create unique articles, videos, and songs for each of us. Our daily feeds will soon be created complpetely by AI, only for us to consume.

As we enter this era of hyper-personalized, AI-generated content, what happens when we no longer share any common cultural experiences? How will we connect without any shared reference points? As humans, we’re hardwired for social connection and shared experiences. Our evolution as a species has depended on our ability to communicate and bond over common ground. We must ensure technology brings us together, not apart.