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Are LLMs to culture as Startrek’s replicators are to physical matter?

This thought occurred to me when reading Manu Saadia’s book about the economics of Star Trek. From loc 1209:

Machines take care of the repetitive, energy-intensive, low-skill, high-output labor. They handle the transformation of natural resources into consumer staples. Meanwhile, humanoids can shift their focus to the highskill, low-output end of the curve, the kind of products and services that require knowledge, education, creativity, and a personal touch, whether it be wine making, exploration, or a doctor’s bedside manner. This is labor substitution on a very grand scale.

I don’t think it works because the political economy of content doesn’t map onto this distinction between low-skill high-output and high-skill low-output. The great bulk of creative labour which is still* compensated sits in between these two points. But the dominate narrative of the cultural industries being decimated will likely include this idea it frees people up to be really creative, if viral content is being produced by machines.

*The reduction of which long precedes GAI. This is part of a longer story, with a naive valorisation of the digital commons seeming increasingly obviously to have been a mistaken.

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