The rise of AI is likely to lead to a return to trusted networks -- friends, acquaintances and closely guarded groups of people with common interests. We can look to online dating for why.
Online dating works (it's how I met my partner) but it can reasonably be defined as an asymmetric yet equally miserable experience for both men and women.
Women are overloaded with inbound messaging from guys saying "hey" and "what's up" and the majority of messages end up unread. The occasional well-written and thoughtful messages get buried in that avalanche of outreach.
Men, even the thoughtful ones, eventually realize that writing personalized messages isn't rewarded and it turns into a numbers game -- reach out to as many people as possible with a simple message and hope that you eventually connect with someone.
This becomes a vicious cycle, where the rational male choice is to put in the least amount of effort with the greatest number of recipients, further overwhelming the women they want to reach.
This is about to be played out across the board.
* The incremental cost of creating web pages filled with mediocre, room-temperature slop is virtually zero. This is causing search to wither as a marketing channel.
* There are plenty of services out there that will enable you to apply to hundreds of jobs without even looking at the roles. And AI can automatically create a convincing cover letter or answer to a "tell me about a time when..." questions. I would hate to be a first-line hiring manager right now.
* There are now lists of words to avoid in college application essays because AI will write something as good as many high school seniors.
This isn't all doom and gloom. The point is to start thinking about entirely new ways to get attention. Or, more to the point, it's time to go back to the old ways. Going wide is going to continue to get noisier and noisier. Networks are going to matter more than ever before.