I was chatting with my friend on a run this morning. I was telling him why I like Mastodon. I get more random interactions.

Each time we do a search, Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft get a little better at creating a customer avatar. A customer avatar is your search profile. What is this person interested in. They take that information and use it sell ads to you. The ability of AI to determine customer avatars is pretty amazing. But it is imperfect.

I liken it to people who listen to my podcast. Nearly 600 episodes of the Irish & Celtic Music Podcast. 250+ episodes of Pub Songs & Stories. I talk a lot about myself. In fact, some people tell me, “I feel like I know you.”

It’s true they get a lot of information. But it is incomplete. There are a LOT of topics I don’t talk about on my podcasts or in my blogs.

I remember in my heyday of search engine optimization. I did a lot of searches for “Celtic music”. I was looking for what was new. I was trying to find other Celtic bands.
I *NEVER* do that now. It’s pointless. The searches all suck. I don’t find anything interesting. I gave up.

It’s a flawed avatar also because I want to discover new thing. I want to find something random in my feeds.

What I don’t want is an echo chamber.

But that’s where we’re at. They show me what they think I want. Based on a flawed model.

They will improve their model one day. But one of the things I LOVE about the Irish & Celtic Music Podcast is that it is not based on artificial intelligence trying to understand Celtic Americans. Because if it was, I wouldn’t want to listen to it.

I know this because there are so many different tastes out there. I found an Irish music podcast in Florida. The level of *I don’t like this music* was incredible. It was Very different my podcasts.

I understood why some CIE Ireland tours take you to the Merry Ploughboy and Blarney Castle. I understand why my music is so different and doesn’t fit in with what many people think of as “Celtic music”.

There will be a revolution against the machines some day. It won’t be like it was in Terminator with actual machines that are trying to physically kill us.

It’ll be a revolution of people deciding that they don’t want an algorithm to run their life. They want to be recognized as individuals. They don’t want to be sucked into the interwebs in an AI-induced hypnosis and echo chamber.

But it takes people disconnecting from crazy conspiracy theories of Fox News and Qanon. January 6th changed the world. People now realize that Trump Lied and instigated an insurrection on our lawfully elected government. That Lie was able to flourish because of that AI hypnosis.

Once we pull ourselves away from that world, we will discover a far different place than the one Facebook is trying to sell us.