The UK, the EU, podcasting and AI
2024-06-18 06:30:00 +07:00 by Mark Smith
It's the year of elections, with the EU having just had their big election event, the UK about to have theirs in July, France at around the same time, and there's also the US. Elections are happening everywhere it seems. I'm usually not that interested in elections, but for some reason this year I have been. I think that's because the dynamics are genuinely quite exciting at the minute, with big shifts in opinion, economic conditions and ongoing wars causing geo-political forces to be very strained.
It's also been the first real EU election that didn't include the UK. Ironically enough, I think that's also caused many in the UK to become more intetested in the politics happening across the waters and througout the continent. I've learnt really quite a lot about central and eastern europe just reading round ups of what's been going on in each country. It's rather fascinating, no less because the EU is so big these days.
But the other big thing that's changed in recent years is that podcasting has become very popular, almost mainstream. People are able to have access to a much broader set of media sources, much of it created by non government groups or independants. I've been listening to politcs discussions all throughout the Bitcoin scene on podcasts like What Bitcoin Did, Crypto Voices and Bankless, the Peter St Onge Podcast and of course great discussions and interviews on the All-in podcast. But also, more recently on podcasts like the Rest is Politics and the Rest is Money. It feels like a genuinely different environment than back when Brexit happened.
The other big change is clearly the AI and LLM revolution that's happenned over the past couple of years. If the rise of podcasting has significantly changed the environment, and in my opinion it has, then how different will things be after a few more years of exponential advances in AI tech?
In the Uk, some pundits are predicting that the Conservative party will have their biggest election loss in over 100 years. That's pretty massive, but it's even more massive considering that the rest of the EU has been going in the total opposite direction, with the political right and extreme right gaining huge ground.
What a strange time for this to be happening. It occurred to me earlier that such a big election defeat, at the very moment powerful AI tools are being democratized, could be a lethal blow to the Conservatives. What if they never recover?