Robin Good on human curation

I made this video in 2011 -- 14 years ago. The value of the Internet/Web, before it was swamped by corporate-algorithmic control of what we viewed, was created by millions of people who made their own choices about what sites to recommend to their communities -- initially by people who created websites and linked to others, then by the bloggers. These myriad human decisions about what to recommend was the basis for Google, which applied its secret sauce to those choices and (for a time) used them to surface the best sites for searches. I was reminded of this today when I saw Good's substack on human curation in the age of algorithms and AI.

The best antidote against the fear of becoming irrelevant in front of the tsunami of average, superficial content generated by AI and is to explore and learn the power of interpreting and contextualizing the infinite human dialogue for specific audiences and needs.

Here’s why I think so:

• By collecting and examining multiple sources and authors a human curator becomes a relevant and useful source for AI search (AI search appreciates niche expert advice that references lot of good quality resources - like it should always have been)
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• A human curator provides a specific perspective and viewpoint from an authoritative individual, based on his specific experience. That’s a unique perspective that AI cannot easily replicate, as AI does not have a specific perspective nor a personal experience.
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• Curating content lits up individual ideas, refines new discoveries and helps to critically and constructively analyze what we study and care about instead of blending it all in a normalized package of nice words without offering a trace to the original people, contexts and needs that gave birth to them.
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• Human curators are curiosity sherpas that can supply infinite opportunities for the discovery of relevant content and authors.
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• Curation work shines, when trust drives it. That means that the curator shares the same values, ideas and purpose that his audience has. AI has no deep, innate and intrinsic purpose, value or ideals outside of those, non-transparent bias have been programmed into it. Thus it can offer great counterpoints and alternative views, but it cannot deeply trusted as you would do with a human whose value have been made public.