You need "precursor civilizations" to die to maintain space opera type setting. I think the vision of space being a source of "frontier" stories is pretty fringe within its own context given the nature evolution of the environment. What is likely to happen short time span of colonialization followed by populations and processing power that is orders of magnitude beyond anything in history. An alternative would be the first civ systematically killing potential life bearing areas to prevent future rivals.
Someone really need to think about that world....(and find an angle that is appealing to read) Quadrillions living in a system for (b)million years. What would "people" even do? What is the culture, what is the kind of thing that is thought about and what are the stories within that context.
AI-based writing doesn't have any humans in the loop. Someone could well create that AI as a *lark.* Someone could create it as a university project. Someone could create it as a way to torpedo the publishing business that constantly rejected his own garbage novels. Someone could create it as a pay-per-book service that spends a few years making the creator bank, but which then finally gets cracked by hackers and modified into a freeware system.
Computer systems isn't free (GPT-3 costed millions in computing, millions in engineer time, novel length model with good quality will take significantly more), and corporate can provide a better service than the average dude on the street fiddling with compute. A freemium version will likely exist based on user data collection and marketing tie in (product placement and more) though. A run at home system is likely to run into government opposition for generating the wrong kind of narratives, please think of the BIPOC queer children~ in any case.
Now good text generation for novel length stories runnable on "low cost" hardware will eventually happen, but when it does society is probably blown up by changes across the whole economy and writers is the last of normal people's concerns. Who remember novels during the third skynet war~
No need for hypotheticals, all eyes on AI Dungeon monetarization results~
There's nothing special or sacred about fiction writing or writers. If they can be replaced with automation, they will be.
There is always a market for authentic handcrafted ethical writings from (((insert class)))
LOL at (((neuroatypical))) people that buy books to read them as opposed to show off taste~ see:
Does this photo of perfectly curated green books set you off (or excite you)? This article is for you.
www.apartmenttherapy.com
....I can just see it now, the drama when some intern in 2050s+ mindlessly breaks kayfabe and lists books as furniture.
Some people are special and sacred, and as such association with them have positive signaling value:
The existing YA market is amusing because it is based on having sacred status to sell the product. That is why there is "drama" due to theological issues that no evil "nihilist" can comprehend.
What are the impacts on capitalism generally once replicators become commonplace? Are the impacts on publishing arising from the widespread access to the internet any sort of guide?
Production does not fulfill the entire Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Labor would logically shift toward sectors that can not be fulfilled by production technology.
This is not too new, as material needs for humans actually hits diminishing returns relative to everything else after health and comfort can be fulfilled, and elites in complex society generally have gotten to this point. The elites are not idle and work damned hard at other things though.
Which is to say, the future is the entire population becoming activists-lawyers suing each other to get into good school districts, forever~
The future is already here, just not evenly distributed~
--------
The study of economy is just not very relevant as people move beyond material deprivation. What the era needs is study of social status.
