Do Androids Appreciate Dreams of Electric Sheep?

We are at an inflection point in the phenomenon of "AI".

For this discussion I use "AI" as familiar token for the social and business phenomenon, putting aside if "AI" as realized Q3 2025 is, or is even a path to, Artificial General Intelligence.

Broadly, I see three perspectives expressed:

1. With billions of speculative capital, and terabytes of speculation from last week block chain, this week AI experts at stake, we are offered the proposition that the bulk of human activity not directly related to manipulation of physical reality will be managed by AI within a few years.
2. AI technology remains, as technology always has, secondary to the realization of automation, and human factors; process reform, human adaptability, resistance to change, capital availability, organizational inertia, will all constrain application of AI sufficiently that its impact, while significant, will be sufficiently constrained and delayed to make AI another incremental efficiency gain, not a driver of societal change.
3. Outright rejection of AI as scam and/or bubble, like the .com bubble of the late 1990's.

Which of these perspectives prevail depends on whether the value perceived by the audience or consumer of an incident of digitally expressed content is influenced by the form of the actor that generated that content. This question is aligned with "the medium is the message", asserted by Marshall McLuhan 60 years ago, and even more relevant today than in 1964.

Put simply, value is in the eye of the beholder. Do humans value synthetically, i.e. non-human, generated content?

We already have the answer to this question.

Two hundred years after lithography became commercially viable we continue to value an inferior and unfamiliar human created original work of art far more than the best quality print of a masters work. A venue decorated with prints is tacky and commercial, to be engaged with as convenient and necessary and nothing more. A venue that displays original art projects authority and permanence, and secures deference and obedience from those occupying it.

It is the same with AI generated content. An image or copy is engaging, arguably superior, but AI generated? Who cares; anybody or anything can generate that. Human generated content is, and will remain, valued, while synthesized content is perceived as having little, if any, value.

AI generated content possesses value just as the prints in a building lobby do; valued two years ago when acquired, now valueless because they no longer match the carpet.

The ultimate, yet familiar, exploration of this question is found in Philip K. Dicks's 1968 novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", source of the Blade Runner films.

Dick's novel provides far more exploration of synthesis than the movie Blade Runner does, and is worth reading if you have interest in the topic.

In Blade Runner replicants have the same appearance, superior functionality, same biology, and same emotional capacity as humans. Yet in Blade Runner humans are innately precious and preserved, while replicants are perceived as holding transitory value based only on current utility and obedience, to be disposed of when humans perceive they do not have value. At the climax of Blade Runner the human audience is satisfied when Deckard survives Batty, even though all Batty sought was that which Deckard had been gifted, but did not value until his encounter with Batty.

Neither the expression, nor subjective or objective inferiority or superiority of synthesized product is relevant. Half a century ago Dick already understood exactly how humans would value, and would brutally dispatch, the ultimate product of synthesis; ourselves.

Resist the temptation to replace personally generated content with AI generated content because at this hour you, or others, perceive it inferior. The novelty has worn off and just as with fine art and replicants content relatably human to both creator and audience is the only content we will continue to perceive as having value.