I still do it. Spotify is good for making playlists but I don't use it for listening. I collect mp3s, bought on Bandcamp or downloaded from Soulseek, and listen on an old Sansa Clip mp3 player.
This isn't new to AI. The same kind of thing happens in movie test screenings, or with autotune. If something is intended for a large audience, there's always an incentive to remove the weird stuff.
This is better than nothing, but the big advantage of the UBI is that there is no bureaucracy deciding who gets it and doesn't get it. If there are any conditions on the income, then there's a constant danger that the program will become another tool of control.
I've been making music videos with a very satisfying creative process: Use AI to make a ton of images, pick the very best ones, and carefully arrange them in the right order. Example: https://youtu.be/r-_dJNgt3SM
This article fails to mention why the currency circulated so fast. It was depreciating: it was defined as gradually losing value, so hoarding didn't work, and the people with money had a strong incentive to spend it. The article makes it sound like these currencies worked because they were local. They worked because they depreciated, and it's possible to do this on a national level.
A great book on this subject is In The Absence of the Sacred by Jerry Mander. He argues convincingly that the correct biological metaphor for technological progress is not evolution, but inbreeding. We are turning our attention more and more into worlds of our own construction.
Still, there's a lot of cool technology out there, and a lot of room to use it better.
I agree with the author: Heroes II is my favorite of the series, just for the innocent vibe. Also, Heroes IV is underrated. It got bad reviews because it came out buggy, but the bugs were fixed in updates, and of all the HOMM games, it has the best soundtrack.
I like this idea, but my problem is with the word "successful". Setting constraints rather than chasing goals leads to doing interesting things. But there's no guarantee you'll ever be recognized or rewarded.
When I was young, every time I got a 20-20 prescription, my eyes got worse. When I stopped going to the optometrist, my eyes stopped getting worse. Now I wear glasses that only correct to around 20-40. I take them off for reading, and I have weaker glasses for the computer screen. Supposedly I have astigmatism but I use no astigmatism correction and can see fine.