$$\rho_t = \rho_h + (\rho_m - \rho_h)\, s_t, \qquad \rho_m < \rho_h$$

Equation 14 · Technological Evolution

The Bandwidth of Culture: Transmission Fidelity to 2100

This equation states a bound: one expression must stay on the indicated side of the other under the article’s assumptions.

$M_t$ is the net machine-mediated contribution: positive where model-assisted re-emission genuinely helps a human originator reach or refine an audience they could not otherwise reach, negative where it substitutes synthetic recombination for content that would otherwise have required, and thereby preserved, a human transmission chain. The mechanism Shumailov and colleagues describe operates by pulling $\rho_t$ itself down as the share of machine-mediated content in what gets re-ingested rises: $\rho_t = \rho_h + (\rho_m - \rho_h)\, s_t, \qquad \rho_m < \rho_h$. where $\rho_h$ is ordinary human-to-human transmission fidelity, $\rho_m$ is the fidelity of a machine-mediated re-emission — empirically lower per the tail-collapse result above — and…

Meanings in this article

• $\rho_h$: ordinary human-to-human transmission fidelity.
• $\rho_m$: the fidelity of a machine-mediated re-emission — empirically lower per the tail-collapse result above —.
• $s_t$: the share of newly circulating content, at time t , that is machine-generated rather than human-originated.

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