Generative AI systems are predominantly designed, evaluated, and marketed as intelligent systems which will benefit society by augmenting or automating human cognitive labor, promising to increase personal, corporate, and macroeconomic productivity. But this mainstream narrative about what AI is and what it can do is in tension with another emerging use case: entertainment. We argue that the field of AI is unprepared to measure or respond to how the proliferation of entertaining AI-generated content will impact society. Emerging data suggest AI is already widely adopted for entertainment purposes -- especially by young people -- and represents a large potential source of revenue. We contend that entertainment will become a primary business model for major AI corporations seeking returns on massive infrastructure investments; this will exert a powerful influence on the technology these companies produce in the coming years. Examining current evaluation practices, we identify a critical asymmetry: while AI assessments rigorously measure both benefits and harms of intelligence, they focus almost exclusively on cultural harms. We lack frameworks for articulating how cultural outputs might be actively beneficial. Drawing on insights from the humanities, we propose "thick entertainment" as a framework for evaluating AI-generated cultural content -- one that considers entertainment's role in meaning-making, identity formation, and social connection rather than simply minimizing harm. While AI is often touted for its potential to revolutionize productivity, in the long run we may find that AI turns out to be as much about "intelligence" as social media is about social connection.

翻译：生成式人工智能系统主要被设计、评估和宣传为智能系统，通过增强或自动化人类认知劳动来造福社会，承诺提升个人、企业和宏观经济的生产力。然而，这种关于人工智能是什么及其能做什么的主流叙事，与另一个新兴应用场景——娱乐——形成了张力。我们认为，人工智能领域尚未准备好衡量或应对娱乐性AI生成内容的激增将如何影响社会。新兴数据表明，AI已广泛用于娱乐目的——尤其是年轻人——并代表了巨大的潜在收入来源。我们主张，娱乐将成为主要人工智能企业寻求大规模基础设施投资回报的主要商业模式；这将对这些公司未来几年生产的技术产生强大影响。审视当前的评估实践，我们发现一个关键的不对称性：虽然AI评估严格衡量智能的益处和危害，但它们几乎完全聚焦于文化危害。我们缺乏阐述文化产出如何可能具有积极益处的框架。借鉴人文学科的见解，我们提出“深度娱乐”作为评估AI生成文化内容的框架——该框架考虑娱乐在意义建构、身份形成和社会连接中的作用，而非简单地最小化危害。尽管AI常被吹捧为具有革新生产力的潜力，但长远来看，我们可能会发现AI最终关乎“智能”的程度，正如社交媒体关乎社会连接一样。