Generative AI is disruptive, is transformative, and is reducing friction, but the economic incentives for using it are geared far less toward supercharging human potential and much more toward producing abundant slop.

Still, a synthetic feed is theoretically much simpler—an endless scroll of dopamine-triggering engagement for users and grist for other social networks and group chats. As the Bloomberg writer and podcaster Joe Weisenthal mused on X recently, there’s a poetic coherence to this evolution: “The emergence of ‘slop’ was foretold as soon as we started... See more

OpenAI’s proposition with Sora 2 feels slightly different—more like a flashy proof of concept to showcase the power of its models. Announcing Sora 2, Sam Altman wrote that “creativity could be about to go through a Cambrian explosion” as a result of the tool: “And along with it, the quality of art and entertainment can drastically increase.”... See more

What people such as Altman and Andreessen envision is the logical end point of technology itself—a push to eliminate cognitive resistance and bridge the gap between imagination and reality.

What Altman is describing is a world of creativity without craft.

Research has shown that, inside some companies, workers begin to see their colleagues who use generative AI as less creative, even less trustworthy.

There is no realm of life that is unsloppable.

By volume alone, slop may be the most visible and successful by-product of the generative-AI era to date. It is also a hallmark of what I’ve previously described as a collective delusion around artificial intelligence—where the breathless hype and imagined future of building a godlike superintelligence and curing cancer collides with the dull... See more

This is tragic. The loss of friction deprives people of something crucial. What happens between imagination and creation is ineffable—it entails struggle, iteration, joy, and frustration, disappointment, and pride. It is the process through which we enact agency. It is how we make meaning and move through the world. To lose that, I fear, is to... See more