But what really blows my noodle is how rare AI skepticism still is in the media. One year ago, ChatGPT was opened to the public. The onslaught of overheated and careless rhetoric about our imminent ascent to a new plane of existence (or our imminent extermination) began then and has not slowed since. It’s inherent to the financial interests of journalism for professional media to sensationalize, after all. (This is a complaint that’s old enough that it was made by Charles Dickens, among many other journalists.) And so I’m not at all surprised that there’s been so many stories about how nothing will ever be the same, even as we’re all still just living busy little ordinary lives like we always have.

Freddie deBoer • Where Are the AI Skepticism Stories?

Saved by sari and

RelatedCollectionsNotes

Despite the relentless hype, I think AI overall is underhyped. The long-term effects of AI will affect our society to a greater degree than electricity and fire, but its full effects will take centuries to play out. That means that we’ll be arguing, discussing, and wrangling with the changes brought about by AI for the next 10 decades. Because AI

Kevin Kelly • Interview: Kevin Kelly, Editor, Author, and Futurist

But us humans, we’re scared too. Which makes us defensive and write think-pieces like "Will AI replace the artist? Wait dang it I wrote that one nvm.

The more we talk about how we are not AI, the more robotic we become.

"Trust us, we're human and here's why," we keep saying — that nobody can deny!

The truth hides in the subtext and makes me wonder, ... See more

Sari Azout • Are We Human? Then Let's Be Dancers

In the course of a year, the tech industry’s dreary post-social, post-crypto interregnum was rapidly supplanted — largely as the result of public-facing efforts by OpenAI, which is reportedly in talks with Microsoft about a potential $10 billion investment — by a story about inevitable technologies that are so transformat

John Herrman • Why Artificial Intelligence Often Feels Like Magic

Last night at dinner talking about subculture stuff and I bring up my standard boring/reductive Q about “how punk skate hip hop etc had monoculture to rebel against, so what now?,” and a brilliant friend answered straight up, “AI will be mainstream monoculture-esque, and is at its core boring and average and uncreative, and that is what people will... See more

Michael J. Miraflor

x.com

Such a thing is compelling not because it offers answers in the form of text, but because it makes it possible to play text—all the text, almost—like an instrument.

That outcome could be revelatory! But a huge obstacle stands in the way of achieving it: people, who don’t know what the hell to make of LLMs, ChatGPT, and all the other gene

Ian Bogost • ChatGPT Is Dumber Than You Think

ChatGPT Is Dumber Than You Think

Ian Bogost theatlantic.com

In the past there were plenty of tasks—including writing essays—that we’ve assumed were somehow “fundamentally too hard” for computers. And now that we see them done by the likes of ChatGPT we tend to suddenly think that computers must have become vastly more powerful—in particular surpassing things they were already basically able to do (like prog

Stephen Wolfram • What Is ChatGPT Doing ... And Why Does It Work?

Since the 1950s, discussions about AI have largely revolved around a big, tantalizing question: What can machines do, and where might they hit a wall? Will they ever truly think, understand, or maybe even become conscious? Could they reach the so-called “heights of human intelligence”? And then there’s that shadowy question looming in the backgroun

Kevin Kelly • Interview: Kevin Kelly, Editor, Author, and Futurist

Sari Azout • Are We Human? Then Let's Be Dancers

John Herrman • Why Artificial Intelligence Often Feels Like Magic

Ian Bogost • ChatGPT Is Dumber Than You Think

ChatGPT Is Dumber Than You Think

Stephen Wolfram • What Is ChatGPT Doing ... And Why Does It Work?

Shai Tubali • The Mechanized Mind: AI’s Hidden Impact on Human Thought