real thinking involves organic associations, speculative leaps, and surprise inferences

No one can deny the power and size of the AI coalition, an ensemble of Silicon Valley investors, lobbyists, and bought-off politicians; hucksters, carnival barkers, and gravy train chasers; and bosses gleeful at the opportunity to downsize and deskill. Unsurprisingly, this well-funded upheaval is outpacing any social, political, or ethical effort... See more

A literature which is made by machines, which are owned by corporations, which are run by sociopaths, can only be a “stereotype”—a simplification, a facsimile, an insult, a fake—of real literature. It should be smashed, and can.

As we train our sights on what we oppose, let’s recall the costs of surrender. When we use generative AI, we consent to the appropriation of our intellectual property by data scrapers. We stuff the pockets of oligarchs with even more money. We abet the acceleration of a social media gyre that everyone admits is making life worse. We accept the... See more

Yet as Gavin Mueller writes in Breaking Things at Work , Luddism—born as a revolt by artisan weavers against their proletarianization by manufacturing capital—was far from “a simple technophobia.” The Luddite rebellion, he notes, “was not against machines in themselves, but against the industrial society... of which machines were the chief weapon.”

For both publications and universities, there are narrow pathways to follow the example of Hollywood, where, after its strike two years ago, the Writers Guild won historic if imperfect protections against GenAI in screenwriting. Under the 2023 WGA contract terms, writers can’t be replaced by AI, or be required to use it (and where they choose to,... See more

And AI’s semivisible, infrastructural role in exploiting precarious labor (Uber’s nifty algorithm for suppressing driver wages), landlordism (RealPage’s widely used rent-hiking software), and neocolonial war (Israel’s high-tech civilian-bombing gadgetry) may already be too entrenched to stop. But professional readers and writers: We retain some... See more

A refusal of AI in creative work begins with a refusal of that product’s ideological packaging.

AI-made material is itself a waste product: flimsy, shoddy, disposable, a single-use plastic of the mind.