The irrepressible monkey in the machine
If a simplistic description of AI is computers learning to be more human, then the persistence of Hawk Tuah for six months and counting is the inverse: Humans learning how it feels to be a computer—forced to remember, unable to move on, endlessly consuming and regurgitating our past output in slightly different formats—a video here, a podcast there... See more
Drew Austin • The Meme Fossil Record
As the false output of artificial intelligence content generation gets mixed in with original human-generated content on the internet, the internet will become less and less useful. All the more so when intelligence agencies, corporations, governments, PR firms, and other propaganda actors us AI to deliberately seed the internet with false informat... See more
Charles Eisenstein • An unbelievable opportunity
You could see AI making an exact replica of The Room and it having none of the value, because it wasn't made by someone. Because there was no human-led deviation between what was attempted and what was made. That deviation, in art and in life, is what makes us so damn human.
Alex Dobrenko` • Will AI Replace the Artist?
None of this is to imply that human beings should repudiate the technologies that make us more efficient. We just have to recognize which needs greater quantity can meet, and which it cannot. For example, AI chatbots cannot meet the need for intimacy. LLMs cannot meet the need for creativity. AI-generated art cannot meet the need for aesthetic nour... See more
Corresponding to the price of authenticity, the tech-vex can also exact a price on human dignity. It begs the question, to what extent does machine-mediated living gratify, ennoble? Can it replace the sense of fulfilment that people feel when they attain a skill or achieve an insight? Can a work put together by artificial intelligence match the elo... See more
Kirk Schneider • Tech-vexed: how digital life threatens our capacity for awe | Aeon Essays
Platforms like TikTok and Instagram are engines of distraction and cultural rot. They stand in front of the more difficult but more rewarding aspects of life: deep work, intimate connections with friends and loved ones, focused attention for hobbies with intrinsic rewards. By training users to crave constant novelty and the immediate approval of an... See more
Adam Singer • TikTok and Instagram are intellectual poison
Use the tools if you must. But a better use of your extra energy — such as it is — is to live the gap between human and AI. Can an AI gather, synthesize, calculate, and even speculate faster than we can? Yes. Can it do all those things better than we can? Maybe. Can it be more interesting, unexpected, artful, or meaningful? Well that’s just a matte... See more