AI

• This was a good essay to encounter because I don’t often hear the perspective that humans also use algorithms to try to reproduce “successful” art. The major difference is that LLMs will employ these algorithms more efficiently. What’s the solution? Be great. Be interesting. Don’t aim for medium quality. A part of the fear of AI is we don’t trust ourselves to recognize the lies.

“If you wanted to create a tool that would enable the destruction of institutions that prop up democratic life, you could not do better than artificial intelligence. Authoritarian leaders and technology oligarchs are deploying AI systems to hollow out public institutions with an astonishing alacrity. Institutions that structure public governance, rule of law, education, healthcare, journalism, and families are all on the chopping block to be “optimized” by AI. AI boosters defend the technology’s role in dismantling our vital support structures by claiming that AI systems are just efficiency “tools” without substantive significance. But predictive and generative AI systems are not simply neutral conduits to help executives, bureaucrats, and elected leaders do what they were going to do anyway, only more cost-effectively. The very design of these systems is antithetical to and degrades the core functions of essential civic institutions, such as administrative agencies and universities.”

“The decisions you make are a product of the person you are, and the person you are is shaped by the company you keep. Studying history, philosophy, literature, economics, and the liberal arts more generally is an exercise in keeping good company and becoming a certain kind of person: one who has spent sufficient time grappling with the best that has ever been thought and written to be trusted with important decisions. It is to become a person who has cultivated the art of judgment.”