AI

The writing is getting better. The ideas are getting worse. There’s a new genre of essay that other academics reading this will instantly recognize, a clumsy collaboration between students and Silicon Valley. I call it glittering sludge .

The web is no longer primarily human-generated text created for human readers; it is increasingly AI-generated text created for algorithmic amplification, mixed with human-generated text optimized for the same algorithmic reward functions.

As AI systems train on this degraded corpus, they learn to reproduce its characteristics—shallow reasoning,... See more

In ordinary language, we frequently speak of machinery or ideas ‘doing’ things in our lives. But they do nothing. People – human persons – produce, operate and apply their creations. The problem with assigning agency, even informally, to the nonhuman is that this disguises the strength of human control, limited though it is in other respects. It... See more

Unlike humans, AI can’t flexibly navigate changing environments yet because it does not have a notion of its “self” and what it can do with it.

Enter Large Language Models (LLMs). The first tranche of products and startups leveraging LLMs has kept within the mental model of selling software to achieve step-function improvements in end-user productivity. The "Copilot for [x]" trend reflects this mental model. While there are fantastic startups innovating to improve employee productivity,... See more

When the bubble is big, every idea feels like a billion-dollar idea. I yearn for cheap ideas from strangers.