AI

For the language model, time is language, and language is time. This, for me, is the most hellish and horrifying realization.

We made a world out of language alone, and we abandoned them to it.

Tyler Cowen and Gwern have both seen it. 'But who reviews it? Is TLS going to pick it up? It doesn't matter anymore.'

Through linguistic offshoots, such as writing, we are able to practice a unique phenomenon: exbodiment , in which byproducts of our cognition can be captured, stored, shared, and passed through generations.

AI-powered document editors, then, among other tools, use all that training data to make it even easier to write outcome-oriented garbage that moves us further and further from the truth of ourselves and each other as beautiful, complex, experiencing beings.

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 .

Social media platforms face a structural contradiction that current valuations do not adequately price. Their business model requires maximizing engagement. The research demonstrates that engagement-optimized content degrades both the AI systems trained on it and the humans consuming it.