Severin Matusek

AI boosters argue that, while, generative technologies are new and shiny, they’re at root no different from the digital technologies an artist like Fincher uses, or the practical ones an artist like Carpenter used. They argue that AI is just another tool.

But I can’t get past the fact that, for something to count as a tool, it has to help you do... See more

In 2023, we launched an editorial series about AI called Shades of Intelligence. We learnt a lot about the way creatives were beginning to work with this new tech, harnessing it for tasks ranging from creative direction to project rollout. Since then, the needs have shifted. After two years of rapid change, Light and Shade focuses on the wider... See more

I’ve noticed a new trend among the chattering classes of online AI guy hypebeast. Their current stage of grief over AGI not arriving or having very little to show in the way of ROI for their LLMs has shifted to blaming the users. To them, it’s not that AI is not working as they intended; it’s the people who are too stupid to understand how to use... See more

The final notes of the AI-and-I essay are cowed resignation, awed acquiescence, and what Trotsky called the “terrifying helplessness” of cultural production at “the beginning of a great epoch”

“I think people feel uncomfortable in the world today. They’ve decided that their home is their sanctuary. It’s not easy to get them to leave.”

We're now living in a system where attention dynamics are the operating system for resource allocation, political decisions, and identity formation.

But what we’re not talking about, what we’re not worrying about nearly enough, is the other side of the coin. If we’re running at speed at this, if we’re pushing everyone to use AI because we think it’s some sort of panacea to every business challenge we have, what about atrophy? What about the erosion of expertise, of knowledge, of critical... See more