Severin Matusek

What people such as Altman and Andreessen envision is the logical end point of technology itself—a push to eliminate cognitive resistance and bridge the gap between imagination and reality.

For both publications and universities, there are narrow pathways to follow the example of Hollywood, where, after its strike two years ago, the Writers Guild won historic if imperfect protections against GenAI in screenwriting. Under the 2023 WGA contract terms, writers can’t be replaced by AI, or be required to use it (and where they choose to,... See more

It’s not financially responsible to throw our ideas around online for free anymore, but the alternative threatens the spirit of what internet community is supposed to be about.

The arrival of AI slop is simply the culmination of a long process of cultural slopification, and one of AI’s unexpected functions has been to launder the human slop so we can pretend we didn’t create it.

Rather than building tools that compete with them, the smarter strategy is to create incentives for their participation.

Simply put, we don’t know what is important until many years later.

The sense is that in the fairly recent past there were social narratives that were both fulfilling and rewarding to participate in, but that for our generation and seemingly subsequent generations to come, it is becoming harder and harder to find and buy into a compelling shared telos. This is the sense of meaninglessness that prompts some people... See more