Probably the best thing I've read on this godforsaken subject so far aside from Brandon Sanderson's excellent short talk "We Are the Art" (which did a great job articulating my own feelings about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb3uK-_QkOo&t=99s).
Et tu, Rutger Bregman?! I would have expected someone like him to come from the angle of "we need to reckon up all the costs and damages of this, who benefits and who loses" before telling anyone how they "should" feel about it.
I don't think I'll ever get over the theft either. Truly. I am, reasonably or not, perpetually upset with everyone who shrugs off the theft and privatization-for-profit of the entirety of humanity's thought and creativity.
I think I'm going to go rewatch Firefly now! Beautiful piece, Mike. I really like the structuring around "Earthsea."
Thank you, :) You're always so supportive of my incoherent rantings!
It's also a measure of how swiss-cheesed my mind is that in drafting this piece, I clean forgot Brandon Sanderson's talk, which you recommended to me and I watched the first half of. Yes, it's brilliant and wise and heartfelt in all the ways that guy seems to be.
This is also something I'm really interested in seeing: what will the expert storytellers do, the ones who already clearly have the skills that AI evangelists are claiming LLMs can bring to the table and kick over the chairs where humans were formerly sitting in? In mean - I'm sure some will be curious enough to have a go. I just saw James Patterson is teaming up with MR Beast to write a novel - yes, really: https://www.harpercollins.com/blogs/press-releases/mrbeast-and-james-patterson-join-forces-on-thriller - and that feels on the same level of yikes. So, who knows? But so far, the actual storytellers seem to bloody hate it, and I reckon that says a lot.
And yes, I was surprised at Rutger Bregman's piece for the same reasons. It seems very out of character, like a new season of a TV show where the entire writer's room was fired behind the scenes. Maybe it isn't and it's just his way of hammering home his conclusions with the maximum marketing noise and fury? It was just delivered at a level of belligerent self-confidence that tends to fry my brain these days, whether he's eventually proven right or not, which he may be. I hope he is, on many of the points he makes in the back-half of that piece.
"I’m absolutely fine dying on this hill. At least the view is nicer up here." Going to add this to my lexicon of responses when asked about my aversion to AI. *clap*
I heard someone say recently that the way that tech bros talk about AI is not unlike how rapists talk about rape: "It's inevitable", "There's nothing you can do to stop it", and my personal favorite, "It'll go easier if you just submit."
It's *only* inevitable if we allow it to be, and I, for one, have never been prone to submission.
Well written on a tough topic. I am not using it. I don't want to for so many reasons. I'm "mandated" to figure out ways it can help me in my job at work and I have yet to find any. And of course, since I work in systems, we are attempting to implement some AI even though I'd rather not. One problem we have is that the AI already doesn't have the throughput for everything everyone is trying to do. The data centers alone could kill us all. Something is going to have to give.
Agreed. As a natural speed reader with a photographic memory, I don't need AI to do what I do best. In fact AI is slowing me down, because the AI-generated information pieces the search engine coughs up these days are wordy, repetitive, and contain very little actual information, none of it in depth, so it takes me a lot longer to find reliable information to read on a topic than it did just five years ago. That is the most insulting kind of intellectual theft: stealing other's hard work and making something stupider. It is like stealing a famous piece of jewellery and breaking it up to sell of the precious stones and metal separately - you will get a lot of money for the raw materials you stole, but you have just destroyed a work of art.
My main fear is for teen and college students who aren’t doing the hard work of learning how to think. And the teachers and professors who are needing to spend much time determining how to address students using AI and claiming it as their own work.
Also, I really appreciate this one, Mike! I work as a contract negotiator for university research projects (i.e. "research administrator"), so I'm in the realm of "vague and squishy" subjective work. If everyone agreed on agreement terms, then there'd be no need to negotiate anything, and all of it could be automated. But that's not how it works. It's widely known that research administrators say "it depends" in response to everything. Because it *does*. And yet my team is being asked to use an AI program to...negotiate terms. To automate it. Sure.
I'm sure the ask will turn into an order later on, but for now, I'm avoiding that program like it's a high-stakes game of dodgeball.
all of that. yes. thank you for engaging so thoughtfully and brilliantly on the very messy middle this has thrust us all into (esp those of us who write for our living!)
I loved this, Mike! I fully agree with all that you wrote and have nothing to add - but I do have something to contribute about the chatbots that are designed to keep us away from interacting with a paid human.
A year or so ago, I read that chatbots (at least in the US) are programmed to immediately connect callers to a human representative when frustration or anger is "heard." I accidently tested that when I got so frustrated that I seriously considered throwing my phone against the wall. And then I heard, "please hold while we connect you with the next representative." This same scenario has played out 4 or 5 times now - Including one last week with the cable company about an internet service issue. After being disconnected from three different Chats (with what seemed like humans) I called again and started screaming at my phone. I was connected with a representative. 😉
I am so with you, Mike! And, like Antonia, I can’t get over the theft. Just plain stealing. All writers getting colonized in real time. While we watch.
Which reminds me of the last piece I got really excited about regarding AI: Abi Awomosu, “They built a system to see everything. But it can’t see you.” https://abiawomosu.substack.com/p/they-built-a-system-to-see-everything/ She gets into my favorite lane: epistemology. How we know stuff.
What I took away: AI uses the knowing of empire, which tries to predict. By contrast, traditional knowing (oracles, divination)—labeled “superstition” by empire—tries to listen instead. There’s a profound difference between predicting and listening. One is for controlling, the other for responding. She says the model of predicting will always require more and more data. More gigantic data centers. Because prediction and control are hungry monsters.
I want to write something to build on her and you and Adam M—thanks for that voice. Going now to check him out. This is the colonial frontier of our time. We’re watching empire do its thing. To everybody now.
Need to move Earthsea up in my TBR! I love your writing, it's inspiring and something that AI could never. It's sad to see writers and websites put out of business and I think in the future because of the damage that AI has done and will do to humans and the environment that humans live in (data centers killing towns), that it will implode on itself and we will be left trying to clean up the mess and survive. survive in both a physical sense but also maintaining our humanity in spite of all that is trying to squash it out of us because of greed.
It's easy to fall in love with the latest shiny rock. We will look back and wonder why we missed the greatest event which was the Monk's knowledge Renaissance that is going to change absolutely every aspect of everything in our lives and make AI look insignificant by comparison. Explaining chemistry so that we can understand things like batteries or what's going on around us or empowering us to take on things like Climate Change is stupendous real progress, not a toy. AI is more like looking in the mirror while the monks balance of forces that gives us The Theory of Everything will actually cause a tsunami of progress that will transform us from a caterpillar into a butterfly.
What I need is popular but intelligent people like you to start ringing the bell so that I can get out from under this burden of being the only person who understands reality other than my co-author. Help!
I love the spirit and honesty in your post. You've misunderstood a lot about modern AI models, about how they behave at the cutting edge, and how they are developing, but I sympathize mightily with your feelings of frustration at the cowardice and laziness of many who use these tools as lazy substitutes for real or meaningful thought.
We're moving into a brave new world, built on queasily ethical grounds and very likely to disempower huge swaths (all?) of us.
I confess, I am a head in the ground ostrich when it comes to things artificial. I’d rather make my bones ache by pushing a mower that’s lost its self-propel function, I like to pedal my bike up hills without assistance and, call me old fashioned, I write for the joy of the struggle to put a selection of words in what passes in my head for a semblance of order. I get tenses and perspectives awry, and my stories probably don’t have ‘an arc’ or other things they’re meant to have. But they’re mine and the fun is in crafting a tale that is mine, warts and all. Long way round saying I usually ignore anything with AI in the title, let alone in the body of the kirk. This, though, made so much sense, I just kept reading. Excellent work, Mike. Compelling.
Probably the best thing I've read on this godforsaken subject so far aside from Brandon Sanderson's excellent short talk "We Are the Art" (which did a great job articulating my own feelings about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb3uK-_QkOo&t=99s).
Et tu, Rutger Bregman?! I would have expected someone like him to come from the angle of "we need to reckon up all the costs and damages of this, who benefits and who loses" before telling anyone how they "should" feel about it.
I don't think I'll ever get over the theft either. Truly. I am, reasonably or not, perpetually upset with everyone who shrugs off the theft and privatization-for-profit of the entirety of humanity's thought and creativity.
I think I'm going to go rewatch Firefly now! Beautiful piece, Mike. I really like the structuring around "Earthsea."
Thank you, :) You're always so supportive of my incoherent rantings!
It's also a measure of how swiss-cheesed my mind is that in drafting this piece, I clean forgot Brandon Sanderson's talk, which you recommended to me and I watched the first half of. Yes, it's brilliant and wise and heartfelt in all the ways that guy seems to be.
This is also something I'm really interested in seeing: what will the expert storytellers do, the ones who already clearly have the skills that AI evangelists are claiming LLMs can bring to the table and kick over the chairs where humans were formerly sitting in? In mean - I'm sure some will be curious enough to have a go. I just saw James Patterson is teaming up with MR Beast to write a novel - yes, really: https://www.harpercollins.com/blogs/press-releases/mrbeast-and-james-patterson-join-forces-on-thriller - and that feels on the same level of yikes. So, who knows? But so far, the actual storytellers seem to bloody hate it, and I reckon that says a lot.
And yes, I was surprised at Rutger Bregman's piece for the same reasons. It seems very out of character, like a new season of a TV show where the entire writer's room was fired behind the scenes. Maybe it isn't and it's just his way of hammering home his conclusions with the maximum marketing noise and fury? It was just delivered at a level of belligerent self-confidence that tends to fry my brain these days, whether he's eventually proven right or not, which he may be. I hope he is, on many of the points he makes in the back-half of that piece.
"I’m absolutely fine dying on this hill. At least the view is nicer up here." Going to add this to my lexicon of responses when asked about my aversion to AI. *clap*
I heard someone say recently that the way that tech bros talk about AI is not unlike how rapists talk about rape: "It's inevitable", "There's nothing you can do to stop it", and my personal favorite, "It'll go easier if you just submit."
It's *only* inevitable if we allow it to be, and I, for one, have never been prone to submission.
OOF. That hits!
Well written on a tough topic. I am not using it. I don't want to for so many reasons. I'm "mandated" to figure out ways it can help me in my job at work and I have yet to find any. And of course, since I work in systems, we are attempting to implement some AI even though I'd rather not. One problem we have is that the AI already doesn't have the throughput for everything everyone is trying to do. The data centers alone could kill us all. Something is going to have to give.
Agreed. As a natural speed reader with a photographic memory, I don't need AI to do what I do best. In fact AI is slowing me down, because the AI-generated information pieces the search engine coughs up these days are wordy, repetitive, and contain very little actual information, none of it in depth, so it takes me a lot longer to find reliable information to read on a topic than it did just five years ago. That is the most insulting kind of intellectual theft: stealing other's hard work and making something stupider. It is like stealing a famous piece of jewellery and breaking it up to sell of the precious stones and metal separately - you will get a lot of money for the raw materials you stole, but you have just destroyed a work of art.
My main fear is for teen and college students who aren’t doing the hard work of learning how to think. And the teachers and professors who are needing to spend much time determining how to address students using AI and claiming it as their own work.
Also, I really appreciate this one, Mike! I work as a contract negotiator for university research projects (i.e. "research administrator"), so I'm in the realm of "vague and squishy" subjective work. If everyone agreed on agreement terms, then there'd be no need to negotiate anything, and all of it could be automated. But that's not how it works. It's widely known that research administrators say "it depends" in response to everything. Because it *does*. And yet my team is being asked to use an AI program to...negotiate terms. To automate it. Sure.
I'm sure the ask will turn into an order later on, but for now, I'm avoiding that program like it's a high-stakes game of dodgeball.
all of that. yes. thank you for engaging so thoughtfully and brilliantly on the very messy middle this has thrust us all into (esp those of us who write for our living!)
I loved this, Mike! I fully agree with all that you wrote and have nothing to add - but I do have something to contribute about the chatbots that are designed to keep us away from interacting with a paid human.
A year or so ago, I read that chatbots (at least in the US) are programmed to immediately connect callers to a human representative when frustration or anger is "heard." I accidently tested that when I got so frustrated that I seriously considered throwing my phone against the wall. And then I heard, "please hold while we connect you with the next representative." This same scenario has played out 4 or 5 times now - Including one last week with the cable company about an internet service issue. After being disconnected from three different Chats (with what seemed like humans) I called again and started screaming at my phone. I was connected with a representative. 😉
I am so with you, Mike! And, like Antonia, I can’t get over the theft. Just plain stealing. All writers getting colonized in real time. While we watch.
Which reminds me of the last piece I got really excited about regarding AI: Abi Awomosu, “They built a system to see everything. But it can’t see you.” https://abiawomosu.substack.com/p/they-built-a-system-to-see-everything/ She gets into my favorite lane: epistemology. How we know stuff.
What I took away: AI uses the knowing of empire, which tries to predict. By contrast, traditional knowing (oracles, divination)—labeled “superstition” by empire—tries to listen instead. There’s a profound difference between predicting and listening. One is for controlling, the other for responding. She says the model of predicting will always require more and more data. More gigantic data centers. Because prediction and control are hungry monsters.
I want to write something to build on her and you and Adam M—thanks for that voice. Going now to check him out. This is the colonial frontier of our time. We’re watching empire do its thing. To everybody now.
Need to move Earthsea up in my TBR! I love your writing, it's inspiring and something that AI could never. It's sad to see writers and websites put out of business and I think in the future because of the damage that AI has done and will do to humans and the environment that humans live in (data centers killing towns), that it will implode on itself and we will be left trying to clean up the mess and survive. survive in both a physical sense but also maintaining our humanity in spite of all that is trying to squash it out of us because of greed.
It's easy to fall in love with the latest shiny rock. We will look back and wonder why we missed the greatest event which was the Monk's knowledge Renaissance that is going to change absolutely every aspect of everything in our lives and make AI look insignificant by comparison. Explaining chemistry so that we can understand things like batteries or what's going on around us or empowering us to take on things like Climate Change is stupendous real progress, not a toy. AI is more like looking in the mirror while the monks balance of forces that gives us The Theory of Everything will actually cause a tsunami of progress that will transform us from a caterpillar into a butterfly.
What I need is popular but intelligent people like you to start ringing the bell so that I can get out from under this burden of being the only person who understands reality other than my co-author. Help!
I love the spirit and honesty in your post. You've misunderstood a lot about modern AI models, about how they behave at the cutting edge, and how they are developing, but I sympathize mightily with your feelings of frustration at the cowardice and laziness of many who use these tools as lazy substitutes for real or meaningful thought.
We're moving into a brave new world, built on queasily ethical grounds and very likely to disempower huge swaths (all?) of us.
I confess, I am a head in the ground ostrich when it comes to things artificial. I’d rather make my bones ache by pushing a mower that’s lost its self-propel function, I like to pedal my bike up hills without assistance and, call me old fashioned, I write for the joy of the struggle to put a selection of words in what passes in my head for a semblance of order. I get tenses and perspectives awry, and my stories probably don’t have ‘an arc’ or other things they’re meant to have. But they’re mine and the fun is in crafting a tale that is mine, warts and all. Long way round saying I usually ignore anything with AI in the title, let alone in the body of the kirk. This, though, made so much sense, I just kept reading. Excellent work, Mike. Compelling.