I have a somewhat controversial view of AI in that I don't think it's actually going to ruin anything because we were already doing a damn good job of throwing everything good about humanity in the trash long before AI came around.
That said, there's something that's really really painful to me: capitalism wants to control scarce resources, and late stage capitalism turned human interaction into a resource to be hoarded, harvested, and farmed.
AI magnified that, but the damage was already done
I've been talking with this very topic recently with some researcher friends of mine, and it's been excruciating to watch and commiserate about the damage that's being done to society about this.
@hazelweakly I agree with many of Ben's points, but I feel compelled to point out that all of the physicists in his "Golden Age" picture are cis white men. I was there in the 80s and 90s, and I think it was even harder than it is now for people who didn't fit that profile to get their work on Song dynasty merchant families noticed. Not saying the enshittification isn't real or an existential threat, but…
@gvwilson yeah the gatekeeping of knowledge to an elite few was definitely not the "golden era of science" and correlating that with "we need to raise our standards again" is bothersome.
I appreciate you pointing that out, because it's a very real phenomenon, and important to point out.
We can raise standards, combat enshittification, and improve things, without having to regress what viewpoints we consider valid to be a very small and out of touch percentage of the population.
@hazelweakly@gvwilson I think it's equally worth pointing out that the gif in Ben's article is misleading in that academia I don't think is "pushing" publish-or-perish - at least in the UK, most of the (STEM) academics I know are generally of the opinion that it's imposed on us externally (in the UK, via the REF, the "research assessment framework"), rather than being something we deeply value "as academics".
@aoanla@gvwilson yeah that's also a very valid point. I tried to bring that up in what I talked about, but it definitely didn't come from academics wanting to ruin the quality of their own work :)
I miss forums so much it hurts. I miss when research was about discovery and learning and sharing. I miss when humanity felt like it had hope, when human interaction was plentiful and when genuine connection wasn't rarer than gold.
I miss the days before our souls were destroyed for the sake of the market, before our knowledge was plundered, before our humanity exploited.
I miss when the song of humanity was sung in the streets. I miss it, even though I born after the war was lost.
Now we whisper the truth and shout the lies, but this was not the fault of AI.
We whisper the truth and drown in the noise, but this was not the fault of academia.
We whisper the truth and bury it in disguise, but this was not the fault of the internet.
We whisper the truth and we watch as it dies, but this was not the fault of humanity.
We whisper the truth because we no longer know it, and know of no one or no place or no where to find it. Our oracles were slaughtered; our teachers starved
How does one flame in the darkness, in the howling wind, find another flame to huddle with, to keep warm, to share the connection of humanity and the joy of learning?
How does one go on as the world gets snuffed out? How does one heal the garden where the salt was sowed, where the poison was poured, where the rocks were thrown? How does one heal that which has scarred so heavily it may never grow life again?
When we recover, as we eventually will, what will be left of us?
The nightmare of humanity lost started with those who seek to find it. Publish and perish, draw blood from the stone, turn lead to gold.
But then it grew, and it became a price to pay to participate in society: give us your humanity, give us your thoughts, let us profit from the words you pen, from the inscriptions carved, from the art you created. The price was free, but the cost was everything.
As we built machines to move dirt ever faster, ever farther, ever higher; as we built machines to construct buildings ever greater
So we did with words, structure, and thoughts. We built parrots to speak sounds of saying, words of no meaning, thoughts of no thinking. Ever faster, ever farther, ever higher; we build today machines to construct noise ever louder, that we might drown out every ounce of humanity
Today, you can find me, you can hear my voice, but tomorrow, I cannot promise to you
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