Rec | NOT BECOMING A ROBOT

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work with my hands, at my pace and stay present — this is how i push back against the proprietary, the predatory, and the puerile.

@pan

Mar 3, 2025

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AUTOMATION OF THE HUMANITIES

as if ai taking over jobs wasn’t enough, it must hijack creativity too. im approaching the last year of my college in what feels like a (losing) race against the development of ai, with the knowledge that in a year not so distant my degree will become obsolete. in times like that art is all we have left- but with the rise of (incredibly soulless and tacky) ai advertisement and design- i’m not so sure about the stability of literally anything anymore.

@lyssa

May 20, 2025

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ai happened suddenly, was pitched as an unequivocal positive, people started using it without knowing it, Everywhere, Lightspeed

When the smartphone revolution began about 20 years ago you knew when you were using a smartphone or not. You knew when you were sitting down at a computer or not, when you were opening up a social media app or not, etc. I think the big difference here is that AI is everywhere and in everything, almost without user consent. No industry is safe. Education isn't safe. Childhood isn't safe. Religious communities aren't safe. Text exchanges with family members aren't safe. For months now I've recognized the need to establish a set of personal values and safeguards around AI. These apply primarily to me and in my domains of oversight. But also they will shape who and what I engage with and consume from. In many ways I think this will be the issue of our time. What does it mean to be a human? Is there value in creating or only in the completed product? What do we gain from the struggle of the creative process? Also I see opportunity everywhere. As generative AI overtakes and as we realize that we can't trust anything that comes through a screen, even, soon, the person on the other side of a Zoom video chat (it could be their AI avatar authorized to speak on their behalf), then real life and real world interactions become so much more poignant and beautiful. Right now I lead a community writing workshop on weekly basis. IT IS REAL. No one is using AI. We write together with pens in notebooks. We read our work aloud together. This will remain a safe space. I can see other safe spaces springing up too. For instance: we gather and paint or make art, together and in realtime. Then we walk next door and hang our art immediately in a gallery and have a show. It's real. It's human. And we can trust it. Also I see communities forming of people who choose to opt out of the generative AI devolution. There's a lot of thoughtful writing about this out there already.

@matt-3

May 15, 2025

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The Reenchanted World, by Karl Ove Knausgaard

i'm always getting too bleak about technology and AI, about the brain rot and disassociation and spiraling out and general cognitive decline we're all experiencing, that will only continue to worsen with time. but this essay gave me some hope “Do you see a way out?” “Yeah, I mean . . . I’m not in the business of saving the world, but it would definitely be a better and more interesting place if more people were involved in making these things. That’s the fundamental thing: that if more software, more buildings, more social spaces, and more everything were designed by more people, of course it would produce a more interesting and better world! ...One of Stafford Beer’s more famous and brilliant phrases was ‘POSIWID,’ which stands for ‘the purpose of the system is what it does.’ It’s a kind of maxim of cybernetics. And it’s very good for diagnosing systems. Instead of saying, Oh, we have a democratic system, we have an education system, you say, The purpose of the system is what it does. And what our society produces is people who are undereducated, or just educated enough to perform specific tasks—the way to get a good education is to study something that has this high economic value. Apart from that, you are pretty fucked. The purpose of the system is to reproduce the existing power dynamics of that system again and again. That is what it does. Society has no interest in educating you in how technology works. Because then you make your own technology, and you make different technology, and you upset the economic power balance and so forth. But it is doable, and people are doing it all the time. You can do it yourself.”