Corin Ashwell 🌍 🌿 🍄🏳️‍⚧️Feb 11

Another article filling me with dread about the rise of #AI

While reading it and thinking about a friend who thinks Anthropic & OpenAI will be gone by next year - & how happy that would make me - I also started reflecting on the perspectives of other people who are not so good at writing (or reading, perhaps), not college educated etc for whom ChatGPT & Co-Pilot are a godsend in terms of allowing them to produce writing they can use in work & formal situations. Another asymmetry.

Show threadEdricFeb 11
@corin_ja this is yet another false ‘benefit’ of generative AI. People are already attuned to and prejudiced against ‘AI slop’, so submitting written work generated by AI will be viewed unfavourably by others. Basically the same groups will be discriminated against for different reasons (their use of AI rather than their challenges with language).
Show threadEdricFeb 11
@corin_ja discrimination will be compounded when the OpenAIs and Athropics are forced to charge the real cost of using the models. Then this ‘democratisation’ of writing will be exposed for what it really is: an enclosure of language and paywalling of ability.
Generative AI has no function other than to strip you of your ability to do things and then charge you to be able to do them badly.
Show threadCorin Ashwell 🌍 🌿 🍄🏳️‍⚧️

@edric I think you're optimistic about people being "attuned to and prejudiced against AI slop" - I think the gatekeepers of trad writing & reading are, I'm not so sure about the rest of the world.

But I think you make an excellent point about this apparent democratisation of writing being in fact a "paywalling of ability" and I'd add in many ways an additional instrument of deskilling.

Feb 11 at 12:34pmWeb
Show threadCorin Ashwell 🌍 🌿 🍄🏳️‍⚧️Feb 11
@edric also, pint?
Show threadEdricFeb 11
@corin_ja bit early for me.
Let’s try and arrange a suitable time in another channel.
Show threadEdricFeb 11
@corin_ja the deskilling is part of the process. It is vital to the business model, as people will only pay the real price for generative AI if they have lost the ability to do stuff themselves.
It is a fascist’s wet dream because it couples active dumbing down of the population with total control over their activities (whilst charging them for the privilege).