"generative AI to me feels like a corporate DDoS on society in a way that is really disorienting" "we're running on the fumes of knowledge produced in the past and underfunding and undermining knowledge production and serious science right now" Perfectly stated, @alixdunn.com
Computer Says Kill: The AI Safety Circus w/ Heidy Khlaaf
www.themaybe.orgJun 16, 2026 at 10:39 AM
The abstraction you didn't ask for
When I say 'generative AI isn't going away,' people hear 'and you have to like it.' You don't, and you might be right not to. But the is-ought divide here is real and we should all be preparing for both outcomes.
AI is turning research into a scientific monoculture
Generative AI deserves scientific attention. But the rush to study it is producing a feedback loop of topical and methodological convergence, flattening scientific imagination and crowding out the pluralism needed to keep research adaptive, resilient, and intellectually generative.
From the Platform Society to the AI Society: Towards Critical Studies of Generative AI
The era of AI has begun. Generative AI is rapidly reshaping knowledge production, culture, and political authority, giving rise to an emerging AI society. Yet this transformation did not emerge ex nihilo. This paper argues that the AI society can only be understood in relation to the platform society from which it arises. Tracing the transition from platforms to AI, we identify interlinked economic, epistemic, and political shifts. Economically, AI emerges within platform-based rentier capitalism but reconfigures the monopoly mechanisms on which its accumulation depends. Epistemically, LLMs mark a shift from predictive to generative epistemics, entangling theory formation and knowledge production with private research-as-a-service infrastructures. Politically, governance shifts from data politics to alignment politics: from shaping visibility to shaping what can be said, thought, and imagined. Together, these transformations signal a qualitative shift in mediation—from governing interaction to governing cognition itself—and call for a Critical AI Studies.
An exploration on what could be a leftist position on generative AI - Jacky Alciné
As a Black software engineer and leftist in the United States, I contend with the notion that generative artifical intelligence can be used in a materialistic way that moves the needle forward for progress without intrenching the power of capitalists and business folks who are adamant on exacerbating existing calamities within the technology sector.
In spite of hype, many companies are moving cautiously when it comes to generative AI | TechCrunch
Companies are extremely interested in generative AI as vendors push potential benefits, but turning that desire from a proof of concept into a working product is proving much more challenging.
“Wait, not like that”: Free and open access in the age of generative AI
The real threat isn’t AI using open knowledge — it’s AI companies killing the projects that make knowledge free
Ars Technica's policy on generative AI
How Ars Technica uses, and doesn't use, generative AI.
AI, Human Cognition and Knowledge Collapse
We study how generative AI, and in particular agentic AI, shapes human learning incentives and the long-run evolution of society’s information ecosystem. We bui
AI, Human Cognition and Knowledge Collapse
We study how generative AI, and in particular agentic AI, shapes human learning incentives and the long-run evolution of society’s information ecosystem. We bui
Bernie Sanders has AI policy all wrong
His criticisms are responding to industry hype, not the real harms of generative AI
Why I'm (sort of) not worried about AI | Jack Conte
As a creator, and as a leader of a tech company, I have a deep sense of conflict about AI. I feel outrage, but I also feel something else. O
Use of generative artificial intelligence | ÉPICBiodiversity
An alternative version of this document was initially drafted by Timothée Poisot with input from members of the Viral Emergence Research Initiative, and further revised based on a conversation with group members. For this reason, it is excluded from the CC BY-NC-SA license under which the rest of the website is published, and may not be reproduced without permission.
Inside the Economy of AI Spammers Getting Rich By Exploiting Disasters and Misery
How AI spammers monetized the LA fires and other natural disasters.
AI FOR EPISTEMICS & COORDINATION
Civilization and technology have radically improved the human condition. Nonetheless, the world sometimes goes in directions which essentially nobody would prefer — e.g., nuclear arms races, unexpected financial crashes, predatory marketing, or ubiquitous political misinformation.
Our Spreadsheet Overlords
Weatherby argues that the current discourse around AI, especially the buzz around “artificial general intelligence,” is a distraction from its actual impact: the expansion of bureaucracy through massive data systems…
