Counterprogramming cancerous sincerity and the cult of authenticity with AI assistance
AI, Artifice, And Authenticity
The era of badly-automated homogenized engagement slop is upon us. I desperately want to believe there's a renaissance for authenticity on the other end.
We Asked the ‘Future of Truth’ Author to Explain How He Used AI. It Didn’t Go Well
A book about how AI shapes perceptions of reality came under fire for using AI-generated quotes. Its problems go beyond that.
When online commenters 'detect' my art as AI
Here is a collection of screenshots (obfuscated) of dozens and dozens of online comments from many platforms (Reddit, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook) containing accusations or confusion that my artworks and comics are AI-generated. Despite creating every piece by hand, despite sharing timelapses, the comments keep coming, and they're getting stronger.
‘There’s a Value in What We Produce Because We Feel – and an AI Chatbot Can’t Feel’
Byline Times' Editor in Chief meets Kate Devlin, Professor of AI and Society at King’s College London, to explore how relationships with AI companions aren’t particularly new, why she believes the under-16s social media ban is flawed, and why human creativity can't be matched
Wherein I Find Myself Writing About Writing
Most everyone finds writing to be challenging (especially those who say they enjoy it). This is because writing is an intentional, thoughtful act. This is as it should be, but “AI” has recently exacerbated the misbelief that writing is simply an output. In fact, it's a creative process that has merit in and of itself.
The Breath of the Author
The palpable presence of someone else's mind in our best writing should give us pause about the encroachment of AI text
StoryScope: Investigating idiosyncrasies in AI fiction
As AI-generated fiction becomes increasingly prevalent, questions of authorship and originality are becoming central to how written work is evaluated. While most existing work in this space...
The artificial intelligence disclosure penalty: Humans persistently devalue AI-generated creative writing.
I pulled ~90,000 Reddit posts about what makes writing "sound like AI" to determine the biggest AI-slop giveaways (Part 2)
674 votes, 228 comments. The majority of people can instantly tell when writing is generated by AI. For those who don't intend to get into the weeds…
The Impact of AI-Generated Text on the Internet
The proliferation of AI-generated and AI-assisted text on the internet is feared to contribute to a degradation in semantic and stylistic diversity, factual accuracy, and other negative...
The Impact of AI-Generated Text on the Internet
The proliferation of AI-generated and AI-assisted text on the internet is feared to contribute to a degradation in semantic and stylistic diversity, factual accuracy, and other negative...
AI Tools for Trust: Community Notes, Rhetoric Detection & More
Five AI technologies to combat misinformation: community notes, rhetoric detection, reliability tracking, epistemic evals, and provenance tracing.
The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Human Thought
This research paper examines, from a multidimensional perspective (cognitive, social, ethical, and philosophical), how AI is transforming human thought. It highlights a cognitive offloading effect: the externalization of mental functions to AI can reduce intellectual engagement and weaken critical thinking. On the social level, algorithmic personalization creates filter bubbles that limit the diversity of opinions and can lead to the homogenization of thought and polarization. This research also describes the mechanisms of algorithmic manipulation (exploitation of cognitive biases, automated disinformation, etc.) that amplify AI's power of influence. Finally, the question of potential artificial consciousness is discussed, along with its ethical implications. The report as a whole underscores the risks that AI poses to human intellectual autonomy and creativity, while proposing avenues (education, transparency, governance) to align AI development with the interests of humanity.
Big AI is accelerating the metacrisis: What can we do?
The world is in the grip of ecological, meaning, and language crises that are converging into a metacrisis. Big AI is accelerating them all. LLM engineering sits at the core. Despite the public good motives of language engineers and the promise of LLMs, this work is being leveraged to create unprecedented wealth and power for a handful of individuals and corporations while causing existential harm to life on earth. As a profession, we urgently need to come together to explore alternatives and to design a life-affirming future for our field of natural language processing that is centered on human flourishing on a living planet.
Google research shows the fast rise of AI-generated misinformation | CBC News
From fake images of war to celebrity hoaxes, AI technology has spawned new forms of reality-warping misinformation online. New analysis co-authored by Google researchers shows just how quickly the problem has grown.
