A growing body of research correlates persistent use of AI with a drop in critical thinking; humans become reliant on AI and unwilling, perhaps unable, to verify its work. As chatbots creep into every digital crevice, they may continue to degrade the web gradually, even gently. Today’s jankiness may, by tomorrow, simply be normal. - The Atlantic
The phrase “impostor syndrome” often elicits a fierce sense of identification, especially from millennial and Gen X women. When I put out a call on Twitter for experiences of impostor syndrome, I was flooded with responses. - The New Yorker
"For example, one respondent’s online collection included a semi-private archive that normally received a handful of visitors per day. That archive was discovered by bots and immediately overwhelmed by the traffic, even though other parts of the system were able to handle similar volumes of traffic.” - 404 Media
The importance of monasteries for the emergence of the Renaissance can hardly be overstated. Their number increased many times over from the sixth to the fifteenth century, from about one thousand to over twenty thousand. They were agents of cultural transmission. - LitHub
What is the difference between great and mediocre art? Why do some songs, poems, and paintings move us profoundly, while others—even if they impress us with their technical skill—leave us cold? - Psychology Today
Who, exactly, owns the outputs of a generative model? The user who crafted the prompt? The developer who built the model? The artists whose works were ingested to train it? Will the social forces that shape artistic standing—critics, curators, tastemakers—still hold sway? Or will a new, AI-era hierarchy emerge? - MIT Technology Review
Generally, we want geniuses to be good with their minds rather than with their hands, but we can make an exception for a surgeon or a chef. We expect them to discover new realms of knowledge; Their talent should be incomprehensible to the masses, unless they’re a politician. - The New Yorker
This exaltation of self-sufficiency and the downgrading of the value of trading links amounts to a profound break from the orthodoxy of globalisation – the idea that ever-greater interconnections between nations through trade would enhance the security and prosperity of all. - Aeon
“Artists, writers and community leaders have gone the center to be inspired, root their work in a deep understanding of the vastness of the African diaspora, and spread word of the global accomplishments of Black people” - Seattle Times (AP)
We've all noticed the changes in Google's approach to search, and most would agree that they have made finding reliable and accurate information harder. Regardless, Google's incredibly deep and broad index of the Internet is in demand. - Ars Technica
McLuhan foresaw that computing would enable new forms of pattern recognition, requiring fundamentally different ways of thinking — more integrative, relational and responsive — rather than simply accelerating old methods. - The Conversation
Your brain breaks apart fleeting streams of acoustic information into parallel channels – linguistic, emotional and musical – and acts as a biological multicore processor. - The Conversation
New research builds on a growing understanding that the majority of the brain’s function goes to maintenance. While many neuroscientists have historically focused on active, outward cognition, such as attention, problem-solving, working memory and decision-making, it’s becoming clear that beneath the surface, our background processing is a hidden hive of activity. - Quanta
Taste is a subtle sensibility, more often a secret weapon than a person’s defining characteristic. But we’re entering a time when its importance has never been greater, and that’s because of AI. - The Atlantic
