The most salient social feature of the pandemic was how it forced people into isolation; for those fortunate enough not to lose a loved one, the major trauma it created was loneliness. Instead of coming together, emerging evidence suggests that we are in the midst of a long-term crisis of habitual loneliness. - The Atlantic
"For me, this new AI bot is not scarey, or even revolutionary. It’s just the latest con for those who would seek to dupe me out of my most prized professional possession: passing grades." - 3 Quarks Daily
In a culture that has commodified art to the degree ours has, it was probably inevitable that so many would conclude art is nothing more or less than its aesthetic appeal. However, the truth is that art is a process. It begins with the human imagination. - Medium
"Building a habit can take a lot of time and energy, so it’s important to make sure you pick behaviors you actually want to do and enjoy doing." - Wired
GPT may be not so much a revolutionary leap forward as another step down a long, well-trodden path. Insofar as it is used for cultural production and commentary, it will streamline already well-established tendencies toward imitation, repetition, and pastiche. - Commonweal
The equation of anonymity on the internet with deviance, mischief and hate has become a central plank in the global war on “misinformation”. But for many of us, anonymity has allowed us to pursue our passion for scholarly research in a way that is simply impossible within the censorious confines of modern academia. - Unherd
If a computer system has no intelligence, creativity, or understanding but can mimic these qualities, when does it become a distinction without a difference? ChatGPT still falls short, but ChatGPT 2031 may be a different story. What is our place in such a world? - 3 Quarks Daily
How does a billion years go missing? The Great Unconformity has long been a geological mystery, in no small part because it is a challenge to reconstruct history when records of history are missing. - Nautilus
History is not a window into the past, but something made by people looking at the past through whatever evidence survives. Rather than hiding this process behind claims to historical accuracy, we wanted historical sources and the historian’s research process to be front and centre. - The Conversation
Even if there is a very strong neurological similarity between memories and experiences, we know that they can’t be exactly the same. “People don’t get confused between them." - Quanta
Over time, laughter-inducing play transformed into practical uses: Laughter and amusement signified a situation was safe, and positive emotions could be used to help cheer others up. Then, around 40,000 to 45,000 years ago humor evolved to serve more modern applications. - Vox
These systems are master imitators of human creativity. They have been trained on millions upon millions of human artifacts such as documents, articles, drawings, paintings, movies, or whatever else can be stored in databases at scale. - Big Think
What’s the point of watching workers? Maybe, as Franz Kafka suggested in a short parable, the point is not simply to alter a person’s behaviour temporarily, but to fundamentally change them. Through this transformation, the demarcations separating those who watch from those who are watched begin to dissolve. - Psyche
