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1. Embed this notice
   Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 21-May-2025 03:23:56 JST Paul Cantrell

   The newspaper insert “contained AI-generated misinformation and reading lists full of books that don’t exist”
   https://www.404media.co/viral-ai-generated-summer-guide-printed-by-chicago-sun-times-was-made-by-magazine-giant-hearst/

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 21-May-2025 04:08:20 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     I have a half-formed thought here about how we people of all stripes who work with information and ideas — news organizations, software developers, teachers, etc. etc. — left the door open for this deluge of information pollution and this AI-powered rotting of our professions…

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 21-May-2025 04:11:02 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     …by letting way too much of our work be bullshit even •before• the arrival of current gen AI (fluff reporting, Accenture-style body farm software, teaching exam-and-lectures driven factory-style classes, etc etc)…

     Matthew Lyon repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 21-May-2025 04:13:32 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     … and any of us who think our work matters need to double and quadruple down on eliminating bullshit from what we do as humans, and on explaining very loudly and incessantly exactly why what we’re doing is not bullshit and thus different from the slop you get from the bullshit automation machines.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 21-May-2025 04:17:41 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     I don’t want the above to seem like victim-blaming; I know that many (including myself) have been fighting a miserable Sisyphean battle against bullshitification for decades now.

     I guess what I’m saying is that now it’s a fight for survival — not just economic survival, but the survival of what “humanity“ means that is more than just being biologically alive.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 21-May-2025 04:22:29 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     Putting it in concrete terms: the reporters who might have complained miserably 10 or 40 years ago about churning out a thoughtless “summer guide” fluff piece with no real probing or craft behind it? Those reporters had good instincts.

     Matthew Lyon repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 21-May-2025 04:28:16 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     Our minds and aesthetics and sense of identity and truth are all about to go through something analogous to what cheap, ultra-processed junk food did to our bodies.

     And as with food, if the healthy stuff becomes a luxury good, available only to those few who have access, that’s both a moral failing and a threat to society.

   • Embed this notice
     Ashwin Dixit (purrperl@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 21-May-2025 04:59:12 JST Ashwin Dixit

     in reply to

     @inthehands

     “What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance."

     ~Neil Postman

     https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7942005-what-orwell-feared-were-those-who-would-ban-books-what

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 21-May-2025 05:08:56 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Benjamin Geer

     @benjamingeer
     Which is why I wrote this: https://hachyderm.io/@inthehands/114541766840133215

   • Embed this notice
     Benjamin Geer (benjamingeer@piaille.fr)'s status on Wednesday, 21-May-2025 05:08:57 JST Benjamin Geer

     in reply to

     @inthehands I think you’re right, but to say that “we” didn’t uphold standards obscures who actually made those decisions: not the journalist who complained about having to write fluff, but their boss, who was ultimately answerable to investors. The choice between quality and rubbish has always depended on a power struggle.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 21-May-2025 05:36:37 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Benjamin Geer

     @benjamingeer
     Preferable when we can get it. It’s essential for people to be doing the work both inside and outside of existing institutions.

   • Embed this notice
     Benjamin Geer (benjamingeer@piaille.fr)'s status on Wednesday, 21-May-2025 05:36:38 JST Benjamin Geer

     in reply to

     @inthehands So I think for knowledge producers to ensure that they can do good work, they should control their own means of production: universities, newspapers, etc. The struggle has to be a struggle to establish better institutions, not just to fight bullshitification (Sisyphus-style) within the existing ones.