This essay from Robin Sloan (new to me!), shared by a friend, thinks about the outcomes of giving away (unwillingly) our collective creation of the internet to the AI.
This particular section was worth remembering and thinking about:
The Everything framework is pretty cool. Basically, we gave everyone the ability to type into one book and the result is something so much more interesting that what you could do if you created a recreation — or a model of — this if you set out to.
And so what right does the AI companies have to train on that and build the models on it?
If it gives us super science then that’s good. If it just churns out various recreations of what we do as humans faster, then that’s not good.
Whatever the middle is of the outcome is what will be interesting to critique when the time (period) comes.
If it goes well, it’ll almost certain be a wonderful tradeoff. If we don’t break through the AI-slop malaise and just get social media accounts engagement farming us until the cows come home, not worth the tradeoff.
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