I think it’s important now to redefine the field — or practice — of humanities before AI culture deems it a category mistake. It’s the quality of our questions which distinguishes us from bots, not ours’ or their answers. The transformation of human epistemology driven by AI, though certainly a landmark phenomenon, is misconceiving the (un)conscious sources of ontology which make us fully human and are being swiftly forgotten in our breakneck over-determination of AI culture. That kind of mindset would certainly justify a planetary war for scarce resources. If societies were to develop a techno-feudal instrumentalism that is disconnected from the human wellsprings of equality, cooperation and self-sustainment, that will surely leave us wandering in the kind of endless state of waiting for Godot that Beckett portended.
I'm still reading up on "elite overproduction". It could be that be that by sweeping through the economy, AI reduces elite value and makes the few positions remaining very competitive. So the best and brightest (or well connected) continue innovative research, while the rest of us operate upstream, filtering the flood, or downstream in application and implementation. Or, being forced to seek work elsewhere.
Less status for the majority, but it might be functional.
I have a long-running joke — which, admittedly, is neither funny nor in good taste — that in the limit case of AI-powered neoliberalism, there will only be two jobs left: plutocrat and prostitute.
Robert Maxwell founded Pergamon Press in 1948 when he realized that researchers wrote the articles, provided the editing and also paid to subscribe to the articles. At the same time the academic community chose to use "publish or perish" vetting for promotion, tenure and the basis for seeking external financing. In 1956 Eugene Garfield created the Institute for Scientific Information which was the start of the listing of journals and articles and subsequent vehicles for vetting and ranking the academic research. Today, as a result, the scholarly literature is a major industry which started in 1665 and, today has a small sample of the "breakthrough" researh buried in a plethora of controlled access pubications and a profitable industry. The "open access" movement shifts the cost onto the granting agencies, many of which are governments.
Today, when one searches Wikipedia, often the first response was created by one of the many artificial intelligence systems (as clearly identified) and today, there are AI engines that can also write or "assist" in writing academic literature. Today is publish/perish the scholar's Fendanyl
I think it’s important now to redefine the field — or practice — of humanities before AI culture deems it a category mistake. It’s the quality of our questions which distinguishes us from bots, not ours’ or their answers. The transformation of human epistemology driven by AI, though certainly a landmark phenomenon, is misconceiving the (un)conscious sources of ontology which make us fully human and are being swiftly forgotten in our breakneck over-determination of AI culture. That kind of mindset would certainly justify a planetary war for scarce resources. If societies were to develop a techno-feudal instrumentalism that is disconnected from the human wellsprings of equality, cooperation and self-sustainment, that will surely leave us wandering in the kind of endless state of waiting for Godot that Beckett portended.
I'm still reading up on "elite overproduction". It could be that be that by sweeping through the economy, AI reduces elite value and makes the few positions remaining very competitive. So the best and brightest (or well connected) continue innovative research, while the rest of us operate upstream, filtering the flood, or downstream in application and implementation. Or, being forced to seek work elsewhere.
Less status for the majority, but it might be functional.
I have a long-running joke — which, admittedly, is neither funny nor in good taste — that in the limit case of AI-powered neoliberalism, there will only be two jobs left: plutocrat and prostitute.
Yowch.
Robert Maxwell founded Pergamon Press in 1948 when he realized that researchers wrote the articles, provided the editing and also paid to subscribe to the articles. At the same time the academic community chose to use "publish or perish" vetting for promotion, tenure and the basis for seeking external financing. In 1956 Eugene Garfield created the Institute for Scientific Information which was the start of the listing of journals and articles and subsequent vehicles for vetting and ranking the academic research. Today, as a result, the scholarly literature is a major industry which started in 1665 and, today has a small sample of the "breakthrough" researh buried in a plethora of controlled access pubications and a profitable industry. The "open access" movement shifts the cost onto the granting agencies, many of which are governments.
Today, when one searches Wikipedia, often the first response was created by one of the many artificial intelligence systems (as clearly identified) and today, there are AI engines that can also write or "assist" in writing academic literature. Today is publish/perish the scholar's Fendanyl