The New Luddites Aren’t Backing Down::Activists are organizing to combat generative AI and other technologies—and reclaiming a misunderstood label in the process.
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The author states that she’s been a tech writer for 10 years and that she thinks AI is going to ruin journalism because it gives too much power to AI providers.
But, have you seen the state of journalism? AI killing it would just be an act of mercy at this point. How much SEO optimized, grammatically correct, appropriately filtered, but ultimately useless “content” do I really need to sift through to get even something as simple as a recipe?
The author can bemoan AI until she’s blue in the face, but she’s willfully ignoring that the information that most people get today is already controlled by a handful of people and organizations.
Man I hate to tell you this but a good chunk of the content you’re describing is already written by AI. Thats a huge driver behind how shit it’s all gotten.
I wonder how much support this will get - it’s not the tool that’s the problem, but how it gets used.
- as a tech person, generative AI is already a useful tool, similar to how search engines are. However I’m not afraid of it taking my job because someone still needs to tell it what to do, plus it’s still pretty limited. I liken it to previous attempts to outsource software to the lowest bidder in the cheapest country. In general that was a failure and companies are looking for ability even in cheap labor markets, not just cheapness
- as someone who reads news and opinions online, I see the enshittification overtaking that industry over the last decade. Most content is clearly no longer written by journalists nor adhering to any standards for informing the user, but written by formula and template for SEO, and invoking outrage or other emotion. As someone watching videos, I see more choices than ever, but mostly poorly written and produced. It feels like these industries are racing for the bottom and not stopping. Generative AI can actually do a better job than most of the crap, and the most important skill of an online citizen is how to wade through the oceans of crap to find those morsels of journalism. How do we bring back journalism as a whole, regardless of what tools the hacks use to fill our attention and sell ads?
It was actually the same thing with the original luddites. They didn’t oppose the new tool but the way it was used.
From the article :
The first Luddites were artisans and cloth workers in England who, at the onset of the Industrial Revolution, protested the way factory owners used machinery to undercut their status and wages. Contrary to popular belief, they did not dislike technology; most were skilled technicians.
Full source?
This is what futile looks like.
