Here is the post of Rafael Brown:

Isaac Asimov: “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”‘

Generative AI isn’t democratizing anything creative. Far from it, Generative AI is democratizing laziness and stupidity. We didn’t have any shortage of either prior to generative AI. Actual writing is thinking put onto paper (or electronically or digitally). I was taught long ago by English & Literature teachers that writing was a way of composing one’s thoughts. Writing, or other compositions, regardless of medium, are essential to working out, mapping out, interrogating, and comprehending complex ideas, including one’s own thoughts. Don’t miss comments. Here is the most scary one.

Isaac Asimov: “Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.”

Writing has value because it is a record of structured thinking. Writing can be brainstorming, note-taking, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, myth, analysis, teaching, critique, and a variety of other forms, but writing is important because it comes from thinking. Auto generation of word salad scrambled text output from statistical models is not thinking. And anyone consistently relying on that is accepting not thinking. If anything they are damaging their critical thinking faculties. Writing is essential to shared critical thinking.

Isaac Asimov: “If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.”

In college we are taught to make our own opinions from analyzing sources and applying critical thinking faculties. This seems to have been lost or de-emphasized in recent decades. Now we have error prone tools that hallucinate constantly. We go through that hallucinatory mass and decide what we like and what we don’t. Or we just accept it all. But it is all “hallucination”.

Gen AI systems don’t know right from wrong, truth from fiction, accuracy from deception. They can be given guidelines, and will just break them. AI output need to be culled through with a fine toothed comb. Finding AI errors and fixing them is often more work that creating the content correctly the first time. But hey, who doesn’t like to waste time hunting for errors in AI slop output? Meanwhile new discoveries? They won’t be found by Gen AI. They were found by accidentally by humans.

Asimov: “Probably more inhibiting than anything else is a feeling of responsibility. The great ideas of the ages have come from people who weren’t paid to have great ideas, but were paid to be teachers or patent clerks or petty officials, or were not paid at all. The great ideas came as side issues. To feel guilty because one has not earned one’s salary because one has not had a great idea is the surest way, it seems to me, of making it certain that no great idea will come in the next time either.”