continuing to step aside

I am not ignoring new technologies in the ‘AI’ field, but I believe there is a real need for people to get better at communicating and making sense with other people. Well that is what I wrote early last year in stepping aside. What have I learned since then?

I still have not found any use for generative AI in my own work.

The rush to implement generative AI in the workplace is leading to massive job cuts especially amongst software programmers. The perfect storm of neo-liberalism and automation continues to tear up 20th century social contracts.

As I read the stream of posts on LinkedIn [I am no longer on Facebook, Twitter, or other consumer social media platforms] I feel the conversations are drifting toward meaningless attempts to game the system and garner more views.

It is becoming more evident that human skills and human connections are valuable, beyond the transactional economy. Generative AI is showing that transactional relationships are easily replicable. Universities and schools that view the use of AI as cheating have to come to terms with the transactional nature of their institutions. Writing an essay or taking a test never showed true understanding of a subject. Meanwhile, students are re-evaluating the value of a degree. Why get a degree that does not lead to a job? Only a small percentage of the student body is there purely for the joy of learning. The social contract promoted by higher education is cracking. Some professors are changing their teaching and testing but it’s a huge effort within institutions that have not changed in the face of ubiquitous student use of AI.

In my PKM workshops this year — which I had considered shutting down — I learned from participants that there is a continuing and perhaps growing need for sensemaking skills and learning in communities and networks. As Bonni Stachowiack said after the last workshop, “Mastery is not an endpoint, but a habitual practice of learning, sharing, and growing. The real power of PKM shows up not at the end, but in the consistent rhythm of seeking, sensing, and sharing.”

So let’s seek, sense, and share amidst the growing tide of AI slop.

I will ask chat GPT
I will boil the last of our drinking water
Salt the soil of the scrub-lands
Tear the pages from books and feed them to my fire

I will ask copilot
I will scramble your library
reanimate and puppet the faces of your dead ancestors
I will bury you in poor copies of your dreams

I will ask grok
I will fall silent and never speak to you
I will talk only to myself lost in a maze of my own fantasies
I will forget all who cannot compliment me
I will decouple my soul from this world.

—@futurebird

Image: Aimee Cozza