Burning Libraries

Most of the attention around AI in recent weeks has been on the nervous stock market and on hacks carried out by poorly controlled tools. Here are some more stories from the floodwaters. AI-using college graduates are hitting the workplace. Students’ reading ability improves after removing tech from classes. AI companies are buying millions of rare books, scanning their contents to train their models, and then shredding them. Burning the Library of Alexandria to build Borges’ Library of Babel. The unintended consequences of large language models as a labour-augmenting technology in science. AI slop writing has taken over LinkedIn and X. We’re living in a ChatGPT flyer pandemic. The UK Home Office used “AI hallucinated” information to refuse an asylum claim. The US government mislabelled every country on a map of Africa shown at a global conference. Google enabled fabrication of features on Google Maps before backing down. Meta now lets anyone use your Instagram photos in AI images,…