Cory Doctorow: The people who tell you ‘AI is changing everything’ are lying

In my academic field of sustainability, AI still fails to explain what economic sustainability means. It’s very simple.

I lecture and explain to my students that economic sustainability is about how we assess and manage our knowledge, innovations, wealth, and other man-made capital. I stress that it is ABSOLUTELY NOT profit and revenue.

Sure enough, my students submit assignments clearly written by AI that state economic sustainability is profit and revenue.

AI is regurgitating decades of green-washing and even bad academic articles that state economic sustainability is about profits. I use that AI god mode site to test several AI’s at once and they’ve consistently gotten this wrong for 3 years.

So you teach something different from the mainstream - cool. But don’t be surprised when students or AI cite others or take an alternative position.

I’m no economist but I had plenty of professors who wanted their particular theories reflected back at them.

While students should do their own reading and writing, using ‘they write mainstream ideas’ as a litmus test for writing and AI seems parochial. And I’d go so far as to say AI is becoming a standard research and writing aid like the web word processors, and you sound like teachers who ranted against those too.

Have you engaged either group in open discussion about comparing the perspectives you’re challenging? I bet several modern models could debate your philosophy on merit, I wonder if you ever gave students the chance.

I’m pretty sure the fucking economist you’re replying to is not “teach(ing) something different from the mainstream” that’s the whole point of their post.

The whole point is the AI tools are hallucinating* completely incorrect answers and that students trying to use them as study aids and tools to learn with are going to have a lot of fake and wrong information to sort out and good luck to them knowing what is or isn’t incorrect or wrong when they’re just trying to learn a subject they know nothing about.

The only reason you or I or anyone else knows when AI hallucinates in its output is because we know stuff from our prior knowledge and can catch it that way. If you’re ignorant to a subject and trying to learn stuff you’re not going to know off hand the AI is lying to you if it sounds convincing enough for a layperson to accept.

*which I kind of hate that term because to the AI there’s no difference between truth and hallucination - it’s just output as far as the robot is concerned