Human Factors in Authorship

1–2 minutes

I’ve shared another article on Substack about how the AI-authorship debate is bollox.

Audio: NotebookLM summary podcast of this topic.

The LLM-versus-human debate has been raging for several years now, and there seem to be two principal camps: human exceptionalists and agnostics. I suppose there may also be a small, misanthropic faction, but its members are either remarkably quiet or indistinguishable from everyone else online. If you are out there, do raise your voice.

If you want to witter on about other negative aspects of AI, have at it, but the authorship debate is weak tea.

Je m’accuse, on s’accuse

The LLM Witch-Hunt and the Enemy Within

I recently read a piece arguing, with considerable sophistication, that LLMs represent an unprecedented psychological threat – that conversational systems operating at a planetary scale change the geometry of human susceptibility in ways that demand serious governance responses. The author wasn’t wrong about the effects. This isn’t the debate, but she was wrong about the story. The effects are real, and the narrative erected around them is the oldest displacement manoeuvre in the repertoire

Continued on Substack.

Audio: NotebookLM summary podcast of this topic.