The Bluestocking, vol 324: The AI-shaped Hole
a garotte should consist entirely of paper mache and malice
Happy Friday!
Apologies for the short email this week, but I have spent all my time watching videos of Travis Kelce at the Eras Tour been travelling for work.
I do at least have one piece of exciting news: the internet’s Jesse Singal and I are doing a live show in London on August 3. Blocked and EXPORTED. We will be covering internet nonsense, cancel culture, why all heterodox people end up thinking the same things, the American election, the aftermath of the British election, and which of us can do the better impression of the other’s accent.
Tickets are available here. They include an after-party at a pub round the corner, making this an incredible chance to meet people who are even nerdier than you are.
Helen
I Will Pile Drive You If You Mention AI Again (Ludicity)
I'm going to ask ChatGPT how to prepare a garotte and then I am going to strangle you with it, and you will simply have to pray that I roll the 10% chance that it freaks out and tells me that a garotte should consist entirely of paper mache and malice.
I see executive after executive discuss how they need to immediately roll out generative AI in order to prepare the organization for the future of work. Despite all the speeches sounding exactly the same, I know that they have rehearsed extensively, because they manage to move their hands, speak, and avoid drooling, all at the same time!
Let's talk seriously about this for a second.
I am not in the equally unserious camp that generative AI does not have the potential to drastically change the world. It clearly does. When I saw the early demos of GPT-2, while I was still at university, I was half-convinced that they were faked somehow. I remember being wrong about that, and that is why I'm no longer as confident that I know what's going on.
Extremely Australian, and therefore entertaining, rant about the use of AI by corporations. The writer concludes that, basically, unless your company is one of the tiny handful of places that will actually drive AI innovation, “building random chatbots will not prepare you for the future.” So why not just make your actual business good?
Chaser: Ed Zitron thinks that OpenAI’s agreement with Apple to integrate ChatGPT into iPhones is the worst deal since the Treaty of Versailles.
The God Divide Within The Heterodox Community (Persuasion)
A growing cadre of intellectuals think the decline of religious belief has created a moral and spiritual vacuum, which has been filled with surrogate religions like wokeness and political extremism. They believe there’s a crisis of meaning in Western societies as people scramble to fill the “God-shaped holes” in their lives with other objects of worship. They argue that a renewed commitment to the Judeo-Christian tradition is the only way to restore a sense of social solidarity and shared purpose—and perhaps even save the West.
The journalist Ed West describes this growing phenomenon as “New Theism,” which argues “not that religion is true, but that it is useful, and that Christianity made the West successful.”
Matt Johnson, author of a book on Christopher Hitchens, notes how many “heterodox” thinkers have veered from New Atheism to New Theism, and believe that Christianity was an operating system that made the West succeed, and that therefore its retreat is a threat.
Johnson points out that many of the “Christian” values that the New Theists praise actually arose from the Enlightenment, which was “in large part a response to centuries of religious oppression, dogma, and violence in Europe.”
Quick Links
“The Jeremy Corbyn years and then the cross-party unity of Covid meant that Sunak managed to become Chancellor of the Exchequer — indeed, to spend most of his time in the role — without ever facing a tricky moment in Parliament. Can there have been a career like it?” Excellent pre-mortem on Rishi Sunak’s political career by Rob Hutton (The Critic)
“In 2020, the animal rights nonprofit Peta launched a campaign to rebrand pigeons as ‘sky puppies’, since they ‘poop in public, beg for food, and recognise people who are nice to them’.” Strong, if not entirely convincing, pitch in this BBC article that we are too harsh on feral pigeons because “like the negative stereotypes about other marginalised groups, the common perception of pigeons is not based on reality.” Are you racist about pigeons? Check yourself.
I called into this fortnight’s episode of Page 94 to talk about the British invasion of American journalism.
One more event I’m doing soon: talking to Jess Phillips about lies in politics on August 8 in Kilburn.
Just rewatched this clip of Shane Gillis’s routine on the lure of Early Onset Republicanism, which speaks to my soul.
I was the guest on Radio Atlantic this week. If you want a frisky half-hour recap of the big trends in British politics revealed by the election, here you are.
See you next time, which will be after the general election. I’ll be writing something for The Atlantic on the night. I should have been in Riga, but we had to cancel that holiday after Rishi Sunak called the election, so I’m glad that all worked out for him.
> "a garrotte should consist entirely of paper maché and malice"
I just want to say that this is such a wonderful phrase - the idea, the rhythm, the sheer glorious bonkers verve of it…
Thank you!
The original cancel culture was religion. Don't subscribe to the local religion? You're an outcast!
Now, it's the religious types claiming that they're being cancelled, although their idea of cancelled is having no more power than anyone else, and no longer getting away with domestic violence or molesting children.
I call that a vast improvement.