A.I. scab-bot$, with Max Read

Hello from Montréal! 

🥳 Reminder: Join us THIS SATURDAY, June 10th, in Brooklyn, for our subscriber picnic! Subscribe on Patreon or Substack for more details. 

This week, we welcome back our friend Max Read—dad, Twitter lurker, hat seller, and creator of the incredible Read Max newsletter—for an anniversary chat. (12:30) We speculate about the next phase of A.I. ascendancy and (28:25) large language model pioneers, and (44:00) unpack the labor dimensions of these technological shifts. Speaking of labor, (45:30) we get Max’s inside perspective on the WGA strike (in which, again, A.I. …) and express solidarity with the Insider journalists who just went on strike for a fair contract! 

In this episode, we ask: 

Will the next generation be expected to know how to write? 

Who will ChatGPT threaten to (awkwardly, inadequately, terrifyingly) replace? 

Is A.I. doing to writing what earlier technologies did to the music industry? Are we getting schooled in notions of collective authorship? 

For more, see: 

• Max’s newsletters on the WGA strike and A.I.: 

  • Why I'm on strike

  • I cannot believe the shit that morons are getting up to with ChatGPT

  • Yet more of what I'm reading about A.I., a great mixed-reality TV show, and a great new music newsletter

• His previous TTSG appearances! 

  • Crypto fraudsters with Max Read

  • TTSG disinformation campaign with Max Read 

• John Herrman’s New York piece about Google’s in-search generative A.I. experiment

• Our last episode about A.I., in which Ben Recht gets skeptical: What can’t A.I. replace

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