By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 21/09/2026Looking back on the wonder I felt then, I realize that it was largely driven by how good the output was *relative to my expectations about how good mathematically-derived sentences and images could be*. 1323
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 21/09/2026The novelty of that experience drove me to grade the machine's output on a curve: "The wonder is not that the dancing bear dances well, it is that the bear dances at all." But with repetition, the stimulus has regressed to the mean. These outputs have an unconvincing lack of texture. 1311
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 21/09/2026The smoothness of AI-generated prose and media makes it unbearably banal. It's hack. To the extent that AI still surprises me, the surprise is about how much smoothness there is in our real world. 1321
