[The end of 2025 means another Year in Review blog series, AmericanStudying a handful of the year’s biggest stories. I’d love your 2025 reflections in comments!]
I wrote about ChatGPT and other generative AI programs as part of last year’s Year in Review series, and would say that every experience I’ve had with AI in the year since has only deepened every part of what I said there about its worst elements and effects. We’ve also learned a great deal more over this last year about AI’s horrifically destructive potential, from what data centers do to communities and the environment to what chatbots do to individuals to what AI is doing to education (to cite just four specific stories about just a few of the many issues I could highlight). And yet just about every day I see or hear or read or encounter folks—most of them folks I know and trust and often love—talking about using ChatGPT and other AI programs in casual and consistent (if not indeed constant) ways. So unfortunately I think I need to include AI in this year’s Year in Review series as well, as we desperately need a full and honest conversation about what this new technology is doing, and whether and how we can (at the very least) stop its further growth.
Next reflections tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think? 2025 stories you’d highlight?
Leave a Reply