Nicky Dries

Professor of Organizational Behavior. Studies 'imaginaries' of the distant future in news, fiction, and the arts. Has Fernweh (farsickness for the unknown).

[Nicky Dries @NickyDries]

What will the future of work look like? Should we accelerate disruptive innovation, move cautiously, degrow...? Our study of 570 experts, now in Harvard Business Review!
👇🏻
https://t.co/iA7OjvLOVR
with @joostluyckx and Philip Rogiers

[Min, Creator of ZIPPED UP💚 @ MOMOCON @sillyminny]

To young artists and animators discouraged by the news about Disney:

It’s now more than ever that our industry CRAVES human-made, authentic art. Continue to create your characters, continue to tell your unique, authentic stories, and whatever you do, DO NOT GIVE UP.

[Nicky Dries @NickyDries]

@pigsbliss ♥���

[Boze Herrington, Library Owl 😴🧙‍♀️ @SketchesbyBoze]

I'm afraid the future belongs to those who read widely, who can write without a machine's assistance, who haven’t allowed endless slop to kill their creativity & curiosity. Read books. Love learning. Keep your mind sharp or be left behind.

[Boze Herrington, Library Owl 😴🧙‍♀️ @SketchesbyBoze]

I'm glad the villain of the new Toy Story is a child's tablet. I hope the film conveys how screens eat up a child's hobbies, interests, literacy, ability to function socially. I hope it provokes millions of parents to think twice before making the iPad a babysitter.

[Lupin @lupinxart]

if you start reading books again. you will feel at least a little better. i promise.

[Reid Southen @Rahll]

Create a problem, then sell the solution.

Welcome to Silicon Valley.

[Boze Herrington, Library Owl 😴🧙‍♀️ @SketchesbyBoze]

I’ll never understand adding AI to The Wizard of OZ to “complete the directors’ vision.” The beauty of art is its blemishes—that it was made by imperfect humans wrestling against the constraints of their time and place. Can’t you simply let a thing be beautiful and imperfect?

[Eugenio Tisselli @motorhueso]

"The opportunities offered are not pathways to genuine creation rooted in lived experience or skill, but simulations of creativity itself. The user, alienated from the authentic labour of making, engages instead with a frictionless interface that delivers simulacra on demand."

[DEI Witch @aamanlamba]

New slang just dropped - botlicker - @GaryMarcus

[Lincoln Michel @TheLincoln]

The tech bro mindset is such an impoverished, Puritan outlook. Very sad to be ruled by such hollow, empty automatons https://t.co/ROsrmCHQxZ

[Cat Finnie @CatFinnie]

"...there are many ways that AI can “kill” a job, by sapping the pleasure one derives from work, draining it of skill and expertise, or otherwise subjecting it to degradation."

[Kyle Chayka @chaykak]

my @NewYorker column this week goes in depth on how using AI makes us less original, unique, and creative as writers, thinkers, and communicators. Various new studies are proving that AI is a rampant force of homogenization:

[Megan Fritts @freganmitts]

wait i thought this was going to make us smarter

https://t.co/BIdvT9tHIY

[Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex]

@demishassabis @DarrenAronofsky @Tribeca Artist-washing (verb): to intentionally distract from AI models’ exploitation of creators’ life’s work by finding individual artists willing to use those models

[Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex]

Another paper funded by big tech (this time Google) arguing that they should be allowed to train their AI on people's life's work without payment/permission if it's 'publicly available'.

One of its actual arguments: "A large and diverse corpus of training materials also helps ensure that models reflect cultural diversity."

To be clear, this is arguing that billion-dollar corporations should be able to commercially exploit the work of other cultures, for free and without their permission - and that this unpaid commercial exploitation is actually *good* for those cultures.

Genuinely shocking that this argument is still being rolled out. The solution to a lack of cultural diversity is not to exploit the work of those cultures. It is to ask their permission, and to pay them.

[Nanosaur Enthusiast @NanosaurFan1999]

Writing *your own kid’s obituary* with ChatGPT is hitting me in the gut. Just pawning off our most deeply human moments to an unthinking, unfeeling machine.

[Chubby♨️ @kimmonismus]

2. Mechanize, a young start-up from San Francisco, makes no secret of what it really wants: to eliminate all jobs - as quickly as possible. While previous tech companies hid their automation plans behind euphemisms such as “increasing productivity” or “assistance systems”, Mechanize says it openly: The goal is a fully automated economy. Behind it are three founders - Tamay Besiroglu, Ege Erdil and Matthew Barnett - with research backgrounds at Epoch AI.

[Rob Wiblin @robertwiblin]

Recent Pew polling on AI is crazy:

1. US public wildly negative about AI, huge disagreement with experts

2. ~2x as many expect AI to harm as benefit them

3. Public more concerned than excited at ~4.5 to 1 ratio

4. Public & experts think regulation will not go far enough 1/

[Dagan Shani @daganshani1]

Andreessen says AI will take almost all jobs but his. OAI high-ups want to build bunkers to hide from ASI. AI CEOs praise UBI while ensuring they'll be trillionaires when AGI comes. AI bros exclude themselves from AI's impact. Makes you wonder if they believe the utopia they sell

[Ewan Morrison @MrEwanMorrison]

This poor man is so lost.
It’s a shame that he has to drag us all into his state of emptiness.