RAB Source Entry 2-Jazmyn B.

Research Question: “How is modern AI affecting media targeted towards today’s youth and how does it harm their development?”

MLA Citation

Hoel, Erik. “Opinion | A.I.-Generated Garbage Is Polluting Our Culture.” The New York Times, 29 Mar. 2024. NYTimes.com, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/29/opinion/ai-internet-x-youtube.html. 

Summary

In the New York Times article titled “A.I-Generated Garbage Is Polluting Our Culture,” Erik Hoel suggests that the uprising in modern AI is promoting a decline in morality. He uses official research about the increased detection of AI in student work. He also shares a firsthand account of his book being stolen, copied, and resold with AI services. With this in mind, the neuroscientist says that pushing the use of AI in everything in life will discourage creativity and originality in the average person. He states that the reasoning behind this is simple—money. The more we develop as a society, the more obvious it gets that people want things as cheaply and quickly as possible. Describing it as “short-term economic self-interest”, Hoel says that despite all the concern surrounding it, A.I. companies don’t actually want to completely solve the problem, because they still need money. Lastly, Hoel proposes that government action may be needed to fight against this problem, suggesting a “Clean Internet Act”. He says that forcing companies to be transparent about the way their AI is used and putting AI labels would benefit the general public. Overall, Erik Hoel calls this situation a “threat” to human culture, and that “extensive intervention” is needed to protect it.

Rhetorical Analysis

This article is an opinion piece. The audience of said piece is the general public, specifically those that are concerned about the future development of AI. Hoel combines a personal tone from his own experiences and recorded information, explaining his issues with AI and how it does harm human culture. Hoel uses the rhetorical appeal of ethos, having his own knowledge as a certified neuroscientist and the fact that his own book was stolen and copied by AI. He then uses pathos when he creates an analogy, comparing those that are worried about the potential of AI as lost souls paddling through “sludge” of  a “cultural ocean”. Lastly, logos is used as Hoel provides scientific studies and real occurrences of well-known companies like Instagram and Spotify needlessly employing AI. The article’s author, Erik Hoel is an esteemed neuroscientist, having done research at Columbia University, Tufts University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Princeton. He’s won the Forbes 30 award, and published many works under different companies, such as the New York Times. The New York Times is one of the most respectable news outlets in America, with 7 Pulitzer Prizes in Public Service and 5 Emmys. It’s reported as mainly reliable and unbiased with its mass production of content.

Notable Quotables

•  “Then there is the growing use of generative A.I. to scale the creation of cheap synthetic videos for children on YouTube. Some example outputs are Lovecraftian horrors… The narratives make no sense, characters appear and disappear randomly, and basic facts like the names of shapes are wrong.” (Hoel)

•  “Any viral post on X now almost certainly includes A.I.-generated replies, from summaries of the original post to reactions written in ChatGPT’s bland Wikipedia-voice, all to farm for follows. Instagram is filling up with A.I.-generated models, Spotify with A.I.-generated songs… on Amazon there will often appear A.I.-generated “workbooks” for sale that supposedly accompany your book (which are incorrect in their content; I know because this happened to me). Top Google search results are now often A.I.-generated images or articles. Major media outlets like Sports Illustrated have been creating A.I.-generated articles attributed to equally fake author profiles.” (Hoel)

•  “As a neuroscientist, this worries me. Isn’t it possible that human culture contains within it cognitive micronutrients — things like cohesive sentences, narrations and character continuity — that developing brains need?” (Hoel)

• “ Einstein supposedly said: “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be very intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” But what happens when a toddler is consuming mostly A.I.-generated dream-slop?” (Hoel)

• “It’s increasingly clear that companies are dragging their feet because it goes against the A.I industry’s bottom line to have detectable products.” (Hoel)