A recent article in the Atlantic by Thomas Chatterton Williams suggests that the humanities face a crisis intensified by AI, which advances the flawed idea that knowledge ought to be easy and effortless. This apparently devalues the essential struggle at the heart of deep learning.
Rather than chasing “relevance” by adapting to lowered expectations, academics must confront contemporary sensibilities by insisting that difficulty itself has intrinsic value—one that fosters profound thought and sustains human meaning.
Read the article that inspired this piece: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/12/humanities-crisis-ai-camus/685233/
Opinion
Should we use carrier pigeons instead of email or WhatsApp to get a message across? I myself have come to appreciate some of the classics more through a good BBC TV series than the original manuscript—Vanity Fair being the most recent example, but there are others.
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| Young woman with carrier pigeon - Hans Hassenteufel (19th C) |
And I use AI. I used it to help produce the little summary you see above. But I ran that blurb through several wringers, not just one language model. And then I manually tweaked it to fit with how I think and write.
What's wrong with that?
For me, I must do it this way or do nothing. I don't have time to sit in a leather armchair and fuss over countless details.
And if I did sit in an armchair and spend countless hours pouring over texts, should I do that sans computer or word processor?
There was a time when some academics scoffed at computers and insisted on pen, paper, and a manual typewriter.
When people cannot appreciate that change is the name of the game, they're perhaps stuck in one particular way of seeing things. The above-linked article assumes that academia is "easy" if you use AI; or writing for Earthpages.org, for that matter.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Young and older people today face novel challenges that likely surpass anything our predecessors had to face. The world has sped up. And if you don't speed up along with it, you'll get left behind. It's as simple as that.
True, there are some remarkable holdouts that do things the old-fashioned way. But those types of people probably miss out on what the new breed sees and thinks about. As the brain multitasks and speeds up, we arguably go to another plane of consciousness. Old school bookishness might cut it in some instances, but on the whole, information processing vast amounts of data and FAST is where it's at today.
That applies not just to CPUs but to human beings as well... the two probably interfacing in some cybernetic manner in the not-too-distant future.
—MC
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