The Human Curator: AI and the Future of Writing

While academics in the humanities and social scientiststend to be political progressives, they often behave more like reactionarieswhen it comes to technological innovation. Some of our professionalfuror against ChatGPT and other AI chatbots is certainly by the ease ofplagiarism it enables, though presumably a consensus solution will eventuallyemerge for this problem. Yet the real anger directed at this technologyapparently stems from a misplaced pre-emptive nostalgia about therole of the writer. We mourn in advance the solitary author summoningwords onto blank paper ex nihilo, ignoring that the essential feature ofwriters lies elsewhere.