Send questions to mail@wired.com, with the subject line ASK LEVY
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Dear Levy,
When I would ask Encyclopaedia Britannica Macropaedia – sitting at the library, where breathing and the occasional cough each in their way indicated the exceptionally huge volume of the reading room – I KNEW without a doubt that I was speaking with the world. It was only later that I realised bias even existed in philosophy, anthropology and hard sciences, but back then I felt certain of the knowledge and integrity of those people toiling to make the world known to me in the most precise and well documented manner.
Then came the internet. 1994 for me. At the end of the numerical lists from 1-11 on-screen – hyperlinks mostly leading to actual places and their topics (universities and departments) – nothing was really there, apart from some personal stories of drugs and computers written by admins, so I put some things out there. Poetry mostly. And then slowly, this additional soil could be seen to cover the whole planet, and I was awakened to the fact that there are differences in cultural and linguistic habits and rituals, but none in the importance every human puts to the details of their own lives. Differences rule, and for a while data there wanted to be free.
But you cannot make money or entice anyone to draw flies to the sugar bowl, if you don’t have sugar and a bowl and nice advertising. To develop the computer infrastructure you need lowered barres. And more and more control of human’s fickle focus, look here, no, look here, fencing them in – inside eco systems of controllable data. And let the humans inside these compounds themselves decide the value of the data by way of an old Roman dictator assessment-of-battle prowess. Live. Die. Likes.
And now we feed our cognitive simulators parts of these low-grade controlled data – inside a computer framework excellent at parroting the bell jar norm of conversation and data coherence, and thus in terms of both test and method based knowledge regurgitating the lowest denominator of all data acquisitions: The explainer.
To me, to Europe, to the rest of the world, it ALWAYS looks as if USA is the nation with the answers. There is ALWAYS an American on TV somewhere with an explanation. And now with the advent of the AI your culture has introduced a global answering machine based on low quality, primarily, US-data and sold the capitalists everywhere on the idea that consumers will more or less buy into “knowledge” and “creativity”springing from the cognitive simulator. Easily accessible facts, theirs for the very high price of not thinking for themselves.
It is SO frustrating to see how every invention is made to drive the capitalist machine, so called free initiative in USA, and no efforts are made to prevent the exploitation of the Earth in the name of SALE – while free initiative in other countries is scorned, if USA is somehow not part of its regulation. And now this strike against people, for science and capitalists, and the military also, of course.
So, LEVY, my question is: Do US-Americans have any primary regard for the rest of the world?
With this I mean:
Do none of your politicians know anything of psychology and paedagogigs – specifically now in regards to how an AI affects people?
Is human basic behaviour, when confronted with free “time savers” and “ease”, as well as the intricacies of building flexible minds from struggling with figuring stuff out, in the name of free enterprise simply regarded as donkeys before the capitalist pushcart?
Will every US-american choose dollar over consequences, dollar NOW over risk of idiocracy later, even if WE of Humanity risk losing our home, our only home, our collective home – or is that not the voice of the individual US-citizen?
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Stephen Levy of WIRED: As you know, every week I answer a reader question. But lately, you have all been lax in sending me these questions, despite the incredible potential payoff of having me answer you personally in Plaintext, for all to see. I have had to resort to venturing onto social media, dipping my lure into those troubled waters to see if I can snare a good query. (Data point: Twitter, er, X, despite my having 100,000 followers there, has not been as good a fishing ground as upstarts like T2 or Bluesky or Threads, where many fewer people follow me.) So, please ask away. Send questions to mail@wired.com, with the subject line ASK LEVY. Or DM me on one of those networks, or even LinkedIn. Thanks.
