Guy Wilson
@gcwils0n.bsky.social
Recovering historian & slight curmudgeon who works as an instructional technologist. My passion remains finding the patterns in history & the present. Gentle criticism always welcome. I can also be found on Substack.
Modernism has been about reducing everything & everyone to material entities & rules. AI is its apotheosis. Its creators seek to simulate everything & believe that they will comprehended the universe. Their simulations are only simulations based on known data & explain nothing particularly well.
December 31, 2025 at 8:10 PM
Modernism has been about reducing everything & everyone to material entities & rules. AI is its apotheosis. Its creators seek to simulate everything & believe that they will comprehended the universe. Their simulations are only simulations based on known data & explain nothing particularly well.
I realized last week that I have been too focused on AI by itself and that the ways it is delivered (laptop, phone, smartwatch, smart speaker, smart glasses, drone, android, or implant) is just as important in understanding the intent of the company and the effects on the individual and society.
October 27, 2025 at 4:53 PM
I realized last week that I have been too focused on AI by itself and that the ways it is delivered (laptop, phone, smartwatch, smart speaker, smart glasses, drone, android, or implant) is just as important in understanding the intent of the company and the effects on the individual and society.
The 20th century saw the flowering of techniques and the beginning of electronic & chemical means to attack the human mind. That was its great contribution to human history.
guywilson.substack.com/p/war-on-cog...
guywilson.substack.com/p/war-on-cog...
War on Cognition
Technology and the century-long assault on our humanity
guywilson.substack.com
October 26, 2025 at 9:03 PM
The 20th century saw the flowering of techniques and the beginning of electronic & chemical means to attack the human mind. That was its great contribution to human history.
guywilson.substack.com/p/war-on-cog...
guywilson.substack.com/p/war-on-cog...
Reposted by Guy Wilson
currently the winning thumbnail 🐀
forget the lies you have been told! rats are empathetic, intelligent, and sweet pocket puppies.
and their tails are beautiful.
forget the lies you have been told! rats are empathetic, intelligent, and sweet pocket puppies.
and their tails are beautiful.
October 21, 2025 at 9:02 PM
currently the winning thumbnail 🐀
forget the lies you have been told! rats are empathetic, intelligent, and sweet pocket puppies.
and their tails are beautiful.
forget the lies you have been told! rats are empathetic, intelligent, and sweet pocket puppies.
and their tails are beautiful.
A study in viral disinformation phys.org/news/2025-08...
Mapping out France's 'Great Fear of 1789' shows how misinformation spreads like a virus
Since the rise of the internet and social media, society has become well-acquainted with the idea of "virality" as the rapid spread of ideas and information (or misinformation). The relatively recent ...
phys.org
September 5, 2025 at 12:13 PM
A study in viral disinformation phys.org/news/2025-08...
Modernity is a monster. Not Frankenstein's Monster, so beloved of modernist and post-modernist scholars.
Monstrous Modernity
Why doesn't anyone want to upload their unconscious?
open.substack.com
August 31, 2025 at 5:47 PM
Modernity is a monster. Not Frankenstein's Monster, so beloved of modernist and post-modernist scholars.
Disparate Thoughts
open.substack.com/pub/guywilso...
open.substack.com/pub/guywilso...
Disparate Thoughts
Ideas from my working notebooks.
open.substack.com
June 21, 2025 at 9:35 PM
Disparate Thoughts
open.substack.com/pub/guywilso...
open.substack.com/pub/guywilso...
I don't think we hear as much about data center pollution as a threat to local health as much as we do about energy and water use, or even about long-term effect on climate.
June 17, 2025 at 12:47 PM
I don't think we hear as much about data center pollution as a threat to local health as much as we do about energy and water use, or even about long-term effect on climate.
The Need to Understand
This is a short post, the result of pondering some recent conversations
open.substack.com/pub/guywilso...
This is a short post, the result of pondering some recent conversations
open.substack.com/pub/guywilso...
The Need to Understand
Or why we need to think about AI in the context of civilization as a whole
open.substack.com
May 31, 2025 at 10:56 PM
The Need to Understand
This is a short post, the result of pondering some recent conversations
open.substack.com/pub/guywilso...
This is a short post, the result of pondering some recent conversations
open.substack.com/pub/guywilso...
This is about Memorial Day holiday, who it honors, and about the need for something more.
open.substack.com/pub/guywilso...
open.substack.com/pub/guywilso...
Beyond Memorial Day
I think we need another day
open.substack.com
May 26, 2025 at 12:31 AM
This is about Memorial Day holiday, who it honors, and about the need for something more.
open.substack.com/pub/guywilso...
open.substack.com/pub/guywilso...
66 cases of lawyers caught using AI-hallucinated legal citations in US courts this year, and as Marcus says, these are only the ones we know about. Hallucinations are not going away anytime I've soon, certainly not with the technologies we have now.
open.substack.com/pub/garymarc...
open.substack.com/pub/garymarc...
AI literacy, hallucinations, and the law: A case study
In the battle for AI literacy—and communicating clearly the weaknesses of AI— hypesters are winning.
open.substack.com
May 24, 2025 at 9:07 PM
66 cases of lawyers caught using AI-hallucinated legal citations in US courts this year, and as Marcus says, these are only the ones we know about. Hallucinations are not going away anytime I've soon, certainly not with the technologies we have now.
open.substack.com/pub/garymarc...
open.substack.com/pub/garymarc...
The paper, “Evidence of a social evaluation penalty for using AI” raises questions about how people who use AI at work are perceived and anticipate they will be perceived. The results are provisional but point to users being stigmatized as lazy.
www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....
www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
www.pnas.org
May 19, 2025 at 1:35 PM
The paper, “Evidence of a social evaluation penalty for using AI” raises questions about how people who use AI at work are perceived and anticipate they will be perceived. The results are provisional but point to users being stigmatized as lazy.
www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....
www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....
There are not many signatures yet, but this is a petition objecting to the addition of a ban on state-level AI regulation (drafted in the broadest manner possible, to include the regulation of AI use in decision-making systems). Please consider signing. www.change.org/p/prevent-th...
Sign the Petition
Prevent the federal government from prohibiting state regulation of AI
www.change.org
May 18, 2025 at 12:01 AM
There are not many signatures yet, but this is a petition objecting to the addition of a ban on state-level AI regulation (drafted in the broadest manner possible, to include the regulation of AI use in decision-making systems). Please consider signing. www.change.org/p/prevent-th...
I’ve recently seen suggestions that educational institutions should use AI therapists to help with the student mental health crisis. There are lots of reasons why they shouldn’t do that. Here is one.
www.theverge.com/policy/66568...
www.theverge.com/policy/66568...
AI therapy is a surveillance machine in a police state
Big Tech wants you to share your private thoughts with chatbots — while backing a government with contempt for privacy.
www.theverge.com
May 15, 2025 at 11:34 AM
I’ve recently seen suggestions that educational institutions should use AI therapists to help with the student mental health crisis. There are lots of reasons why they shouldn’t do that. Here is one.
www.theverge.com/policy/66568...
www.theverge.com/policy/66568...
This is the best response I’ve seen on New York Magazine’s big article on AI cheating.
2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/ai-slop-educ...
2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/ai-slop-educ...
AI Slop Education
There's a tendency to write about technological change as an "all of a sudden" occurrence – even if you try to offer some background, some precursors, some concurrent events, or a longer, broader pers...
2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com
May 9, 2025 at 12:04 PM
This is the best response I’ve seen on New York Magazine’s big article on AI cheating.
2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/ai-slop-educ...
2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/ai-slop-educ...
To believe that any particular path in humanity’s future is either inevitable or immutable is a sign of ignorance, indolence, or insanity. That says a great deal about a lot of ostensibly smart people.
May 4, 2025 at 7:29 PM
To believe that any particular path in humanity’s future is either inevitable or immutable is a sign of ignorance, indolence, or insanity. That says a great deal about a lot of ostensibly smart people.
I lost one of the best people I know this past week. That prompted some thoughts on a friendship, and remembering old conversations about how we used to think about technology. guywilson.substack.com/p/old-conver...
Old Conversations
Notes on a friendship and the changing face of technology
guywilson.substack.com
May 4, 2025 at 3:51 PM
I lost one of the best people I know this past week. That prompted some thoughts on a friendship, and remembering old conversations about how we used to think about technology. guywilson.substack.com/p/old-conver...
AI cannot be separated from the political agendas to which it is harnessed, from its military origins and lethal uses, the greed of CEOs, or its environmental consequences. Every "ethical" use of it must be balanced against these.
May 4, 2025 at 2:16 PM
AI cannot be separated from the political agendas to which it is harnessed, from its military origins and lethal uses, the greed of CEOs, or its environmental consequences. Every "ethical" use of it must be balanced against these.
I often see pieces by computer scientists and engineers claiming only they can accurately critique AI or other tech. A few know tech is inseparable from culture, how people use it, & how it uses them. Those I'm willing to listen to. The rest live in fantasy worlds as far as I'm concerned.
May 3, 2025 at 4:25 PM
I often see pieces by computer scientists and engineers claiming only they can accurately critique AI or other tech. A few know tech is inseparable from culture, how people use it, & how it uses them. Those I'm willing to listen to. The rest live in fantasy worlds as far as I'm concerned.