Stephen Downes

I have nothing like the deep fascination Jim Groom has for film and video culture but I do appreciate as Groom does the work Mike Caulfield is doing to understand what AI is doing when it creates ("a great recent example," says Groom, "is his "book chapter" on My Cousin Vinny (and) he even built a film-aware fact-checking tool). That's the genre Groom is actually working in here as he has ChatGPT take a look at an essay he wrote in 1999, analyze it for originality ("Verdict! Bloggable!") and produce a post that would be relevant in 2026. The post stands up and I'm sure film-Groom's audience would be interested. For my part, tech-Groom's post about the post is also a pretty good read, one in which I am interested. And to return to his main subtheme, the question of assimilation, well, that is a theme that has been very well worked over in film, literature, and reality. Sure, the discussion is topical ("the ways in which our writing and thinking is being mapped, grafted, and commodified in a tool like ChatGPT is some next-level horror," writes Groom) but compared to what might be it's also hyperbolic.