Stephen Downes

Ian O'Byrne summarizes some recent stories, including Googles AI-search announcement and the Monet painting panned on Twitter and draws the conclusion that many others have drawn, that we are losing our connection to 'the source layer'. "For a long time, information came with visible signals attached. A citation, a publisher, a byline, or a recognizable human voice with its own perspective and flaws," he writes. "AI systems change that. They collapse the distance between asking a question and getting an answer." Well, maybe. But claims that the source layers is dead are wildly exaggerated. A record of who said what, and how they knew, is still important, even to AI. If AI does anything, it reinforces the need for an empirical basis that underlies our knowledge. You can see the links to sources in his own article. It wouldn't have been worth reading without them.