Re: Taneja: The Apocalypse Will Save Us All
I was recently in San Francisco on an English department-funded trip interviewing tech founders as background for my novel. One founder was telling me about his expansive use of artificial intelligence, and how it had made his job easier. I asked him what he was doing with all of his free time. “I actually have a note about that,” he said. “One of my main struggles has been figuring out what to do with all my new free time.”
Rohan Taneja ’28 recently responded to my column about model collapse. He argued that my fears are representative of bad uses of AI, and that there are plenty of uses of AI that can be productive and liberate people from repetitive and alienating work.
He makes a compelling argument. However, what he fails to address beyond a brief mention is the corruption of our free time that has come with the advent of new technology. Without militant discipline, it is stupidly easy for any human to fall victim to the incorrigible scourge of cheap stimulation via social media, gambling, pornography and television. This trap is why it’s so critical we still have classes and an academic structure that force students to do difficult things that could be outsourced to AI so they still learn their value.
I’m not saying that this curriculum has to exist alone. I think Taneja’s idea of classes guided by AI where students are empowered to use their brainpower to critically think and make decisions is fascinating. I just hope that we’re also pragmatic about how we are all spending our free time and don’t chalk our extracurricular intellectual pursuits up to doing them for the sake of sheer interest. If we don’t institutionalize them, they will be buried in a world of endless stimulation.
Eli Moyse ’27 is an opinion editor and heads The Dartmouth Editorial Board. Letters to the Editor represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
Eli Moyse ’27 is an opinion editor and columnist for The Dartmouth. He studies government and creative writing. He publishes various personal work under a pen name on Substack (https://substack.com/@wesmercer), and you can find his other work in various publications.
