P.D. Magnus

Engines of enshittification

Via Ars Technica, I’ve learned that shady Amazon sellers have been using chatbots to automatically write item descriptions. The result is hot offers on items like “I cannot fulfill that request” and “I apologize but I cannot complete this task.” This is a natural progression from Amazon product listings which were simply misdescribed by humans.

Wrap up of 2023

Last year’s blogging tallies up to 10,484 words in 47 posts.

There used to be a blog tradition of summing things up by listing the first sentences of each of first posts from each month of the previous year. Since all the old ways are coming back, I’ve assembled that list below.

Lincoln!

My paper Generative AI and photographic transparency now has a DOI and is on-line, occupying that liminal space of published but not quite which is characteristic of contemporary scholarship. The publisher has given me a link to the published version, but it won’t let you download or print it. (As always, you can grab the preprint from my website.)

Who I am these days

Recent updates to the department website have added a direct link to my CV and a list of representative publications, so it made sense to rewrite my bio as well. Here’s what it says now:

His areas of research include philosophy of science, the philosophy of art and music, the epistemology of technology (Wikipedia and AI), and pragmatism. His work in the philosophy of science, motivated by a falliblist but non-sceptical conception of scientific knowledge, has addressed topics like the underdetermination of theory by data, natural kinds, and values in science. He regularly teaches courses in philosophy of science, logic, epistemology, pragmatism, and philosophy of art.

I feel seen

I just stumbled across an old interview with Alexander Nehamas. This line about his life captures mine just as well:

I walked backwards into a life, deciding to do whatever seemed easiest at the time, just postponing difficult decisions indefinitely. Either by design or by accident, I ended up in philosophy.

Hot takes on new things

Like pretty much everybody else, I’ve been thinking about chatbots and generative AI. Unlike other things I write about, like scurvy, this is a hot topic. It’s hard to keep up using my usual strategy of rambling here on the blog, ruminating, and letting ideas simmer. Nevertheless, there are these two papers:

Generative AI and photographic transparency: accepted and forthcoming at AI&Society
On trusting chatbots: a draft that riffs on my earlier work on Wikipedia to ask how we should think about claims that we read when interacting with chatbots

CFP: environmental philosophy grad conference

For many years now— with a brief hiccup during the pandemic— the graduate students in my department have hosted an annual graduate conference. It’s a great event. I have been around since the first one, and I’ve always enjoyed attending.

This year’s conference will be Saturday April 20, 2024. The topic is environmental philosophy.

I had some things to say about open access

I recorded a session as the guest on the Librarians with Lattes podcast, talking about open access. The episode dropped today as part of Open Access Week.

It’s available at all the podcast places, but here are links to Apple and Spotify.

Some days I have no idea how to do this job

Reviewer #1 calls it “well-written, well-researched, clear and compelling.” They say it’s “good to go.” Reviewer #2 says that the “ideas are evasive and not well developed.” The verdict is Revise&Resubmit— that is, rejection with encouragement to resubmit with “major revisions.”