What if AI Just Makes Everyone Really Boring?

Last week, the Princeton professor D. Graham Burnett wrote an essay for the New Yorker about his fascination with how generative AIs and LLMs are changing the way his students interact with and ingest information. The first half of the piece is interesting, a sort of interrogation of how the technology is changing behavior on campus and how students and university administrators are trying to outmaneuver one another. I was slightly surprised to hear that the ChatGPT IP address is blocked on some university networks, but we were using VPNs to download virus-packed torrents on campus internet in 2009 so I can’t imagine what the kids are able to do now.