Illustration credit: Ariel Davis | The New Yorker
“A vacuous and dangerous echo chamber.” “Best creative booster ever!” “An existential threat to humanity.” Whether you love it or hate it—or fall somewhere in between—it’s likely that you have used generative AI yourself. But is it a good idea to be doing so? And what will be the consequences of that use? In this June 2025 piece from The New Yorker, staff writer Kyle Chayka, who covers technology and internet culture, reports on recent studies that offer potential answers to these questions!
Read it here.
EXPLORE, REFLECT, SPEAK UP.
- Chayka strikes a reasoned tone, citing multiple studies and quoting experts as he makes what amounts to a strong argument: using bots like ChatGPT leads to a “more semantically similar, more homogenized set of ideas.” Does Chayka consider any alternative perspectives? If so, what are they? In what ways does your own experience with chatbots help support, or deny, Chayka’s central claim? How effective do you find Chayka’s argument, and why?
- Chayka concludes the article with a story about asking MetaAI whether AI will “surpass human intelligence.” The chatbot provides four possibilities, all of them positive, leading Chayka to question whether “the chatbot was telling the whole story.” Why do you think Chayka chose this way to end the article? How well does it “clinch” the argument he is making? Explain your answer using details from the article.
- LET’S TALK. Take a closer look at paragraph 7 in Chayka’s article, where he writes about the relationship between AI and human creativity. With a small group, read this paragraph aloud and then use it as a springboard to talk about your own experiences using AI to spur creativity. Do your experiences align with the findings in this paragraph? How so?
- AND NOW WRITE. How successful has Chayka been at convincing you that AI tools “seem to exert a hypnotic effect” that can “override the writer’s own voice” in ways that lead to the homogenization of thought? Write a brief letter of response to Chayka, explaining how your own thinking, experience, and research lead you to agree or disagree with him. Or perhaps you partially agree and partially disagree. Regardless, explain why!
LetsTalkLibrary 