Kate Davies did something that, for all its hype, I bet AI boosters do very little of. She actually listened to a bunch of AI podcast slop generated by some company with huge ambition, promises about changing the world, and a long tech pedigree.
But it sucks. It all sucks. And worse, it’s all bullshit. It’s kind of based on some loose facts, but it fills all the nuance and stories history of knitting with even-keeled, feel-good bullshit that helps nobody. Davies is preparing us for what’s coming to a lot of communities. For being a generative technology, we can expect AI to be plenty destructive.
Our community has spent so many years building something of genuine human value: a shared body of knowledge, cultural meaning and careful critique all of which lend considerable discursive depth and richness to what we do. But in the brave new world of Knitting Bullshit, all of that accumulated wisdom, all of the real history of knitting as labour, as resistance, as solidarity, as design intelligence, as craft, is now there simply to provide the powerful emotional currency that AI-generated podcasts and videos cynically mine for profit.