Future Tense

Future Tense

The Feedback Loop We Can't Exit

What we're selecting for while we pretend we're still choosing

A Z Mackay's avatar
A Z Mackay
Sep 10, 2025
∙ Paid

At Oxford, researchers fed a model its own outputs until it forgot cathedrals. Medieval architecture became training data became generated text became new training data. By iteration nine, when asked about flying buttresses, it wrote about jackrabbits with the confidence of a tech CEO explaining blockchain.

Not confused jackrabbits. Not jackrabbits as ar…

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