Keeping the Cultural Uplands Alive (jaymollica.com)

In a recent profile, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, acknowledged the complexities surrounding large language models, emphasizing the industry's lack of transparency and understanding regarding these technologies. This reluctance to clarify how AI systems operate and evolve raises concerns about governance and control at a time when such technologies are increasingly influential. Altman's perspective reflects a broader trend where opaque technologies render users more legible to systems that are deliberately hidden from them, exacerbating asymmetries in power and interpretive labor between institutions and individuals. This emerging "legibility regime," now penetrating various sectors, threatens to undermine cultural institutions like museums, which historically acted as conduits for avant-garde work that resisted commodification and categorization. As these institutions increasingly prioritize metrics and measurable outcomes, they risk alienating innovative, less quantifiable cultural expressions. The ongoing fracturing of audience trust in museums highlights the urgency for institutions to reclaim their role in safeguarding spaces for creative expression that defy neat categorization. The challenge for the future will be whether any institutions can maintain conditions for cultural illegibility while navigating the pervasive influences of AI and other technologies that seek to quantify and standardize creative output.