The real problem posed by ChatGPT and its clones is that they works by recombining existing threads of thought into new presentations, just like a human writer does as rewrite “men” do in a newspaper city room.

That’s not the problem. The problem is that, as AI-generated material begins to dominate the collected database of all information, the AI bots will begin recombining existing threads that were created by the ChatGPT during previous iterations. This type of recursive re-looping results in a saturation of the intellectual environment with an ever-increasing amount of unpoliced and unpoliceable data that may or not be true, may or may not be applicable, or might actually be inadvertent misinformation or deliberate disinformation.

These recursive recombinations will eventually have the net effect of freezing human civilization with a cortex of data that will so far outstretch our ability to consume information that the result will be total confusion.