Exploring AI and the Concept of the 'Big Other'

In this episode, Ryan and Todd discuss the effect artificial intelligence is having on higher education, primarily through commentary on ChatGPT. They first discuss how immediacy and the elimination of labor are key to ChatGPT's appeal before moving to discuss how it produces an idea of what Lacan would term the Big Other and how its ruling logic is one of emergent consensus. They end by arguing that ChatGPT inverts Rick Boothby's axiom that "the Big Other doesn't know" and how that introduces a damaging psychic dilemma.