Episode 03 · 1 September 2026 · 1 hr 3 min

Waiting hopefully for the enshittification to come

Patrick Adler, Noel Castree and Mark Carrigan on the new AI policy at Progress in Human Geography, what counts as authorship when a model is in the room, and why the political economy of AI may settle the question before the disciplines do.

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Speakers: Patrick Adler, University of Hong Kong · Noel Castree, University of Manchester · Mark Carrigan, University of Manchester
Discussed: Progress in human geography and AI: A policy statement, the editorial by Castree and colleagues
Transcript: 1 hr 3 min of conversation, in full. Generated by Zoom, edited by Claude Opus 5.

Three men on a beach at sunset — Noel Castree, Mark Carrigan and Patrick Adler — with a small robot marked D standing beside them, a red heart floating above it. — Generated by ChatGPT Images 2.0 (GPT Image 2)

Contents

What they talk about.

2:11What a review journal is for, and why that remit matters here
2:39A spike of submissions where AI use seemed clear
3:25Two papers published, readers who felt something was awry, and a corrigendum
4:38Eight desk rejects, and writing the editorial
5:47The discomfort of sensing something is wrong and being unable to demonstrate it
6:23Articulated norms make the problem legible rather than private
7:21The symmetry with what we already ask of students
9:53Putting a marker down: will we know if the policy has worked?
12:21Review journals as a special case worth protecting
14:08What counts as authorship, and what we add
16:16Reading the statement as epistemically realistic rather than restrictive
17:44The hill Mark would die on, and why he is becoming more pessimistic
18:56Publish-or-perish, and models designed to preempt intention
21:14Interrogating your own archive: going deeper rather than faster
22:50C. Wright Mills on intellectual craftsmanship
23:47Blanket prohibition as a strategy doomed to failure
25:52Would a thousand prompts against your own reading be permitted?
26:43Standing up for authorship, and where Noel parts company with Mark
28:41Tackle the ball or tackle the man: the industry behind the technology
29:51Professional norms as the middle ground between prohibition and drift
30:58An antagonist of posthumanism finds its critique of authorship relevant
31:27Epistemic agency as an alternative to reinscribing authorship
32:27Podcast ideas that end up in papers, and citation infrastructure
33:44Models offering contributions that do not feel like your own
37:28Authorship 1.0: social, but never crediting the books you read
38:21Authorship 2.0, and why treating a model as co-author is the problem
39:01Launched into the world: Wild West rollout and forced adaptation
39:41Cognitive offloading, and the antonym we do not have
41:55One of two things is locked in: IPO or the bubble bursts
42:47Blitzscaling without network effects
43:10The pricing shock, and assumptions upended within eighteen months
47:47On balance a destructive force, and where to attribute causation
50:57What does a post-AI university look like?
53:31The crash that might never come
53:39Doctorow's enshittification as a working model
54:49Inverting Mollick: these may be the best models we ever use
55:50Adverse selection: does a stricter policy crowd out good actors?
57:13Crash or enshittification, and a journal willing to change its policy
57:58Worse than nuclear weapons, because they are ubiquitous
58:40What bothers Noel as a parent
59:24Waiting hopefully for the enshittification to come
1:00:25Low tech, no tech, better tech
1:01:05Integrating with one hand, protecting spaces of judgment with the other
1:02:21Syllabus reform, with thanks to the tech overlords

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