Emanuele Murgolo

The Death of the Student Essay—and the Future of Cognition One professor's reflections on the end of an era, as AI tools such as ChatGPT have murdered the student essay (RIP). Here's why that threatens the future of human cognition—and how to save ourselves.

After the latest round of grading papers, I wrote about AI, ChatGPT, the death of the student essay, and what it means for the future of human cognition.

To end it, we protest because we have a different vision of what Barna should be, and who it should mostly cater to. Tourists can be welcome, but the price cannot be the disruption we're seeing. We know that there is not a panacea, and we are asking for many solutions from our instutitions
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On a side note, people more versed on the issue could write a dissertation on the effect this is having on Catalan in Barcelona, which is dying also due to these processes. The disruptions are multidimensional and the concerns are hardly limited to housing 8/n

We'd like a city where we know we can live without the threat of our houses, for those who have one, bought by foreign funds and converted in short-term rentals in the name of profit. We don't want to see our neighbors evicted, and replaced by tourists with no connection to our community 7/n

We are not NIMBYs. Build more housing if it can help. But acknowledge that what we ask is that politics change its projects for this city: we want Barna to be by locals, for locals. We want a city where the main objective is not to attract tourists or expats with 10k$ salaries 6/n

I'd add to the matter that in the urban area of Barna, 1.6mln people live in 100km2. Close to where I live lies the densest km2 in Europe, with 50k people residing there, in the contiguous city of L'Hospitalet. The city is packed. While as I mentioned in the post above, many apartments are empty 5/n

I do not find it helpful to patronize us like we're some morons looking at the finger (airbnb) instead of the moon (building housing). We also want to see more (public) housing being built/converted. We'd also like to see the thousands of empty houses being filled with families in need 4/n

The result of this, btw, is not just higher rents and the displacement of locals. It's daily evictions of (mostly) marginalized people. It's gentrified neighborhoods that lose their community ties and their networks. And neighbors who are forced to leave are cut out from these networks too 3/n

Short-term rentals are a problem. Overtourism is a reality that at times feels suffocating. Expats who come to live here with much higher salaries than locals are also an issue which we wish could be regulated. Foreign 'vulture' funds buying housing to put it on airbnb is another huge concern 2/n

I really wish people could avoid superficiality when talking about the (massive) housing problem in Barna. Banning short-term rentals is not a panacea, we know. But our struggle is bigger and it is, broadly, to have housing recognized as a fundamental right, rather than a for-profit commodity 1/n