The Death Of The Gatekeeper

Tuesday, May 19, 2026

Long ago, when blogging first became “a thing” there was this debate about gatekeeping.  With blogging it seemed anyone could decide what was news and what wasn’t.  It was called the “democratization of information.”  For a while there the “blogosphere” started to organize and new gatekeepers arose – puncturing the monopoly held by the NYTimes, WaPo, and the TV networks.  But then along came Twitter – not even permitting a word count sufficient for actual reporting – and things have never been the same since.  Much to our detriment.

One of the reasons I studied chemistry during my educational years was that there were no gatekeepers.  There was simply the right answer or the wrong answer and which was which was independent of the professor.  That was not true in the humanities where profs exercised a gatekeeping role – Shakespeare was a good writer, perhaps even the best writer ever, was a truth maintained by the gatekeepers of the university.  If you disagreed, well, you clearly were not meant to be an English major.

And so, even as truth became fungible in the news business, driven by Twitter, one thought ultimate truth would win out because of our academic gatekeepers.  But they have had their own erosive forces to deal with.  When I was in school we transitioned from the slide rule to the calculator.  It was argued that by the time you reached college calculational expertise was established so why not use the short cut?  Perhaps.  But I know a lot of college students these days that do not know beans about logarithms which were the foundation of how a slide rule worked and show up repeatedly in very high level scientific theory.  And so an upper division physics or physical chemistry prof now has to take time out of his or syllabus to teach logarithms to students that in my day knew them instinctively.  Likewise trigonometry is no longer emphasized as its primary use was in surveying and now the calculator in the machine does all that work.  And so, when teaching waveform analysis, profs have to teach students about sine, cosine and tangent which in my day was taught in high school.  These disciplines were more than just mathematical tools – they taught rigorous thought and problem solving.

But if I thought the calculator was educationally erosive, these days are hard to believe:

Last week I wrote about what AI had done to the 130-year-old honor code at Princeton. That code, which was instituted in the 1890s, required professors to step outside of classrooms during exams as a sign of how much they trusted the honestly of their undergrads. Last week, Princeton reversed course. Professors will now remain in classrooms and take notes on anyone who seems to be cheating using AI.

Yesterday a senior at Stanford told nearly the same story about his school. Stanford also has a 100-year-old honor code and, according to Theo Baker, that code is now being routinely violated by students taking advantage of ChatGPT to complete assignments.

So much for the academic gatekeepers.  And the worst part is AI is not smart – AI is an agglomeration of everything on the internet, good and bad.  It weighs the veracity of information not against a standard, but by popularity.  And so we get stuff like this:

Roughly 1 in 3 Democratic respondents in a Newsguard survey said they believed the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting “event was staged, compared with about 1 in 8 Republicans.”

We have arguments about whether there is a revival in church attendance or not –  something that should be a matter of fact, not interpretation.  SCOTUS packing, an idea long ago repudiated, once again takes hold.  We tremble in fear about the next pandemic when the last one was grossly overblown.  And worst of all, the oldest discrimination and hatred in human history raises its ugly head anew.  And hatred does not ease through the barrier of reason and truth, it destroys it altogether.

But the internet, social media and AI are not the problem.  They are but tools – it is their utilization that is at issue.  Well, that and human nature.  We use those tools wrongly because we are naturally lazy and prejudice.  Let’s not blame the tools, let’s put the blame where it belongs – on us.  Let’s learn how to use the tools properly and how and when to teach others that same thing.

There used to be an incredibly useful tool for any woodworker commonly available -the radial arm saw.  Nowadays you can only find them available through industrial distributers clearly designed only for use by professionals, feature filled and very high priced.  Gone are the days you could buy one at the hardware store within reach of the average DIY guy.  Why? Well, properly used they are an incredible tool – in the hands of the average DIY guy they are a good way for him to get seriously hurt – or dead.  Regulation did not create this change – common sense and the marketplace did.  That is what is called for here – but it has to happen quickly.