Your Scholarly Digest 7th August, 2025

Scholarly essentials hand-picked fortnightly for the mindful scholar

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Hi Scholar, 

It has been 1 year, 6 months and 20 days since the first edition of The Scholarly Letter was sent out on the 17th of January 2024. This is our 74th Letter to you.

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BRAIN FOOD

On Plastic and AI: A Cautionary Parallel

Unpacking the groceries after a recent supermarket run, my mum muttered, “It’s so annoying how they wrap everything in plastic, even a cucumber!” 

She’s not wrong. In the UK, as in many parts of the world, just about everything we buy at the supermarket, from mushrooms to mangoes, comes shrink-wrapped, sealed, or bagged in plastic. 

Of course, that plastic is overused and over-relied upon – not just in the UK, but globally – and that this overuse has had dangerous consequences for the environment is hardly a novel observation. What was once, and in some ways still is, a revolutionary invention has infiltrated our lives so completely that it’s now the very thing choking us and the planet. This isn’t a hot take. It’s so commonly accepted I haven’t even bothered to “cite” it.

What struck me though – and why this moment sparked this week’s Brain Food – is the parallel between our use of plastic and our use of AI.

Can we really deny that the invention of generative AI is revolutionary? Some of you might respond with a familiar critique: “It’s just a glorified auto-complete machine.” And while there’s some truth to that, perhaps such dismissals do a disservice to the immense scientific and scholarly work that made this technology possible. Belittling generative AI’s significance may not be the most scholarly response.

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