Every time I find myself wondering about AI I remind myself that in farming lingo it stands for 'Artificial Insemination'. Enough to keep me from that rabbit hole (as it were).
Great post, Alex! I've been making notes for a piece about AI, but you convinced me to burn those notes and feed the ashes to our Roomba. For what it's worth, though, those notes did include the term "moral panic." Great minds, Alex, great minds!
Two AI stories grabbed me this week. The first one was about how Clarkesworld had to temporarily close its submissions because the editor was overwhelmed with AI-written crap. The second story was about how Vanderbilt had to apologize to its students for sending an AI-written letter in response to the shooting at Michigan State. What's interesting about both of these stories, to me anyway, is that humanity was the real failure point.
For Clarkesworld, it was people outside of the sci-fi writing community using an AI to scale chaos. In other words, the sci-fi writers who see Clarkesworld as their hub kept doing their thing: reading, writing, submitting. But a bunch of people who, it seems, just don't know or care about writing, or fiction, or manners grabbed a new toy and fucked up a good thing, presumably for the lolz.
For Vanderbilt, it was just a really dumb decision by some comms pro who should've known better. Interesting because that same comms pro is, if the moral panic is to be believed, about to be replaced by the very tool that landed them in hot water. Also, I found it super rich that after weeks of higher ed peeps talking about how AI tools would lead to widespread cheating, it was actually a University that got caught cutting corners. But also, and I can't stress this enough, if any piece of corporate communications calls for humanity, it would a letter like that.
Which brings me to my point, I guess. I'm fascinated by AI. I think there's the potential to do some really interesting stuff, although I suspect that the applications aren't what we think they'll be because the conversation about the AI future, right now anyway, is a tech bro goat rodeo inside of PR clusterfuck. In other words, the conventional wisdom here is cooked and crooked and totally useless. And that's too bad. Because there's something to these tools, and if we could find a way to be a little more thoughtful, a little more compassionate, and maybe a little more respectful of each other, we could really put these AI tools to work making our lives better, such that everyone could spend time with the people who love them and maybe take them out for an imitation crab dinner. Wouldn't that be nice?
I mean, we live in a world where my fucking printer suicides if I install the wrong drivers, so I'm pretty skeptical about ZOMG THE ROBOTS ARE COMING111. Maybe if Chrome stops crashing when I use the right number of tabs,* I'll get excited about the power of machine intelligence
i agree about all the AI bullshit! it's the end of the world! it's the best thing ever! truthfully, though, it is probably going to usher in the end of civilization as we know it, but we had a pretty good run.
"The GOAT smarterchild" HAHAHA, I'm dying Alex (in a good way). I'm fully annoyed with the A.I. discourse too, but I hated the NFT one even more. I think I'm mostly annoyed by the way that both can and have been so harmful to real people (rich celebrities scamming the world by promoting their NFTs on late night talk shows, or how Art A.I. bots illegal scrape copyrighted art from the internet to create their images). It feels like most people are like "Yay! I push the button and it makes-a-pretty!" but they really should be like, "Yay! Large scale theft of starving artists!" ... My frustration on the topic goes too deep, for the sake of respecting your post title, I will stfu on the topic now!
New subscriber -- your KAI rant (Krab AI) sealed the deal. Only a free subscriber so no profile (thankfully) next week with "original art". As for AI, as a basketball lover, Allen Iverson and the great crossover makes the use by others of AI (whether intelligence or insemination) a weak play. All this nonsensical reporting of AI in the news. So far what the press has reported is bad writing and bad art. Yet again they bury the lead. Look up AIFold and what it means for all of us. Reminds me of the old sop that technology will be used for good and bad. I suppose we can just add inane. Social media is the place where the sods focus on the inane while the significant occurs in the background and people eventually come to a place where "yeah that is cool and amazing but I don't know how it works" -- they must've imbedded a chip inside it to control me). Looking forward to your next post where the abbreviation AI does not occur.
who's AI anyway
I would like to talk about how people feel the need to bundle imitation krab with cream cheese in a sushi roll like WHAT horror is this
JEEVES RIP
Every time I find myself wondering about AI I remind myself that in farming lingo it stands for 'Artificial Insemination'. Enough to keep me from that rabbit hole (as it were).
I'm so sorry I accidentally sent it to like six AIs before I got to the end where you asked me not to send it to any AIs.
Great post, Alex! I've been making notes for a piece about AI, but you convinced me to burn those notes and feed the ashes to our Roomba. For what it's worth, though, those notes did include the term "moral panic." Great minds, Alex, great minds!
Two AI stories grabbed me this week. The first one was about how Clarkesworld had to temporarily close its submissions because the editor was overwhelmed with AI-written crap. The second story was about how Vanderbilt had to apologize to its students for sending an AI-written letter in response to the shooting at Michigan State. What's interesting about both of these stories, to me anyway, is that humanity was the real failure point.
For Clarkesworld, it was people outside of the sci-fi writing community using an AI to scale chaos. In other words, the sci-fi writers who see Clarkesworld as their hub kept doing their thing: reading, writing, submitting. But a bunch of people who, it seems, just don't know or care about writing, or fiction, or manners grabbed a new toy and fucked up a good thing, presumably for the lolz.
For Vanderbilt, it was just a really dumb decision by some comms pro who should've known better. Interesting because that same comms pro is, if the moral panic is to be believed, about to be replaced by the very tool that landed them in hot water. Also, I found it super rich that after weeks of higher ed peeps talking about how AI tools would lead to widespread cheating, it was actually a University that got caught cutting corners. But also, and I can't stress this enough, if any piece of corporate communications calls for humanity, it would a letter like that.
Which brings me to my point, I guess. I'm fascinated by AI. I think there's the potential to do some really interesting stuff, although I suspect that the applications aren't what we think they'll be because the conversation about the AI future, right now anyway, is a tech bro goat rodeo inside of PR clusterfuck. In other words, the conventional wisdom here is cooked and crooked and totally useless. And that's too bad. Because there's something to these tools, and if we could find a way to be a little more thoughtful, a little more compassionate, and maybe a little more respectful of each other, we could really put these AI tools to work making our lives better, such that everyone could spend time with the people who love them and maybe take them out for an imitation crab dinner. Wouldn't that be nice?
I'm bookmarking this for eternity. And I just subscribed. AI sucks. Hard. Thank you.
You know I meant the other AI sucks, right? Damn, that is confusing.
You have no choice. As you said, it's in the name: All those in favor of AI, say AI.
I mean, we live in a world where my fucking printer suicides if I install the wrong drivers, so I'm pretty skeptical about ZOMG THE ROBOTS ARE COMING111. Maybe if Chrome stops crashing when I use the right number of tabs,* I'll get excited about the power of machine intelligence
*142
One of the extras in Home Alone 2 became president 😂🤣😂🤣 Fucking brilliant
I find imitation crab useful as a flag to identify sub-par rolls on a sushi menu.
You’ve convinced me. We need to start referring to “AI” as “Jeeves.” Bring back the Ask Jeeves Macy’s Parade float!
i agree about all the AI bullshit! it's the end of the world! it's the best thing ever! truthfully, though, it is probably going to usher in the end of civilization as we know it, but we had a pretty good run.
I think Siri should include affirmations with her directions. I’m always waiting for “good job” when I reach my destination, but it never comes.
"The GOAT smarterchild" HAHAHA, I'm dying Alex (in a good way). I'm fully annoyed with the A.I. discourse too, but I hated the NFT one even more. I think I'm mostly annoyed by the way that both can and have been so harmful to real people (rich celebrities scamming the world by promoting their NFTs on late night talk shows, or how Art A.I. bots illegal scrape copyrighted art from the internet to create their images). It feels like most people are like "Yay! I push the button and it makes-a-pretty!" but they really should be like, "Yay! Large scale theft of starving artists!" ... My frustration on the topic goes too deep, for the sake of respecting your post title, I will stfu on the topic now!
New subscriber -- your KAI rant (Krab AI) sealed the deal. Only a free subscriber so no profile (thankfully) next week with "original art". As for AI, as a basketball lover, Allen Iverson and the great crossover makes the use by others of AI (whether intelligence or insemination) a weak play. All this nonsensical reporting of AI in the news. So far what the press has reported is bad writing and bad art. Yet again they bury the lead. Look up AIFold and what it means for all of us. Reminds me of the old sop that technology will be used for good and bad. I suppose we can just add inane. Social media is the place where the sods focus on the inane while the significant occurs in the background and people eventually come to a place where "yeah that is cool and amazing but I don't know how it works" -- they must've imbedded a chip inside it to control me). Looking forward to your next post where the abbreviation AI does not occur.