Astonnishment

The Superbly Tailored, but Ultimately Meaningless Language of AI

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/This article is going to be long. Get something to drink and happy reading. Oh, by the way: It’s not written with the help of AI and all the mistakes herein were made by a human, but the meaning and the words of this article comes from that human’s heart. So, it’s true magic.

Artificial intelligence is all the latest rage. Everybody is jumping on this bandwagon to make money, test it out, use it to write their grade 12 essays or simply to spread false information — I am amazed that the wagon did not collapse yet under the weight of its own importance.

Before you start shouting and howling at me for being an AI hater, please Google “Virtual assistant for the blind” and read some of the articles on there. By reading, I mean actually taking time and reading them — don’t read them like you would kiss your mother-in-law’s cheek. AI can do good and it is already doing good.

I don’t have a problem with AI — in fact, I sometimes use it to get image descriptions and ideas when composing some kind of documents. I have also used the Bing Image Creator to create an image that you can have a look at below, but that’s where my use of AI stops. When I am writing blog articles, Tweets, Toots or Facebook posts, then every thought, every word and every feeling is mine — mistakes and all.

AI Generated: Lion Standing on a Rock at Sunset

According to people with vision, it is almost photorealistic.. and it was created using AI. I am, therefore, using AI as a tool. I have seen books written with the aid of AI. I have seen people use it in business proposals — not to create ideas, but to write an executive summary. Well, guess what?

I can immediately see the style differences. Look at the formal language something like Chat-GPT from OpenAI uses.

I imagined myself as a manager in a company. I then asked it to help me to compile an email to Mister XYZ to apologize for an imaginary faulty product. It did an excellent, excellent job, but there was one issue so serious for me, that I have decided not to use Chat GPT in a business context ever again: The language.

The language it used was of a very, very high register. It used lots of hyperboles and overly flowery language to say the following: We are sorry for the bad customer experience you had as well as for the faulty product. We hope you will give us a chance to improve and that you will enjoy your free replacement product.

But it used about a hundred and fifty words to profusely apologize to this client — almost licking his ass and begging him to please give us a second chance to prove that we will and can do better and that we are sorry we pissed on his bedroom carpet, but he must please understand that we are just a small puppy and that we are, truly, deeply, unchangeably so, so very sorry.

I almost had to replace my computer keyboard as I had to fight to keep my last meal from leaving my body violently, suddenly and all over the place, via my face. The taste of that fawning, meaningless apology stuck in my throat like the smell of cheap perfume on your skin after you hugged your mother’s eldest cousin’s daughter at your last family reunion. You try to wash it off under the shower, just like you’re trying to wash off the self-guilt from your soul for not contacting her more, but scrub as you might, the smell lingers…

The language that came from it was so formal and stiff, that I doubt that even the king of England could have done better. In fact, it sounded more like a PHD in linguistics than a true apology. Or, perhaps, the manager hired a professor to write his correspondence. How can this ever be believable?

I have seen AI posts on many other places and, especially when I know the person behind the words personally, I can immediately tell if this text was AI generated, partially or not. I am not claiming to be the world’s expert on spotting AI-generated text, but I was a lecturer in translation studies for five-and-a-half years before coming to the accessibility sector. Style and register are baked into my DNA and it’s something I still pick up on ten years down the line…

Yes, it’s true that you can tell Chat to lower the register. You can even tell it to do a lot of other things. But it’s not magic.

Whenever I see posts written with the aid of AI, I don’t take them entirely seriously — especially if I know the person behind the text — from the way he or she dresses, smells and speaks..

But why?

AI is a tool. It is up to us to choose how we will use it. It’s like a gun or a knife. It could rescue or it could kill. It could feed or it could deprive. It’s the human behind the tool that makes the difference. It is for this reason that I take AI-generated texts a little less serious.

True creativity, true magic, comes from the heart — not the head. Any fool with enough skills can ask a computer to write an executive summary, a poem, a story or an apology. But it comes from the head and not the heart.

AI can do what we can do is less time than the blink of an eye. It can save you a huge amount of time, if you use it correctly. But don’t overuse it. Don’t become so dependent on it that you will miss it when it’s gone.

If you need to write a simple Facebook post and you find that you can’t do it without AI, you fucked yourself over. If you haven’t written the executive summary for tomorrow, because AI will help you tonight, but the internet is down, then let me congratulate you on fucking yourself and your company well and truly over. Don’t blame AI; it’s a machine. It doesn’t have feelings and it doesn’t have original ideas or creativity. What it does have, is its controller’s or programmer’s view of the world with their idea of morality or immorality.

While using AI, look at its language. Is this the way you would speak to your friends? So stiff and formal? Do you think they will believe that it’s you — should you present the text to them in printed form — making as if you were the only person who wrote it. No, they won’t.

I would rather have a mediocre piece of human-constructed reading — with all the stylistic, grammatical and spelling mistakes — than a machine-generated piece of superbly tailored unfeeling and non-magical shit.

Be proud of your writing — mistakes and all. You are human, just like me. Humans are known for their mistakes and their fallibility. Look at your house built of words and know that it is well and truly yours and that you meant ninety nine percent of it.

Look at the example below. First is my query, then the responce. It assumes that I am a manager. If one of my colleagues were to write me an email like this and wanting me to report back to them, I will certainly be the hell in with them and ask them, in a kind and controlled manner, just who the fuck they think they are?

Help me to compose an email to a colleague, Rose, asking her to contact a prospective customer by the name of Mister Kotlavski who expressed an interest in our training. His contact number is 0123456780
Dear Rose,
I hope this email finds you well. I wanted to reach out to you regarding a prospective customer who has expressed interest in our training program. His name is Mister Kotlavski and he has provided us with his contact number which is 0123456780.
I was wondering if you could take the lead on reaching out to him and providing him with further information about our training program. If he has any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to address them and provide him with the necessary assistance.
Please keep me informed of any progress made in this matter. I am looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Best regards,
[Your name]

The Furries Phenomenon

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Whatever you do behind closed doors as an adult is your business. I don’t hate furries; live and let live and all of that, but for children to use something like this as an excuse is just fucked-up.

I was creating a Mastodon account and I found a server for furries. I checked it out and you won’t believe what I found. I googled it and found the following from a dictionary definition: an enthusiast for animal characters with human characteristics, in particular a person who dresses up in costume as such a character or uses one as an avatar online.

Not so bad, hey? But a bit further down the page I found an article about an 8th year female Sidney student who thinks she’s a cat – trying to support and justify her behavior. They also tell the story about a boy who thought of himself and identified himself as being a dog.

My mouth was hanging open and drool was dripping from my lips onto my computer keyboard, but the worst was still to come…

Allegations were made against a school in the US by a lady. She said that the school provided litterboxes to students who thought they were animals. These allegations were denied, but where there is smoke…

Our future has too much time on their hands — time they don’t use constructively, because they don’t know how. They are exposed to social media and the world wide web and everything it contains. Children don’t play outside any more, because there is television and games to keep them busy. There is also the criminal element to keep in mind — especially in South Africa where a life is worth less than a cell phone. It’s time for us to step up to our future and do one of two things: Either give it the hiding of a lifetime or go out and buy pet food. Either solution will work. One day with only pet food to eat, no snacks, bed, toilet, television, cell phones and the other amenities of human civilization and I can virtually guarantee you that our future will look at life, the universe and everything, a bit differently.

But this is not only limited to our future, but also to our current and our previous generations as, according to the article, even elderly people believe themselves to be animals. And did I tell you about the school uniforms with the hole at the back for a tail?

The author of the article used the words “romanticized animals”. These obviously come from television, books and movies where animals can talk, they can help you if you are in trouble and where a lion is a noble beast. It’s up to us to put the record straight and teach our future that a lion will probably kill you out in the bush, that an elephant will stomp on you and that a wild cat will claw out your eyes if provoked. We are allowing our future to watch this kind of shit, so we need to put it straight.

If you ever get the chance to get close to a lion, do it. Smell the air. A lion really fucking stinks – just like our future does now. And, if you still don’t get it, I am using the word “Children” and “our future” interchangeably, because they really are humanity’s future.

What are we thinking? Are we so scared of our children that we are willing to put up with this shit? Our future is in jeopardy, people. Society is degrading at a rapid and rapidly accelerating pace. What are we going to do? What can we do? And this is where the psychologist takes the stage saying to the Furry:

“It’s fine. We understand that you have stresses in your life. We understand that you will take great offence should you get a hiding or get pet food for dinner. We also understand that you may be too fucking lazy to do exercises in a gym or at home to get rid of these stresses. It’s OK. We will talk about these stresses once per week for however long I feel it’s necessary and for however long your medical insurance will allow.”

It’s not that I hate psychology, I just don’t like it very much. Please read the previous sentence again: It’s not that I hate psychology, I just don’t like it very much and I have nothing against most of the people in the profession – just a lot against the profession.

I also pretended that I was a horse or a lion or even a ship when I was a kid, but when I went home, the fun was over, and I was a little boy again. I never felt that I needed to wear a costume or use my behavior as an excuse for the way I acted.

Dear Jesus (I am saying this with the greatest respect), please have mercy on us for I believe we don’t know what we’re doing. I am the last person to go through life with the Bible under my arm, but I do come from a Christian background – more particularly the NG church. This has made me change my views on religion somewhat – perhaps a topic for later discussion. All I am trying to say is: Be glad I am not God. I would be tempted to wipe the slate clean and start over…