The speed of computers and the audacity of human greed may be multipliers, eh? I just barely saw it coming and now it may be blowing right by me:
On Amazon, you can buy a product called, “I’m sorry as an AI language model I cannot complete this task without the initial input. Please provide me with the necessary information to assist you further.” [WaPo]
Etc, on other platforms such as X (Twitter), Amazon, and various blogs, followed by:
Across the internet, such error messages have emerged as a telltale sign that the writer behind a given piece of content is not human. Generated by AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT when they get a request that goes against their policies, they are a comical yet ominous harbinger of an online world that is increasingly the product of AI-authored spam.
“It’s good that people have a laugh about it, because it is an educational experience about what’s going on,” said Mike Caulfield, who researches misinformation and digital literacy at the University of Washington. The latest AI language tools, he said, are powering a new generation of spammy, low-quality content that threatens to overwhelm the internet unless online platforms and regulators find ways to rein it in.
Spammy? Low-quality?
Heavens to betsy, our AI overlords are out to get us with … incompetence.
Here’s the thing: the only restraints on using AI are commercial. Governments can’t do much about this, and, worse, the AI overlords CEOs have enough money to throw the type of cash around that inhibits and even bans regulation, even by the Federal government.
In fact, Silicon Valley has already spawned political action groups in this election cycle, such as the anti-Biden Democratic PAC We Deserve Better[1], which I rather suspect wants Rep Phillips (D-MN) in the White House because he’s a businessman and seen as easily manipulable. Biden is a big ol’ vat of experience and suspicion of business.
So don’t depend on government to make the Web magically wonderful via AI.
Instead, everybody who thinks money is more important than authenticity and quality will be trying to employ AI to do their work for them, even when it’s not sensible. But ChatGPT and many of its competitors are just party tricks, dependent on the Web to generate answers.
There is a reminiscent flavor to all this, but not one the hipsters will relish.
Remember the mad cow crisis? It was quite a while back, so I’ll summarize. Beef tainted with dangerous prions suddenly came on the market, prompting fears and a crash of the beef market. The source of the dangerous prions? The feed of the cows had begun to include … cows. Cows now inadvertent cannibals, the dangeous prions were concentrated and then flooded the cow population, and consequently the beef markets. People caught the illness and became dangerously ill. Some died, others became comatose.
This is a notable analog. The AIs party trick computer tools will generate text that will be posted to … the … Web, which will then be harvested by the party trick computer tools again for posting … to … the … Web …
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Goodness. I am all a-lather to see the nature of the Web in five years. If it even exists. Or if there’ll be required classes in how to discern good information from bad information. For more on this topic, see here on why you’re just not that smart.
Meantime, on a personal note, I’ve been trying to cleanup my writing, condensing by using better words, stay away from dangling participles, all that rot. Seeing these notes on people frantic to avoid actually writing their own copy is alternately distressing and deeply amusing. Do they really want reputations as ding-bats?
I use that last word as a tribute to the hipsters, of course. Of course.
