As an internationally renowned blogger – in the last week, Eclectic Blue has had views from places like Canada, Australia, Singapore and France, I’ll have you know – I find myself in demand from people who seek to make the blog more popular and lucrative, and not of course people who wish to make money from me, oh no. “I can help you make money,” say these people, who seem to have no on-line imprint. Well, it would be handy but I have suspicions that perhaps I would be wasting my time and money. Increasingly, I get correspondence from persons and companies saying that my work could be greatly improved if I was only to use Artificial Intelligence (AI).
For all I know, that may well be the case. I am the first to admit that my work can suffer from typos and mangled grammar, as well as, it has to be said, piss-poor content. And AI is already in use via numerous media platforms, including a local newspaper which recently published an interview with an old friend which had never taken place. The content appeared to be accurate and indeed well written, but it wasn’t written by a human being.
I suppose if I was to publish a blog, say, which was put together with the help of AI, the words might not be mine, the point of the blog might well have a version of what I was wanting to say but at least it would be genuinely published by me. I do have issues about this sort of thing, namely that it would be dishonest and potentially fraudulent to do it. My work would certainly benefit from the attention of a sub-editor, which I think would be fair enough, but rewriting it in its entirety? Not so much.
It’s not just humble blogs like this one, which could be taken over by AI. In 20 years, experts believe that aspects of AI will be far smarter than actual real human beings. If AI somehow concluded that all human life was a waste of life and resources, could it not be the end of the world as we know it? That’s a slightly bigger subject that technology tweaking my blogs and worse than that it’s not impossible. In the long term, it’s not unlikely, either.
The effects of AI are everywhere, not least on social media. Someone I know shared an amusing photo recently on Facebook and, as I am wont to do, I went to the page where it originally came from. I was not at all surprised to be confronted by a barrage of misinformation and AI generated pictures. It’s insidious. We’re drawn in by something we like and next we are surrounded by fakery. And the point about the internet is that because something is on it, then whatever it is must be true.
I am so cynical these days, I often look at something and my first reaction is, can this be real and true? Then, satisfied that it probably is, I work back and look at it or read it. Given the shit show that is the British media these days, I’m afraid we should approach most outlets as if they were a UXB.
What you read on this blog might be shit, but it is all my shit, every single word, warts and all. We are now in a world where much of what we see isn’t true or real. If we don’t want the world to end, as AI might one day decree that it should, maybe we should all be far more discerning in what we consume. Would they lie to you? You bet they would.
