Category: Technology

More AI Snake Oil

In a recent BBC report of an interview with Google (Alphabet) boss Sundar Pichai, we see Pichai repeating the nonsense spewed by numerous AI tech bros in attempts to allay fears of AI disruption.

Pichai says that AI will also affect work as we know it, calling it “the most profound technology” humankind had worked on. Well, perhaps that part of his comments is correct.

“We will have to work through societal disruptions,” he said, adding that it would also “create new opportunities”.

One person’s manageable disruption is another’s total disastrous loss of earning power.

There are people who have been successful in a number of specific careers who will not be offered or be able to take those “new opportunities.” Many are already being deprived of work and income, by being replaced by AI. Opportunities will be provided to others, perhaps, but certain careers will simply disappear; translation is one of them. Change is coming much too fast for some groups to keep up. The notion that translation will continue as a career is clearly delusional.

“It will evolve and transition certain jobs, and people will need to adapt,” he said. Those who do adapt to AI “will do better”.

Transition? Adapt? What do translators transition to and how do they adapt? By accepting post-editing work at one-fifth the word rate (and certainly not anywhere near a compensating five-fold increase in throughput)? And that doesn’t even address the issue of mind-numbing post-editing work. Most translators will not be able to survive by adapting to AI or even adopting AI themselves, because they have been habitualized by their clients to working only for a client demographic one tier above them on the food chain, and that client demographic is currently using AI to replace them. Freelancers have arguably allowed themselves to be isolated from translation consumers that have not yet adopted AI. AI will be of no avail without clients that are not using AI, and that includes acting as the “human in the loop,” the snake oil sold by the major translation brokers that control most of the translation market.

“It doesn’t matter whether you want to be a teacher [or] a doctor. All those professions will be around, but the people who will do well in each of those professions are people who learn how to use these tools.”

This could very well be true for some professions. As noted above, however, freelance translating is not one of them, as is already being demonstrated to be the case, with large numbers of translators trapped into non-translation functions that pay extremely poorly, if they even have that left as their clients replace them with AI.

The outlook is bleak. More and more translators are coming to realize that, but numerous translation organizations appear to hang onto the delusion that this storm can be ridden out; it cannot. When it passes, it will leave a barren wasteland in its path, with very few translators left standing.

And just when I thought people couldn’t get any dumber…

Someone actually wrote this in a public post on the LinkedIn social media platform (and it is a social media platform):

And now, I feel like NOT using AI to help you edit, tighten ‘grafs or offer a reality check is sort of like using a typewriter when everyone else is using a Word Processor or Word Perfect or MS Word.

Asking AI to do a reality check? This is a breathtakingly dumb thing to say in an attempt to demonstrate that the author is “embracing” the technology.

A business plan for people short on skills and ideas, and not willing to spend time writing.

Give a prompt to ChatGPTx as follows:

“Write 300 words about [insert name of a well-known person, a totally unknown person, or even a fictitious person, a movie, a historical event, or just about anything that has something to do with—or nothing to do with—you or the social media platform you’re on].”

Countless variations are possible and are recommended for best effect.

The requested “content” will be generated immediately, and you can copy-and-paste it into an anonymous or pseudonymous social media account to attract engagement, which could be hundreds of comments, or even thousands if the post includes politically controversial content. An important element to include in each of your posts is either a photo you steal (no need to ask permission for republishing—remember you’re anonymous and not going to be held accountable) or an AI-generated image.

This works on most social media platforms, which essentially guarantee that you can remain anonymous and unaccountable. These days, although truly anonymous accounts might seem difficult on LinkedIn, many people have overcome this problem, and even LinkedIn is demonstrating itself to be as good a place as any to drop your slop.

After a while, when the account has accumulated enough engagement on numerous such slop posts, you can sell the account for repurposing by someone else, but that won’t be obvious to subsequent visitors, because the account will remain anonymous or pseudonymous after the sale as well. I have seen ads for places willing to purchase or rent your LinkedIn account, provided it has a record of high engagement levels.

Alternatively, you can keep the account and hope that people will click on your other social media links. You can include a fake physical address without a problem, with confidence that nobody is going to show up there and find out it doesn’t exist. It doesn’t matter. In fact, nothing matters in this business model, which is precisely its charm.

And you can make as many of these anonymous accounts as you want, with each posting countless meaningless buckets of AI slop every day.

What the fuck wrong with people? And I’m also—particularly, in fact—including those people who, because of their stupidity and credulity, actually engage with this AI-generated garbage, often created by wretches who have nothing to offer other than endless demonstrations that, well, they have nothing to offer.

Again, what is wrong with people? Lots of things, it seems, and that’s on both sides of the ocean of AI slop that has flooded the online places some people think are real and have come to rely on, often as a replacement for real-world interaction with other members of their species. These people need to get out more.