Category: Technology

Various technology topics, not limited to the overhyped AI nonsense.

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.

De-AIification

Recently, I had two images on my parent business website that I generated using AI, meaning that I am guilty of causing the associated energy use to create non-essential images. I have taken them down and commit to not using AI-generated images (or AI-generated anything) in the future.

Oh, and unlike countless people active in cyberspace, I do not steal images of any sort and unlawfully republish them in cyberspace without permission of the owner.

Unlawful use of copyrighted material—including images—is rampant in cyberspace. The almost guaranteed anonymity and unreachability of the offenders has led people to make their peace with, meaning surrender to, this unlawful behavior, and I don’t think a system with accountability is going to appear any time soon.

Cyberspace is a lawless land, and that lawlessness destroys trust and fattens the bank accounts of cyber-oligarchs with no demonstrable socially redeeming qualities.

Would you like some AI help writing that note? No, I’m good.

There is a great deal of discussion these days about silicon-based AI helping carbon-based individuals write. I do not use any of the many available online AI writing assistants.

While I wasn’t looking, however, Apple installed just such an AI feature right on my iPhone. Now, when I write a note off-line, I am presented with the option of having it rewritten, including selecting one of a few styles, and even giving the writing tool my own instructions on how to rewrite what I have written.

As a test, for one note, although it was not a plea for assistance, I told it to “make this sound like a plea for assistance.” It worked, but the result was written in a style that is not mine and with expressions that I never use.

The availability of such functions on a device that almost everybody already owns raises the specter of a world in which many people are able to write things that, well, they are not able to write, and in a way they are not able to write them (or write anything, perhaps), and this could suggest a persona that they cannot rightly claim as theirs. Essentially, it is AI-assisted persona spoofing.

This does not bode well for either people whose livelihoods depend upon writing or people who must judge others or make decisions based on what they write. Let the reader beware, and let the writer be real.