Tag: AI

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 (AI-generated anything) in the future, and there is one such image in another blog post that will be removed shortly.

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 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 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 authenticity 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 others write. Let the reader beware, and let the writer be real.

The Approaching Authentipause

The heliopause is the point in space, outside of our solar system, beyond which the solar wind from our heliosphere can no longer counteract the incoming flow of interstellar wind.

We can imagine an “authentipause”—somewhat similar to the concept of the heliopause—which is the point beyond which the flow of reality and facts flowing outward from our real world of carbon-based sentient beings—I will call it the “authentisphere”—can no longer successfully counteract the force of fake things flowing in from the outer sphere (the illusionosphere or fake-osphere), which is populated by AI and AI-generated illusions, essentially a world of fake nonsense generated by computer code running in silicon-based entities, but still, as of this writing, under the nominal control of their carbon-based owners. That might change sometime.

The authentipause is clearly moving inward at an accelerating pace, effectively shrinking the authentisphere we have become used to inhabiting and enveloping us in an environment in which fake overtakes real. That is already becoming the case in numerous online venues, and social media, a great promoter of fake AI-generated nonsense, is helping that happen.

The authentisphere. Enjoy while you can. Not too far in the future, we may look back on it fondly in the rear-view mirror.