Tag: Global South

New LinkedIn-Based Business Plan

This business plan is predicated on a move to a Global South location, from which you can post on LinkedIn to advertise your coaching regarding:

  • how to succeed on LinkedIn (without feeling the need to explain what that might mean);
  • the differences between AI models (using pretty graphics to demonstrate the value you provide by bringing something that is obvious and easy-to-find elsewhere to the forefront in easy-to-understand terms);
  • how to prompt AI models (presented as the essential key to survival and triumphing over your rivals);
  • how translation is not the replacement of words in one language with those of another (a strawman argument presented in the hope that readers won’t realize that people with real money to spend on translation already know that);
  • how human translators are still needed because they understand and can bridge cultures (as if any more than a tiny portion of translation that is paid for has any cultural aspects or concerns);
  • how translators need to transform themselves to take on the new tasks, which it turns out are mostly training AI or fixing AI output at rates that you would only be happy with after you moved to and accustomed yourself to your new home in the Global South);
  • how to translate from any language to any language using AI;
  • how to do “digital marketing;” or
  • any combination of the above, preferably not promoted in the same post.

Then you just need to wait for the engagement and the money to roll in. Ain’t LinkedIn great? For what, you ask?

Desperation drives a lot of LinkedIn posts from the global south.

My LinkedIn feed is inundated with posts from people with whom I share no business or language interests. They are mostly from the Global South and mostly AI-generated slop, and the low value of the posts is disturbing.

Why is it that the majority of LinkedIn post mentioning Japan that are fed to me by Microsoft are from accounts of people who are not in Japan, including many in the Global South, who are very unlikely to ever be able to come to Japan?

If you don’t know the answer to that question, you need to spend a bit of time thinking about LinkedIn and the demographics of desperate LinkedIn users.

Many LinkedIn users in the global south will never have the opportunity to visit locations such as Japan, but post in the hope that AI-generated or even human-generated Japan-related slop will attract engagement and perhaps income. That is highly unlikely, but such is the LinkedIn world of desperation.

What has cyberspace turned into?

On “normal” social media platforms:

  • AI-generated videos of UK royalty dancing with their royal children.
  • Crotch shots of AI-generated female athletes with definition in the crotch area that would get them disqualified from whatever AI-generated event they were going to compete in.
  • AI-generated dogs saving the lives of AI-generated babies.
  • AI-generated aircraft crashing onto the decks of AI-generated aircraft carriers.
  • AI-generated cars crashing into AI-generated trailer trucks.
  • AI-generated animals having AI-generated foreign objects removed from their skin by AI-generated veterinarians, this becoming common recently, along with many more, even more-revolting fake videos involving animals.
  • A constant stream of AI text slop from places like India, Macedonia, Pakistan, Cambodia, and Vietnam, often accompanied by unlawfully published photos, the poster neither giving credit for the images nor citing sources, and the slopper certainly not having permission to use the images.
  • A constant stream of ads—mostly confirmable as coming from Vietnam—for WiFi connection equipment and services in Japan, clearly aimed at Asian laborers who have been brokered into Japan to work.
  • Loan-shark ads aimed at foreign laborers working in Japan.
  • AI-generated voices of well-known people on a video of two seconds of the person to establish “authenticity” and continuing for several minutes with the faked voice but without any image, because the lip movement would give it away instantly. There are countless fake Neil deGrasse Tyson videos like this. The voice is very close, but the cadence of the fake narration clearly is not his. He has recently called this out in a video of his own, pointing out the damage this does to trust. This theft of images and spoofing of voices is criminal, but will go unpunished, thanks to the guaranteed anonymity of social media and apathy of users, many of whom have been numbed to this behavior by a torrent of unlawful posts.
  • Inspirational stories that never happened, mostly from places like Macedonia.
  • Ads claiming to sell you the method of getting rich quickly using ChatGPT. One recent testimonial boasts of being able to buy a luxury car and a home after just two months of stock market investment using ChatGPT.
  • Ads for underground banks aimed at Asian laborers in Japan who want to repatriate money they earn in Japan.

On some platforms, video slop you didn’t ask for and don’t need will autoplay after you watch something that you have actually elected to watch, requiring you to escape to avoid seeing it.

From the LinkedIn social media platform in particular—and it is as social media platform:

  • Vapid AI slop posts with both text and graphics generated AI, the subject matter of which most often being totally unrelated to what the poster purports to do when they are not generating AI slop.
  • AI-smelling text posts that evoke many comments, with each comment being replied to by AI, the replies being within a word or two of each other in length.
  • Microsoft-suggested posts promoting AI or promoting AI promoters.
  • Ads promoting AI.
  • Posts from soon-to-be-out-of-work translators claiming that AI will not replace human translators because AI doesn’t understand culture.
  • Unwanted irrelevant connection requests, mostly from the Global South (although I have fixed that problem).
  • Ads for paid webinars run or promoted by translation organizations to teach translators how to succeed and be better at jobs, although those jobs are quickly disappearing.
  • Translators’ organizations announcing activities of little or no relevance to translators working in the high-demand mainstream domains that are rapidly shrinking because of AI-using agencies.
  • Constant non-productive and futile complaints from freelance translators about this or that agency, this preaching to the choir constituting a waste of attention and time that could be better spent thinking about what to do next (hint: for most, it’s not freelance translation or probably translation at all).
  • Investment scam ads (including investment in mango plantations).
  • Ads for homes in Dubai for USD 1 million.

There you have it. Who could ask for anything more? More importantly, who asked for any of this?