[Seth Says] Clippy's Revenge
Tonight we feasted on various kinds of frozen (well, unfrozen and then steamed) shumai, and it occurs to me that dumpling should be a gerund. Dimpling sort of is if you think of it as "to smile such that dimples are created", so why not dumpling (even if it's a word that unfortunately sounds like it might describe a tiny defecation).
And speaking of creations that some people think are great and some think sound like crap:
AI MAKING BULLSHIT
As a general principle, I like the democratization of production. (I also like democracy in general, an apparently increasingly unpopular view in this country, albeit presumably not among the recipients of this newsletter.) If you want to be a filmmaker, or a rapper, or a writer, you CAN. You can record your own music, film your own shorts on your iphone, write and self-publish your own book, and no one can stop you.
But maybe they should, if you're going to be "creating" things by leveraging generative AI to uncreditedly steal the work of others. GenAI not only destroys the environment to steal the work of uncompensated creators, but is now filling the Internet with soulless crap. And with fake videos recently announced, it seems clear they will be used maliciously, for deepfakes, harassment, scams, and so forth.
The sheer scale of misinformation has also now permanently reduced the utility of the Internet -- not only because of all the fake videos purporting to be real, but because every real video will now be suspected of being fake. In a polarized society where people not only disagree on policy, but also disagree on matters of fact, this is only going to accelerate that problem.
OH NO HIM COMPLAIN AND NOT BE FUNNY
Why him do that? Him think talk like caveman make better? Maybe make better.
(Won't Seth just play Game With Four like many past time, when this dude just will talk with four upon each idea that will come into mind view? Will this call back from yore, days with crow nest pals, days when Josh made this game with Seth, make this news mail more good? Will Seth talk with four then yell that Seth just hate tech that will take arts work, won't give folk that made that work cash, won't even give them name cred, just take take take spew spew spew. Okay, game with four time will stop here.)
BUT THE SOUL STILL BURNS
I foolishly watched a video on my feed about how to become a 6-figure freelancer. (I mean, I've had six figures of income, just not in the same year, unless you're including the figures after the decimal point). 80-minute video about how to do so, which provided a grand total of 1 potentially useful piece of advice (reach out to companies with a warm and personal email that demonstrates your expertise and ends by asking for a call). (not original, but useful).
The problem with these courses is that they are mostly crap. And yet, ubiquitous. I suspect if you spend time on the Internet, you've seen courses advertising about how they will coach you to be a successful 6-figure freelancer, or coaching you to be a successful salesperson, or coaching you for something else. There are so many that last month I saw a course offering to coach you how to be a better coach, which is so obvious that I'm surprised I hadn't seen one before -- during a gold rush, the surefire way to get rich isn't mining and hoping to strike gold, but to sell pickaxes to all the miners.
But some of the info is shoddy, much of it is repetitive, and most anything remotely good in these courses isn't original, it's just information you could find somewhere else that they've repackaged.
And that's when I realized: It's the same problem with GenAI. Not all the same problems; get rich quick courses probably don't consume as much processing power so aren't as bad for the environment. But all the other issues -- filler of dubious value, material scraped from other places without compensation, makes it impossible to search for new useful advice because reconstituted trash is peddled everywhere, likely to scam people, etc. -- are there.
...I'm realizing I've created my own Kobayashi Maru.
YOUR WHAT NOW?
I wanted to open the newsletter with a few words about AI to segue into this week's column about AI. But once I start writing about AI, I just start ranting angry. So it's a bit of a Kobayashi Maru. Although I realize not everyone knows Original Series Star Trek references. For Star Trek Next Generation fans, you could say I was "hoist by my own Picard".
(I came up with that phrase half a year ago and have still not found a really appropriate time to use it, but this has not stopped me from using it roughly every month since then. But one day someone will have a self-inflicted Star Trek-related catastrophe, and I will be SO READY. And now you will too.)
Surprisingly, my column about AI this week is less angry than wry, probably because I'm writing about everyone's favorite forgotten proto-AI-assistant, Clippy:
POWERED BY SPITE
Okay, so now that I've finished ranting about AI, I'm out of energy and going to sleep. First spite, then respite. (Better powered by spite than powered by AI!) But I thank you for reading this newsletter in spite of the anti-AI frothing (the beth part of cupcaketh), and back in two weeks with a new column and presumably somewhat less ranting about AI.
No Artificial Intelligence, All Natural Ridiculosity,
Seth