half of all internet traffic is now bots. Glory be, we’ve lost the meaning of life. The meaning of life being closely tied to being alive, and this being a darkly comical hellscape of things that are not alive, poking at us. Some are feeding the ravenous maw of AI “learning” monstrosities and others are more directly criminal, trying to hack your accounts for any number of nefarious plots. Nostalgically I recall the web “crawlers” of old, indexing the “web logs” and websites, so we could find an interesting read quickly without wading through a dumpster fire of advertisements and cookie agreements, and how cool the Internet was or seemed to be before greed and ugliness swamped all.
Meaning of life, meaning of life.
I make a record, I write a post, I record a podcats (sic) I do these things with my hands and voice and thoughts and tools that yes, include computer technology throughout, but I have no desire to have the tools overtake the joyful tasks and make me merely an observer of them. I don’t want this for our kids, either, I worry for them and I am glad to have lived before this. I don’t even like the little prompts on my text app – “Can I call you later?” “In a meeting,” or whatever. No, you see because I choose my own words, I choose my words because I am alive and have the human gift of language.
Creepiness abounds. LinkedIn, which I like for some things, is all heavy into AI every which way now, it seems. I go to make a post – I usually just re-share my mewsletter (sic) and the first thing I see is a “Rewrite with AI” prompt. They also send emails telling me how many “impressions” my posts there have gotten in a week and how many times my profile has been found in “searches” there. These notices are automated of course and if I upgrade to Premium I can see who these mysterious searchers are, and hey, I don’t mind a hustle, everyone on LinkedIn is hustling one way or another and the platform needs to make money like anyone else so fine fine. I’m actually going to take a LinkedIn Learning course about AI that seems geared to understanding and adapting to the reality of it and not simply “leveraging” it, for the love of yawn. I want to know more about this because it’s not going away and I honestly fear it may drive us all mad.
Anyway I don’t want to have a machine talk or write for me, and that won’t change. Like the New Orleans chef in Apocalypse Now saying “I don’t want it! I don’t want it!” and ripping off his shirt, I do not want it. I do not want it, Sam I Am. Not over here or over there, or with a tiger or with a bear.
I will do my own bad writing. I will do my own good writing. Sometimes I may even write something great and feel good about it. Again, the meaning of life. These kinds of things give our lives meaning. And this I want.
The mad rush to AI-everything and “mine” stupid bitcoins is speeding the heating of the planet, everything is being deregulated by dangerous maniacs, and people are thrilled to be able to “make” a song or movie or novel or essay or resume without doing much but “prompt” an AI-chatterboxthingy.
I don’t want it.
Hi tiger. Bye tiger.
