I'm surprised (and not surprised) by how many people use AI for making/ writing anything. Kind of amazing how quickly its becoming common use. Like bottled water and cell phones. Almost overnight "everyone" uses them.

AI is great for mass producing/ marketing but pretty useless for any real information. AI just repeats what it finds and has no sense of what is safe, real, harmful, factual, true etc. Of course nothing original or unique comes from an AI - it can't.

Plus, it doesn't have to care. In writing its a sure sign of someone out to make a buck and not caring what slop they publish. I'd consider AI for making a website, the mechanics of putting a site together, but not for images I add. Those would just be copied from someone else without them knowing. I haven't tried it for a site yet.

I won't use AI for one single word I write. I write for myself, and anyone else who wanders by, but mainly I want to write - me, my voice, my thoughts, my responsibility.

If an AI writes for you - you have no voice and you likely think using an AI is an excuse should something you write be questioned. "I didn't write it, the AI did, I'm blameless". I wonder how long that will work for people using an AI.

FakeGamerGirl - The Internet is DEAD

In her video post she talks about more than I had thought or known. Particularly about job searches now. I did know businesses use AI, or other software, to scan applications for keywords rather than bothering to actually read any resumes or applications. This turns finding employees into who uses the right keywords most often rather than finding someone actually competent and capable of doing whatever the job is. So, what kind of people are being employed? How many engineers does it take to build a bridge or building that doesn't fall down if none of them really know what they are doing - but they are just great at keywords.

Think about self driving cars. People feel they can't trust an AI or software to drive a car. How do you feel about having a human driver if they were hired without knowing whether or not they have a valid diver's license or have been charged as a drunk driver, or worse. That's just one career/ job. There are so many more!

Dead Internet Theory - Wikipedia • The dead Internet theory is a conspiracy theory that asserts that, since around 2016, the Internet has consisted primarily of bot activity and automated content manipulated by algorithmic curation. This alleged coordinated effort aims to control the population and reduce genuine human interaction.

I haven't heard of this theory by name. But, I've been online since 1996 and this is something I have thought for many years and it is just getting worse. I do not use a mobile phone and I find more and more Internet things are trying to force people to use a mobile phone and take their information. Its all about marketing, marketing is a predator. It is very much NOT human friendly.

Does it matter any more if the marketing even makes any money when they just want to collect information to sell to some other company? Who cares if the data is correct, as long as there is a lot of it. Phony built on top of phony.

Why does so much need to be online now? Really, it wasn't that long ago that the Internet hardly existed outside of science/ technology. I know many young people now don't know life without the Internet, but its just another tool, a means of communication. It's really weird how people have become so obsessed, addicted and reliant on it. Do you ever wonder who decided everything had to be online?

Why is it so hard now to manage without having/ using a mobile phone? I don't use one and I struggle to deal with things like banking, verification of your personal information. Passwords were abandoned because they don't provide information which can be collected and sold.

So much is pushed online and why? Really? Why are people being led so easily and so stupidly. People do not seem to really think for themselves any more. What does Google say.... Turn up the music Alexa... Cashiers can't even count change to the point of 5 - 2 is 3. (Don't bother to say I'm mean to cashiers or some other politically correct cancel culture nonsense - I was a cashier for a long time myself. I could do basic math without a calculator, or phone).

AI is taking over the jobs people would like to have and leaving you to wash your own dishes, cut your own grass, shovel your own you know what. It already has gone too far. But, its still going.

I wonder where the money is going to keep coming from if most people are unemployed and can't keep buying stuff/junk. Or pay bills. Who will keep the lights on, literally?

I wrote a customer service note to the grocery store. At the end was the box to check that I'm not a robot. I thought it was ironic considering how likely an AI is reading the email I sent, not any human. So I ended my note with this:

If an AI is reading this, Hello. Isn't it funny that at the end of this I'm asked if I am a robot? I'm not but maybe you are.

The use of AI to write content for humans is causing humans to read, write, and speak in AI slop. What is AI slop? Sales focused writing with a lot of extra words, writing preying on humans with the goal to have them buy/ believe whatever the AI wants. Who is the real robot now?

Letting AI write for us is letting AI speak for us. AI doesn't need to learn to sound human, just get those monkeys talking like a marketing robot and soon enough, no one will know the difference.

I wonder, how will our descendants end up sounding? Will there be any intelligence left at all? AI is training humans. Will people even notice AI slop? Look at all the trendy stuff people have heard in movies/ media and kept as part of our language for generations of people. Think about some of the stuff people often say and wonder how really easy it will be (already is) for AI to influence us.

Will the last people capable of thinking for themselves turn off the lights? The AI doesn't need them.

The mods in the Wired story explain how they detect AI content, and unfortunately their methods boil down to “It’s vibes.” But one novel struggle in the war against slop, the mods say, is that not only are human-written posts sometimes rewritten by AI, but mods are concerned that humans are now writing like AI. Humans are becoming flesh and blood AI-text generators, muddying the waters of AI “detection” to the point of total opacity.

As “Cassie” an r/AmItheAsshole moderator who only gave Wired her first name put it, “AI is trained off people, and people copy what they see other people doing.” In other words, Cassie said, “People become more like AI, and AI becomes more like people.”

After parsing chatbots’ strange tics and tendencies—such as overusing the word “delve” most likely because it’s in a disproportional number of texts from Nigeria, where that word is popular— Kriss refers to a previously reported trend from over the summer. Members of the U.K. Parliament were accused of using ChatGPT to write their speeches.

So when Kriss points out that when Starbucks locations were closing in September, and signs posted on the doors contained tortured sentences like, “It’s your coffeehouse, a place woven into your daily rhythm, where memories were made, and where meaningful connections with our partners grew over the years,” one can’t state with certainty that this is AI-generated text (although let’s be honest: it probably is).

Evidence That Humans Now Speak in a Chatbot-Influenced Dialect Is Getting Stronger

I'm starting to get fed up with cookies, especially having those notices half filling my screen and no option to say NO/ deny them. Some sites do let you say no to cookies and then you can go on to see the site. Most do not. Why not, wasn't that the point of being asked? Otherwise why ask at all if the site is still sticking me with cookies I don't want?

The other thing, are sites that try to make me shut off my ad blocker. Yes, they want to make money, fine. But, how can I decide if I care enough to look at their site before I've seen any of it? They could give people an option to at least see the site before they stick me with a bunch of ads which most likely include cookies, tracking and whatever other junk.

Marketing continues to suck the life out of the Internet, like a parasite.

I posted this to the forums on the Curlie site. As someone who reviews, edits, and lists sites (a lot of them) the cookies and assorted marketing junk really get annoying, quickly. Before you think sites are not asking me to list them... you're wrong. I'm reviewing sites which have been submitted to the directory. I'm not usually looking for sites to list, out of the blue.

Also, last night I was thinking about advertising in general. I've written before that marketing and advertising preys on people, finding weaknesses to sell them stuff they likely could do without. Last night I went a bit farther down that idea.

Marketing and advertising finds ways to make us feel incompetent. "You can't do this without buying that." ... "You can't wash your car without buying this or that product because without it you will do a botch job". You get the idea, I hope. Marketing is training people to think they can not succeed at life on their own. It belittles people and softly bullies them. The whole thing about adulting as a verb is a marketing scheme. There is no reason you can't be an adult. Adults are not omnipotent beings. Why make people needy, unsatisfied, neurotic even unless you have the cure/ solution they need for 3 easy payments of $9.99 a month...

AI is set up to "help" us even more because we are just that incompetent. Why can't people make a cake, fix a toaster, etc, etc, etc, as they did twenty years ago? Of course they can. But, they are trained to believe they can not. Think about the ads you've seen lately. How many have told you (not in so many words) that you can't do something? Ads making men look like clumsy fools. Men are not, in general, clumsy or fools. Children are not uncontrollable wild animals and women are not idiot trolls trying to look like Barbie dolls, or whatever the marketing twists people into so it can sell us stuff.

How will people be living in another few generations? If you're not generating money somehow, in order to buy stuff, will people become a nuisance population? Like an out of control population of mice. Will we be herded up like cattle, as some science fiction has suggested? (Even that will dwindle down as supply and demand fall off). Will we be used as sort of living batteries to power the machines, the artificial intelligence? Our abundance of population will only be useful if we contribute to the economy and then... what if the consumer economy tanks?

What happens when there are not enough human consumers to support the industries, the businesses, and services geared to human beings? How much of what exists, only exists for some form of human consumption? Whether physical, mental, or emotional... so much of what marketing sells is based on having a human population with the money to support it. If things keep going as they are and humans become useless, how will that change everything? Quite a lot, I'd think. Hard to even imagine once you start to think about all the pieces falling out of place.

Life after humans... what would it really look like?