Tales from the Mothership

We’ve all seen the meme above, used in various situations where we think someone is pretending to be something they’re not. And in the current world, we’re seeing more and more blog posts, social media posts, and pictures created by AI. They don’t tell you they use AI, either. They want you to think that they wrote it themselves. So I wanted to let you know that anything you see from me, whether it’s fiction, a blog post here or comments on my social media, is 100% written by me. I will not use AI for anything creative whatsoever. Not for images, and definitely not for writing. I don’t even use it at work, even though I am being continually encouraged to do so because my employer is gung ho about everyone adopting AI (I suspect that’s because, like a lot of other companies, they are being convinced that they need it by one of the big financial services firms, some of whom – if not all – are partnering with Open AI to push it to their clients). The day they make AI use mandatory is the day I will hand in my notice. That’s if they don’t replace me with an AI agent in the meantime. If I could afford to retire right now I would say, ‘bring it on.’

It’s impossible to avoid AI at the moment because they’re shoving it into everything whether we want it or not. And I most definitely do not. I can see as I write this blog post that there is an AI assistant up on the toolbar at the top of this page. My Gmail has an AI assistant embedded, as does my Pixel phone. Internet searches are getting to be completely useless between the AI overview and SEO practices making it nigh on impossible to find what you’re looking for. And then there’s my laptop. I’ve disabled Copilot and swapped my MS365 subscription to a ‘family classic’ one, which doesn’t come bundled with Copilot (and is £30 a year cheaper than the one that does, which they had ‘upgraded’ without my consent). I’m getting to the point where I’m ready to swap my phone for a ‘dumb phone’, switch to Linux and Open Office, and start backing up to a thumb drive instead of the cloud. I’m that sick of it all.

The thing that irks me the most is that the product doesn’t measure up to the hype. The Emperor is not wearing any clothes. Honestly. He’s start, bollock naked and we can all see his rather flaccid and unimpressive wedding tackle. AI doesn’t write well. Everything it produces is homogenous, trite, soulless tripe. Yes, even your board meeting minutes, and the paper you said you wrote (we could tell you didn’t). Yes, even that poem. You know which one I mean; you’re not fooling anyone. And don’t get me started on the ‘art’. We call it ‘slop’ for a reason. That picture you drew in crayon when you were five, that your mam put up on the fridge because she was so proud, is a better example of human art than anything an AI sloperator could churn out. Just pick up a pen or pencil. Practice. Then practice some more. You’ll get better, and you’ll feel a sense of satisfaction that no pattern recognition software could ever bring you. I promise.