bombs in bottles
A few days ago, I ordered a dog crate to use as a brooder now and as a hen hospital should one of the girls need to be quarantined in the future. Today, it arrived.
The box says "Not Suitable for Children. For Pet Use Only."
...humans? Are you okay? Could you perhaps make an effort to send us better people?
Consumer warnings and the Code of Federal Regulations have one thing in common: Reading them makes me fear that humanity is too long overdue for some kind of spiritual awakening. It doesn't even have to be spiritual. An extra dose of self-awareness would do.
Case in point: LLMs are now convincing the please-convince-mes among us that LLMs are their source of spiritual awakening:
Rolling Stone: People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies
Lately, the only answer that has made sense to me is "do more hands-on, real-world stuff." Go full Candide: make our garden grow. Raise chickens. Build a hen house. Pull all the books off the fiction shelves and re-shelve them by genre. Go to the little building by the lake and listen to the nice lady talk about loving our neighbors better.
I thought the question was "how can I deal with the constant whiplash uncertainty that is the Trump Administration?" Now I think the question is also "how can I deal with how quickly AI is enshittifying EVERYTHING?!"
NPR: Clarkesworld closed submissions after a flood of AI-generated stories
Reddit user: I got rejected by an employer for not using AI first
Ars Technica: Open source devs say AI bots dominate traffic
Creative Bloq: Designers say AI is making stock image sites unusable
One of my students was bummed today that their favorite AO3 writers are all going private, hoping to keep their stuff out of the clutches of AI crawlers. Student understands why, but is also sad they don't get to read their favorite fanfic authors anymore.
Something has to change eventually. I just don't know what, or in what direction. So I build my house and chop my wood and make my garden grow.
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