March 17 is never a fun day at Chez Tov, being the anniversary of the day my brother finally succeeded in killing himself with alcohol. So imagine my mood when I opened my email and a freelance client accused me of being AI.
Specifically: "this draft came back as 99% AI. Can you rewrite it so it's no more than 60% AI?"
First, as my 2.3 readers may have guessed: I don't use AI when I write. Ever. I'm offended by the existence of LLMs.
Second: I guess I'm not surprised. I've been cranking out freelance "content" for 18 years now. I've written things on the Net that are old enough to vote. I've written things old enough to get blown up by a Shahed drone. LLMs were trained on my work. No wonder algorithms now think I'm one of them.
Third: "no more than 60 percent"? Seriously? So we're admitting that the "detectors" are actually crap because they'll never "detect" zero percent, probably? We're admitting that the machines are laying claim to all human written expression now? Yet we continue to rely on them? What are we doing here, people?
Fourth: Freelance Liberation Day cannot come fast enough.
"Freelance Liberation Day" is what I call the day on which my various investments can be reliably trusted to crank out enough money to replace my freelance income. The capital total isn't terribly high, because my freelance income isn't terribly high. Right now, though, I need that income to make ends meet.
I hadn't planned on quitting freelance work even when I hit Liberation Day. It pays too well for such little effort. But I want the option.
I was less than two months from Liberation Day when the Iran "war that is not a war that Trump has totally under control except he needs help only no he doesn't NATO is a bunch of big meanieheads hey has anyone seen Netanyahu lately" started. Who knows where I'll be at the end of this month.
(This was going to be a post about the under-sea-mining of the petrodollar. you're...welcome?)
Which means I am wasting part of my morning reading about how AIs "write" so I can convince an algorithm I am human, when I was human all along. "Actually doing your own writing" is not enough to avoid getting flagged as AI anymore. It's cosmically stupid. (Kind of like this war in Iran.)
At least this gives me something to be mad at that's not my brother. I have had enough therapy to know I'm only mad at him so I don't have to face the heartbreak of his absence head-on. It gets me through my workday, okay?
In more fun news, I joined Ribbit because my new coping mechanism is "pretend it's 1997." Feel free to friend me:
EDIT: my collection of LiveJournal icons from the aughts is now on my website. A disturbing deep dive into the personality and interests of twentysomething molly. Also, kittens!
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