AI is the big thing right now. I was reading about the new quantum chip from Google yesterday. It can perform calculations trillions of times quicker than current computers. This expands the possibilities for AI beyond our comprehension. The biggest limitation will be how quickly we can write software to exploit the capabilities of these chips. As someone who had a long career as a freelance IT consultant, I understand the complexities of this and the fact that it is a big constraint, but it is also fairly clear that this will only be an issue until the tools are developed to fully exploit the capabilities of quantum computing. And then....
A couple of years ago (7th January 2023), I was having a curry with my son, who is a graduate with a maths and economics degree. He has grown up with the burgeoning development of AI. We were discussing its capabilities. He had used it as a tool as part of his studies. I wasn't familiar with the capabilities. Since I stepped back completely from the world of IT, I've not really had any interest in it. We got to discussing my blog and AI. He suggested that AI could write my blog as well, if not better than I could. I was intrigued. I said Ok, show me. So he said "Give me a blog title and lets see what comes out". So I said "Write a blog about the London Borough of Barnet in the style of the Barneteye blog". within about 15 seconds, a blog was produced. When I read it, a few things were instantly noticeable. It had absolutely accurately mimiced my grammatical style. It had identified linguistic ticks that I didn't even realise I had, but as soon as I read it, it was clear that it was exceptional at plaigerism of style. Then there was the content. This was far more interesting. When I read the blog, it had the air of an "abandoned
Saturday list" blog. Often I start these and realise I don't have ten things that are interesting enough to complete a list. It was boring and bland, I guess someone in the USA who was curious about Barnet may have found it vaguely interesting, but it was very "fat free" and dull. Just rather generic facts about the Borough with no real insight. My son explained that the modern way to write essays was to get AI to generate such a template and then spice it up. I told him that to me, it was unusable. When I write a blog, I start with something I want to say, then build it up from there.
It was an interesting exercise and very useful. I immediately started to recognise when people/BOTs were using AI to generate content. There is a rather soulless and bland presentation of facts, wrapped up in grammatic tricks to make it look authentic. The most interesting thing of all though was what happened to my blog stats. The number of hits per day, for that day went from the average of around 1,000 to over 100,000. It was clear to me that the AI BOTS were hammering my stats, learning everything about me. Since then, every month or so, I get a large spike of between and 10-30,000 hits for no apparent reason. It is clearly BOTS trawling the blog for info. As I've been researching and investigating this blog all week, oddly, my average for the week is around five times higher than normal.
So what do I conclude? Well first of all, I am on the AI BOTs radar. The question is, what are these BOTS doing? The answer to that is more interesting. They are harvesting information. Someone somewhere is making a profit from my hard work and I'm not getting a penny from it. The BOTS and the multi national companies that run them are making huge profits and content providers such as me don't get a penny. It is plaigarism on a massive scale. The concept that sixteen years of hard work writing this blog, is being monetised by some else is rather galling. For all I know, the words I've written, the research I've done are generating huge amounts of cash for all manner of individuals and companies.
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| Dog bless you all! |
It is not just bloggers like me that are being ripped off. AI BOTS are generating music, images, film scripts, anything that a creative person can do. The thing is that the BOTS are not innovating. They are just picking over the carcasses of other peoples work, and churning out something for the non discerning masses. None of this would be possible without creative people doing the heavy lifting. It is ironic that script writers in TV are being put out of work by BOTS regurgitating their own words. When we say "AI generate me an image of an Angel on a dalmations body" The AI BOT finds someones picture of Angel, someone else's picture of a Dalmation, it then strips it of anything to make it too obvious and gives you a hilarious picture.
AI doesn't know what a dalmation or an angel looks like, without a source picture. It may be that the picture is an aggregation of many pictures, but the point is that someone, somewhere has done work and it is being exploited without payment. As an artist and a content maker, it is clear to me that this is theft of intellectual property. AI gets the credit, not the people who's work was sourced.
I have a prediction. Unless this is addressed, it will not be the likes of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin who will own the future. It is the people who own the quantum chips and the AI BOTS. They will own everything.
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I am a fervent believer in supporting artists, their intellectual rights and their financial wellbeing. I've spent my life doing gigs. I've heard AI generated music and it's awful, but it is cheap. Please support artists and if you like what I say, please support me as a writer, an artist and a creator. There are three ways you can do this. 1. Come along to my bands gig at The Dublin Castle on Friday (we're on at 8pm) and buy me a beer and have a chat. 2.
Like my band's page on Spotify and actually listen the music. 3. Do the same for all the other artists and writers who's work you enjoy. Do not always just look for "Free music".
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Oh and finally, just for fun, here is what CHATGPT produced when I put the following query in. I waited until I had finished my effort before I put this in.
Tell me what you think?
AI Isn't a Form of Intelligence; It's Just Plagiarism on a Massive Scale
There’s a lot of buzz about artificial intelligence (AI) these days. From self-driving cars to chatbots that can churn out essays, some claim we’re standing on the brink of a technological revolution. But before we get swept away in the hype, let’s pause for a moment and consider what AI really is: a souped-up photocopier with internet access, masquerading as a genius.
AI doesn’t think. It doesn’t create. It doesn’t innovate. What it does is rip off the hard work of generations of creatives, assembling their efforts into something that looks clever but is, in reality, a chimera of stolen labor.
Take the music industry, for example. AI-generated songs might sound catchy, but those algorithms weren’t born with a gift for melody. They’ve been trained on libraries of music painstakingly created by real humans—people who poured their blood, sweat, and tears into their craft. AI’s role is to mix and match pre-existing pieces into something vaguely new, but the soul, the intent, the human experience? That’s missing. It’s the difference between a heartfelt ballad and elevator music.
The visual arts are no better off. Platforms that spit out AI-generated images rely on datasets pulled from millions of artists, many of whom never gave permission for their work to be used this way. The results might be stunning at first glance, but they’re hollow. It’s art devoid of meaning, created not to express or communicate but simply to dazzle. And where does that leave the artist? Out of a job, perhaps, or relegated to chasing trends set by machines.
Then there’s writing. Some see AI as the future of content creation. Need a blog post? A script? A love letter? Just plug in a prompt, and AI will handle it. But let’s not kid ourselves. Every sentence an AI writes is cobbled together from patterns it has observed in human writing. It’s not drawing on personal experience or original thought. It’s plagiarizing—albeit with enough remixing to skirt copyright laws (for now). And the more we rely on this process, the more we cheapen the value of human creativity.
The defenders of AI will tell you it’s just a tool, like a paintbrush or a camera. But a paintbrush doesn’t decide what to paint, and a camera doesn’t compose the shot. AI, on the other hand, is designed to simulate creativity. It’s a mimic, an impostor, and its rise poses an existential threat to the very idea of originality.
So what’s the solution? Transparency, for starters. Tech companies need to be upfront about how their algorithms work and whose work they’re exploiting. Regulation should ensure that creators are compensated for their contributions. And as consumers, we need to be more discerning. Let’s not be dazzled by flashy facsimiles when we can support real human talent instead.
AI isn’t intelligence. It’s glorified plagiarism on a scale humanity has never seen before. If we’re not careful, we risk losing sight of what makes art, music, and writing worth doing in the first place: the people behind it all.
Credit - CHATGPT
You tell me which you think is the better blog!
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