March 11, 2024

On Saturday I had enjoyed a great hike. I was home, feeling wonderful. I had hopped out of the shower, I was staring at myself at the bathroom sink, assessing things before finishing getting ready for the day. “Hey, Siri, play the news”. It actually worked and the typical noises indicating an NPR broadcast starting coming out of the HomePod mini.

The lead story from NPR was about President Biden’s recent State of the Union speech. I hadn’t watched the speech as I’ve been trying to avoid the news since it’s usually very depressing and my mental health is more important than the mental activities coming from the vast majority of elected people. But, I try to listen to the news at least once a week so I know what countries have been blown up and other asshattery going on in the world.

NPR’s lead story wasn’t about the content of Biden’s speech but rather one word uttered during the speech in an off-the-cuff remark. In response to screaming from the audience (how dignified!) apparently President Biden had used the word “Illegals” instead of “Undocumented individuals”.

First of all, President Biden is up there in years. It’s also well known that he has a speech impediment in the way of a stutter, and folks that stutter sometimes have a hard time getting the words in their head to come out their mouth. I’m often in the same predicament and I recognize that Biden does what I do; when he sees himself getting stuck he does a quick word substitution so something comes out and he avoids stuttering. I firmly believe in this case the word “illegals” came to mind and it just came out. It’s not a great word and in this age of thought and language policing from all sides of the aisle, people flip out over these things.

NPR leading the hourly news round up with this, nearly two days after the event, is just throwing gas on a societal dumpster fire. With all the crap going on all over the globe, THIS is what they choose to focus on? One word? I get it, folks don’t like the word “illegals”. Everyone is a human and a border is just a human created barrier anyway. I get it. But focusing on this aspect of the speech, instead of accentuating all the great things he said and has demonstrated during his tenure as President, is just making this election cycle a bleak, dismal, money grab for the media companies. NPR is just as guilty as the corporate owned media conglomerates when it comes to skewing, spewing, and carrying on about “the news”.

Dark times.

A few weeks ago I mentioned an old cash register system on Mastodon. I think it was either the Data Terminal Systems Model 440 used at many grocery stories back in the day or the NCR 220 that was used at some Kmart stores back before Kmart realized they should be embracing technology. A fellow human being on Mastodon saw my update, did a web search on the model cash register I was talking about, and then shared they were surprised to see my blog entry at the top of search results.

This happens from time to time, as I occasionally talk about things that no one else talks about. Like old cash registers at Kmart.

I’ve never thought much about this blog coming up in search results on various topics, but I know that I’ve seen this blog more than once on Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo in the past. I just didn’t think anything of it; I’m sharing things on here and search engines are suppose to show what’s shared.

What I didn’t realize until today was that there are probably lots of “AI” (Artificial Intelligence), or more accurately, “LLM”, or “Large Language Model” programs out there vacuuming up every bit, byte, vowel, and consonant of well over 20 years of blog entries from my site. Hell, they’re probably gathering up the punctuation as well.

I don’t think much about LLMs, inaccurately called “Artificial Intelligence”, because in some ways I think it’s going to be a passing fad like Google Glass or Bitcoin. However, there’s a lot of people worked up about AI and the way it takes bits and bytes from various places on the Internet, regurgitates it just a bit to make it look like it wasn’t stolen, and then presents the outcome as fact. It wasn’t that long ago that ChatGPT told me the population on Mars was around four million people. Don’t tell Elon.

The realization dawned on me when I read a blog entry around this subject by Les Orchard. Les nails it in this regard, and now I’m wondering what hazy memories I’ve posted on my blog that have been regurgitated as absolute fact because some WhizzGPT said it so.

This is not a good way to inform a society. Misinformation is misinformation, whether it’s emblazoned on a screen by an overly engineered computer or spewed out of the mouths of the likes of Kellyanne Conway.

Never forget the Bowling Green Massacre.

I’ve never really thought of the longevity of my writings beyond when I turn dust to dust. I figured someone wouldn’t pay the ongoing web hosting bill that keeps all this running, and some lackey would hit delete and it’d all be gone not long after I’m gone. But if my writings are now being vacuumed up by this latest fad of AI? I might have to think a little bit more about my content, the accuracy, and the volition of my musings here on this bloggy thing.

Nah. I’m just going to keep doing what I do. I hope it doesn’t clog up the electronic Hoover.