THE INTELLIGENCE BASELINE

I really haven't done much with AI. I tried out the chatbots a few 
times and determined they were hopelessly unreliable for anything 
that wasn't just as easy to do using conventional computer tools. 
They are excellent at generating convincing bullshit, which seems 
to be a massively disirable commodity, but that's a disadvantage if 
you're one of those strange people who actually want a real answer 
from them. Using them to write code just seems crazy since you then 
have to figure out how that code works, which I've always found 
much harder than just writing the code myself, and equally error 
prone. Although maybe that's just my obsession, like with reading 
books, of understanding every little detail as I go (even as I 
forget the last detail at the same time, which is how I get stuck).

Nevertheless it seems AI is edging increasingly into my general 
information consumption. AI-generated webpages were an unwelcome 
first example. But now, as Sean Connor noted, they're even taking 
over Usenet groups:

gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog%3a2026/03/20.1

Not just claimed direct AI posting either, but posters who 
copy/paste AI responses then disown them when the response is 
proven wrong, or ignore responses pointing out errors in their AI 
slop only to do the same things again and again later on. True you 
can't believe human responses blindly either, but AI is so good at 
talking claptrap that it's much harder to work out whether the 
basis of what it says is truthful, or just composed of some 
completely different facts which happened to be on a webpage along 
with some common words associated with the question.

I've found myself in the habit now of skipping over any long 
detailed responses as assumed AI. This has already surely robbed me 
of that human content on Usenet, in addition to all the human-mande 
webpages drowned out by useless AI-generated clickbait when one 
looks to find them.

Now I watch TV news programmes and see clips of AI-generated video 
as propaganda for all branches of local and global politics. These 
seem to offend me even more deeply. They look lifelike, yet all 
have some childish disregard for reality, a juvenile and 
horrifically broad tone of humor, unaware of subtlety, which deeply 
offends me. Its a condensation of all the human nonsense found on 
the internet that I fear reveals the true idiocy of humans 
themselves, not least since a great meany obviously like this 
stuff. When I look back at the AI chatbot responses I see there's 
something similar about them which I hate too. They all have a 
similar flavour of generality which indeed reflects the average 
human, but minus the inspired moments, the flashes of meaning 
between the dim thoughtless glow of language.

But did that ever matter? It seems most people are now satisfied 
without any sense of truth, or at least true belief, from what they 
consume. Indeed does it ever matter in the end when all this 
information has been condensed into one's own human intelligence, 
so often then expressed with much the same blandness and repetition 
as AI?

I hurt my neck again on the weekend (seems it gets triggered when I 
pull out my hair), so I was stuck, proped up in a position of 
minimum pain, watching excessive amounts of TV for a few days. 
Documentaries, old TV shows, movies, and TV news programs annoying 
me by showing AI-generated political clips. What have I got from 
it? Emotions, at the time, negatively skewed as they were by the 
pain. I hope also some understanding, but still any reality is 
filtered through layer upon layer of distortion, from language to 
editing. Has the truth really been demonstrated by AI? That you 
condense it all together, without real emotion, and get exactly the 
sort of banal messaging that AI content conveys. It's all but a 
load of childish nonsense, dressed up, regurgitated by human and 
now machine, as something more. Is AI just the true baseline of 
real intellect in the world? A swamp of specific facts, devoid of 
all meaning, and churned up upon demand. Is it really evidence not 
just that I should stop looking at AI junk, but stop consuming all 
the intellectual junk food humans produce themselves, whether fact 
or fiction? The baseline of it all, as represented by AI, is 
clearly far too low.

 - The Free Thinker