Archives for posts with tag: AI slop

I Had a Thought (about AI)

January 29, 2026 //
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I’m sipping my coffee – still too hot to drink – and thinking about writing. I’m not really writing quite yet, no ideas. I had a thought yesterday afternoon…another yesterday evening…and as I drifted off to sleep last night, a great idea for a title came to mind (I don’t remember it now). It’s that kind of morning. I am “an empty vessel” this morning. This is rare for me. I nearly always sit down to an empty page, and simply write. Another person might reach for some app or write a prompt for an LLM… I just sit sipping my coffee and letting my thoughts, such as they are, guide my fingers.

I am a human being, writing for other human beings.

I am generally employed with companies that are “AI forward” in some significant measure. AI is the new “revenue engine”. Investors and shareholders want to see “AI” in the quarterly presentation decks and annual meetings. They don’t necessarily understand it, or have any idea what “AI” really means in any given context. Companies sometimes take advantage of this, using the language and terms of AI in marketing materials, but without changing anything in their product, services, or app. In this environment, most people pay lip service to the AI hype, whether or not they are impassioned “true believers”. In my own role, I consider myself fortunate; it’s part of the job to take a skeptical view, to find the flaws, to be watchful and cautious, and to reduce risk. I rarely use AI in my work, instead I scrutinize it in the work of others. This suits me, and I enjoy it. I am not an AI fan, and I am not interested in hype. I maintain sufficient proficiency with AI to be able to detect the problems – and I’m focused on those. Can AI do fast work? Sure. It’s superficial and rather same-y, though, and it makes a lot of mistakes (and it absolutely makes shit up and cites references to work that does not exist) and has no comprehension; it does not have an “understanding” of a single word it produces. Worse still, as it works it degrades the working skills of the users who seek its services. Human primate intelligence does not benefit from the use of AI tools.

…Brain rot is a real concern…

I absolutely do not use AI to write. I like writing. I like seeing words creeping across the page that have come from my own thoughts, to the page by way of my skillful hands on the keyboard. I enjoy the rhythm and the sound. I enjoy the sensation of communicating and of “being heard”. I have born witness to writers using AI and seen the damage to their ability to write unassisted, as time goes on. Creators who create without AI risk giving up much if they capitulate to using it. Thanks, I’d rather not. Creators who exclusively use AI to create are not actually creators at all (imo) – until and unless they learn to create on their own, in the medium of their choice, without an AI crutch. Few seem to – although I don’t know why they would bother, if the point is “make some money”, and the AI slop they generate does so for them.

I sip my coffee and reflect on progress and technology, and whether humanity has a shot at long-term survival in the face of our foolishness, violence, and short-sighted greed. I suspect we do not, and that saddens me. We’re pretty interesting creatures – seems a shame to put ourselves on the path to extinction, but we may be honestly too stupid to be good planetary stewards who work together as a global culture towards a greater good for all. We are too easily divided and controlled by petty bullshit. There are too many greedy billionaires (I realize how redundant that is, as I write the words), too few wellsprings of real wisdom and goodness, and the rest of us are kept distracted by the seeming urgency of earning a living day-to-day, too busy to look up from our present task to see whether the world really is burning, or do much to change that, once we discover that it is.

…I wonder where this path leads?..

I sigh to myself. The week is already almost over. If I focus on work, it feels very much as if this time has been empty and rather pointless, to me personally. There is more to my experience (and my humanity) than my work (meaning my “gainful employment” with one corporate overlord or another). I write. I paint. I laugh. I feel. I explore. I contemplate. I enjoy walking beaches and forest trails. I like the sparkle of glitter, and of seeing the lights of cities from a great height. I enjoy a walk with no destination. I like a drive from wherever I am to some distant horizon. I enjoy a few minutes of idle conversation with a stranger – and I like walking away from it, into some lovely solitary moment. I read and I think, and I seek out things to see. I write poetry. I paint sunrises and moments by the fireside. I have deep discusses with friends, solving nothing in a practical way, but deepening our connection. I love deeply, and enjoy a profound partnership with my beloved Traveling Partner. (Isn’t my capacity for love more important than my capacity for staring into spreadsheets day after day?) I have endured much, and I continue to be and to become. I am one human being, being human. No AI needed (or wanted).

There’s a work day ahead, and I amuse myself by recalling a favorite way of demonstrating AI flaws (I find), which is using it to summarize big group meetings. For anyone who was at the meeting (and paying attention), the tells and flaws are obvious; AI is sometimes (often)(commonly) very wrong about what was said, who said it, and what the “take aways” from the discussion are. It doesn’t reason or comprehend, so it doesn’t actually “understand” what the salient points of a discussion were. It’s just playing fill in the blank and counting up words. AI is “stupid fast” – meaning that it is both stupid, and also very fast. Idiomatic language, accents, and variations in individual clarity of speech result in some hilariously “off” transcriptions of conversations. It would be quite humorous, if it weren’t so terrifying that in spite of these limitations people are using these tools and making decisions that affect real people with the slop turned out by AI. Yeesh. Do better, people. The survival of humanity likely depends on you being smart enough to preserve (and develop) your own cognitive skills and tools, your ability to reason and make good decisions, and your actual sentience. Choose wisely. Take the time to learn to do the things you want to do, instead of trying to cheat your way through life and work with fucking “AI” (it isn’t intelligent, at all).

I breathe, exhale, and relax. I let all that go and sit enjoying my coffee here in a real physical space, listening to the sounds of voices in the background (real people busy with real things). I exist in this physical real place. Don’t you? (What are you doing to improve it? Anything? The clock is ticking…) I smile a good-morning to the barista who greets me in passing, and waggle my fingertips at her as something like a wave, without lifting my hands from the keyboard. Actual human primates observed in their natural environment. I chuckle, aware that we are not necessarily “domesticated” creatures, and that our behavior can be wildly unpredictable, even dangerous. Funny that we adopt such airs of grandeur and dignity, so often – we can be vicious, vile, messy, and prone to casually spreading disease. I sigh to myself, hoping to do a little better at being the person I most want to be today, compared to yesterday. Incremental change over time is effective, if slow. I become what I practice; there’s no choice there, it is what it is. The choice is in what I choose to practice.

What are you practicing? Will that help you become the person you most want to be? The journey is the destination. Is it time to begin again?

Seems to be very effective so far… probably doesn’t hurt that the path is mine, and that I choose it myself.
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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, breathe, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, joy, Logic & Reason, Love, meditation, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, thoughts on AI, winter, women, Words

No Words

January 16, 2026 //
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Today I’m sipping my coffee, and waiting for words to come. No AI, no prompts, no hints, no suggestions, I just sip coffee and wander through my own thoughts, sifting through the random bullshit for something to say. This morning, words are not coming so easily. It’s Friday, before a three-day weekend. There’s one more work day between me, and a visit from The Author. I’m looking forward to his visit.

…I’m tempted to stop there, and simply enjoy my coffee and this Ill Gates track. It has samples of Bruce Lee, “Be Like Water”. I try to find a clip of that interview to share, but AI slop is so pervasive right now I don’t find anything from a source I trust to be authentic, so I skip it and move on. My Traveling Partner shares a video – apparently Google has decided to be even more evil, and has integrated their fucking AI into Gmail. Gross. I definitely will not be turning that shit on. My Traveling Partner is right; it’s time to shed Googles tools, including Gmail.

I remember when I was a young analyst learning my trade in the Army. There was so much emphasis, every day, on the strict prohibitions against data collection on US individuals or listening in on their communications. These activities were not merely regulated, they were not permitted at all. Now? Hell, we invite surveillance into our lives through our connected apps and devices: smartphones, TVs, digital assistants listening in ambient spaces, fitness trackers…and even our dishwashers, refridgerators, cars… and our email. Gross. Then there’s Elon-fucking-Musk and his troll army over on X, using Grok to attack and demean people. You realize that if those entities stealing our data and invading our privacy had to pay us each directly for every individual piece of data collected, and sold, they would likely stop doing that shit… or we’d have a comfortable means of providing UBI to everyone. We are living in the worst timeline. Do better humans – before we all run out of chances.

I’m feeling cross and gloomy. Irritable. I don’t have any kind of reasonable reason for this experience, other than I allowed my mind to wander into a minefield of irritating bullshit looking for something to say, and now here I am. LOL I could do better. I breathe, exhale, and relax. I let go of the lingering irritation and let my mind wander on.

I glance at the small straight scar that stretches from knuckle to knuckle on my left index finger. It is a very tidy carefully done reminder of the surgery I had (last year?) to remove some kind of cyst that had formed under the skin there, years ago, that vexed me every time I bumped it and made it hurt all over again. I don’t really remember when it first developed, only that it got a bit larger every time I wacked it on something carelessly, until one day my Traveling Partner noticed it there, swollen and dark looking. I’d given up trying to get a doctor to pay attention to it by that point. He insisted I have it looked at again. My current GP sent me directly to a surgeon to consult, and weeks later it was removed. It could have been something more serious. I’m grateful it wasn’t. I feel a little foolish every time I see that careful very straight scar; I put up with too many years of discomfort that could have easily been resolved by attending to it sooner. The feeling of “learned helplessness” and futility that resulted from routinely being dismissed or just not heard defeated me before I ever really tried. There’s something to learn from that, and I reflect on it every time I see that little scar.

Another breath. Another moment. Another sip of coffee. I glance at the time, and think about the day ahead, although there’s no need. Not yet. My beloved sends me a message – cute “stickers”. I feel loved. I sigh to myself. I’d definitely rather be taking the day off. I chuckle at the silent admission. Obviously. Nothing new there. I decide I’ll treat myself to a daylight walk later in the morning, maybe between meetings…?

I sigh to myself. I guess feeling restless and disinclined to work, struggling to want to focus, is better than being a grumpy jerk. lol It’s enough. The morning feels re-set, and I’m ready to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, meditation, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Art of Being, Words

Use It, or Lose It

December 3, 2025 //
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As I struggle with fatigue and distraction this morning, I think about how very many human skills and abilities are “use it or lose it”. Walking, reasoning, speaking another language, legible handwriting, cooking a recipe from memory, recalling the route to a place that isn’t visited often: all of these, and many more besides, are the kind of thing that diminish over time without continued practice. We become what we practice, and so conversely, we can expect to be far less of whatever we don’t practice. It makes logical sense, thinking about it, and more importantly experience has proved it to me directly over and over again.

How about a really simple example? I learned French from my mother as a child, Czech in military language school, and German living in Germany for more than six years. I can’t honestly claim that I actually speak any of those languages now with any fluency, at all. I don’t use them enough, and the skill has largely faded away to little more than comfortable familiarity. (Whether immersion would or would not “bring it all back” is a separate question.)

Not enough? How about this one? I write. I write something like 1500-5000 words each day, between personal and professional writing. I used to do that in pen and ink. My handwriting was very specifically my own, easily recognizable, with characteristic flourishes and embellishments developed through frequent loving practice. It was legible and at times visually “beautiful” (to me). I rarely write with a pen on paper anymore. It’s nearly all on a device or keyboard. When I do have occasion to pick up a pen to write, if only to jot down a note, my handwriting is degraded, messy, chaotic, and often completely illegible to anyone else. I don’t write by hand enough to preserve my skill.

Another deeply worrisome example is that of my late Dear Friend, whose weight and health slowly robbed her of her ability to walk, as she aged. When we met, in the mid 90’s, we would go places together as we got to know each other. We walked a lot. We camped. We attended fairs together. An injury some years later put her off her feet for awhile, and after that walking began to become more difficult. The less time she spent on her feet and walking, the more difficult it became, until it was an effort to get from her kitchen to her bedroom. Eventually, any walking at all required assistance of some kind.

Now I’ll tell you that what this is really about is all the many cognitive skills we all so carelessly put at risk every day, now, through excessive reliance on tech devices of various kinds, and… “AI”. We are very much at risk of losing our abilities to think clearly, to remember our experiences, and to socialize harmoniously in accordance with healthy behavior and within agreed upon social norms. I’d like to say maybe I’m exaggerating a bit to make a point, but that wouldn’t be true to my day-to-day experience or observation over time. I see it happening, and I’m clearly not alone; it is a common topic in the essays and thought pieces of others (many with greater relevant expertise). I think it’s something worth taking seriously.

I sigh quietly, as I stop at my halfway point on this trail. It’s still dark, and the autumn fog is thick and getting thicker. It seems a suitable metaphor for humanity allowing itself to become dumber…by choice. What a bummer of an idea. Don’t do it! Preserve your precious abilities! Practice critical thinking skills! Read an actual fucking book. Read several! Learn a new skill. (No, not how to draft a better ChatGPT prompt, that’s not as useful as you may be imagining.) Make something! Have real conversations with live human beings in real life. Walk. Daydream. Use your mind to think deeper thoughts. We become what we practice. For fucks’ sake don’t give up your mind.

…A lot of the world’s petty cruelty and actual evil only thrive because we allow it, or have become distracted. We could do better and choose differently. Don’t let your precious finite lifetime trickle away, the sand in your hourglass slowly running out while you doom scroll through AI slop you don’t even care about (or remember five minutes later). Don’t let an LLM stand in for your own capacity to think, to reason, and to understand. (Trust me, you’re better at all those things than any “AI”!)

I take time to meditate and reflect, as the first hints of daybreak begin to color the sky. I breathe, exhale, and relax. The morning is a chilly one. I’m grateful for the warm sweater I chose, and the warmth of my pockets, into which I jam my hands between paragraphs, to warm them again. We have choices. I think about mine and watch dawn becoming a new day. Later I’ll take the truck over to the dealership for a bit of work, and begin my work day there, in the waiting lobby of the service department. After that? I’ll begin again, again, and I’ll keep choosing, and practicing.

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Categories Allegories, art and the artist, autumn, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, solo hiking, The Art of Being, Words

An Admission of Ignorance

November 9, 2025 //
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I arrived at the trailhead for my morning walk at daybreak. I didn’t expect a colorful sunrise, given the time of year, and the recent weather generally, but I also slept in this morning, which changed my timing. (Which has nothing to do with whether there would be a colorful sunrise, only the likelihood of seeing it.)

Mt Hood in the distance.

I parked, grateful for the quiet morning and the pleasant drive. Grateful for the simple good life I am fortunate to enjoy with my Traveling Partner. My mind wanders to my colleagues in the Philippines. They’ve had a rough year, multiple super typhoons, earthquakes, and even volcanoes erupting. I silently wish them well, hoping they are safe from harm, and reminding myself to check on them.

I set off down the trail, content to walk with my thoughts over unmeasured miles. I’ll get there when I get there, wherever “there” turns out to be.

Behind me, the sun rises.

I get to my halfway point, feeling light-hearted and calm, unbothered by the troubles of the world for the moment. Feels good. I haven’t looked at the news today, other than the weather. Weather reports are to news what cookbooks are to literature; generally very neutral, fact-based, and practical. I’d very much like it if all of the news were handled in a similarly practical factual way, but since that is not the situation in the year 2025, I have been making a point of not looking at that crap until later in the day, if at all.

…And you can’t make me 😂 …

How many times can I look at repeats of the same aggravating, outrage-stoking, needlessly provocative AI slop or partisan gaslighting without becoming (understandably) distressed or depressed? No thanks. I’ll accept a measure of predictable uncertainty and ignorance of world events in the moment. The most important details will still reach me, filtered through work channels or conversations with friends, or shared to me by my Traveling Partner, who understands better than anyone besides my therapist the effect too much of such things can have on me.

Are you old enough to remember adults in your life reading the newspaper? I’m talking about the folded paper newspaper that may have been delivered with a thump right to the doorstep each morning or maybe just on Sunday… Growing up, for me, that was my father and my grandfathers. (My recollection is that my mother and grandmothers were more inclined to read magazines and books.)

The pace of knowledge and news seemed slower before the rise of cable news, and later the Internet, and the words in each article, edition, or volume seemed more carefully thought out. Catching up on world events weekly wasn’t ridiculous – and it certainly seemed enough to fuel an entire week of conversation.

…Why do you need immediate real-time news 24/7, anyway…?

During my own lifetime, the pace of news delivery has accelerated beyond the point of new news being available to report at all, creating an opportunity for bullshit repeats, “clickbait”, sponsored content, and AI slop to thrive. That’s not good news for human thought. I think it began with the evening news on television (so convenient!), and quickly worsened with the coming of cable news channels. If it were all high quality, skillfully researched, factual, and with clearly stated agendas, biases, and the special interest groups backing it openly identified, the news might be a real value, and a useful resource. I don’t think it measures up to that standard, presently. I think it is reasonable to doubt the truth of most of what we see shoved at us as “news” these days. That’s definitely true of the laughably dishonest missives coming from the White House directly. It’s almost certain someone has a stake in controlling what we think as a population, no matter where we get our news. It makes sense to think critically about what we read, hear, and see that is presented as the news.

So…yeah. I guess I’m 100% okay with a measure of “ignorance” of the sort that results from carefully vetting news sources and just catching up once in awhile, or based strictly on work relevant topics and local news each week. I’m not okay with letting advertisers dominate my consciousness or cognitive processes, or letting notifications regulate my attention. I’ve been switching my phone to “do not disturb” more often (a lot), and carefully managing casual access to my attention. So far these steps have been very freeing in practical terms, and with some expectation setting, don’t seem to have created any great inconvenience for people who need to reach me. Helpful.

I sit watching the new day unfold, thinking my own thoughts. Delightful. I take time to meditate. To breathe. To be. I listen to huge flocks of geese passing overhead, and traffic whoosh past on the highway beyond the marsh. I breathe, exhale, and relax, and fill my attention with here, now. It’s lovely. On the pond’s edge, opposite where I am perched on this fence rail, nutria go about the business of being nutria. A youngster eyes me curiously and begins to makes it’s way nearer to me. The mother looks up, attentive, and some sound I don’t hear, or movement I don’t see, calls the youngster back to its mother. A small brown bird scratches in the leaf litter at the side of the trail. None of this is “news”, and all of it is more relevant to this moment of being, for me, as an individual.

I think of things my beloved Traveling Partner has said recently, about what is within our control, and how he seeks to manage stress through selective attention, relevance, and perspective. He’s right, too, and these are also things that have been emphasized in therapy over the years. Trying to control what we don’t have control over, and trying to fix things outside the scope of what we can directly act upon drives a lot of needless stress. Hell, even trying to have an opinion about something we just don’t actually know anything about adds to our stress! It can be a very stressful experience, this human experience. It is true that most of our suffering and stress are self-imposed, too, making it both “easy” to resolve, and also quite difficult.

(I didn’t say I had this solved, I’m just thinking about it.)

I sigh quietly, still managing to startle a chipmunk I hadn’t seen approach. I laugh merrily to see her dart away speedily, tail up. I smile toward the sky as I get to my feet to begin again. It’s a new day.

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Categories 2024 Election, Allegories, Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, solo hiking, The Art of Being, The Big 5, War and News of War, Words

AI Slop Everywhere (but not here)

June 24, 2025 //
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Are you fed up with the deluge of “AI slop” being pushed at you on pretty nearly every platform you look to for information or entertainment, everywhere, all the time now? I know I am. AI “art” isn’t art. AI writing isn’t literature (nor, generally, is it worth reading at all). AI summaries of search results are highly prone to inaccuracies and are often quite ridiculous in spots, and sometimes unreadable. AI content is very often IP theft or plagiarism. It’s pretty awful. AI doesn’t catch its own mistakes; it can’t think, comprehend, or reason.

Hey, good news; there’s no AI here. I’m an actual real person. A human primate. My spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, poor syntax, and occasionally meaning-obscuring overuse of ellipses are 100% human and my own! I sit somewhere in some moment of self-reflection, and compose my actual thoughts, such as they are, using my own words, and I share them with you. Wow. My photos and images are generally my own (at least since I began bringing a camera along with me everywhere and viewing so much of my life through that lens). Music I link to isn’t mine, but I selected it myself, inspired by my experience, and chosen to enhance my writing in some way. I share my own art with you. My “unfiltered” take on life is offered up relatively fearlessly, too. I don’t need AI to do my thinking for me (and neither do you).

It is still possible to choose the content you consume with sufficient care to avoid AI slop, generally. (I block pages and content that are AI generated, once I recognize it – and I’m reliably seeking to determine that quickly. I’m not a fan.) I personally find garbage AI slop seriously cringe, and also don’t want to undermine the value of human content creation by encouraging that crap. I’m an artist. A writer. A photographer. It matters to me to differentiate between created works and “generated” works.

Anyway. No AI here (aside from the one use of it on my About page when ChatGPT launched). Oh, I’m aware of the potential inherent in AI, and professionally I stay current with what AI tools are capable of, presently. I just don’t prefer (or need) to use AI to write. 😆

The world is a fucking mess, eh? It’d be easy to shrug off AI concerns as unimportant, considering everything else going on. If you’re in a safe place, be sure to go outside. Take healthy breaks. Enjoy a moment with a friend. Take a walk. Watch clouds scoot across the sky. Smell flowers. Try a new recipe. Read a book. Learn a skill. Sit in a beautiful garden. Make something. You can live an actual life and form thoughts about those experiences. AI can’t. Enjoy your moments. These mortal lifetimes are fleeting.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. I sit with my coffee, grateful for a new day, and a new opportunity to begin again. I watch the sun rise as the clock ticks on this mortal lifetime. My thoughts are my own, an idea I greatly enjoy.

… I notice the time… already a new moment… already a new beginning… What will I do with it?

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Categories Allegories, Art, art and the artist, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, meditation, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Practices, Summer, The Art of Being, thoughts on AI, Words