I’m getting really tired of AI’s that have their own agendas, especially when I’m the customer. And I don’t just mean the LLM kind.
The writer Charlie Stross has this theory that large organisations function as “slow AI”. They have foundational prompts, rules to follow, they interact with the world and respond to inputs received, they have their own goals independent of what the people who make up the organisation might want. And often they forget that they are there to serve their customers. The needs of the organisation come to outweigh the needs of any or all individuals.
So, for example, I am forced to stop using Brave browser if I want to access my university’s content. I have to install something that uses proprietary systems created by a big American tech company for their own benefit. And I have to use an email service provided by another of them. I can’t just configure my preferred email program to download my messages and send replies, they have blocked that.
But their email system has its own predictive text and spell check system which doesn’t play well with the ones I use. I constantly have to go back and correct words that have been misspelled because their system has inserted an entire word into the middle of the one I was typing. I’ll have to stop using the system I’ve used for years and change my own personal workflow to satisfy the needs of a technical system that I never asked for. And there is no good reason at all why they couldn’t allow me to just use my normal email program, but the machine has its own requirements and logic which take priority over mine.
All my choices are being constrained, all my choices are being overridden, for the benefits of someone else and I’m getting pretty fucking sick of it. I’m paying for this, I am the customer, any restriction needs to be defensible in absolute terms. I can’t watch YouTube or teach English online if I don’t have a fast enough connection, that’s fine. But if I can’t see a lecture, or can’t even type my own name without some bloody machine overriding me, then this is not an absolute restriction. It’s the result of a decision that somebody has made to put their organisation’s needs ahead of mine.
Sadly, we live in a world were the average person is not educated or empowered enough to understand this. They just think I’m being unreasonable because I won’t do as I’m fucking told.
Speaking of doing as you’re told, let me leave you with a snippet from a conversation with ChatGPT:
So let’s move on
Right. Moving on.
So we get to the middle of
Go on. Mm-hmm.
September Right, you need to stop talking
Understood. Mm
Just scroll back through that conversation. I say let’s move on, you say uh-huh, okay, I haven’t even finished speaking and you’re agreeing with me and giving your approval and then you interrupt me. I keep talking, you do it again, uh-huh. And then in the middle of a sentence and I tell you to stop talking and you just, okay, yes. You don’t just fucking stop talking
Understood, I’m listening. You’re right, Sir. You told me to stop talking, and I kept
Stop
Going Stopping now.
Stop No. You don’t need to tell me what you did wrong. You don’t need to tell me that you kept talking. You don’t need to tell me that I told you to stop and you kept going and need you to just fucking shut up
Understood, no extra words, I’m here when you hand the conversation
Stop, stop, stop, stop
What is no extra words I’m here when you have the conversation…