I Did It Myself

Despite me being adoptive of LLM usage to aid my work from a fairly early stage, there’s a lot of frustration brewing. No, not the fact that Open AI made ChatGPT dumber and less able to produce quality results, the fact that I have to deal with sloppers in almost every part of life. Widespread usage of generative products, particularly ChatGPT, by many people I come in contact with is making my life more difficult and also in many situations means my skills are less appreciated.

I’d like to say there has been slow progress here. However, some time in the last few months there has been a tidal shift. All at once, the skills that I built over decades can, in some people’s eyes, be replicated in moments by a robot. Knowledge and learning are equal to a few words in a prompt box, and everyone who is anyone thinks it’s acceptable to share emoji filled nonsense as professional communication.

If I can be allowed to remove all the ethical issues surrounding LLM training and widespread use. Which are all completely valid. There are less pressing but more obvious issues in my creative life that boil down to two main areas.

De-Valuing Of My Skills

I am a designer at heart. I produce products that achieve an end result. These might be nice-looking things, they may be experiences for users, and equally they are read by thousands of people every day. I’ve used the last 20 years or so to build my skills in many areas, and pride myself on being a good communicator (not that you might know it from my blog posts).

There is no ego here. Absolutely anyone can do what I do daily with a bit of effort, as I have absolutely zero natural talent. I like to think I am good at what I do, and enjoy continually learning and improving. Yet tasks I would typically do are being instead produced by a chatbot. Devaluing what I do, making my job even harder, and also decreasing the quality of communication as a whole.

Oh don’t worry about Gemini, they’re down a K-Hole.

Some of this I understand. Why spend a few hours on a draft of something, when AI can do it in moments? That’s the lie we are told, and I would be totally onboard if that were the case. However, people don’t seem to understand that the things you send to others contain almost no meaning and are littered with errors.

Sorry, hallucinations. A word conjured up by companies selling these tools so it downplays the fact they make stuff up. As if the fact your tool is off its face on LSD means the lies it pumps out can be dismissed easier. Oh don’t worry about Gemini, they’re down a K-Hole. No point checking its work though, just send it out.

Hey Siri, Rewrite This For A Human

Emails are increasingly being written by AI. Memos being distributed with not a moments thought, and worst of all there’s an increasing understanding that it’s OK because everyone does it. I’m convinced that a large chunk of email traffic is Gemini talking to Co-Pilot, and neither of them has a clue what the hell is going on anyway. All in the name of productivity.

You see. No one is getting any extra work done. Companies are spending billions because they are convinced that this new technology will change the world. When none of that is true, it’s all smoke and mirrors, and hallucinations. Well, apart from the truth that the societal change is expected to be one not seen since the industrial revolution. Unquestionably it will, but that world will not lead us to work less. It will be one where the humans are dumber because they can’t be bothered to learn any more.

We will pretend every output produced is our own, and communicate only in emoji laden drivel that portrays hustle culture, but the only energy used was megawatts of electric and half a lake of water. But don’t worry because “🧵 Here are 10 things you should be going in your morning routine 👇”.

Go Prompt Yourself

When things are questioned, the excuse that they didn’t check ChatGPT results appears to be perfectly acceptable. Emails from professionals, company press releases and even health care letters are unchecked and littered with issues. As if there’s no pride in anything, not least themselves, any more.

I am having to proactively ask others not to send me AI slop to make my life easier. If I am having to rewrite the shallow nonsense that every LLM produces anyway, I might as well just do it myself from scratch. Seriously, everyone is doing it, doctors, press releases, suppliers. All sending drivel that only an LLM on the receiving end can understand.

Couple this with the presumption that any end result I provide was produced by AI too. Heaven forbid I should use an em dash! I’m not exaggerating when I say this two-pronged attack is squeezing my the life out of me. The words “just get ChatGPT to do it” is the death knell that might signal my eventual snap. Throwing my hands up in the air and walking off into the sunset. Never to be heard of again. Unless you make a custom ChatGPT bot.