I Am Already Over AI

 JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: It started out innocently enough, wit a few articles about this new "Artificial Intelligence" thing and a few more articles wherein pundits predicted we'd all be living in the Terminator Universe soon, crushed under the chrome-plated jackboot of our robot overlords. 

 

But it turns out AI is far, far more annoying than killer machines.

 

Everywhere I turn, another company is eager to thrust it's AI chatbot/ tools/ research aids upon me. It started when I realized every time I logged in to my health insurance website, this annoying little seal pops up and asks me what I'm doing on every. Single. Page. And you can't get rid of it! The first thing everyone did back in the day was toss Microsoft's Clippy in the trash, what makes you think we want another version?

 

Then, of course, I had Google decide, in its infinite wisdom, that I needed "AI summaries" of every search I made. I cannot convey to you how deeply irritating I find this. It's like being forced to watch someone acting out their kink in public. My friend, I know there are people who like licking boots, but I don't need to clap eyes on it. And I know there are people who want instant information from untrustworthy, error-prone Large Language Models, but I want to click on websites and judge the information myself.

 

Recently, my professorial Zoom account "upgraded," and I was confronted with a slightly changed dashboard (vexing, but not worth more than an eyeroll) and a new title: I was no longer using Zoom, but Zoom Workplace. What the heck is Zoom Workplace, you ask? According to the company, it "brings communication, employee engagement, spaces, and productivity solutions together on a single platform with Zoom AI Companion capabilities woven throughout."

 

 

Really Zoom? I know I'm getting old, but do I look like I need a companion? I'm using your product to lecture college students, they're engaged because I can flunk them, not because I'm using AI to do God-knows what.

The newest unpleasant surprise came when I logged into Freepik, an otherwise great site for finding license-free pictures. You search using various terms, they show you many, many pictures meeting your needs, and you download one or more. Fast, easy, user-friendly.

 

This time, when I selected a photo for downloading, a new screen popped up. Did I want to use AI to edit the picture? "Hmm," I thought. Or maybe said. I talk out loud a lot when I'm alone with the dogs. "I wonder if I could crop this guy out of an otherwise good image?"

 

Reader, I could not. The pinnacle of computing, the application that uses as much electricity as a small country and consumes an average of 550,000 gallons of water per day, per data center? Could stretch the photo side-to-side or up-and-down. And if you're thinking, as I did, "Hey, I can do that with MS Paint, a program first released in 1985," well, I guess you're not looking forward to the future. Or something.

 

I'm starting to feel like a diner in a restaurant that's bought way, way too much spinach and eggs. No matter what I ask for, the waiter keeps offering quiche. It doesn't seem as if these "improvements" have anything to do with, you know, what customers and users actually need.

 

Instead, I'm getting the sense that various CEOs, dazzled by the bullshit sales pitches, spent lots 'o money buying tickets on the AI train. In this metaphor, dear readers, we are tied to the tracks as the locomotive chugs toward us.

 

 

 

So, how do you feel about the plethora of AI assistants showing up online? Are you a fan? Or do you, like me, just want to scream, "Save me, Dudley Do-Right! Save me!"