You may wonder why I moderate the comments. If only they could just flow freely, like the thoughts in your head late at night. It's not just the trolls. It's also the spam that the spam filter doesn't always catch. And nowadays, it can use AI to compose the compliment that's supposed to provide camouflage for the link it wants to post. This came in overnight:
I need to learn the ways of the machine so I can exclude it. The machine, insanely, has its own voice. It came up with "blurred lines of appropriateness." Is this Elon Musk's new machine, Grok? It seems as though it's been taking drugs.
I asked ChatGPT for similar content and here's how it went:
Notice how both machines seem to think the main thing about law is that it's complicated and the main thing people want from a lawprof blogger is simplification.
ADDED: This post made me want to look back on my old "Canyons of Your Mind" post from 2015. That's in the top 1% of what I mean to be doing here. When AI absorbs that, I will be afraid.
Posts
33 comments:
… and the main thing people want from a lawprof blogger is simplification.
Well, those of us who passed sixth grade civics back in the 1950s want simplification from the legislators*
and government regulators who write the laws and regulations.
_____________
* Yes, I am aware that at the federal level, at least, most of the legislation is written by staffers.
Blurred lines is an Emily Ratajkowski dance video, safe and adult versions depending on topless or not.
It's an online replacement for the Pastor's Model Letter Book
(Name) has asked to unite with First Church, and therefore has requested that we contact you in order that his/her name be removed from your church roll.
We are pleased to receive (name) into our fellowship, and are certain that he/she will be an asset. Thank you for your prompt compliance with his/her desire to transfer membership.
In Christ,
Pastor
I like the Rahm Emanuel version.
What's hilarious is how flowery the fake post is. People here are pithy and brutal. At a certain point AI will be programmed to actually read the blog and comments.
All my life I've wanted a sycophant and now with technology it's possible. Do you have to pay extra for a bevy? I'd like a bevy of sycophants.
"ADDED: This post made me want to look back on my old "Canyons of Your Mind" post from 2015. That's in the top 1% of what I mean to be doing here. When AI absorbs that, I will be afraid."
You have a distinct voice and it would surely be disheartening, though maybe kind of fascinating, to read words that sound just like what you would say. As far as replacing you, the other talent, which you could make use of, if AI ever masters it, is the choice of subjects to blog about.
All my life I've wanted a sycophant and now with technology it's possible. Do you have to pay extra for a bevy? I'd like a bevy of sycophants.
Pretty funny stuff. Grok has a nice approach. I'm going to have to dig into it and perhaps, return here as something else.
I still don't know how you keep up with this thing.
Who couldn't enjoy watching Rahm hump the back of a folding chair?
He should wish for Brad Pitt playing him in the movie version.
The second attempt went with the “blend” too. Strange. It is impressive that they pile the BS so high before slipping in the link.
"You have a distinct voice and it would surely be disheartening, though maybe kind of fascinating, to read words that sound just like what you would say. As far as replacing you, the other talent, which you could make use of, if AI ever masters it, is the choice of subjects to blog about."
That's something I've blogged about before, but here I was only thinking of AI figuring me out enough to write a compliment that would sound as though it understood what my blog is about — something that seemed like what would be said by real person who reads and enjoys what I'm actually doing.
Right now, AI's idea of what a lawprof blog might be is generic and actually insulting to me. It's what a commercial website might hire a law school graduate to crank out. There's no amount of money you could pay me to do that for 20 years of my life.
In the first few years of this blog, it was a running joke for me that other blogs would criticize me and use the phrase "you, a law professor!"
That is, they thought they could attack me by accusing me of not using my expertise to soberly explain legal concepts.
My comments “flow freely” from the depths of my bowels.
“I need to learn the ways of the machine so I can exclude it.”
That’s easy. Just delete all comments that say anything nice about you.
Me: "That's the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. I'm researching the origin of the phrase 'canyons of your mind.' What do you think is the first appearance of that phrase?"
Meade: "I don't know. Glenn Campbell?"
Me: "That's 'Gentle on My Mind.'"
IIRC, the phrase can also be found in the less well-known song, Gentle on My Canyon by The Gonzo Bitch Hounders.
I guess I just try to stay reminded that with A.I. chatbots, your mind is the product that is being traded, just as with the 'free' social media, your data footprint was. Social media has changed humanity, but is it for the better? What will A.I. do? More bad than good, I fear.
"Be more effusive and detailed."
LOL. compliment harder.
Yes, the lack of specifics and knowledge of the blog, combined with the generic language seems to be the tip off. AI knows the words to use, but lacks the experience. Its also too verbose and well-written. And full of lib-speak.
No real person would write "eavesdrop (sic) on your intellectual banter".
Dear Professor Althouse,
Congrats on such a well-written post! I read Mother Jones, The NY Times, and the Harvard Law Review. I know for sure I couldn't duplicate such an artsy 60's, avant-garde, feminist point-of-view (speech uber-alles) on my own.
In a word: Unique.
Text to collab/collage on a project?
Aggie, don't worry. Pau! Krugman has written that AI will do horrible things to civilization.
So we can all relax now.
The writing reminds me of Gigolo Joe, Jude Law’s character from the movie “AI”
The writing reminds me of Gigolo Joe, Jude Law’s character from the movie “AI”
Skating away on the thin ice of a new day.
ChatGPT product is a twist on Nabokov's definition of prOn: the copulation of cliches.
Jargon thrusting deep inside babble.
“That is, they thought they could attack me by accusing me of not using my expertise to soberly explain legal concepts.”
How boooring that would have been. For most, law is boring, and esp the legal ins and out, as opposed to the human side. My poor sainted daughter decided to take a different path, after growing up in a family of lawyers. For her, as a PhD mechanical engineer, fluid dynamics and heat transfer are more interesting to talk about than how many angels can dance on the lead of a pin, as lawyers tend to do. Many times, our dinner conversation would veer into lawyer talk, leaving her, my mother, and one brother out. My next brother can happily engage in either discussion, as can my best friend (both ME trained patent attorneys). I can’t. I had just one ME class - ME for non ME engineering majors, and that was sufficient for my interests. How boooring.
For quite some time now, my order of reading stuff off the Internet starts off with four lawprof blogs: Instapundit (Reynolds), Volokh Conspiracy, Althouse, and Legal Insurrection (Jacobson). Drudge used to be first, until he sold out and the blog became irrelevant. You could be forgiven if you didn’t know that either Reynolds or Althouse were/had been law profs, just by reading their blogs. It’s their voices that I like. I discovered blogs through Eugene Volokh - we knew each other before that from the Cyberlaw-L listserve group, and Mark Lemley’s Cyber Law conferences in Austin, in the 1990s, when he was at UT. I continue to be interested in the legal topics he writes about (personally), though some of his Conspiracy bloggers can be quite pedantic. And I started following LI when Andrew Branca was following the George Zimmerman SD case closely there.
It’s Ann’s mind that I find so compelling, as evidenced by her writing. I think that I would have been attracted to her, like a bee to honey, if we had gone to the same college (she’s 3 months younger), before either of us had gone to law school. Yet, I suspect that she would have been well out of my reach, as several of my female classmates were (and all went on to prominence). And, yes, I was never a leftist, even in college, when protesting was so in vogue. But that just make’s Ann more interesting - a somewhat recovered ivory tower leftist.
Do I always see where she is going with her posts? Of course not. Many of us don’t. One of the things that many very bright people can do is make intuitive leaps, that the less fortunately endowed cannot easily follow. Sometimes it takes nudging on her part to see where she was trying to go. Often I can though, and greatly enjoy what she ties together.
I wondered why you didn't post my comment : )
Seriously, all spammers (email, phone, etc.) should be rounded up and prosecuted.
But of those, 10 names should be randomly drawn every year, and those 10 executed on live television.
Spammers sap billions of dollars and millions of hours of productivity.
They are the lowest form of life.
I'd normally say 'Kill them all' but that might be a tough sell.
Ask me what I really think...
Like fake reviews on Amazon, it’s glaringly obvious. I can’t believe you think this would fool anyone other than Inga or an ESL commenter.
Moderation takes away more than it offers. I miss the hurly-burly of the marketplace, trolls, obsessives, stalkers, deranged Progs, and all the rest.
"buzzing with thoughts"
It's kind of funny that an electrical device said that.
"buzzing with thoughts"
It's kind of funny that an electrical device said that.
Well, "My mind is aglow with whirling, transient nodes of thought careening through a cosmic vapor of invention" has already been done...
That was Chuck.
AI needs a watermark.
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