AI Trolls

This is how technology is improving our lives

Declan Sun

AI is a tool, and as such, I have nothing against it. What bothers me is how people use it.

Some of my corporate work supposedly had to be done, and I’m all for AI taking it over. It was tedious, mind numbing, soul crushing labor, and looking back, the new platforms and the way we worked was being tailored for an AI production line.

In the beginning, I proofread files, could use a command window to load a complete proxy once all the sections were finished for a final check, and even file it with the SEC myself if necessary. By the time I left, all I was doing was proofreading. I couldn’t look at anything unless a typesetter posted it, and no longer had the power to file. I was also a lot more replaceable.

This job was only necessary because we have so many financial laws and loopholes that are constantly changing. We’re burning through terrawatts of coal and gas and billions of reams of paper to churn out this crap and do other jobs that are complete bullshit, and AI is eating even more electricity. If it’s doing something necessary and saving time and energy in the long run by ending commuting and reducing the hours human beings have to suffer, fine, but we’re more concerned with AI companions, and the machine heuristic applies even more so than it does for computers.

People tend to trust computers and AI more than people even when the answers they get are clearly incorrect or biased. These people think they’re computer literate, but don’t understand garbage in, garbage out. Yes, the computer executed the program correctly, but you didn’t input the data correctly.

AI is more insidious, and one troll kept sending me ChatGPT analyses criticizing an article I wrote. I told him ChatGPT is a large language model based on probability, which psycholinguistics has shown is not how people generate language or ideas, and that the people who program these models have biases that have been confirmed to seep into their work. ChatGPT was just learning to tell him whatever he wanted to hear.

He disappeared to look up whether what I was writing about ChatGPT was true, or desperately trying to find out it wasn’t, then chimed back in after nearly an hour and tried to dox me.

Most people don’t want a discussion or to acknowledge reality. They want a robot that agrees with whatever insane bullshit they happen to believe. I see a future of billions of broke people who think they’re interacting with a community, but who are actually talking to themselves. These people may hate themselves, but at least they agree with themselves, and we’re already seeing that people are increasingly incapable of maintaining a civil dialogue that challenges any of their beliefs. You might agree on 90%, or even 99%, but that 1% of disagreement is too much to cope with.

We aren’t failing the Turing Test because AI is growing more cogent, we’re failing because we’re becoming more stupid and fragile. Social media already chopped one leg off, and if AI finishes us off, we deserve it.

If a MAGA lunatic disagrees with me, I’m a libtard. If a liberal extremist disagrees with me, I’m a MAGA fascist. Why can’t I just be an individual who knows they’re a moron?

A person goes to a math forum to ask a question. Several people explain the answer clearly and correctly, and the questioner writes “Well from my perspective, blah blah blah.” One of us replies “Your perspective doesn’t matter. Your answer is incorrect. We’ve shown you step by step why.” The person retorts “Well that’s not how I see it.” They never listen until their life (or phone or computer) is immediately on the line. Once the problem is resolved, it’s back to being the smartest person in the world.

Personal attacks toward me have shifted to assumptions about my lack of a love life or gainful employment. I’d rather be alone than be with an annoying, entitled asshole. I’ve hated most of my jobs, and with a bit of thrift and luck, I should be able to coast to Social Security, death, or the collapse of civilization, whatever comes first (probably the collapse of civilization).

All of these people are self-proclaimed unique freethinkers, but there’s only one version of a successful life that they can imagine, and it centers around status, or the race to be rich (not content), married (not happy), and have kids as accessories. It’s a race to show off who can best conform to warped expectations and appear to be enlightened, and would these people want this so badly if they hadn’t been told what they wanted their entire lives?

I’m content to be indifferent to these people, but what I feel is contempt and frustration. You talk to one of these people, you’ve talked to them all, but I don’t want an AI sycophant either. If everyone on earth thought as I did, I’d shoot myself, and the world would be even more of a nightmare.

The only way out is to trust and help each other, but we’ve forgotten how.