AI – specifically the types that write good words – is taking over. Judging by the news, that’s now an explicit aim of the government. It’s definitely taking over LinkedIn – apparently over half of longer posts are likely AI-generated. And there’s lots of marketing guff around explaining how we all need to be leveraging AI to generate content.
Here at Lamplight we’re not using AI on this website, and not too much overall.
We would say that wouldn’t we
Can I prove that this post wasn’t? No. I mean I suppose I could record me sat here typing. But you’ll have to take my word for it, I’m afraid.
Why Not? It’s so much more efficient.
- We don’t want to contribute to the enshittification of the internet
It’s not just LinkedIn – more and more of the content of the internet is or will be AI generated. We just don’t want to be a part of that. We want to communicate with humans as humans.
- The Environment
The environmental costs of AI are so high. It takes massive amounts of computing power. We’re trying to move in the opposite direction – reducing our energy consumption and environmental impact with things like Climate Perks.
- AI has problems with bias and lying
It’s learned much of what it knows from the internet. If you’ve used the internet, you’ll know it’s not all sweetness and light here. AI generates content that reflects what it’s learned. It’ll also make stuff up. In other words, I don’t trust it much and probably wouldn’t employ it if it were a person applying for a job.
- AI has it’s uses but not here
There are some things we’ve found where it’s helpful. One of our team has found that passing draft emails through an AI powered service reduces the anxiety they previously felt about their communication, so it’s made them happier and more efficient. We use it a bit to help with programming – it can generate small sections of repetitive code fairly reliably, although we check it carefully. So we’re not completely against. But if you contact us you will be speaking to or emailing a real person.
Photo by DC Studio
