Why the Current AI Frenzy Will Not Last

I’m not opposed to using any form of technology, and I’ll happily use AI if it serves my purposes.

Like most copywriters, I write to encourage AI to pick up my client’s content, because I’ll do whatever needs to be done to support Australian small and medium businesses.

But I predict it’s just a matter of time before the tiresome and annoying AI frenzy that we’re dealing with at the moment will disappear.

I predict that it will disappear in the same way as the dot com bubble of the late 1990s did in 2000. The dot com bubble demonstrated that trendy but indiscriminate investment in “dot coms” or internet businesses that didn’t have a solid business foundation was unwise. These businesses collapsed and went broke in their droves in early 2000.

The dot com bubble showed that just because lots of people jump on the bandwagon of the latest “big thing,” doesn’t mean they’re wise or directing their attention to where they should direct it.

Sure, we’ll probably use some AI technology in a balanced and discriminate way after all this quietens down, in the same way as we as we still use internet businesses quite happily.

But AI does not deserve the ridiculous amounts of attention it is currently getting, just because it’s trendy.

This is because:

Using AI as a Research Tool is Actually Time Wasting Rather Than Time Saving

When I research a topic now days I’m normally served up some AI guff at the top of the Google screen.

Hilariously, this firstly fills me with a boundless amount of confidence when it informs me that AI can make mistakes (although I’m actually well aware of this already, thank you very much).

Google’s AI Overview then proceeds to feed me an overly lengthy dog’s breakfast regurgitation of information that AI has plucked from a myriad of sources. If I use this AI box when researching I then have to try to identify individual pieces of information that are useful, and then waste considerable time clicking on the linked websites that the box now provides to work out where that individual piece of information came from. This is because I’m not disrespectful or rude, and I won’t give the people I research for (or myself) poor quality information. I need to assess if the information comes from a quality source, and I will only use valuable information from sources who are human beings.

If I did follow Google’s recommended process above I would waste endless amounts of time. Instead of facilitating my path direct to quality human written information, Google has rudely presumed that as an intelligent human being I want to waste my time ploughing through sanitised robot word vomit before actually ending up right back at quality human written information! I might as well just go straight to quality human written information.

The intelligence element of artificial intelligence is clearly missing here.

I actually research topics far more quickly and efficiently when I go direct to websites below the AI guff and find identifiable sources of quality information written by human beings to answer my question.

Technology of any Kind Only Exists to Serve Human Beings, Human Beings do not Exist to Serve Technology

Those currently ramming AI technology down our throats in order to make a quick buck have forgotten a very important fact.

They have forgotten the fact that human beings are what have endured throughout history and human beings are what will always endure.

Technology only exists to serve humanity.

Yes, we will use AI if it makes something easier.

But we will control when we use AI, and how we use it.

The future is for us amazing human beings and our children, and we will simply use technology as a tool the way we’ve always done.

Just because AI applications are being flogged left right and centre doesn’t mean that we’re going to take them up.

This is because we human beings have had ample experience with technology. And we know that it is not perfect.

We are intelligent, and we will assess where it is responsible and safe to use any technology, and where it is not.

Which brings me to my next point.

Intelligent Human Beings are Offended By AI Generated Slop

We all know that as intelligent human beings we pick up on a wide variety of information when we read something.

We do not simply digest information like mindless machines.

We detect a variety of cues in text. This means that we notice straight away if we are being patronised, or if the knowledge we have as an educated audience is not being respected. We also notice if we are being served up information that ignores where we live and local nuances associated with language, which regularly happens when words are simply plucked from sources across the internet and then cobbled together by AI.

Anyone with a business knows the amount of work and effort that goes into building respectful relationships with clients so that they will return and refer others.

Quite frankly, most business people are not stupid enough to throw all this hard work and effort out the window by throwing AI generated word vomit at their clients. Business goodwill and reputation is earnt by hard work (much of which is unpaid), and business owners are not crazy enough to send clients and potential clients away in droves by publishing offensive low quality AI information. They are also too smart to risk embarrassing themselves by publishing AI information which “could include mistakes.”

AI is anti-Small Business

The internet became a magnificently useful and sometimes even lifesaving resource because independent businesses and organisations posted information on it that actually helped human beings.

Search engines themselves started as small enterprises, in the same way that all businesses start. They then used their ability to link human beings who needed information to information posted on the internet by other generous and smart human beings to become enormous multinational corporations.

Now Google and other massive multinational search engines have decided that human beings and small businesses don’t matter. They are using AI to shunt businesses far to the background rather than keeping them in the foreground. They have decided that human beings are not discerning creatures who want quality information direct from other identifiable, discerning and knowledgeable human beings.

The overpaid Google management has instead incorrectly presumed that we will happily swallow whatever soulless plastic robot generated crap they decide to feed us.

Well Google, I’m here to tell you that you are wrong.

Human beings can detect AI generated text a mile off. Human beings can also detect AI generated images straight away. Is anyone else physically repelled by the shiny plastic AI generated images and graphics? I don’t want a shiny plastic fake world, I want a beautiful real world filled with beautiful real people.

Google is just a large business run by people who don’t always make good decisions. And all multinational corporations make poorer decisions the larger they become.

At the end of the day, human beings will always drive how the internet works.

And I’ll be very interested to see how search engines like Google will need to change in response to how human beings continue to use the internet.