Authors, journalists, and politicians are now ‘enriching’ their texts with AI

Total nonsense but in many words to impress us

The newest favor authors do readers and listeners is peppering their texts with AI nonsense so they look more erudite, we are kept busy and feeling stupid, and so, they must be smart. No science fiction; the future’s here.

‘Fossil from 1940 reveals what dinosaur skin looked like’ is a magnificent example of newspaper ‘journalism’ ‘enriched’ by AI nonsense.

Let’s walk chronologically through the gobbledygook piece.

The heading is nonsense. The fossil was found in 1940, not from 1940, and then 75 years in storage before being prepared for study in 2020.

Of course, one specimen of a plesiosaur could not prove “how dinosaur skin looked” (sic) in general. It is well-known (but not by AI) that a large minority of these beasts were covered with feathers, not scales.

Look at this text with its useless details, misplaced commas, and a baffling And about the researchers’ methods: “transmitted light microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, electron backscatter diffraction, and infrared microspectroscopy.” If you must drop all these names and forms of microscopy, then explain them: ‘regular transmitted-light microscopy and surface-detecting microscopy with scanning electrons or electron backscatter diffraction, and analytical infrared microspectroscopy that characterizes the chemistry and three-dimensional physical structure.’

And “to analyze the molecular makeup” probably was meant to mean the cellular makeup, a whole scale larger. Of course, its cells and nuclei were gone, if only by lying in storage for 75 years. But some relics of them apparently were found. Which ones would be interesting to know, but AI can’t tell you what’s interesting and what’s not, so we are not told which.

“The well-preserved German fossil really highlights the potential for soft tissue in providing valuable insights into the biology of these long-extinct animals,” is such a typical fluffy AI nonsense sentence. What would be sensible would be: ‘That its soft tissue (and not just the bones as in most fossils) was well-preserved makes it possible for us to study its cytology and have some thought about under what conditions and with what adaptations and capacities it lived.’ That is informative and logical.

How do you like this beauty of nonsense: “Despite differing opinions on their behavior, the study offers insights into the appearance and locomotion of plesiosaurs, marking a turning point in their study as they proved much more difficult to analyze than other prehistoric marine reptiles.” ‘Study’ is used in two different meanings in one sentence and ‘despite’ is a wrong word here. The whole causality is off. I suspect that this was the intention: ‘This study offers insights into the appearance and locomotion of plesiosaurs, marking a turning point in studying them as they proved much more difficult to analyze than other prehistoric marine reptiles giving rise to differing opinions on their behavior.’

“Our findings help us create more accurate life reconstructions of plesiosaurs, something that has been extremely difficult since they were first studied over 200 years ago” is a totally superfluous sentence.

At the end, the piece explains that Plesiosaurs were in the oceans what dinosaurs were on land. A human would put that at the start of the piece.

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AI, indeed, has found some usefulness, but not what the hype tells us. AI can take over stupid things, like washing machines can do our washing. AI can speed up computer work, like folding proteins in theory. But the fear that AI will take over and kill us all? I don’t think we need the help.

Now, a crazy scientist has calculated we can stop climate change by exploding 3 million Hiroshima nuclear bombs. I know a cheaper way. Have climate change kill us all and then carbon emissions will really fall.

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About the Author

MM is a prolific and creative writer and thinker, previously a daily blog contributor to the TOI. He often makes his readers laugh, mad, or assume he's nuts—close to perfect blogging. He's proud that his analytical short comments are removed both from left-wing and right-wing news sites. None of his content is generated by the new bore on the block, AI. * As a frontier thinker, he sees things many don't yet. He's half a prophet. Half. Let's not exaggerate. Or not at all because he doesn't claim G^d talks to him. He gives him good ideas—that's all. MM doesn't believe that people observe and think in a vacuum. He, therefore, wanted a broad bio that readers interested can track a bit what (lack of) backgrounds, experiences, and educations contribute to his visions. * This year, he will prioritize getting his unpublished books published rather than just blog posts. Next year, he hopes to focus on activism against human extinction. To find less-recent posts on a subject XXX among his over 2000 archived ones, go to the right-top corner of a Times of Israel page, click on the search icon and search "zuiden, XXX". One can find a second, wilder blog, to which one may subscribe too, here: https://mmvanzuiden.wordpress.com/ or by clicking on the globe icon next to his picture on top. * Like most of his readers, he believes in being friendly, respectful, and loyal. However, if you think those are his absolute top priorities, you might end up disappointed. His first loyalty is to the truth. He will try to stay within the limits of democratic and Jewish law, but he won't lie to support opinions or people when don't deserve that. (Yet, we all make honest mistakes, which is just fine and does not justify losing support.) He admits that he sometimes exaggerates to make a point, which could have him come across as nasty, while in actuality, he's quite a lovely person to interact with. 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