AI Ate My Lunch

 

Meta AI image of a PBJ sandwich and chips 

I’m participating in John Holton's Writer’s Workshop this week by responding to two of his prompts. The first question is about my favorite topic: lunch!

1. Did you bring your lunch to school? What did you usually have?

My mommy always packed my lunch when I was little. I had an inexplicable hatred of peanut butter for several years, so she would make me sandwiches of tuna salad, egg salad, or lunchmeat. She included chips or cookies, and I think I bought milk at school. Around age 12, I decided that I loved peanut butter and jelly (but not grape jelly), so we switched, and I began making my own lunch. Because I can get a bit obsessive, I pretty much had a PB&J sandwich every school day, along with Pringles potato chips. I brought a lot of chips so I could share them, which gave me a smidge more popularity than I would have had otherwise. In high school, my food OCD went out of control, and my lunches changed accordingly (half a PB sandwich, no jelly, no chips, etc.).

2. Do you use Artificial Intelligence for anything? Have you ever used it to write a blog post? What is your opinion of it?

I use Meta AI daily; I find it much more efficient and helpful than Googling because Google now not only gives you AI results anyway, but also it provides a pile of questionable links. I don’t like to click on unknown things, due to all the scams and malware out there. Here are examples of recent “conversations” that I have had with Meta AI: updates on the local Garden Grove toxic event, updates on the California primary election, when is Yesteryear coming out, what is aspiration pneumonia, how did Amazon trick me with this photo of a shirt that appeared to have sequins but didn’t? 

While I have not used AI to write a blog post, I have used it to create images to go with blog posts, such as the one here. Meta AI gives me images in a good size, unlike say Pixabay or even my own photos, which are generally enormous, so I don’t have to reduce them to save on Google storage. It baffles me though how AI is going to “take over the world” when it often flubs the simplest directions, like “make the table blue.” I did not ask for a blue plate! But I stopped there because I have discovered that the more tweaks I ask for the worse it gets. 

If/when I do use Meta AI’s actual words in a post, I will say so, as I would do with any other words that aren’t mine. This will be coming up because we just had a very interesting discussion about first-person POV in novels, and I plan to make (yet another) post about that subject. I find that Meta AI is really good at articulating exactly why a book worked for me or didn’t by doing a deep dive into plot and character.

I think that much like any technology AI has benefits and drawbacks. I go case by case to judge. Asking AI how many levels of Wordscapes I have to play before I get to a challenging level is fine, but using AI to write a book and saying it’s your own work is wrong. Using AI to create fake news or photos of people is wrong. Using AI to stalk an ex is apparently wrong because it actually refused to do this for me. Oops! My bad.

That’s my opinion. Also, I am opposed to data centers gobbling up community resources ~ if that’s the only way we can continue with things such as Meta AI, then it isn’t worth it.