AI is here to stay, getting better (in some applications), and maybe someday will mean the end of websites like CC—it’s already affecting us in a number of ways, all negative. But as long as I’m still the publisher, CC will have a strict no-AI policy for its content as well as in the comments. The exception will of course be if we are doing an AI-specific post with images that are amusing, speculative, ironic or tongue-in-cheek, but they will be clearly marked as such. The whole point of this website is to use our cumulative historical knowledge, insights, perspectives, opinions and judgments on a subject we pride ourselves on knowing more about than most, including AI. CC is about either knowing the facts or being able to figure them out based on genuine research or even just good judgment to know what’s right and what’s not.
And this includes comments left based on an AI query, which have popped up recently. They will be deleted, as they invariably (so far) have had significant mistakes in them.
I am neither an AI optimist or alarmist; I have no greater ability to discern just how it’s going to fully affect the human experience going forward. But it’s pretty obvious that it will generally make us all…dumber, without being plugged into our personal AI agents. This is nothing new; we’ve all been getting dumber in some respects ever since technology has replaced the need to do (and know) essentially everything for ourselves, at least if we wanted to be successful in life. Yet of course technology has also opened vast avenues of knowledge and information to us; that’s why CC exists on the web. But there’s a huge difference between using technology to make widespread access to information and facts and resources and then using good judgement and experience to distill what is “true” versus junk. This is what we do here everyday, and it’s what separates us from lesser automotive history websites. And some of us (I’m looking at Aaron Severson) have a vast storehouse of printed material or are able to access libraries and collections of materials that no AI is ever likely to find.
I make a point to keep current with the impact AI is having in many fields, and perhaps not surprisingly, the need to oversee and correct AI is where the growth is at. Yes, many mundane jobs in law, business, medicine, and many other fields are being farmed out to AI, but everyone is realizing how essential it is that this AI-generated material is then reviewed and edited. It largely explains why there has not yet been a substantial impact on employment in these fields.
I’m a bit reluctant to use an actual comment at CC to use as an example because I don’t want to shame the commenter, but it’s a graphic example of how in our field, AI is simply not to be relied upon. In a response to a comment wondering why Chrysler chose to use the letter “LHS” as the name of one of the versions of its LH-platform cars, this comment was left:
AI says LH was the LH Platform, and the S was for stretched, ie longer than its stablemates.
The facts are that the LHS was the exact same length (and body) as the New Yorker and had the same wheelbase as the rest of the LH family. Although we may never know why certain letters or letter combinations were used by automakers (“LTD”, “XS” “SLE”, etc.), we can use our experience and judgment to say that almost certainly the “S” stood for Sports or Special, as in the high-status Mercedes S Class and others, as the LHS was clearly targeted to be sportier and more Euro-oriented than its more typical American luxury-style New Yorker sibling. “S” was simply a fairly common letter used to denote a sporty/Euro themed variations. No maker ever used “S” to denote a stretched version of a car, to my knowledge.
Here’s exactly what happened, as it wasn’t hard to track down. Someone on Instagram posted this about the LHS claiming that the LHS stood for “LH-Stretched”. AI read that post and and now AI thinks it’s fact. This is precisely how AI works, but unfortunately the internet is absolutely littered with garbage “facts” and unsupported opinions about cars as well as everything else. It’s not really AI’s fault; it’s just regurgitating what it finds without knowing better.
Now is it theoretically possible that LHS really does stand for “LH-Stretched”? I suppose yes, but it defies everything we know about naming conventions, the significance of the letter “S” as well as just common sense. But if someone can show solid evidence that this was actually the case, bring it on, and I’d be very happy to eat crow. Which we have done many times in the past, and will continue to do so in the future as facts are pointed out to use where we’ve been wrong. That’s the essence of what CC is all about: teasing out the real facts thanks to our collective efforts, in the content as well as the comments. Which is why I (and other CC writers) spend quite a bit of time responding to comments that we feel or know are inaccurate. Who else bothers to do that?
And you know who the ultimate beneficiary is? AI! We’re trying hard to educate AI so someday we can all really retire and live on the guaranteed “free” income all of us will be getting someday when AI and robots do everything and we’re all sitting around trying to stave of boredom.
In the meantime, I also need to point out that AI is having a real negative impact on our stats and revenue, both of which are down this year for the first time in five years. Google and other searches are yielding…often dumb AI answers instead of a link to our website (or other genuine authoritative sources). So if you want to see CC continue to be staffed by the best automotive history writers possible (it’s become extremely hard to make a living at that), please support us by becoming a member (see below). We depend increasingly on your financial commitment to support our non-AI intelligence, judgment and insights. That is, until AI turns off the lights here…
Well said! Thank you.
Here here!! The AI available to we casual users is happy to serve up flatly wrong answers. If you know better and confront it, it may acknowledge the error. But most ask the questions because they don’t know the answer and therefore don’t know enough to push back.
That’s the beauty of this place. Many times have I stated what I believed was a fact but wasn’t. Others here have challenged or corrected me and I have been better informed afterwards. There are plenty of gray areas or matters of opinion to wrangle over, but basic facts provable by reliable sources should not have to be among them.
I am so pissed off how AI is infiltrating the web. I can not trust anything on the Web. Soon, I will go back to 1990, and stop using the Internet, only use my email.
Alfred: I agree fully. But would throw out there a question as follow up. Could we ever really trust what we “read” on the web? What’s the saying: If it’s on the web, it must be true? Or something like that. Of course, that is sarcasm because we know a lot of what’s out there is not true.
For me? There are MANY days I wish that I could toss my phone into the ocean and turn off my email.
Could we ever really trust what we “read” on the web?
Absolutely not! A substantial part of my motivation in starting and building CC has specifically been to provide an alternative to the endless/mindless misinformation that is littered in so many areas of the web. The rise of social media is a huge cause for this; before that most websites tended to be run by serious enthusiasts who knew their stuff, mostly. Now everyone has an opinion and throws out “facts”.
I am fortunate in having a better than average BS meter. It’s been my biggest asset, as it allows me to search and at the same time sift the chaff from the wheat. I don’t even pretend to know a fraction of what I write here by heart, but I apply a rigorous testing process to all the information I find online. Is this logical? A trusted source? Can I verify it? It’s not about what you know by heart; it’s what you can synthesize from all the information available and come up with a solid, logical conclusion. And be willing to correct it when confronted with better information.
You can trust what you read here to be as accurate as possible with what we have available as resources. And know that we are constantly checking on each other.
Unfortunately, the term “Get It In Writing” was intended to make a statement factual and irrefutable, and now with the coming of AI, it has suddenly become questionable when it can mimic even one’s signature.
AI doesn’t even have to have indexed the wrong answer somewhere to confidently tell you a wrong answer. It will assertively state “facts”, and link sources that turn out to be irrelevant. As an example, I searched a rumor I had heard about a local restaurant owner going to prison, and AI said yes, he did, and he overdosed and died. But it just conflated information about another person mentioned in an article about the restaurant bankruptcy with the actual owner. If I didn’t look at the source I would have believed a completely untrue statement, which had not been definitely stated anywhere
Excellent, thank you!
Thank you for this.
Quite apart from the water, land and energy use and abusive employment of trainers inherent in AI, it´s also based on the unpaid use of everything every written or photographed. AI as most people use it is a way to make a few people rich based on: outputs not grounded in truth or a first-person experience of the world.
We´re here to talk to other humans not Claude, ChatGPT etc.
Here here! I fully support your decision, and I am glad you made it.
GIGO is an acronym dating back to the earliest days of computing. It stands for “garbage in, garbage out”. It’s still true, but now it is happening at an alarmingly increasing rate.
“A lie gets halfway around the world while the truth is still putting its boots on.”
“AI gets halfway around the world while the truth is still putting its boots on.”
There, fixed it for you!
Excellent! This is the attitude that attracted me to CC in the first place. Even before the advent of AI so many other automotive websites seemed childish in tone, with a lot of pointless partisan squabbling and fan-boy nonsense presented as fact. While I have used AI to assist research for writing fiction, I steer clear of it for serious matters. It’s simply not trustworthy as a research tool.
In my line of work, I deal with AI as a matter of daily tasks. I’m a heavy user, and also need to be a reviewer, both for professional and personal reasons. In my experience, there are a few things to be thought about (I won’t say “as a user of such and such I hereby declare”).
1) As has always been true of information systems, GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out)
2) Most tools (In information systems and other technologies, beginning with a hammer) are tremendously powerful as long as they are used by people capable to do so and FOR the means they are intended. A hammer can be deadly.
3) I can’t speak about the usability or capability of tools I’m not prepared to deal with. If I were given a machine (say a gearbox, or a front end, or…) and a set of screwdrivers, declampers, clippers, and whatever other things are needed to dismantle, fix and reconstruct it, the device will remain as is in the best case, in the worst case I’ll probably ruin the chance that a capable human will repair it.
4) Last but not least. CC is known and followed by many people, and many of those, counting myself, are here and subscribe because of its outlook, serious people writing from experience, sources and knowledge, but also because you always feel there is a human behind. I’d say, you’ll never be able to prepare as many articles from as many people telling you a human story that happens to be much related to an automobile, if there weren’t enough human beings, real ones, devoted to do the task.
So, Paul, your explicit decision is very welcome. I, for one, like to leave work at the office, and though I play with AI to find out whether a Porsche 356 could be ordered with a column shift lever, I’d rather trust my website of choice. Thanks a lot for all your effort, and that goes for all the team also.
Should we said goodbye to “phantom” cars and others AI generated cars that never were like this 1975 Packard Patrician and 1975 Studebaker Lark in the “what if?” and “what might have been” categories?
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/what-if/what-if-1975-packard-patrician/
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/what-if/what-if-1975-studebaker-lark/
Yes – unless drawn by hand. It saves resources, at least.
I am very glad CC only uses 100% organic intelligence.
I use AI for analysis and summaries but I always check sources first and CC is often a primary source
Well, I guess you answered my question about AI use in C C articles. can understand the ‘accuracy level’ of AI giving false facts about specs like engine size, model nomenclature, release date, prodution numbers and other facts about the cars discused here. My question was if I can use AI generated ‘cartoon’ strips in multi panel formats to provide a weekly cartoon for readers of CC. They will be of humorous, semi satirical, seasonal and nostalgic nature.And since all my egenerated images are done many times until I get them right, they are not slop.I can provide images for your approval if you give me a chance. Thank you.
As I mentioned in the post, yes, we are open to posts that use AI-generated images for precisely the reasons you stated. We’ve done that in the past and had a lot of fun with it. AI can be a great tool for bending reality visually in a humorous way. Feel free to contact us directly at curbsideclassic(at)gmail.com
Thank you Paul. This is a good thing. AI should not be trying to write ‘fact based’ articles.
As an example, I was on MSN the other day, sadly a default website on a browser I almost never use and got sucked in by a click-bait article (one of many tailored to my interest in all things automotive and all things aviation). The article was about Mustangs, and it was a link to what I thought was a halfway respectable site called Slash Gear.
The article mentioned the S-197 Mustang (something about which I know, considering my handle here), and that the base engine in 2007 was a 4.0L V8… um, I was just under the hood of the car this very morning and only counted 6 spark plug wires. Hmmmm….
Me thinks the author used AI to gather his so-called ‘facts’ and blew this one big time.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this. AI gets aviation details wrong all the time too.
I can confirm that a rapidly growing number of car websites are using AI to one degree or another. They hire young kids for peanuts (often in faraway countries) that have no real historical context or experience and expect them to generate content that will pop on the web. AI slop. Reader beware!
All you need to know is the disclaimer starting to show up: “AI-generated content can contain errors.”
Agreed. AI is hardly “super intelligence”. At this point, I am thinking more that “AI”, at least when it comes to historical information, is the worst sort of “I believe it because I found it on the net”, sort of intelligence.
For reasons not germane here, I have been researching the military situation in the Philippines, just before the war. When I asked the AI agent why rifles the Philippines bought from the US were not cut down to carbines, to be more manageable for the average sized Filipino soldier, the agent said they could not be modified because of the Neutrality Act. I told the bot the Neutrality Act did not apply, because the Philippines were a US possession. So the bot pivoted to a different argument. It insisted that there was no armory in the Philippines that could have cut down the rifles. Wrong again. The Philippine Ordinance Depot certainly had the capability, because, some years before, that Depot had cut down rifles of a different model, so they would be more manageable, for the members of the Philippine Constabulary. The bot has told me other things I know to be haggis, just in this one project.
I need to find an in depth book about the P-40, because I don’t trust what the bot was saying about the armor.
Tienes toda la razón del universo. La IA está afectando a las publicaciones no sólamente de automóviles, también de todos los temas y rubros. Es muy triste que cada vez que yo pongo el buscador determinado tema, se me aparece una respuesta de inteligencia artificial sin que yo se lo haya pedido , ésto implica que están plagiando todos los grandes trabajos que los autores científicos y amateurs han hecho con tanto esfuerzo. Ésto está poniendo en peligro la diversidad y los matices de abordaje que son tan interesantes de descubrir. Yo te escribo desde Argentina y amo Curbside Classic desde hace unos 10 años . Tengo mis puntos de vista y me encanta compartirlos con gente de la cultura estadounidense, asi como jamás podria burlarme de los antiguos automóviles soviéticos porque detrás de cada automóvil hay una arqueologia industrial , culturas, sacrificios y sobre todo mucha carga emocional de cada país que se dedicó a ensamblar sus vehiculos con personalidades adecuadas. Sé que Curbside Classic es la ÚNICA publicación digital que siempre fue pluralista, genuina, que siempre recibe con entusiasmo los testimonios de países lejanos como el mio. Te saludo con mucho afecto desde Argentina, no existe inteligencia artificial alguna que pueda confundir a la gente que prefiere el buen discernimiento. También le mando un abrazo a todos los lectores de Estados Unidos , porque son la fuente genuina de todas estas discusiones, porque entre todos uncluidos los extranjeros queremos que Curbside Classic conserve su cordón umbilical con el público, que tanto te agradecemos tus fascinantes articulos que abarcan todas las culturas del sector automotriz
Thank you Paul.
Great policy! I agree with & fully support your No AI policy.
Good there are to many wrong ideas of old cars. For those of us that remember what they were like from the car companies thanks no need for some AI dream or abortion
I will go against most of my “R-word” compadres and say I think Ai shoulda been stopped at the outset and preemptively put out of our misery. No way it ends well.
As for the LHS, I recall reading in a car magazine back then that it was Luxury High Series.
On a related note – I did own a 24V loaded version of the Concorde, which I pimped out with 300M alloys. It was quite a fine car. Later kept it going with a newer 300C Hemi (with straight pipes!) that was even better.
I remember it as standing for “Luxury Highline Sedan”, but I can’t find any factual verification on that.
Bravo! There is so much AI crappola out there. Recently I’ve seen a lot of 4 headlamp ’57 Chevys and prewar cars doing drifts in city scenes. Its nice to be able to count on CC for Real ,quality content!
Excellent! As an old engineer I have these antiquated ideas that things should function correctly, and that at least on technical topics there are things that are factual and others that are incorrect. AI seems perfectly suited for this modern world where the best anyone can expect is that things sort of work ok maybe most of the time.
Creativity, innovation, imagination? Nope. AI is a one way ride to mediocrity, incompetency and irrelevancy.
Wholeheartedly agree. My Youtube feed is filled with AI-slop videos of buses that are egregiously incorrect. I sometimes think they do it on purpose merely to generate comments because it is so obvious. I usually hold my tongue and refuse to comment rather than contribute towards their revenue.
As a not-so-old but still old-enough engineer I fully concur. Increasingly, I am seeing obvious AI solutions entering into engineering practice. On the one hand, I can’t help but be impressed at how fast some things can be developed (and I use this word loosely) to the point they sort of work, but on the other hand I also can’t help but be underwhelmed by the underlying quality and mostly, gained understanding of the problem being solved. AI feels like a student that always does the bare minimum to pass but never fully grasps the subject matter.
The artistic side of AI is getting better but still not very good. I saw a picture illustrating the 1979 gas shortage. The cars were accurate 70s models, not mixed up as before…. but the gas station attendant was putting gas in the driver’s elbow, and somebody was standing through the hood of another car..
I’m pretty disgusted with all the horribly amateurish AI crap being posted online. The images are shocking and they make me angry. We try so hard to be accurate and then we get buried by bullshit. There are videos from Sweden about cars never sold over there. The creators have zero credibility but offer shiny polished turds of misinformation.
I hate this.
Thank you for this policy, may it live long and prosper! The slop is everywhere now. I find the most pernicious one is Google’s little AI helper on top of their search page. It’s always there and cannot be silenced, but it’s easy to get sidetracked by the BS it generates. Especially when writing posts.
Recently Google Maps moved the route options button and replaced it with the AI assistant, which really pisses me off. I regularly use that show routes button and have zero use for it asking me questions.
This is excellent. I have a friend who is relying on AI to help him with his health. Oh brother. He doesn’t trust doctors, but he trusts that?
Thank you Paul
I haven’t liked what the internet has become since the big social media platforms pushed out most forums and private websites and the AI infiltration even now at its infancy is really putting the writing on the wall for the future of it. There are moments AI can be useful, I didn’t necessarily trust an answer from Reddit or Quora that was fed to me by Google as top results prior to it and for a quick answer to a dumb question I don’t necessarily mind AI cutting it to the chase vs scrolling tgrough them … but I am fairly certain AI isn’t actually intelligent and it simply combines answers from platforms like it and simply regurgitates an answer on the rule of average whether it’s actually correct or simply popular opinion. Broadly if/when the point comes to a point where I literally cannot trust that I’m reading something that came directly from human interaction I’m done with the internet for anything beyond utility, and sadly in just a few short years of AI proliferation that point seems uncomfortably close.
Some AI is fun, take away the often weirdness in visuals there are amusing uses for it. I saw a YouTube channel making a real life AI recreation of the video game Grand Theft Auto Vice City(presumably to get clicks with the next installment coming out) and though there are numerous moments of AI weirdness, it’s based on a 2002 video game with its own graphical weirdness so I’ve managed to enjoy it or nostalgia and get a few laughs at the realistic depictions of abhorrent acts in a ridiculous video game. I’ll also say as a tool it does what hours messing with old school image editing software did, and I’ve only used it extremely casually, not professionally, it is impressive what AI has to offer just in its current state over the 30+ years of human CGI even in recent years doesn’t hold up to. I just wish there were guardrails to the technology, and with the current state of affairs with government/business it seems like the powers that be are A-Ok with a terminator outcome just to see how things “shake out” for it.
Specifically talking cars, oof. I actually get frustrated even with what should be funny little automotive memes that are AI generated, many of which seeming to appeal to men of a certain age who cherish 1970s muscle car nostalgia. And it particularly drives me crazy because I’m younger than them and how do the posters not notice in the “back when we were kids we had….” Template of AI memes the “Chevelle” front end was attached to a Barracuda body, or that the other car or cars distant in the background of this brown tinted 70s photograph of a 70s car with 70s fashions has what looks like a generic aerodynamic modern sedan???
THANK YOU!!!!! I see far too many AI generated images purporting to be about the “New 2027 Studebaker!” or supposedly about “The 1956 Ford Mustang SHOCKED Detroit” with an AI-generated image that was a mashup of seven different cars. Many of those are ridiculous clickbait that lead to your screen being swamped with ads while you hunt in vain for five words of actual content.
Good policy. I’m against AI, it dumbs people down.
We use AI all the time, but I don’t see how Artificial Insemination has anything to do with cars? Guess we’re just a couple of dumb old farmers. 🙂
I have to disagree with this. AI is a tool, in many ways no different to other tools that were declared to be detrimental to humanity.
Someone used AI to answer a question, the answer was wrong (or at least is thought to be wrong) and it was called out. I’m fairly sure people have posted the wrong information on the Internet before.
The problem was in the search query. To get useful responses from AI the individual needs to set the parameters of the query.
So for for example ‘answer this query, you are a motoring journalist investigating the origins of the LHS platform name. Do not speculate, use only trusted Motoring sources. Provide references’
The answer ‘Chrysler’s LHS was a premium, longer-bodied derivative of the LH sedan family introduced for the 1994 model year. Although the expansion “LH-Stretched” is repeated in automotive reference material, I could not verify it in contemporary Chrysler documentation or an authoritative motoring source. The intended meaning of the LHS initials therefore remains unconfirmed’ There was more but I didn’t want to take up room. I hope this does not lead to the deletion of this post given the context.
My argument is not that we use AI all the time. But knee jerk reaction to disallow it removes a useful tool. I use it to hone arguments, fimd obscure facts and to make my posts more readable. I agree that confident assertions cut and pasted are wrong, but I could have found that Instagram post myself and posted the information and been equally wrong
I hope this comment won’t be deleted, given the context. I’m not trying to undermine the site’s expertise or argue that AI is infallible. I’m simply suggesting that there’s a difference between using AI as a substitute for thinking and using it as a tool to support your own research and judgment.
You make very valid points in my opinion. AI in itself is not intrinsically good or bad. It’s how we choose to use it. As another tool in the critical researcher’s kit, it is fine – no better or worse than Google or Quora.
Unfortunately, AI seems to have given a greater amount of people, more than any other tool in history, the ability to ‘find’ and even fabricate ‘facts’ that are deceptively believable for the lowest common denominator, and disseminate them into public discourse.
In that sense, I understand the reaction to flat-out ban and remove obviously AI generated posts. At the same time AI has the potential to greatly enhance any research, but it’s still at the researcher’s discretion what is true and what is not and I fear that’s where the problem lies.
Jon, I largely agree with you. AI is a powerful and useful tool, depending on how it’s used. As your example shows, it requires setting the parameters of the query and being able to modify that further as needed to generate a useful answer. The problem is the same as with the internet and so many other useful tools: way too many people aren’t going to make the effort or have the ability to set the proper parameters. They just throw a question at it and then regurgitate the answer. And that’s where the problem lies.
I have nothing against writers or commenters using AI appropriately as part of their research into answering a question or issue, and I didn’t say I did. What I am totally against is what I have seen more than once here: a copy and paste answer starting with “AI says…”
My position is not so much against AI as it is against readers trying to answer questions lazily. It’s a problem even without AI, where commenters will just speculate about things, and almost inevitably, it’s off base. I would like to see commenters engage with our material with a bit more rigor if they’re going to answer a question or such. I could just not care about what goes in our comments, but…I just can’t quite go there. The comments have always been a way to expand the conversation and help develop the context and add additional facts. And we’re always happy to answer questions or correct mistakes that are pointed out in the comments. I can’t stand to see them dumbed down.
The other even bigger issue is the blatant misuse of AI to generate posts at other websites that are utterly false and essentially deep fakes, simply to generate clicks, cheaply. These are swamping the internet with blatant misinformation.
As I said in my post, I’m not anti-AI per se; I am simply saying that CC is about folks using their brainpower, experience and research abilities (which may include AI) to generate content (and comments) that is as authentic, accurate and trustworthy as possible.
And thank you for your comment; of course I wouldn’t delete it. I’m not an AI Nazi; I just don’t want lazy answers, AI-generated or not.
Thanks Paul, thats a thoughtful response. I dont really comment here, but I love reading the site and learning about cars from the US (and elsewhere)
Or a copy and paste answer that DOESN’T begin with “AI says…” but just presents it as unmitigated fact, there’s too much of that already. It’s a tool, but it should be used as such not as an unquestioned authority.
Thanks for making the position of CC clear.
AI sucks as bad as New Coke did in the ’80s.
“AI is here to stay.”
Recently I heard an interviewer respond to this with “NFTs still exist and they only just switched the servers off on the Metaverse a month or two ago.”
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
AI is in my opinion evil, and portends the end of humanity as we know it. I understand its appeal as an electronic genie that presumably knows all things, and people are inclined to believe whatever it tells them. The speed at which it has taken hold is stunning, and believe me, it isn’t through with us yet.
We are the Borg Warner. Expertise is futile. Prepare to be approximated.
Technology is invented to improve and often replace certain human working tasks. Just like this website replaces many printed based automotive related information and discussion with the speed and wide reach audience that paper magazines can not provide. So I don’t see any wrong to use certain AI generated content on this website — I don’t use many AI generated material yer, my AI mostly around asking questions and trip searches at this time.
We don’t need to be afraid of new technologies even AI, just look at in my generation 40 years ago, the teachers were dead against to use pocket calculator in class, but if we look at the new generation of student achievements in last 30 years, the concerns are unfounded.
My last question is how many of us still remember how to calculate square root numbers by hand. Myself completely forgot how to do that. When I worked, there are six electrical engineers under my supervision, none of them know how to do that. But this doesn’t stop them to be a good engineer and pass the professional engineer tests
I’m not afraid of AI. I just don’t want stupid content or comments. Maybe someday it will be good enough to replace all of us here at CC. That time is not yet here.
I’m glad you took this decision! Although I am an AI alarmist and I despise this technology, which I don’t think will led to an early retirement and free money (I know, I know you are joking) but mass unemployment and a world in which we can’t believe any image we see (that is already the case, sadly). All based on stolen intellectual property and plagiarism for the benefit of… nobody, really, as even IA companies only lose money.
Since things from before the AI era are most trustworthy than those from after its popularization, could you go back to putting the original posting date on the articles?
Thanx Paul .
This is sobering at best and scary at worst .
-Nate
For me, AI doing the heavy writing lifting is doing nothing but dumbing people down more. I foresee in another generation within 25 years, at the rate AI is advancing and more people are using it taking away original creativity and thought, everyone is going to be zombie-like. Graphics artists by trade already hate it because everyone is putting AI generated slop out there.
That is what I fear the most: a dumbed down society. Being Generation X, I hopefully will still be around 25 years from now, especially in the brain department. I cannot stand reading AI generated online articles, be it from news to automotive and aviation related. When I see an article on a well-known automotive magazine/website and the author is “Staff” and not an individual, I know it is AI created or bare minimum heavily used. And it definitely shows. The biggest trigger for me is news sites that have this mindless layout template for paragraphs:
What To Know
Why It Matters
Who Are Impacted
What People Are Saying
What Happens Next
I totally agree with your stance on this. AI can make some great entertainment, and is fine as long as it is clearly labeled as AI generated. But that seems to be about all it’s good for. That and brainstorming, but any idea still has to be checked with real knowledge. The biggest problem with AI is it being treated as fact.
The bigwigs at my company have been pushing for us to use AI. Senior engineers like myself and my boss have tried it, and it basically requires you to push it to a correct answer. When you call it out on its BS answer, it says hey you’re right and gives a different answer. The problem is when you don’t know the answer (and why would you waste valuable time on it if you knew the answer anyway?) That’s the easiest way to check AI, try it with something you know intimately. You’ll quickly see that you can’t trust it with things you don’t know.
I can’t totally blame AI itself. It’s only as good as what it’s fed (GIGO). At least in my experience, Web 1.0 was largely used by enthusiasts. Forums and hand built websites of actual data, facts, and experiences. Then, due to a combination of social media, and everything being for sale to the deepest pockets, Web 2.0 has become a toxic soup of misinformation. Many quality sources being dismantled, with whatever remaining shreds totally mixed up into something useless. To add to the injury, fewer trusted publications are being made in the first place.
The 2 best sources for GM A/X/U bodies have been removed, 2 decades of first hand knowledge, gone. One was taken down overnight with zero warning. I have a handful of buddies from the car shows but that’s it. And whatever information I had saved. I got my first internet access in 1997. People always said anything you put on the internet is forever. More often than not, I wish that were true. As I get older and the sources for things I remember clearly have disappeared. Not even found in Wayback Machine.
At least some of AI is still easily discernible from reality. But that gap is closing in. And not only does it make things a headache, I find it frightening.