Wake the Encylopedia Salesman from his Long Slumber
Some point late last month I was made aware that my career trajectory was more expansive than I thought. First google decided I was important enough to get a little profile card when you google me. And I see why, as I was the head of media of a large Wall Street Firm. I’m not sure of which one, but I’m glad it’s a big one. On top of that I managed to be the business editor of both the New York Times AND the Miami Herald. Finally, I was made Vice President of Hill and Knowlton of New York. I would have shared all of these unexpected developments of my life, but I only just learned of them myself. Which is to say not a lick of it is true. Unless you are family, then look at what a name I made for myself!
Yes, it’s an anti-AI blog post today, I’m so sorry. I’m a writer and artist, it was always gunna be this way.
I’m in no way an academic or a historian (though give it time and google might say I am) but there is a lot of research in my work. Whether it’s for Backwood Folk, or the podcast I’m on, I’m basically always on the hunt for texture for my stories or a good yarn. I can bring a certain amount to the table just from having been raised in an area very much like Po’Dunk, but that’s still a limited vantage from one particular mountain. So I dig around for stories I didn’t hear, or heard and misremembered.
The internet, unsurprisingly, opened every door imaginable for this. Scanned archives, databases, you name it. It didn’t replace good foot work or diving into texts, but it added some incredible abilities to corroborate materials. Looking through a story and matching events to something as simple as websites of cemetery records or newspaper archives without having to make the trip could be a game changer. It still can be, but those days often feel increasingly rare. With every search branching into multiple choice results spawning from your prior search history rather than the sequence of events that make up history. “Just google it” becoming a curse where we took convenience for accuracy.
While I’ve certainly taken these changes in stride, as I’ve always found far more interesting sources offline than online, it does feel like eventually the whole pool gets tainted going forward right? Is there a point in history research where we mark publication dates of the 2020s on as suspect and necessary of increased scrutiny? Even removing publications made entirely with or utilizing AI on purpose, you still will have an entire internet littered with word scrambles claiming to be the facts. Not that the internet wasn’t always filled with disinformation and lies, but even those still hid a perspective which can illuminate a cultural attitude of a time. Now it’s just a search engine synonymous with information belching out that some hick comic artist is the boss of Wall Street. That’s not even a lie. A lie usually has a purpose or a motive. This isn’t even that. It’s just a wrong answer on a quiz.
AI proves especially fraught in my areas of research for the comic. Which is composed of folklore, cryptozoology, ufology and well a whole host of other fringe topics. It’s probably an unsurprising corner to fall into the trap of bad info produced by nobody, but it’s a kinda of tragic one to me. Half of my interest comes out of the lengths and motives people go to believe or, on the other hand, to hoax a story. The stories sometimes even secondary to what I’m hunting. Why does this person *need* it to be be a ghost that caused their problems? What means did this other guy go through to fake his bigfoot photo? But what fun is that when it’s just an image generator doing its best imitation of Jack Link’s instead of the Patterson footage? The Patterson footage makes you wonder who went to the lengths to put breasts on a bigfoot costume, the AI generated bigfoot answers that question. Just software grabbing terms at the behest of a pedestrian pervert. Nothing more nothing less.
I’m still never sure where I fall on how doomed I am to feel about this. Often I think that claims of its inevitability are as fictional as its results. A creation of marketers instead of engineers. And then sometimes someone is telling me ChatGPT or some image generator has been an inexorable part of their process. It’s impossible to discern how much the next generation has saddled their brains to a subscription fee, and how much is my generation just being as terrified of the kids as every generation becomes. Is it replacing everything or do really loud people just want it to? It’s all hard to discern for me. All I know is I’m probably not gunna be finding out on the answers on internet any time soon. Which is a shame, because according to google I’m very important there.
I don’t have any great designs on changing minds, I figure a little late at that, but just another lament really. I can hope that it spurs someone to not take the answers the computer brings them at face value. Maybe it’s time to stop the refrain of ” just google it” and start knowing things again all ourselves. Or maybe we’ll just out some bar room trivia cheats.