partly cloudy

~dragfyre

the sky is patchy; the sun bursts through like a shout, only to be muffled again by the rolling clouds that impose a misty quietness. rain has not yet come, but the air is pregnant with moisture and the due date not yet known. ~bartender, I'll have a cup of earl grey with milk and a pinch of vanilla.

it's been a busy life the past few months, and it seems like a long while since I've strolled down the alley. some of the regulars are still around, but the pub is calm today. my space at the bookshelf is free. a little on the dusty side, but still kept clean. many of us have been away due to the myriad pressures and obligations of work. many say the pressure is too much.

I often say that the working world's increasing adoption of, and dependence on, generative AI tools is a major factor leading to overwork. this may be a little counter-intuitive, as genAI is supposed to save people work, at least according to theory, or at the very least, according to the executive summaries that land on every CEO's desk. but think: if genAI means you spend less time producing content, then profit motive will simply dictate that you use genAI to produce more content. suddenly, genAI is no longer a fun toy to explore, it is mandatory. suddenly, you are assigned so much work that the only way to complete it and survive is to depend on genAI to produce it for you. I don't see a lot of people talking about this angle of genAI use, but to me, it's a seriously concerning trend that threatens to simply destroy work-life balance as we know it.

even if you're not feeling such effects directly through the influence of the corporate world, you won't be able to escape them. of course, LLM/SALAMI slop is appearing everywhere on the Internet, as the use of genAI to generate content goes into overdrive. there's been a lot of talk about genAI bots appearing on gemini and the smol web. not too long ago, two apparent bots docked at the station, eliciting a hostile reaction from capsuleers. a flurry of discussion ensued across geminispace, and more examples of AI-generated content were brought to the fore.

I think the hostile reception is warranted. using genAI to create content feels like low-effort cheating, like disrespect to the reader or viewer—especially when, as it is in so many places now, the content is passed off as the real thing. looking to stream a mix of songs by your favourite artist? here's a playlist of genAI covers that all sound alike. they're clearly not what you were looking for, but too bad, that's what you get. your social feed? filled up with AI-generated thumbnails that all look alike, hoping to drive clicks.

in the defense of recent experiments in geminispace, at least the examples linked above said straight up that the accounts were run with genAI. to me, that even makes them a tad more palatable. but to others who are looking online for real, authentic connections with others, it's frustrating and alienating. for some, it's the last straw.

people often say, as mrrobinhood5 does, "[gen]AI isn't going away", which is perhaps a truism; any new technology backed by trillions of VC dollars "isn't going away", at least not until the money dries up. but if genAI stays, what else will stay, and what will leave? I personally had a few scares over the past week as some venerable gemini capsules and gopher holes—big ones like Kennedy, Veronica 2—winked out for a few days before reappearing in the end. but other sites seem to have gone down for good, including the official Gutenberg gopher hole, leaving a big hole in the smolnet. who will stay if genAI begins crowding out the genuine humans, the ones who curate valued content, who keep real conversations rolling, who maintain the infrastructure that a real community depends on?

thankfully, despite the frustration and the doomsaying, there are still plenty of people left: people hosting, people posting, and people reading. the smolnet is a small community, but it's got good people who care about creating a space that's authentically ours. and in the case of gemini at least, it seems the number of active capsules keeps increasing.

he pauses to sip his london fog and peers out the window. the clouds part and the sun reasserts itself, setting aglow the flowers in the window boxes across the street. the weather is still uncertain, but at least not all is gloom.