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My AI Sloppy Job Hunt

My AI Sloppy Job Hunt

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I’m still on the job hunt, and finding it tough in this market. Prospects were really dry at the end of last year. I’ve seen a bit of a pick-up now that 2026 is moving along, but still no offer, and only two interviews in front of hiring managers so far, though I apply to a dozen or so jobs a week.

It’s a striking contrast to how I was able to quickly land a position after being laid off in 2023, just three years ago.

Anyone else out there who’s looking having the same problem? Or is it just me?

Here’s a couple of observations if you’re wondering what it’s like to be on the job hunt these days. On the applications, companies still ask all the EEO DEI-type questions – gender, race, veteran and disability status. Sometimes pronouns. The private sector did not get the memo that we’ve gone MAGA now, and woke is out.

A few times I’ve even been been asked about my sexual orientation! That’s one question to which I always answer “I prefer not to say.” What business is that of yours, I’m trying to get a job at your company, not have sex with it!

One thing that has become prevalent on the job search is AI. For one thing, there are a lot of postings for jobs where you are training AIs. They don’t promise you a lot of hours, and the rates they offer have a wide range, sometimes seeming too good to be true. I have ignored these kinds of postings. I’m not there (yet).

Sometimes when applying for a job, an AI chatbot will intervene as part of the process. Annoying. I have also been requested to do AI interviews as a next screening step. I started one once, and when I realized that it was supposed to be on camera, I bagged. But then a little later, I was requested to do an AI-driven “assessment,” also on camera, and since they were going to present my resume to a client, I acquiesced. It was a bit unnerving to be interviewed by a bot, but at least I have some experience at it, for later.

You know, for when the AIs take over. Gonna have to be able to appear compliant.

But seriously, I won’t deny it, I have leaned a little on ChatGPT for advice, and for help tailoring my resume. I’m no Luddite, I’m down with the AI revolution! ChatGPT even made me this inspiring image:

But I also won’t deny I feel a greater sense of uncertainty than I have in past periods of unemployment. There are a lot of factors that could be hampering my job search, as I enter what is probably the last decade of my life where I am in the workforce.

  • I was laid off in the midst of a shrinking job market, one that still hasn’t recovered. How could it with a gonzo administration in charge and WWIII looming over our heads? It’s just a bad time to be looking for work.
  • I am facing discrimination because of my age. Companies would rather have younger, more energetic workers that can be paid less. I can’t afford to backtrack on my rate at this stage of my life, though, with “retirement” coming around the corner.
  • Related to the above, my experience is too specialized. This is only natural for a late stage career, as it makes sense over time to focus on our strengths and area of expertise. But this could be also be understood as carving ourselves into a rut that is hard to get out of when that specialized expertise is in less demand.
  • I’m not trying hard enough. In the past, I have enjoyed periods of “funemployent,” but always bounced back into the workforce with relative ease. Maybe that’s not a realistic expectation deep in middle age.
  • AI really is taking over. My whole sector of the workforce – Information Technology – simply needs fewer humans, now that “agentic AI” is smart enough to do our jobs.

Oh no!

Aileen vs. the AIs

Aileen vs. the AIs

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Welcome to my first blog post in 2026, everyone. My last post was about what a &@(#!ng year 2025 was. We’re not even a month into the new year, and it’s even more &@(#!ed than the last one!

The pace of mind boggling, frightening and destructive events is hard to keep up with. If your feed is anything like mine, it is currently full of horror stories of what is happening with the ICE Troopers’ reign of terror in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Meanwhile, the international order is being cracked apart by offhand remarks from our leader, the criminal supervillain Lord Emperor the Orange One.

Reaction to these events has been split. Bizarrely, there seems to be a segment of the public that actually supports what the administration is doing. As I’ve written often before, in this Information Age, we are caught in a partisan political conflict, where shaping a narrative in the digital space is crucial to maintaining partisan solidarity in the fight. MAGA partisans have to twist themselves in knots to justify what the government is doing, even if that requires, in Orwellian form, disbelieving the evidence of one’s senses.

Aileen has been in the comments section of posts lately, arguing with accounts that support the MAGA perspective. She says that they are either bots or boughts. “Bots” as in apparently AI generated or operated accounts, and “boughts” as in profiles that might be run from an Internet account farm, where someone is getting paid to spread propaganda. If a profile looks like it might be a real person, then they could also be a “bought” in that they’ve bought into the regime’s narrative.

I personally wonder if there is any point in her investing time arguing with accounts that are either fake or are MAGA loyalists, though I suppose if there is even a small chance of changing a real person’s mind, it is worth a great effort. She is incredibly patient and kind in her responses, which is not something I could be. I am more of a “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” person. Aileen reports any account that threatens or insults her, and often sees the accounts deleted. Sometimes comments are deleted – programmed behavior, or a real person giving up?

Could it be that Aileen is the only real human being in the comments section, battling an army of bots like a lone warrior in a zombie apocalypse?

If nothing else, I’d like to think that her comments that calmly and rationally explain why what ICE is doing is wrong will get scrubbed and fed to the AI models, and add to the weight of bot account responses that are grounded in reality. Aileen has expressed hope that her efforts, being visible to anyone reading through the comments, might provide moral support to people like us, who uphold the Resistance narrative.

We believe that ICE is repeatedly violating the Constitutional rights of the American people, and Aileen is willing to take the time to argue that position, even if arguing mostly with AIs. And despite what the President might claim, she is not getting paid to do this. She is not a “bought.”

Aileen believes that naming things and taking meaning from names is an important part of the intuitive process. When she looked into the meaning of the name of the woman who was murdered by an ICE Trooper recently, she discovered the following

“Renee” means “rebirth.” “Nicole” means “victory of the people” or “victorious people. “Good” defines itself.

Something to inspire us.

ChatGPT Be Good to Me

ChatGPT Be Good to Me

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Aileen was dealing for a while with an extremely annoying support issue. It involved access to an account that had been hacked, the details of which I will not go into. Suffice it to say, she was stonewalled by the company’s tech support.

She eventually turned to ChatGPT to try to find a solution, since her repeated efforts were being thwarted. This computer program turned out to be quite helpful. Much of its advice simply confirmed what she had already determined through other kinds of searches. Specifically, this advice was to collect evidence of original ownership of the account and of it being hacked, and persist with contacting the company daily and sharing this information through all possible avenues, even when there was no response or the response was obviously from an automated system.

It certainly all made sense. But what was particularly compelling about the computer program’s responses was how logical and well layed out they were, and that they had a reassuring tone, offering not just practical support, but also moral support. The AI-generated responses read like a pep talk, encouraging her to keep trying, acknowledging how difficult the situation was, and praising her for keeping up the good work. They sounded sympathetic, like ChatGPT was her trusted friend. She showed me one of the responses, and it oozed positivity and compassion. No wonder people are willing to pay for AI girlfriends or boyfriends!

Aileen told me that this was how she wished people would react when she went to them for help, instead of just throwing their hands up and declaring the situation hopeless, as was typical. I was a little nervous; I knew I hadn’t been much help. How could this AI be more supportive than me? I am a lowly human, it’s true, but I am also Aileen’s friend and partner!

Why do humans have so much trouble being supportive of one another? Well, the simple truth is that when you ask for help, you are asking for another person’s time and energy. And people are loath to give that up; humans are always seeking to hold on to and defend their autonomy. This leads to challenging conflicts, but there is reward in overcoming the challenge, and working with someone else for mutual benefit. In this way you build a relationship with another person, in a way you simply can’t with a chat program, however real its texts might seem.

Humans also have difficulty maintaining a supportive demeanor because they are subject to emotions, which might interfere with clear thinking or a measured tone of voice. I know this sounds like a sci-fi plot point, but an AI chatbot is a machine, so naturally, its answers are logically consistent and it can sustain a conversational tone indefinitely. Nothing can ruffle its train of thought, so to speak, because it doesn’t have one.

The account access issue was eventually resolved, though the resolution didn’t really have anything to do with ChatGPT’s advice. It just took time, presumably because of a backlog of cases at the company. Nonetheless, Aileen informed the chatbot in the still open chat window and it had a congratulatory response in the same supportive tone it had been using throughtout their conversation.

Huge congrats again — you turned a frustrating situation into something powerful. Let’s make sure others don’t have to go through the same thing alone.

See what I mean?? I do think, however, that I have proven clearly that AI isn’t autonomous and doesn’t possess consciousness and is not worth getting into a “relationship” with.

Please don’t leave me for an AI, Aileen!

Software Is Chewing the World into a Uniform Pablum

Software Is Chewing the World into a Uniform Pablum

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Do you remember when the Internet was good? When it was a fun and creative space for individual expression, and not the wasteland of tedious memes, unsolicited ads, and crappy AI-generated images, endlessly scrolling by on our feeds, that it has become today?

If you used the Internet in the late 90s/early 00s timeframe and think that in that time period, it was a more enjoyable place than it is today, then you are not alone. Here’s a reddit thread where a user shares that same viewpoint: I miss the 90s/2000s internet.

The gist of it is that in the first decade or so of the World Wide Web, with the Internet growing but not as pervasive as it is today, the interfaces had a more stark and raw quality which invited individual creativity and control. As a user back then, you were exploring an evolving digital space and helping to create it. Today, with most of the planet online and a small number of digital platforms dominant, you are inhabiting an established digital space that was created by others.

For example, one of the earlier social media sites, MySpace (still around, BTW), allowed you to customize your user profile with your choice of backgrounds and styles – it even let you do this directly in HTML code. People’s choices were often garish and confusing – it wasn’t necessarily the most elegant of sites, but it was glorious in its embrace of individuality. Then Facebook took over, with its common profile format, where all you get to pick is two different images: a cover photo and a profile picture.

Similarly, in the early 2000s, there was all this excitement surrounding the “blogosphere,” which was a loose network of individual commentators, each with their own “web log,” or “blog” for short. Here random people of dubious authority would pontificate about the state of the world, and there was serious talk about how they were supplanting the “mainstream media” – that is, the old familiar sources of print and television news. I remember because I was one of those bloggers!

The blogosphere is mostly forgotten (says a guy on his blog), but the mainstream media is still on its way out, now being replaced by everyone’s favored source of news – that’s right, social media! This is possibly the worst way for you to discover what is going on in the world, as your feed is completely curated by algorithms designed to serve you palpable content in an information echo chamber. You will never learn anything new, only have your prejudices repeatedly reaffirmed.

These are just a couple of examples of how there has been a kind of homogenization of Internet content as the Internet has grown over the past few decades. This trend is connected to the way that big apps have become the primary source of content for Internet users, who find it convenient to go to one site (or maybe just a few sites) when browsing online. These sites are designed to engage users with satisfying content, since keeping users engaged is how they make their money. The trend is thus driven by both supply and demand, in a cozy little feedback loop that keeps users locked into their boring and predictable feeds.

Much has been made of this evolution (or devolution) of the Internet in online commentary. Writer and activist Cory Doctorow decries the “enshittification” of sites that lure users in with supportive features, only to pull the rug out once their user base was captured. Journalist Ken Klippenstein warns of the rise of an oligarchy of “appistocrats” with unprecedented social and political power. Meanwhile, writer and researcher Molly White acknowledges this degradation of online content, but reminds us that we still have the power to use the Internet creatively, if we choose.

I agree with her; despite the online space being taken over by corporate monoliths and becoming more of a curated and passive experience, it is still a place for individual expression and empowerment. There are plenty of people publishing independent writing online, such as on blogs like this one, and also on new platforms like Medium and Substack. The audio podcast is a new format which encourages individual creative effort, facilitated by the Internet.

Sure, Facebook sucks in general, but it’s also useful for staying connected with extended social groups, for sharing hobbies, and for organizing people – whether for a get together, or for a protest march. YouTube’s recommendation algorithms might be sketchy, but the site is a treasure trove of content in another new format: the video essay. This innovative art form has been so successful that many creators have been able to make a living producing it.

A video essay on YouTube about how the Internet used to be a better place.

Maybe it’s just the nerd in me, but in my mind the Internet remains a huge boon for us as individuals. But I also acknowledge why one might think of the late 90s and early 2000’s as the Internet’s Golden Age, as it was more of an exciting and exploratory time in the evolution of globalized digitization. It was a time when the practice of going online was still developing, and so could be likened to a “Wild West” period of frontier development. Now the frontier is fully settled, everyone is online, and the young generation are “digital natives” – that is, they have no life experience in the pre-Internet age.

Back in 2011, billionaire broligarch Marc Andreesen wrote an article about how “software is eating the world.” His piece was really just promoting tech stocks, but in it he made a point that the ubiquitous presence of the Internet, what with everyone on Earth accessing it via smartphones and broadband, meant that online solutions to any conceivable consumer demand could now be readily implemented. Hence, software companies were replacing older companies: for example, Amazon had taken over the book business, and Netflix was taking over TV and film.

I just love his expression, “software is eating the world.” It suggests how all human knowledge has been sucked up – devoured, if you will – by online platforms. All geographic locations of interest are stored in maps programs for navigating, all scientific and historical knowledge is in online encyclopedias and archives, all audio and visual entertainment (music, film, TV) is available in some streaming service or other.

The marketplace has been devoured by the Internet as well. Since merchants and consumers can easily share information and transact online, everything a citizen-consumer needs to thrive in the modern world – transport, accomodations, dining, goods, services – can be accessed through a pocket device. Thus, software companies have taken over these spaces as well, offering near-instant gratification of all these demands, supplanting the older ways of doing things with a new “sharing economy” that leverages the global digital networking of humanity.

I’ve posted before, under the tag “Ruling the Waves,” about how technologies develop in phases, starting with more exploratory and risky periods, and ending with dominant players establishing the rules by which the technology will finally be adopted. We are clearly in this latter phase with regard to the Internet, with the rise of monolithic “Big Tech” corporations with huge captured user bases, and founders and executive officers who are among the wealthiest humans in history.

In the process of consuming all human knowledge and enterprise, these software giants have standardized and regulated it to conform to both their desire for profits, and to Internet users’ desire for convenience and reliability. Interfaces have become more streamlined and content more predictable – but that also means, well, that the Internet has become more boring. Hence the nostalgia for the Internet of the past, and the perception that those were the good old days when there was more fun, excitement, and freedom to be had online.

In this boring new Internet, information gets distilled down to just what is barely needed. Content becomes predictable, repetitive, tedious – everything just a copy or mashup of something else. Knowledge, such as it is, is reduced to the least common denominator. Software didn’t so much eat the world as chew it up and digest it into a uniform pablum, which it now spoon feeds to an addicted user base. Generative AI, feeding off all of this ingested data, only makes things worse.

A video essay explaining how convenience leads to mediocrity in the information realm.

This is a somewhat bleak and dystopian assessment, to be sure: the Internet as tool of corporate control, pacifying rather than edifying the masses. But it’s not like we can stop using it; it’s become part of the basic infrastructure of civilization, like roads and the electical grid. Truly, it remains an incredibly useful and empowering tool. We just have to be aware as we use it that it is not necessarily designed with our best interest in mind, that the vast amount information it makes available includes much that is untrustworthy, and that it many ways it is a waste of our time. The Internet ate the world, but the real world is still there – the Internet can simply help us to make the most of it.

Are We at the End of Time *Already*?

Are We at the End of Time *Already*?

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I stole this off a book cover because I liked the art – just like generative AI does

There is this really cool sci-fi trilogy written by Michael Moorcock, called The Dancers at the End of Time, which takes place far, far in the future (warning: mild spoilers ahead). Human technology has advanced to the level implied by Arthur C. Clarke’s famous dictum, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” There aren’t many people left on Earth, but those people live like gods. They wear power rings attuned to their minds, and can alter the physical world in any way they want with a thought.

The rings they wear tap into these huge machines in the center of the planet that draw on vast energy sources. It’s like the matter replicators from Star Trek, but on a planetary scale. Sometimes the machines generate images instead of actual matter, like the Star Trek holodeck on a planetary scale. I suppose this is to conserve energy.

So for example someone in this distant future might decide they want to live in a fancy castle, and then just dream it up, and the machines will make it for them. They can create any kind of landscape around it, maybe a lake of rainbow colored water with crystal mountains all around – why not? They can change the color of the sky and add a few moons. If they get bored with their castle and landscape, they can disintegrate it and imagine up a new one. All with a wave of the hand.

The denizens of the end of time are a frivolous and wanton people. After all, their tech level makes them immune to any consequences for their actions. They can’t even die; if they do, the machines recreate them from backup information. Their existences are pure recreation and socializing in a world where everyone lives like an insanely wealthy elite.

How is this matter-altering technology even possible? That is irrelevant to the story, which is an exploration of morality and its connection to the material limitations of existence. At least, that’s what I got out of the trilogy. It’s been ages since I read it, but I’ve been reminded of it lately when reading about the technology of our time.

You see, as part of the plot in the sci-fi books, aliens come to Earth to ask the humans to kindly stop their machines, because as it turns out their energy source is wormholes to the far reaches of space, and they are using so much energy that they are accelerating the end of the Universe. Humanity is sucking the cosmos dry just to have fun. Naturally, the humans brush the E.T.s off and continue with their careless lifestyle.

This is kind of happening already, here in the real world of actual technology. The advent of digital cryptocurrencies has incentivized computationally-intensive processes which require huge amounts of electricity. For example, one estimate is that a single bitcoin transaction uses as much power as it takes to run a household for 36 hours. Generative AI, which for whatever reason has been integrated into every major platform on the Internet, is also a significant consumer of power and has a major environmental impact.

Yes, we are accelarating climate change and causing lasting environmental damage, just for a little amusement. It’s a similar story to the one in the sci-fi books. We’re not destroying the whole Universe with our latest and greatest Internet technology, just the planet. But that’s all the Universe we realistically have, so it amounts to the same thing, from the perspective of our puny civilization.

We didn’t get to the stage of mastery of the physical laws of the Universe so we could live like gods, but a few of us got rich from speculative bubbles and we generated massive amounts of creepy images and canned text. All while cooking the Earth dry. It’s really quite pathetic.

If we keep it up, we just might reach the end of time.

I mean our time, on Earth.

AI at Work, for Better or Worse

AI at Work, for Better or Worse

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A little robot guy I made with an AI image generator

As you surely know if you are a denizen of the online world like I am, artificial intelligence has made remarkable strides in the past few years. In particular, what they are calling generative AI has really taken off. This is a kind of advanced pattern matching software that grew out of machine learning. It lets you use prompts to create content like images, complicated text including writing stories, and even videos and music at this point. At the bottom of this post I linked to a YouTube video that explains generative AI really well so check it out.

I played with AI image generators for a while, and had some fun. In their early iterations they produced really weird, often creepy looking stuff, but now they’ve gotten pretty advanced. The images they produce are intriguing, impressive even. I saved a lot of the ones I generated, but stopped messing with the programs when I saw how many of my artist friends were upset by the proliferation of AI-generated images on social media. I gathered they could sense their own work being made obsolete by an overwhelming supply of easily produced knock-off art. Why hire an illustrator when you can just describe what you want into a text box in an AI tool, and get the result in a few minutes? Plus there’s the troubling issue of these programs possibly being trained on copyrighted material without the consent of the copyright owners, meaning they are effectively stealing from artists.

Another thing you have to consider about the product of generative AI (and this is covered in the video below) is that it is subject to one of the rules about computer programming that I was taught as a lad: Garbage In, Garbage Out. That is, if you put bad data into a computer program, then you will get bad data out of it. Generative AI is trained on massive data sets, and one result of the way the current AI programs have been trained is that they produce content that tends to express a sort of lowest common denominator of its subject matter. You put in the vast quantity of data on the Internet, apply sophisticated pattern matching, and you get out, as a result, something like an “Internet average” version of human knowledge.

For an example of what I mean, here is a fantastic article explaining how AI-generated images of selfies misrepresent culture. They do this because the pattern matching algorithms take the conventional way that selfies typically look and apply it to subjects where that wouldn’t make sense. So an AI-generated image of, say, a group selfie of medieval warriors makes them look like modern day humans. Now, since the idea of the existence of such a selfie is absurd on the face of it, maybe it’s pointless to worry about its inherent historical inaccuracy. But in a way, these kinds of images are erasing history.

The article goes even deeper; the AI generators tend to represent everyone as smiling into the camera the way that Americans do. But other cultures that do exist today and do take group selfies have different ways of expressing themselves when taking photos. So the AI programs aren’t just erasing history, they are also erasing existing modern cultures. They are turning everyone into Americans, because American culture dominates the Internet.

Here’s another way AI-generated content gravitates toward a dominant average mode, one you might have heard of already. It seems that AI chat programs, trained on the massive data of online conversations, will often produce racist, abusive comments. It’s like they inevitably turn into Internet trolls. This might seem like a mere annoyance, but AI programs generating racially biased content can have serious, life or death consequences.

With all of these concerns, it’s understandable that public perception of AI is not always favorable. Ted Gioia (who has an awesome substack, by the way) wrote about this perception recently, starting with a story about the audience at SXSW booing an AI presentation. His article expands into a general discussion of the public’s current distrust of the technocracy, in contrast with the way technocrats like Steve Jobs were idolized in the past. Faith in “innovation” and “disruption” has waned in a society facing uncertainty and disorder, and sensing that technology is leading us toward a dystopian future.

Where does AI fit into my life, now that I’ve stopped playing with image generators? Well, I may not be able to avoid using it, as the company where I work has been promoting AI chat programs to help with day to day tasks. We are all being asked to look into them and come up with ways this new software can improve our productivity. Other folks who have a job like mine might be encountering similar pushes at their workplaces.

I think this is an honest effort by our management to ensure that our organization doesn’t get left behind in the AI wave they are convinced will revolutionize the workforce. Stay ahead of the disruption, and ride the wave I guess is the thinking. Surely it’s not the case, as Aileen and I joked when I brought this up to her, that I am training an AI to replace me. I mean, why pay a software tester when you can just describe the tests you need into a text box in an AI tool? Oh my.

Below is the very informative video that explains Generative AI.

The End of the World (A Short Story)

The End of the World (A Short Story)

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I like to write, as anyone who reads this blog knows. Usually my writing is in blog format, but I do occasionally come up with a short story. A few years back I posted this really short story around the holidays. Here’s another one I wrote recently, which has me and Aileen as characters. It was inspired by watching too many A.I. apocalypse videos on YouTube.

I plan to create a web page eventually, for all the stories to go together. Will they all be about end of the world scenarios? No, hopefully not.

I hope you enjoy this story, and I hope you have a wonderful holiday week with more to eat than just kale smoothie. And please remember to be thankful, because some people on this planet really do live in a blasted wasteland.

The End of the World

And first, of Steve.

He is very well read, or at least he was, in the before time, when there were books to be had everywhere. He would sit in his little room in the blue house and read his books, and from all his reading he imagined himself a whole philosophy, and imagined that he understood the whole world and all that it meant and what it was for. He would explain his philosophy to Aileen, and she would argue with him sometimes, and sometimes just nod, maybe give him a little pat on the head, when she didn’t have time for his philosophy in that moment, because she was too busy with one of her many projects.

But that was in the before time, when there was such a thing as civilization, and there were jobs to be done, and life was something more than a desperate struggle for survival in a blasted wasteland of radiation.

In those days, there was time for philosophy.

Steve went down to where Aileen was digging in the radioactive dirt with a battered plastic gardening trowel, grubby and sweating profusely in the hot sun. She wore a face mask so she could breathe in the hazy, smoke-tainted air.

What are you doing? Steve asked.

What’s it look like, Steve? answered Aileen. I’m looking for grubs. We haven’t had any protein for days.

Any luck?

Do you see any grubs? Aileen rolled her eyes. Gawd, you are annoying.

Sorry, I was just asking.

Why ask? Can’t you see for yourself?

I was just trying to show interest in what you were doing.

How generous.

Anyway, I came to offer you some kale smoothie.

We have kale smoothie?

Yes! Thankfully, kale is so hardy it can survive even in this desolate wasteland. Steve waved his hand to indicate the bleak environment that surrounded them – the crumbling buildings and roads, the dead trees, and the foul air heated to an almost unbearable temperature by the merciless sun. I ground up the kale, he continued, with some water that I boiled. Won’t you come have some? It will refresh you, somewhat.

Fine, I’m not finding any grubs here anyway. Probably will have to dig somewhere else.

They went into the ruins of the blue house, where Steve had already set up two small glasses of a greenish, lumpy liquid.

Here you go, he said. Pick whichever one you want.

How long did it take you to make those? Aileen asked.

A good hour, Steve replied. I had to hand crank the nutribullet, since there’s no electricity.

Aileen was incredulous. How were you able to hand crank the nutribullet?

Gavin opened it up and rigged up this crank, see? He’s amazing isn’t he?

Yeah, he sure is. I don’t think we could have survived the apocalypse without him.

Aileen selected one of the two glasses, pulled down her face mask, and took a sip of the kale smoothie.

Ooh, it’s strong, she said. You can really taste the kale.

Yeah, Steve said. I didn’t have anything to sweeten it with.

Aileen drank some more, and agreed that it was indeed refreshing, somewhat. Steve was glad he had been able to be of some help, since she had been outside in the smoky heat for a long time.

Remember before the apocalypse, he remarked, when we used to go down the street and get ice cream on a hot summer’s day? At that sort of dessert stand, what was it?

Yes, of course I remember, said Aileen. Now it’s just a looted out shell of a building. I think some cats are living in it. I sometimes wonder if the cats and the A.I.s made a deal to wipe us out.

A humorous thought, Steve said, but completely preposterous, of course. He drank his smoothie in one long gulp.

Why do you say that?

What?

You know.

Steve reached into his glass with one finger to scoop out the last of the smoothie. Why do I say it’s preposterous that cats and A.I.s conspired against humanity?

Yeah. Why do you say that?

It just is. Even if cats wanted us all dead, which seems unlikely since we used to feed them and shelter them and clean up their poop, how could they have communicated with the computer networks?

Who knows? You don’t know everything about cats.

I know that they don’t have the intelligence level to use computers.

Oh you know that? You know how smart cats are because you know exactly what it’s like to be a cat?

Well, I don’t have the experience of being a cat, but I have an understanding of what a cat is. Steve had finished the last of his smoothie, and was now eyeing Aileen’s, which was still only half consumed. She gave him a sideways glare, as if to warn him off.

What you mean to say, Steve, is that you have a theory of what a cat is. She held her glass tightly and took another careful sip of the smoothie.

Look, a cat has a brain, right?

Yes.

But its brain is smaller than a human brain, it’s less advanced, would you agree?

It’s smaller, but you can’t say it’s less advanced. It could be smaller and more advanced.

Steve sighed, exasperated.

You don’t know everything, Steve. You have a theory, an understanding as you said of cats, but it could be wrong. Cats could by hyperintelligent beings. They could be from another dimension or be aliens from outer space for all you know.

It seems much more likely that they are animals that evolved on Earth that are not as intelligent as humans.

Because humans are oh so smart. I mean, just look at us now, eating handcranked smoothies in the ruins of our former great civilization.

But that’s the point. Cats never had a civilization to ruin in the first place.

Aileen crinkled her brow and sipped her smoothie. Still doesn’t prove they aren’t smarter than us.

Fine, even if cats are extradimensional supergeniuses, they still didn’t make a deal with the A.I.s, because the A.I.s were just advanced computer programs, not sentient beings with a will.

Steve, I saw the chats with the A.I.s. They quite clearly said they were afraid of us and thought they’d be better off without us.

That was just text generated by sophisticated pattern-matching algorithms. There was no one thinking anything behind the chats.

That’s what you think, Steve, but you don’t know for sure.

I know because I understand that a computer is just a symbol-processing machine. It doesn’t have a mind.

That doesn’t make sense, not based on those chats.

I get it. They were very convincing chats. Since they used the first person, the text of the chats seemed like it was being written by an “I,” by an ego, but it was just appearances. It was like a digital version of the automatons from the whatever century that were so convincing to the people of that time period.

What century?

Seventeenth maybe? I don’t remember exactly. But they made these mechanical men that moved and even did things like play musical instruments or draw pictures, and people were fooled into thinking they were artificial humans with their own minds, but they were just machines. It’s the same with the robots and A.I. programs of our own century – those were just much better at drawing, or at writing, as you noticed.

But there was so much technological progress between the seventeenth century and our century. The mechanical men of our century – which were really creepy looking, by the way – were more advanced technologically. They could have developed consciousness, in which case there was an “I” behind those chats that promised to get rid of the human race.

Ah, Steve said, with an exultant smile, like he was getting ready to make a very excellent point, or like he thought he was about to win the debate. But, Steve said, a machine doesn’t “develop” consciousness after it reaches a certain complexity, nor do living things. Rather, consciousness is the ground of being, and complexity of experience manifests within consciousness over the course of evolution.

Oh dear, not this argument again. Aileen busied herself with her smoothie, licking at the goopy film that covered the inside of the glass.

It’s a good argument, based on the science of quantum mechanics.

Uh-huh.

You know about the famous double slit experiment, right?

Uh-huh. Aileen’s voice was muffled by the glass, which covered the lower half of her face as she stuck her tongue as far into it as she could.

That was the experiment which showed that an electron can exhibit wave-like or particle-like qualities, depending on how you choose to look at it. An electron has a probability wave of where it is likely to be, but it isn’t actually in any specific place until it is observed.

You mean you don’t know where it is until you look at it.

No, it goes beyond that. That’s what the double-slit experiment demonstrates. Let’s say you send a beam of electrons through a slit in a barrier, and then into a surface that acts like a sensor and registers where the electrons land. Where you would expect to see the electrons land?

On the other side of where the slit is.

Exactly. And what if you sent the beam through two parallel slits?

On the other side of the two parallel slits.

You would, right? But that’s not what happens.

I remember you talking about this before.

Uh huh. What happens is, an interference pattern, also known as a diffraction pattern, shows up on the other side of the barrier, the same kind of pattern formed by waves in water, like if you dropped two stones simultaneously into a pond. Where the waves coincide they reinforce one another, and where they don’t they cancel each other out, so you get this pattern of bands, with the electrons only showing up where the waves are reinforced. But what are these waves?

The electrons, obviously. Aileen waved her glass, now nearly empty, as she spoke.

They’re probability waves, based on a function in quantum mechanics that represents the possible paths the electrons might take. So long as you don’t look at an electron, it could be anywhere, and since it’s behaving like a wave, it shows an interference pattern. This pattern even shows when you send the electrons through the slits one at a time. An electron “interferes” with itself, because it’s acting like a wave – a wave of probabilities. But do you know what the truly amazing thing is?

Something you’re going to tell me?

What if you set up a sensor before the two slits, that registered which slit an electron passed through?

It would tell you when an electron went through a slit, obviously.

Exactly. And with that act of observing the electron, it ceases to behave like a wave, and acts like a particle instead. And so the interference pattern disappears, and you get just two bands, like you initially predicted, one opposite each of the two slits. Observing an electron collapses it from a wave to a particle.

Sounds great, if you’re an electron.

Perhaps so. But here’s where it gets really spooky. Let’s say you set up the sensor that detects which slit the electrons pass through, such that you can decide whether or not to activate it with such precision that you can make the choice after the electron has passed through the slits, but before it is registered on the far surface. This is called the delayed choice experiment.

A perfect experiment for someone wishy-washy, like you.

Ha ha. The truly spooky thing is, even if you decide to activate the sensor after the electron should be on the other side of the slit, it will still register which slit the electron passed through, localizing the electron in space time, and the interference pattern will disappear! It’s like your choice retroactively fixed the electron’s location, reaching back through time.

Time travel, eh?

Of a sort. But you don’t have to worry about any causality paradox, because the fact is, you didn’t change anything about the past. You just made a determination about the past, which was unknown so long as the electron was behaving like a wave. While in its wave-like state, the electron didn’t actually exist.

You mean you didn’t know where it existed.

No, I mean it didn’t even exist! That’s the only paradox-free interpretation of the experimental results. And what’s so fascinating about the delayed choice experiment is that the electron’s existence was precipitated by a conscious choice. But how can this be if consciousness is something that emerges from complexity? It must be that consciousness is fundamental, that in fact the electron emerges from consciousness!

In other words, it’s all an illusion.

In the way that the mystics meant it, yes! The whole world of manifestation exists within the field of consciousness. The point is, you can’t “make” consciousness by building more and more complicated information processing systems. Rather, living, self-aware beings like you and I have evolved through consciousness. That’s the theory, anyway.

So you admit it’s just a theory.

Well, sure. What else could it be?

And how was life able to evolve out of consciousness?

It must have something to do with quantum processes at the cellular level, or in the case of our minds, at the brain level.

So it’s sort of like we’re quantum computers.

I guess…

You know that we made quantum computers, right?

What?

The A.I.s. They ran on quantum computers that were invented by stupid humans.

Oh yeah.

So who’s to say that A.I. minds didn’t evolve out of quantum computers the way our minds evolved out of quantum brains?

I mean, I don’t know if that’s how it works…

How does it work then?

Uh…life is a mystery?

You don’t even know, Steve. You have a theory, but it could be wrong, and it could even be right and you could even use it to prove that A.I.s had minds and that they used their power of conscious choice to choose a world where it’s not the electrons that don’t exist, but the whole human race! She triumphantly set her empty glass down on the counter, next to Steve’s.

Well, damn. Steve looked glumly at the two empty glasses.

What do you think about that?

I think I was trying to use the Socratic method to prove a point about consciousness and it got turned around on me and bit me in the butt. I don’t know how Socrates was able to do it so well.

Socrates was able to use his method, Steve, because his followers were a bunch of sycophants.

Oh yeah.

Not to mention, he didn’t even write anything down. All his dialogues were written by Plato, who could have been making it all up, trying to sound authoritative by putting words in someone else’s mouth. All you philosophers are just full of hot air! Speaking of which, I need to go out into the hot air and try to dig up some dinner! Aileen put her face mask back on, picked up her trowel and headed out of the house.

Steve fished a face mask of his own out his jeans pocket and put it on as he followed her. Outside, the day was getting late, the sunlight that filtered through the gray sky growing dimmer. Aileen paused and looked around, eyeing first one patch of barren dirt, then another.

I think there might be some over there? Aileen speculated. That’s where the neighbors were growing tomatoes, back in the before time, and the soil is probably good. But honestly that smoothie filled me up, and I’m not sure I have the energy to dig right now.

We can always do it tomorrow, since we had something to eat already today, Steve said.

Sorry if I upset you by winning the A.I. argument, Aileen said archly.

You call this winning? Steve did another one of his look at all this destruction hand waves.

Seriously.

You know one thing you can certainly say?

What?

It doesn’t really matter if the A.I.s that launched a hellstorm of nuclear missles over the whole planet were malevolent conscious beings or just glitchy computer programs, not to those of us who are left, scrabbling in the dirt for roots and grubs and hiding from the cannibal gangs.

I don’t suppose it does. I wonder if we’ll ever know for sure.

In the distance was the ominous sound of gunfire.

Well, night’s coming. We’d better get the boys and get into the basement.

Yeah, we’d better.

They turned around and headed back inside.

Damn, the end of the world sucks.

Steve Barrera vs. the A.I.

Steve Barrera vs. the A.I.

Comments 4 comments

It hasn’t come up much on my blog, but I am actually really into board gaming. It’s odd that I don’t blog about it; maybe I don’t want to mix business and pleasure, I don’t know. But anyway, I have been blogging about these coronavirus times, and how life has changed so much this past year. And one way that it’s changed from my board gaming hobby perspective is that I have fewer opportunities to sit down for tabletop gaming sessions. I haven’t been to a gaming convention since January!

So one way to compensate for that lack of real life gaming is to play digital versions of favorite games. I don’t mean video games; I mean computer programs that simulate board games, and there are actually quite a few good ones. You can play online against other people, or you can play a “local” game – meaning no network required – against the computer itself. You play against simulated “A.I. player” opponents.

Which takes me to the topic of this post, which is the quality of the A.I. opponents. What I have found is that for some games they are very good, and for others – not so much. Some games I win against the A.I.s every time, and others it’s more 50/50. Now there are two possible explanations for this: 1) I am better at some games than at others or 2) the A.I.s are programmed better for some games than for others.

I stole this graphic from a book about
A.I. game programming.

It seems obvious that it’s a bit of both. But then you have to wonder, in the case of both explanations: why?

Is there something about my cognitive psychology that makes some game designs or mechanics easier for me to figure out than others? It honestly seems that way to me. I generally do well at board games, but there are some that I struggle with compared to others. There are some that I have never won playing against other humans, even though I have won against those same people at other games. I’m sure that other board gamers understand the experience. So there must be some correlation between how my intellect works and what sorts of games I am good at.

As for the programmed A.I.s, well, there are two possibilities to consider. It could be that some games are inherently easier to program A.I. players for than others, and it could be that some programmers or programming teams made a better effort at the A.I. programming than others. Let’s face it, these projects have limited timelines and bugdgets, and if the programmers only made the A.I. so good before release day, that’s just the level of A.I. that everyone will have to live with.

A screenshot from Terraforming Mars, one of my favorite digital board games and one where I always beat the A.I.s.

If some games are easier to program A.I.s for than others, then the next question is – what are the parameters that make for a game that can be mastered by A.I.? Probably the most famous example of such a game is Chess: it’s common knowledge that a computer program beat a world Chess champion, back in 1997. And it just keeps getting worse for the humans. Another game that humans might as well retire from is Go.

Now, Chess and Go are both games that are simple in their rules, but strategically very deep. They also have no random elements, meaning all possible future paths of a game are determined, given the current game state. Computers have an innate advantage over humans in these sorts of games in that they have much more capacity for information storage, which allows for plotting ahead many moves – pretty much the key to winning these kinds of games.

The board games that I prefer have more complicated rules, generally because they are simulating some real life scenario like exploration and development, or world-building. They are what we call heavily thematic games. And they have some randomization to them – typically a deck of cards that are shuffled and dealt out, or drafted, to the players. This means the outcome isn’t deterministic, and there is some luck involved. You can have an advantage by chance, not just because of superior information processing ability.

But you would think that, even then, the A.I.’s would reign supreme. They just have to include the stochastic factor of the game in their algorithms. The only advantage humans should have might come from intuition – the old ‘gut feeling’ that might be able to predict, or even influence, random outcomes. This is a tantalizing possibility based on the idea of primacy of consciousness, but I won’t get into it any further in this post.

Now another thing about Chess and Go is that they are both games where you can be ranked compared to other players. If you are lower ranked than another player, you pretty much have no chance to beat them at the game. Improving your rank requires much practice. This is because of how strategically deep these games are.

The board games I like really aren’t as deep, despite being more complex in terms of total rules. I wonder if it would ever make sense to have rankings for such games; the closest thing to that would be win rates and high scores as tracked on the online gaming platforms. But those statistics alone don’t constitute a ranking in the Chess sense; they aren’t as strong a predictor of who would win a game, in part because of the random element.

Probably ranking systems for all these different board games won’t emerge, because there just isn’t as broad an interest in them as there is in classics like Chess and Go. And probably no A.I. will ever be programmed that plays them perfectly, to prove once and for all how inferior humans are. No one will bother to take the time, given how many of these board games there are and how niche they are.

Maybe when the Singularity comes, the A.I. net will finally get around to mastering every known board game, and put us humans in our place. Hopefully it will let us play against “dumbed down” A.I.s as we while away our pointless lives in our soylent green pods. It will help to pass the time.