A Justification of Theft

On By Mick CanningIn AI, artificial intelligence, comment, communication, internet

Clickbait? Perhaps, but I have a point to make.

There is a blog I follow which regularly posts about good people. People who make a difference to their world. Kindness. They change lives. And it makes for a refreshing read in a world which often appears to be so full of shit we could be drowning in the stuff. I also see now on social media – at least on Facebook, which is the only one I follow other than Instagram – AI generated posts on good people. I know they’re AI generated, because the signs are all there. I don’t intend to list the signs, as most people are aware of them already. These AI generated posts seem to fall into the same few categories. There is the rough biker with the heart of gold adopting a defenceless little girl. The retiree who’s lost his wife and finds meaning in life through spreading love through his community. There’re one or two others, but they all seem to fall into a few predictable categories. And you read these long tear-jerkers and reach the end and you go ‘Ah, isn’t that lovely.’ Or you’re meant to, anyway. But they are AI generated, the people don’t exist (although the original ones may have been based on real people), and these things did not really happen. But does this matter?

I think it does, for several reasons. AI invents stuff. If this is not the intention of the user, these are known as ‘AI Hallucinations’. If it can’t find what it’s been asked to find, it will sometimes make something up instead. Equally, it may draw data from untrustworthy sources. Then there are AI programs which are designed to make up stuff. If we understand that, then when we read something we understand is AI generated, we don’t necessarily believe it. And since we don’t believe the characters or the narrative, then the message it is designed to deliver is rejected. We all know that kindness is a good thing, but being told that by a computer program that has clearly fabricated the vehicle of delivery diminishes the message.

It is the exact opposite of ‘Don’t shoot the messenger’, because in this case the message is rejected because the messenger is flawed.

And the more we read these posts, knowing they are AI generated but if we’re still happy to take them completely at face value, the more we help to normalise the things. The more we accept AI into our lives and accept these fabrications.

So there are more than one type of AI program. Many of those that are really good at inventing stuff, and there are quite a few, are designed specifically to write books. They advertise themselves as producing books ‘in minutes, not months’. A few clicks on the button and hey presto! I’ve written a book! I’ll get back to this at some point, but are these people authors? No. They’re not. They’re frauds. But this brings me back to those original posts, which someone has created using an AI program similar to the book writer programs to deliberately invent the contents.

And to the more important point, the point where both the hallucinations, but even more importantly the deliberately fabricated material, really matter.

AI is, as we’ve seen, designed to invent stuff. Okay, that’s a simplification, but the point is that it’s designed to give the user exactly what they ask for. If someone requests it to write a piece justifying theft, or infanticide, for example, (not to ask it if it can be justified, but telling it to actually do so) it will do that, citing either nasty stuff it’s dug up from some remote hole on the internet, or, more likely, completely inventing stuff because the real justifications don’t exist. And it will look reasonably believable, perhaps writing something along the lines of ‘the Cornel University experiments of 1983 – 1984 by Taylor and Whickham et al demonstrate that…’ etc etc. And the casual reader will think ‘oh, I never realised that. So perhaps there’s something in it after all.’ But these citations will be made up.

And to go slightly off topic for a moment, there are the illustrations. AI generated photos are still usually recognisable as such, but they’re getting much better. Ones that have been subtly manipulated are now very hard to detect. The implications there should be obvious, can we now believe anything we see or are told?

This is not to suggest AI is an unmitigated evil. Its champions will point out advances in, for example, medicine and material sciences, which are very real and extremely important. But the issues of misinformation and, as frequently cited, intellectual property theft, to say nothing of the potential to completely destroy careers in the literary and artistic worlds, are also very real.

So how do we fight this? I’m afraid I’ve no idea. The genie is out of the bottle and I see no way it’s going back in again. Other than burning down the internet we are stuck with it and over the next year or so (or less – who knows?) it’s going to get harder and harder to tell truth from complete (and possibly dangerous) crap. While the programs are becoming better at presenting the genuine data they are requested to present, the ones inventing stuff are getting better at making this appear real. All we can do is be aware of this, be cautious and critical. And perhaps we could go back to getting our facts from books which, although not infallible, are far more likely to be accurate. Publishers are still the gatekeepers there, and they tend to do a pretty good job. Research stuff properly. Rather than accepting important medical information, for example, from Joe Bloggs on Facebook, look it up on a respectable site, like the NHS (in UK).

Maybe just stay off the internet more.

Which is probably a good idea anyway.

50 thoughts on “A Justification of Theft”

  2. A powerful and necessary reflection. You’ve captured exactly why AI-generated “feel-good” stories aren’t harmless—they blur the line between truth and fabrication and slowly dull our critical instincts. Your point about the messenger undermining the message is spot-on. In a world already overflowing with misinformation, we can’t afford to accept comforting fiction as reality. Thanks for saying what many are sensing but haven’t articulated.

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    1. This particular blogger isn’t doing it (at least not knowingly). The particular posts I’ve seen have been on Facebook, although the occasional blog post I come across has clearly been generated. There are some blogs exclusively using AI, and they’re pretty easy to spot, partly because they often post a dozen or more very long posts each day. I’d certainly never give any of them any attention after seeing what they are.

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      1. Ah I understand. I guess I thought you meant this blogger because there is so much of it about! There are also a large number of bloggers using AI imagery which somehow gets a free pass. I suspect I am less tolerant than most people but if you can’t be arsed to create an image or photograph yourself (yes these things are not easy to do) or bare minimum use a credited creative commons image, then why should I be bothered to read the blog. I’m only here to read and share creative content, I couldn’t care less about stats but then I’m not monetising it which I suspect is the real reason. WP doesn’t take down stolen content either.

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  4. Thank you for this post Mick.

    A while back, I fell into conversation with an acquaintance in a pub. He mentioned that he’d seen a video showing several prominent politicians on a train taking hard drugs. He believed what he had seen despite me and another customer pointing out that the video was almost certainly a fake generated by AI!

    There have, for many years, been publications and internet sites denying that the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis happened. I fear that AI will only help to fuel holocaust denial.

    Kevin

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    1. This is definitely the biggest downside of AI, Kevin, potentially even bigger than the destruction of all artistic endeavour. And I can’t imagine there will be any sort of practical safeguards against it. The invention of ‘credible sources’ and the invention of ‘photographic evidence’ as well as the doctoring of genuine photographs will only become more and more believable as time passes. And as well as fooling people who don’t necessarily want to believe these things, it very much – as you said – fuels those who believe, or want to believe, them.

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      1. Thanks Mick.

        I am, I think, a little less pessimistic about the survival of the arts in the age of AI. I do believe that people will want the authentic and if creators (artists, authors, poets Etc) build up a following there will remain those with a yearning for the truly authentic. However, the issue of AI vacuuming up copyright works does need to be urgently addressed.

        On the positive side, as a blind person, I have an app on my iPhone which enables me with the help of AI to read printed text, identify objects Etc. There is also an option to request assistance from volunteers if the AI fails.

        Best wishes. Kevin

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        1. AI certainly has good uses, but the potential for the bad ones seems to outweigh all of those. The problem with the created ‘works’ is that it becomes harder and harder to distinguish them from the real thing. I understand that AI created works are now being attributed to established authors – without their knowledge – and marketed as such. Naturally, this is so someone can make a fast buck before the subterfuge is discovered and dealt with. And it seems to take some while to deal with it, having to convince platforms they are fake and need to be removed. And as newer creators come on the scene, how can anyone be certain they are genuine?

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          1. I guess some kind of system needs to be set up whereby when an author creates a work they authenticate that work as being truly their own. Perhaps this could be done by an authentication service where an author signs a legal document in which they do this, including the submission of some recognised form of ID, for example a driving license or passport. I don’t think we are at this pint yet, but at some point in the future we may be.

            It goes without saying that I don’t relish the beurocracy that would go with such a system, so perhaps there are easier ways of authenticating that works are by who they say they are.

            I also think that in a free society readers should be able to purchase books created (in part or whole) by AI. However, such works need to be clearly labelled as such thereby ensuring that readers are not purchasing an AI publication when they are under the impression that the work was written by a human being.

            We are not going to put Jack back in his box, so we need to work out a way of dealing with the evolving situation.

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            1. The authentication system sounds like a good idea, although I’ve no doubt it wouldn’t be long before ways were found to falsify entries. But nothing’s perfect, of course.

              Clearly, AI books are here to stay, and readers will be able to purchase them if they wish whether we like it or not (Personally, I don’t. I don’t believe that just because something can be done, it necessarily should be. But of course here we are.). So yes, they would need to be clearly labelled.

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              1. I agree with you that just because something can be done it doesn’t follow that it should be. But as we both do, I believe agree we need to deal with the world as it is, not as we would ideally like it to be.

                I am not religious. However, for want of a better word, I believe AI lacks a soul. Where you and I to walk through the same wood and hear the identical blackbird, and to compose a poem about having done so. Our poems would differ because, as humans we would have experienced the walk, the wood and the blackbird both in our own unique way. This is what makes human creativity so uniquely wonderful, even when the work is mediocre. I.E. the very fact that it stems from genuine emotion/experience renders it special, whereas AI feels nothing.

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  5. Michael Graeme's avatar Michael Graeme

    This is a really thoughtful piece, Mick. You capture the concerns here very well. As you know, I do dabble with it – as an old techie and computer nerd it was probably inevitable. I’m coming across those pieces you mention more and more, now – a kind of emotional clickbait, and when you realise it’s AI, there’s a visceral shock to the system – deeply unsettling. Some will accept that stuff without a qualm – there’s always been a market for junk. Others are rightly repelled by it. AI can do the cerebral stuff as well of course, but that works best in conjunction with a human author, and yes, you can always tell if it’s the AI that actually wrote the piece.

    I’m not sure what the future holds here as the technology gains pace. I’m trying to make sense of it at a psychological/mythological and cultural level, but it really is bewildering. At times it amazes me, at other times it’s horrific, and the risks seem catastrophic. But I think the conclusion I’m coming to is that what we do as “human” writers and poets is becoming all the more important. AI has no unconscious mind, therefore no creative genius. I think (hope) that’s always going to show.

    Spend less time on the internet? With you there.

    All the best.

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    1. Yes, I agree with you on all those points, Michael. The art (of all types) we create is important, and will continue to be, but will anyone be able to tell the difference at some point in the future? It does all come down to ‘can I believe what I’m seeing/reading?’ and at the moment I really believe we aren’t too far away from a point when the answer will be ‘I don’t know’. And when we get there, there will be all sorts of repercussions. It will undermine faith and belief in Science, Politics (as if that hadn’t happened already!), History, Ethics…pretty well everything. We will then have a world filled with people who have nothing concrete to hold on to. Or am I being unduly gloomy?

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      1. Michael Graeme's avatar Michael Graeme

        I don’t think you’re being too gloomy at all, Mick. With guardrails and internationally agreed legislation, we could control its worst excesses and perhaps reap more of the rewards, but what are the chances of that happening? Its potential for disinformation is staggering – faith in our institutions is already at an all-time low – just one of the many ways it can be weaponised. And it’s funny how the most outrageous disinformation gets lapped up and goes viral, while the truth is left behind in the starting blocks.

        Then I read about the people at the top of these AI companies, or most of the big tech companies for that matter, and find many of them deeply strange, soulless individuals.

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        1. Internationally agreed legislation. Sadly, that’ll be a pipedream, yes. And bearing in mind there appears to be agreement that certain international actors actively spread disinformation during various elections in the last few years, one can immediately see why that agreement won’t happen.

          But people love the outrageous disinformation. It’s what feeds conspiracy theories; They want to believe the appalling stuff which is why they’ll dismiss a thousand scientific studies and point to the frothing idiot on YouTube pushing the Nonsense and scream ‘See! I knew it!’

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  7. And it takes me one week to write a post, and travel halfway across the world to get a set of photos. 😄 Thank you for writing this super insightful post. I really did not know that so much online content is AI generated. I know chatgpt and perplexity regularly scour my pages. Now I know why.

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  8. Thoughtful post, Mick … and spot on! I can guarantee you that I have never knowingly posted anything generated by AI … except one time when I was just experimenting with it and I told my readers up front that it was an AI experiment. Since then, though, I absolutely refuse to use anything from AI sources. That said, it IS getting harder to know for certain what comes from AI, so I’m very particular about my sources both for news and for my ‘good people’ posts. When I first started hearing about AI some years ago, my first thought was that although I could definitely see where it could serve some good purposes, I was certain that it would more likely be used for evil, for profit, for feeding misinformation to the public. Seems more and more like I was right. Sigh.

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  9. Hi Mick, This is a such a relevant post but there’s nothing we can do. The genie is indeed out of the bottle and it has started wreaking havoc. A month or two ago, Deloitte was slapped with a 440K AUD fine by the Australian government because the report given to them prepared by AI had references that don’t exist.
    It’s scary. I see art shared on Fb that is so realistic and then I see the comments and someone smart calls the person out for sharing an AI generated picture. I still haven’t been able to figure truth versus AI.

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    1. It’s difficult, and becoming more difficult, Smitha. Yes, it’s getting harder and harder to tell them apart. I still think photos have a feel to them, which I can’t quite define, which tends to show them up as fake, although subtle manipulations are now almost undetectable. I think this is the scariest part.

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  10. It’s clear from the responses to your post that concerns over AI and its effect on all of us, individually and socially, are widespread. There’s a lot of “ain’t it awful” and “there’s nothing we can do” floating around, and to some extent both are true. On the other hand, we are free to choose our engagement with AI in certain circumstances. I changed the tagline of my blog to “Powered by Human Intelligence,” and in time I’ll add a post making clear that AI will not be involved in any of my own writing. I’ve also stopped reading some blogs that are making obvious, declared use of AI. Substituting re-reads of good literature, history, and biography for scrolling social media helps, as does supporting writing on platforms (WordPress, Substack, etc) where authorship by humans is clear.

    As for research, I’ve already found so much misinformation offered by various chatbots I gave that up some time ago, and substituting DuckDuckGo for Google as a search engine was a great choice. There are other sites, like JStor and ResearchGate, that provide solid information. As mother told me when I was six, “Choose your friends carefully!” That still holds true.

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    1. Yes, I’ve only used a chatbot as an experiment to see what came up. Otherwise, I’ve not knowingly used one. But I think ‘knowingly’ is the point. How much is AI built into programs and sites other than those that openly declare it? And the obvious problem, which of course is becoming more of a problem as the months go by, is identifying AI produced material. WordPress and Substack may not want AI material on their sites, but I’ve certainly seen WordPress sites that produce it all the time. And I’ve no doubt that some of the ones I couldn’t be certain about were AI.

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      1. Oh ~ yes, indeed. There’s plenty of AI produced material on both WP and Substack. What I meant was that those platforms also contain work by individuals who have forsworn the use of AI, and it’s sometimes easier to find them there than on the usual social media sites, which have devolved significantly, even before the introduction of AI. Some months ago — perhaps even a year or more ago — WP offered users the ability to opt out of allowing their individual sites to be scraped. I certainly took advantage of it, even though it’s akin to the little Dutch boy sticking his finger into the dike.

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  11. A well considered post, Mick. What you’ve written is completely true. AI is a big step towards giving modern people the world of instant gratification they think they are entitled to. I can’t see it ending well, there are never any short cuts in life.

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    1. No, it’s unlikely to end well. I’ve no doubt that many people love it. Instant gratification, as you say. Plus, of course, the chance to ‘prove’ anything they want it to. I wonder if governments will attempt to tackle the issue? Michael (above) mentions guardrails and legislation, but I think we both agreed it would be unlikely to happen. But without something like that, we’ll eventually reach a point where we won’t be able to believe anything we see or hear.

      I even wonder if we might begin to see a bit of a movement to leave the internet, or at least to only use it occasionally and in certain particular circumstances. It won’t solve anything, but might improve the mental health of those that do!

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      1. I don’t think young people will move away from the internet. It’s to ingrained in their daily life. Older people might but then you lose the ability to promote your work on line so how do you advertise it? There’s no point in writing a book just for oneself.

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  13. There are many genies out of the bottle.

    I’ve just used AI several times to look for and develop opportunites in Development fo someone I know, whose main client was USAID… (remember them?) So what I’ve done in a couple of occasions was to ask for potential new areas in development. Programmes, sponsors… etc.

    As a (re)search tool, AI has no alternative…

    Another example: I was a market researcher for most of my career. There was a branch called “desk research.” You’d go to the Library, look for secondary sources on a topic, find sources, and after 3 weeks you’d write a report.

    Today? The research can be done in tow hours. Write the report in a coupla days… (Checking hallucinations all the time of course.)

    Cheers.

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  14. Oh, and I agree about the ‘cheating part’.

    Next thing you know, someone will ask AI: “write me 50,000 words novel set in Guatemala with such and such characters, a love triangle between the Narc Lord and so-and-so, and hurry up I have to submit it to my agent next week.

    Or a producer will say that and ask Ai to develop AI actors that won’t cost a dime…

    (I keep hoping for Emoji to release a ‘shaking head emoji.) (But surely you know what I mean.)

    Maybe I could ask AI to do one? 😉

    Be good.

    Brian

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