AI’s Kryptonite
Can’t stop thinking about this
To be positive for a moment, AI is helpless against us.
I mentioned a book in a recent story, and a few days later, I got an email from AI suggesting that I might like to buy — that book.
So I wrote another story, mentioning another book by the same author, and a few days later — the same thing happened.
In my inbox this morning, lo and behold, a third email from AI, suggesting another book by the same author — who happens to be me.
Not to make too much of this, but without even trying, I’ve goaded a big-time algorithm into running a marketing campaign for, er, that author. Me.
Today’s point isn’t about that. Nor is it about the possibility that AI is marketing my book to more people than just me. On my mentions.
Today’s point is just that AI is predictable.
Pavlov had to train his dogs with treats as well as bells. I just gave my pet AI something to react to. And it reacted. Predictably. And that reaction worked for me.
We’ve all noticed AI surveillance and I’m not saying anything new here. But just think. Books — yeah, obviously. Raise their profile, get them talked about — AI reacts. Anything you say in front of AI — you get back a day or two later, in commercialised form.
It’s wonderfully predictable.
Even better — we know it. In one of those book-mentioning stories of mine, I said that “AI’s onto us”. More importantly — we’re onto AI.
Remember SEO? It worked and then it didn’t work and then it worked and then it didn’t work — because every time it worked, the human intelligences behind the AI “changed the algorithm”. They had to do that…
…because they had to defend their algorithm against human ingenuity. Again and again. Because…
…human ingenuity won every time.
We talk endlessly about AI. It’s the best thing since — whatever — or it’s going to destroy us. Et cetera. Blah blah blah. And repeat. But what if none of that mattered?
What if, when all this transformative AI finally arrives, hand in hand with Godot and the Rapture, the big change isn’t that our lives are suddenly (a) perfect or (b) terrible?
What if the big change is that all the systems, all the government, all the commerce — what if they’re all suddenly very predictable? What if AI is SEO writ large?
What if it’s easily manipulated, easily beaten; what if human ingenuity wins every time?
Forget the Butlerian Jihad; I want this!
Alexa, make me a bestseller.
