I don’t get too many comments on my posts. I like it that way. If folks do engage in a useful way, that’s neat. If they want to troll or fight, I’ll have some fun with that too.

But my least favourite engagement is the type where someone takes your post shoves it in an AI app and asks AI to say something pithy, adversarial or supportive about it. 

My problem with this is straightforward: Did the person actually read what you wrote, process it, make some effort to understand what is being said: the context, the motivation and the application and then come to some conclusion. You might agree, disagree or be completely indifferent. That’s fine. But you consumed it and came to some conclusion on how you feel about it or could use it. 

Look at the post and one of the comments that followed. 

Rahul’s comment is self-evident and flips the trope that comedian’s blame audiences for not ‘getting’ a bit. 

But the comment that follows is just pure inane. It’s a bland and boring rehash of the joke. 

It’s like a bureaucrat or a vogon read what was written and rewrote it after sucking all the soul out of it. And AI has that tendency to sound like a vogon. 

The person who posted it felt a compulsive need to say something. But didn’t have either the bandwidth or capacity to say something pithy. So they use AI and paste something that sounds relevant. 

Did anything really need to be said? Or did you feel the pressure to be seen saying something? Was the post even relevant for you? Maybe you don’t consume stand-up comedy and you didn’t have to have an opinion. Chances are even if you wrote a slightly broken or comment riddled with mistakes, you might re-read it and try to improve it. But nope, you are happy with the sanitised, synthetic comment that made you no smarter and cost the reader a couple of brain cells. 

Much like what is said about everything being a nail to a man with only a hammer, people feel a compulsive need to comment on all kinds of content using AI even if they really have no opinion or feelings about it.