David Craig, on July 12th, 2023Wednesday/Thursday blog
There has been quite a lot recently in the media about Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially since a deepfake video appeared on-line supposedly featuring financial expert, Martin Lewis, recommending some investment or other.
In this blog I just wanted to give a glimpse of the Kafkaesque nightmare that may await some of us as companies replace human beings with Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems.
I believe I may have recently come into contact with an AI programme and it wasn’t a terribly pleasant experience. About two years ago, I self-published my most recent book THERE IS NO CLIMATE CRISIS as a paperback and ebook using Amazon Kindle. Even though I have had seven or eight previous books published by mainstream publishers, this time I had to either ditch the book (the result of months of research and writing) or self-publish as my literary agent explained that no publisher would dare publish a book questioning the climate-catastrophist cult for fear of a backlash and boycott from the cyber-pitchfork-wielding twitter mob and similarly no bookshop would dare stock it.
Although the book has been sold on Amazon for two years, a couple of weeks ago I got a warning from Amazon that my book might be withdrawn from sale due to a typo (typographical error) and that I needed to correct this error if Amazon were to continue selling my book. In a chapter about the utter uselessness of supposedly ‘renewable energy’, I had written “build and install wind turbines. And obviously the amounts used depend on the size of the turbine.” However Amazon ‘helpfully’ informed me that “the amounts used depend on the size of” should be “the amounts used depends on the size of”. I may not be the most literate person. But I do understand that the word “amounts” is a plural and therefore the following verb should be “depend” and not “depends” as suggested by Amazon. I used the plural form ‘amounts’ as I was referring to the quantities of different raw materials – concrete, copper, steel etc – needed to build a wind turdbine. So I had two options, either stick with what I had written and risk having the book removed from sale, or make the change recommended by Amazon which would make most readers think I am an illiterate idiot.
Given that the book had already been on sale for two years without any problems, what I suspect has happened is that Amazon have recently implemented a new all-singing all-dancing AI programme to review its Kindle books to pick up any errors which need to be corrected. Somehow an error has got into the exciting new AI programme used by Amazon and the AI hasn’t understood when to use the singular form of a verb and when to use the plural form. Amazon does give authors the facility to respond to problems its AI programme raises. I have written back to Amazon several times explaining the grammatical rules governing the use of singulars and plurals, but each time I get a response insisting I change the text to the grammatically-incorrect ““the amounts used depends on the size of””. Given that it’s probably the same AI programme reviewing authors’ responses which made the grammatical mistake in the first place, I may be caught in a trap from which there may be no escape.
Now, you might be wondering what this trivial incident has to do with you.
https://community.nasscom.in/communities/ai/exploring-advantages-and-disadvantages-artificial-intelligence-todays-world
Well, imagine that you run a small business – say a chip shop or a newsagents – in a relatively deprived area. And imagine that many of your customers pay with cash. One day your bank decides to replace most of the staff in its usually ludicrously-misnamed ‘customer service department’ with a wonderful new AI programme. The AI programme reviews all the customers’ accounts looking for any anomalies and discovers cash is regularly being paid into your account. The AI programme, being smart, immediately suspects that your account is being used for money-laundering for local drug gangs in the deprived area where you have your business and blocks your account. Normally, there is no right of appeal against this decision. But if you do find some way to appeal, your appeal will probably be reviewed by the same AI programme which blocked your account in the first place. And as the AI knows it cannot make mistakes, it naturally concludes you are a liar and rejects your appeal.
Or imagine that you have a long and unusual name. The AI programme checking for possibly fraudulent bank accounts reviews all bank accounts held in the UK and finds one belonging to a person with exactly the same name and the same or similar date of birth as you. The AI programme then calculates the probability of this happening and concludes that this is so unlikely that you must be a fraudster using someone else’s details for your bank account. So your bank account gets blocked and you are told by the bank (the AI programme) to verify your identity. You comply. But as it’s the AI programme, which originally decided you were a fraudster, that checks your answer, it rejects your proof of identity. You decide to phone your bank to get this sorted out as your direct debits are not getting paid and you are getting all kinds of grief from the organisations which you normally pay by direct debit. After many hours waiting for your call to be answered by one of the few people left in the customer service department, you explain the situation. But then your problem will be whether the person you are speaking to has the authority to over-ride what the AI programme is telling them – namely that you are a fraudster.
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AI concerns me as well. It seems like a more advanced form of rubbish in, rubbish out but I suspect there is also some nefarious intent involved. Tony Heller tried it out to ask for a bio of himself and he reported on all the errors it generated. It does rather look as though certain names and subjects are programmed as targets for generating problems to be dealt with. The example with your book is trivia gone mad. AI seems to be creating human stupidity.
I always pay people coming to the house with cash and this morning I had a window cleaner, before reading this. I raised the cash payments issue with him because of the money laundering issue you mention and he knew nothing about the problems with bank accounts being closed.
I have noticed that internet search requests seem less accurate and I have to keep trying different phrasing. I suspect search engines are being changed to prevent some articles appearing.
I am sure it is part of a bigger picture to control what we can read and say and it is in all areas of the media. Only a few days ago there was speculation here that Neil Oliver might be the next to leave GB News.
I have been concerned about social media for some time. It seems to be a means to turn opinion into fact based on the number of likes, and it spreads round the world in seconds. Look at the reporting time given to the irrelevant lives of Meghan and Harry and now the latest BBC sex scandal where the people involved don’t agree on what has happened. It is part of distracting us with nonsense.
There is nothing new about this, we have been controlled throughout history in various ways. I am reading David Icke’s book “The Robots’ Rebellion”. It does have some strange ideas about aliens and reincarnation but he describes it as “the story of a conspiracy to control the human race” and he talks about a Brotherhood manipulating the human race. I think he uses historical events very well to expose the past control over us. It will be interesting to discover what he concludes. I think it was pointed out in this blog that the apparent freedoms of the latter part of the 20th century were just a blip and now the “Brotherhood” has more means of control than ever.
Social media is a force for evil.
I fell foul of computers when I came to renew my passport. it refused to accept several photographs of me, claiming I had my eyes shut (they clearly were not). It made me take my specs off – they’re NEVER off. They were clearly using facial recognition software which just wasn’t up to the task, eventually after a few emails from me, some human must have intervened and I finally got a photo accepted. But there was worse to come. I then had to renew my driving licence. My surname is hyphenated but the last time my driving licence was renewed they had managed to drop the hyphen. The system refused to accept my passport as proof of identity because this woman with the same d.o.b and name (only missing a “-“) was clearly not the same person. So I couldn’t prove my identity. I had to complete a change of name form to get passed the problem. Had I been dealing with a human I’m sure the problem would be been spotted and rectified immediately.
I feel that this problem is the same as your plurals problem – built in intractability. No-one has explained the grammatical rules to Amazon’s AI, given the poor standard of education these days would anyone under 40 notice if you humour Amazon and make the change?
Meanwhile in our Parish magazine this month our local vicar told us that he’d used AI to write his sermon for him. He was quite pleased with it although he claimed he didn’t actually use it. We humans are definitely heading for obsolescence.
That is ridiculous. I seldom read a book that doesn’t have typos missee by proof readers.
What happens if a book is written in colloquial English, etc?
And how does AI interpret some poetry?
I think that Dave’s book was targetted because it attacks climate change.
There is absolutely no doubt that your book was targeted because of its theme. Anyone who is a “climate denier” a “vaccine denier” or anyone who publicly – and with great courage! – stands up for what we had all been raised to believe were our rights as a “free country” is likely to be “de-banked” or in other ways penalised. A family member regularly self-publishes on Amazon with a significant number of typos and has never been sanctioned or asked to make corrections. Such errors are the responsibility of the author. I never would have believed in my worst nightmares that the country into which I was born in 1938 and for which my father fought in WW2 (and indeed for which my grandfathers fought in WW1) could have descended – degenerated? – to its current state. I shan’t be around to see the worst of it, the end of Western civilisation as I knew it, but I fear greatly for my lovely grandchildren, the youngest of whom last year was greatly perplexed by having been informed at school, before she was ten years of age, that “there were lots of people who weren’t men or women, or boys and girls.” She asked me where they were! I was appalled and immediately put her right with information about chromosomes and people who want to undergo surgery in order to appear to change their sex. Because she is an intelligent child she understood. All this “climate catastrophe” nonsense is just another manifestation of the same idiocy. I awoke this morning to R4 bleating on about the “heatwave sweeping Spain etc.etc.” It always has done in July and August. That’s why the English who want to see Venice and Rome and Florence and Seville etc.etc. go in April and May! The rest who want to grill themselves on the Costa beaches CHOOSE to go in July and August BECAUSE they want to turn various shades of vermillion!
After a rather pleasant June, reminiscent of the Flaming June of my childhood, I see that the roofs are now over Central and No 1 Courts at Wimbledon and play is likely to be suspended at the outer, un-roofed, courts because of rain. Welcome, everyone to “unprecedented heat-waves” and general climate-change-caused catastrophe. Incidentally, did I hear today that there are signs that life did exist on Mars some millions of years ago, before the planet’s climate changed? I trust its then inhabitants enjoyed their gas central heating and their oil-guzzling 4 x 4s.