Since the beginning of August I've written 3 novels. The first was 165,000, the second 77,000 and the one I completed today was 67,000. Anyone who can only write 500-1000 fiction on a good day would look at those figures and immediately assume I used AI.

Only I didn't. I write 7 days a week. I have over 30 novels in print. I type fast and, after 35 years in the biz, I know how to write clean copy while pantsing the plot 1-2 chapters ahead.

I've even tweeted my progress and word counts most days, and my writing software takes a backup of the scene I'm writing every 60 seconds, all time-stamped. I have all the proof I need to show I write every word myself.

But you can't put all that on the product page for your novels. So potential readers and other authors will look at my output of 3 books in 2 months and roll their eyes, assuming that kind of productivity has to be down to AI generation. Hopefully they'll stick around long enough to read the opening chapter before they get the pitchforks out.

Additional note: I just came back to writing after a 5 year break. There didn't seem much point writing fiction when people could churn out AI slop. But in the end I decided to have faith in the fans and readers of my various novels, and keep writing for them.

I've been manually whitelisting JS on sites I use for well over a decade now. Some popular sites try to access great long lists of third-party domains, which tells me to either avoid those sites or just allow the primary and shrug if something doesn't work or load properly.

Used as a tool it's great. Used as a black box machine to generate a load of text on a subject the prompter has no knowledge of... terrible.

E.g. use it to lineedit your assignment and highlight errors. Don't get it to WRITE the assignment in the first place.

Otherwise you're throwing the contents of a garbage can into the oven and pressing a button that says 'pizza' - when you've never seen a pizza before, or tasted one.

Unleash swarms of them at dumps and have them disassemble everything they can get their hands on into useful parts, components and metals.
Separate different types of plastic, sort things for recycling and reclaiming, and we can stop filling valleys with crap, packing that garbage down and building houses on top.

But if they kick them out in the first year due to terrible grades, they don't get paid to have them around the following year...

My 1998 Forester and 1999 WRX are positively archaic these days, but I love driving both of them. I don't want a mobile phone with wheels.

"Authors and publishers, give us the right to train on all your ebooks for free or this rare hardback gets it."

When I imagine what the next version of Windows might look like I picture something with AI and ads and tracking crammed into every part of it.

Oh wait, that's kind of what we have now. But assuredly it'll be even worse, so I expect the Linux percentage to keep growing as it gradually becomes known as the best PC platform for gaming.

It won't be long before anyone with a bit of know-how can create blockbuster-equivalent movies at home and throw them on Youtube, and then hollywood is done.

They're just hastening their own end. As for us, we'll get buried in generic slop.

I recommend people keep buying up those old DVDs and box sets.

Company: Good news! We're adding AI to ...

Users: no

I've found it useful in a few cases:

Writing dos batch files to do specific tasks. I've been using Dos since the 80's, and have a workable knowledge of batch files, but I have to look up more complex commands and syntax.

Pasting in something I've written for a grammar/typo/consistency check (knowing full well it's probably adding that text to its training, so nothing important.). It may not be perfect but it's light-years ahead of grammar tools I've briefly looked at in the past. Mostly it can catch sentences I've edited once or twice and accidentally left an extra word in.

Some linux/ubuntu stuff which I don't use that often, like setting up a logical volume across several old drives in a repurposed/dumpster bin PC I'm configuring for a 3rd or 4th copy of backups. I check every step of the way, but it's easier to ask chatgpt using my specific hard drive designations (e.g. sde to sdi) than copy/paste from a website and edit all the examples. Having said that, on one occasion it included my boot drive sdc in the command to wipe an old LV which I'd already said was on sdb to sdj, so yes, check every step and know what you're doing.

On that note, diagnosing linux error messages too.

But I'm certainly not going to ask it to get creative, or try and get it to do research for me, or instruct me in something I don't already have a working knowledge of. People who pick up a scalpel and ask ChatGPT how to do brain surgery are the problem, not AI itself.

Also telephone sanitation engineers and hairdressers.

If you remove a handful of ultra-wealthy billionaires from the US calculations the Oz GDP is probably double that of the States, too.

Third world countries are famous for their reliable power sources with vast amounts of excess power in the grid, stable goverments, large well-run supplies of water and their total lack of corruption. Perfect for building and running massively expensive data centres.

So much better than, I don't know, building more solar and wind power in Australia, actually paying a relative pittance to authors and artists for the work AI companies are training on, and ensuring those data centres provide their own water instead of sucking up all fresh water in the entire area and driving prices through the roof.

Company: Good news! We're adding AI to ...
Users: no