#0040 – 1 Day Challenge Article: My opinion on AI technologies
NOTE: This article may have used AI, but was definitely written by an ape.
Preamble
I should state that I have not written anything in a while. Predominately I blame busyness. (It is the most common form of laziness after-all.) However perfectionism is also a solid secondary as to why my output here is so low. I have strangled many articles that I found 80% satisfactory. But I just couldn’t press publish because I knew that if I just put a little more effort into them they could be great. One more read through, and rewrite, one more supporting paragraph. One more edit to trim the fat. This all adds on and exhausts me to the point that the draft gets put on ice… Citing that: “I’ll do it when I have a little more time later.”
Well. This exercise is a way of trying to kill both birds with one stone. I want to give myself a solid deadline for making an article. 1 day. From start to finish. Initial notes, media collection, 1st draft, revision edit, and publish. All in a single day. The topic I have chosen for this 1 day article is… AI. More specifically I’d like to generally opine on what I think about AI. As a technology, as a business, and its effects on our lives and culture. It’ll be a rough and ready article.
So without further ado let’s begin.
What is AI? (Or rather what do I mean when I say AI?)
AI stands for Artificial Intelligence. However (thankfully) as of 2026 we don’t yet have a True AI. Id est: a real sentient or sapient intelligence. A self aware entity capable of reflection and personal growth. What we do have is various data manipulation models and scripts that we refer to as AI. Such as Large Language Models (LLMs), or chat bots (e.g. Personal Digital Assistants). I am not going to pretend to know more about this subject than I do – which is not much.
However I am familiar with using generative AI. AI models that create a novel output. Such as text, images, and various other media. As I understand this they do this by creating internal models by copying media that is fed to them. For example ChatGPT collects information by scraping websites then reconstituting that information and passing it to a chat bot which engages the user in conversation. That’s how I broadly understand it. So if you ask it for restaurant recommendations, it will scrape Yell and Google Reviews, then present that information in conversation to the user according to their criteria. E.g. location, food-type, budget, hygiene rating, etcetera.
I will primarily continue to use ChatGPT as an example use case of AI, as it is the one that I am most familiar with by a fair margin, and it is a good generalist that does a little bit of everything. It searches like Google Gemini, it can create images like Mid-journey, it could create code like Claude-code, and so forth. It is a Jack of all trades.
Is AI good for us?
Yes, but mostly no. Hear me out.
Information veracity and reliability
Firstly AI information output can not be implicitly trusted, and hence should not be used in a professional setting. Or any setting where liability may be an issue. ChatGPT warns users of its inherit unreliability within the chat box itself. Observe their disclaimer. “ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.” Basically they wash their hands of any liability. How the user uses this information of dubious veracity is entirely up them. As are the consequences. In my opinion this means that AI can not be used for anything of deep importance. At least not as a stand alone source. Think looking up health symptoms, or asking for legal advice.
Why is AI provided information considered unreliable?
Two main reasons pop to mind. One is “AI Hallucinations”. This is were an AI agent would just spew out inaccurate information that it just made up whole cloth, or tried to bridge disparate datums with faulty assumptions. In the YouTube example video, the AI used by these users made up reference cases that either did not exist, or did exist but the AI misrepresented the context and case law that was illustrated in the specific named case. Watch the video.
The second reason why information provided from AI agents shouldn’t be implicitly trusted is to do with its source(s). Where does ChatGPT get its information from? The Internet. Is the internet filled with bad/inaccurate/malicious information? Yes. If it is present in volume, or in publications that the AI considers authoritative. Then is at a real risk of regurgitating the bad information to its users. AI can act like a magnifier for any bad info that is already in circulation. Such as information presented by ideologically captured (once prestigious) institutions, information in a main stream media circular source loop, or information that is in such volume that it could be considered Vox Populi. This is especially dangerous when it is presented by a vocal minority speaking on behalf of the majority across multiple locations online.
AI hallucinating case law references (etcetera.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGn1SZuhTys
How to use AI even though the information is unreliable?
I do find it rather funny, because when I was in school I was told not to use Wikipedia.org as a reference for my essays. This is because it is not considered a reliable source; due to its core nature of compiling information from the public with little in the way of information discernment and validation. Wikipedia has the same weakness as modern AI. It draws its information from the public who are inherently unreliable, and from official (e.g. main stream media) sources who have been known to selectively report/omit information in order to push agendas/narratives, based on their political affiliations.
However both can be used constructively when researching a topic. To put it bluntly: they are both a good jumping on point. They are both good for an initial orientation on a subject. As long as you can read and compartmentalise the information provided, attaching a mental asterisks to the information to flag it. So that it is not integrated into one’s world view naively. I genuinely think that many if not most people do not have the ability to do this reliably. (Myself included.) We are too prone to cognitive biases, logical fallacies, first movers advantage… etcetera.
Additionally following Wikipedia’s listed sources is very useful for learning more about a given topic, and finding more authoritative sources on information. For example a book written by the author being studied. ChatGPT likewise can be asked to list its sources. Example prompt: “Can you list and summarise Kuji-In for me please. List sources. Prioritise books as a source.”
AI’s core methodology of replacing people
AI at its core is a technology designed to supplant and replace people. It is marketed to businesses as a way to replace staff. And save money by not having to pay their wages. At least initially, it seems as of 2026 the marketing has shifted tenor from “replacing” staff, to “augmenting” staff in order to increase productivity. Marketing bullshit. At the end of the day it has the same results. The technology’s presence lowers the need/demand for staff in general.
This means that it is fundamentally bad for the economy. As it causes job losses. Especially in the white collar office worker sector. Who are usually from an upper-working to middle class background. People who constitute the largest population of people with significant disposable income. This disposable income fuels the economies of the West, especially the UK. Which is primarily in the tertiary sector. And this demographic is the primary consumer base. Who buys the daily Starbucks/Costa coffee on the way to work every day? Who buys lunch every day? Who spends the most on restaurant food delivery? Or taxi services? Or is remodelling their house every 7th year, or replacing their cars every 5th?
Is it the once in a while purchases (assuming fiscally responsible) of the lower working class or underclass (benefits people), or is it the upper classes who aren’t in significant numbers enough to drive public consumption trends. No. It’s the exact demographic of people most affected/displaced by AI. There will be negative down stream to service workers and the tradesmen that service this demographic. Damaging the purchasing power of the core consumer bulk in a service economy country like the UK, will have significant negative fallout on all sectors and people.
AI’s frivolous use cases
Whenever I see AI being advertised to consumers. (Not businesses like above.) The use case always seems to be frivolous and largely unnecessary. many times it is designed to help the user avoid putting in any effort into their own life. Consider the example official advertisements that I have cherry picked here. Look at the situations where the consumer find themselves in, and how they use the AI to get out of it, as well as their conduct and mentality. The people featured seem like low quality trash people. They lie to the people around them, they are lazy, and they are irresponsible: often leaving things to the last minute. AI is being presented here as a tool to enable idiots. Just my opinion.
Also look at the ChatGPT ad of “You can just finish the work”, notice how it cuts the user out of the loop. There is great danger in allowing a computer to remove you from the process. It aggregates all the information in the files provided, creates a presentation for upper management, and sends it. All without user oversight. Just liability/blame if anything goes wrong. I wonder what could go wrong with that? It’s all too easy to show one’s arse with this over-reliance on automation. Building habits that enable complacency.
Look at the below adverts. All for AI personal agents. ChatGPT, Meta AI, Adobe Acrobat AI, and HP AI. All different companies. However the core use case is the same. Offloading cognitive labour from the user’s brain to the machine. What people don’t realise about short cuts, is that they ultimately harm you more than they help. Offloading cognitive labour, enables laziness and is an opportunity lost at learning (and hence growing). This tech is a crutch, that will guarantee that the patient will never walk straight again.
“You can just finish the work” ChatGPT advert
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vvGAKtV_Ek
Signing off on work that you did not review. What could go wrong?
Your personal AI. The new Meta AI app.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2l_2k5KrXmo
Call your wife, control your cat, change tanks idiot.
Meet Kat Dennings’s newest personal assistant, Acrobat AI Assistant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xh2nsY9tQzs
Lie to your colleagues about work, and irresponsibly sign contracts base on summaries.
HP AI Companion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL7kr1ckgDE
Can’t be bothered to read the reference materials, yet somehow can write loads base off of a summary.
AI and Privacy
I know that the modern man seriously does not care a lick about their own privacy. Often citing a defeatist rhetoric to justify their inaction, or active participation against their best interests in this manner. However I would feel remiss if I did not state the privacy concerns regarding AI.
One. People tell these things way too much private/personal information. Thinking that these machines are a black box, where nothing dropped into it will ever comeback to them. What people don’t realise (or perhaps do but don’t care) is that the box has a hatch that opens up at the back. And its technicians and owners see all via that hatch. Now you have strangers holding your private, personal, or otherwise sensitive information. People don’t appreciate the leverage that the masters of the tool now have over the users that do these things. At the very least, it could be used for highly effective targeted advertisement, or selling the data to third parties.
Above refers to service like ChatGPT the phone app, or website. Positions where the data they have is the data that users gave them via prompts. However AI that has complete access to user’s OSes, completely compromises the entire PC. From a security standpoint. This one really shivered my timbers. Who the fuck would give another person (or their agent) complete access to their private computer?
I can envision a situation where a machine sifting through a user’s files for a task: finds a media files that it flags as illegal for whatever reason. Then due to mandatory reporting policy – one in the EULA that the user didn’t read – reports the user to the authorities. Suddenly police are in your home, your PC is being seized, and reports are being made. All over what could amount to nothing. Cartoonishly extreme I know, but not outside the realm of real possibility. A more mundane example would be that the AI attaches private files to emails, shared projects, or correspondence that you may have wished it did not. It is a security risk in this regard.
ChatGPT can now complete tasks on your computer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dB6pOolO7io
What is Microsoft 365 Copilot and how to use it | Microsoft
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqH-HtQbaeU
AI damaging its own ecosystem
This isn’t an environmental complaint, although there are plenty of those in regards to data centres, electricity consumption, and water use. I am not knowledgable, nor interested enough to talk on that. This is about the information ecosystem.
I would like to put forth the idea that AI products act as parasites. Hurting the very host they need to live. The specific AI product I want to example are AI summaries built into search engines. Like Google, and DuckDuckGo. (Note: I was surprised that Bing and Yahoo did not have AI search summaries.) Consider what an AI search engine summary actually does. It scrapes the information from third party websites to then present it to the user in an edited and easily digestible format. This process completely usurps the actual NEED for the user to visit the source websites themselves. This means that the user is satisfied without visiting and patronising the underlying websites from which the information was sourced. Usually by seeing third party adverts on these sites. This results in the business of running a website becoming less profitable, and even less viable.
Meaning that the presence of the AI summary actively damages the source that it itself uses to function. Like a parasite leaching off of a host. If the parasite gets strong enough or numerous enough it could even kill the host. Which would quickly cause the parasite to starve to death (assuming it couldn’t locate a new host). These AI summaries actively starve the very websites they use for information from the funding that keeps them alive. This means that the number and quality of source websites will diminish as AI summary use expands. A true example of the enshitification of the Internet.
Who is to blame for this? Is is the avaricious corporation, or the lazy convenience-addicted habitual path-of-least-resistance walking consumer? Why not both? My point is that the core financial incentive for people to put good information on the Internet, is actively damaged by the AI search summary tool. Which needs that good information to be of any use at all. It’s actually a sad situation. A starving snake eating its own tail out of necessity. Or maybe a better analogy would be a farmer who poison his own land by driving a leaking harvester.
I’ve herd people advocate for the idea of a revenue share with the source websites to offset this market usurpation. And it might work. Maybe if companies all of a sudden decide that they care about the future, and not about short term quarterly returns for shareholders. Unfortunately they are simply not structured in a way where they are incentivised to care about the future in any real respect. Obviously this is just my opinion on this.
Is AI a business fad?
I will say little on this for risk of really showing my ignorance. What I will say is that I have seen many people compare the “AI bubble” to the “Dot-COM bubble”. Apparently in the early 2000s there was a fad where every major business felt the need to incorporate web services into their business regardless of whether it made sense for them personally, or not. It was predominantly done to acquire share holder funds, by projecting the image of a forward thinking and growing business. Regardless of whether or not the website services that they advertised to prospective share holders actually had any value within them. I think the actual dot-com bubble was about primarily web businesses that did nothing but suck up share holder money, that is until the jig was upped.
I see an analogue in AI technologies today. It seems like every company in the technology sector has AI services which they advertise proudly. Regardless of use or relevance to their primary business model. And even outside of the tech sector, every other large corporation has some kind of AI service available — many of which are useless. Just there to tell prospective shareholders that your business has a foot in AI. And hence are a modern, forward looking, and growing company. It’s all surface level appearance based marketing to make their business more appealing to the cursory inspections of shareholders.
Is AI a bubble?
As a roll on from the fad conversation, I want to briefly discuss the future of the AI from a business prospective. I have heard rumblings of an AI bubble bursting. Once the naive investor money dries up that is. This is because AI products are largely not profitable. Id Est: they do not make more money, than they cost to develop and run day-to-day. In addition I have see an image circulating around the internet of how incestuous the funding actually is with big-tech companies and AI. Observe below. This implies that the money input (from outside sources) is fading, and instead companies are playing a game of hot-potato with debt and circular funding. A game that will eventually fail once one company defaults on a loan. Which would then cause a domino effect; that could then cause the collapse of the entire sector as a consequence.
The 7 Trillion AI Gamble Is Failing. Big Tech is TRAPPED Right NOW.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OunJtLnyPT4
AI Bubble: Nvidia is looking desperate as circular financing gets dangerous | Ed Zitron
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1vSlv32MWo
AI and social media
This is where I will throw around the term “Dead Internet Theory”. It is a theory that human users are becoming rarer and rarer on the Internet to the point that we could be drowned out by machines in the near future if we haven’t been so already. Bots communicating with bots en-masse. I personally think that it is not the case, at least not yet. However the presence of machines on the Internet is no longer something that could be denied.
Consider the YouTube comments sections. How many of those comments are from actual people? I have seen many that are obviously a chain of bot accounts replaying to each other trying to sell a product. Be it some no-name’s course, or a random shit-coin that someone wants to pump, or just some scammer’s Whatsapp. These comment chains usually come in the format of a comment that is tangentially related to the video content, that then mentions its product in passing, or asks for a solution. Then followed by reply accounts saying something like X product/service really helped me. Etcetera.
The scam adverting bots are easy to identify. However ones that are not are the political narrative bots. Let me ask you a question. Say that you are watching a politically divisive video. Then you scroll down to the comments section. How do you tell the difference between a bot and an NPC. A bot designed to mindlessly rattle off from a prescribed script. Compared to a human who is a tribally captured useful idiot online, rattling out buzz words, slogans, talking points, and rhetoric, as well as regurgitating statistics that they half remember from tribal sources. How do you tell the difference between a machine reading from a script, and a person reciting dogma? I personally don’t know. What I do see is the sheer volume of vitriol, or dare I say the word: “misinformation” on certain topics by suspect accounts.
What makes an account suspect of being a bot?
Account age, geographic location, topic under discussion, and account username formatting. That is typically what sets off flags for me. Say all the people with very strong opinions are all new accounts, with no history on the platform. Now consider that all the accounts are from areas known for having bot farms such as China or India. All commenting on a video exclusively discussing US politics. Perhaps the topic under discussing has political relevance/significance to either a national power, or group of interest who would have the resources and would benefit from shaping online discourse/discussion on the topic. And finally bot accounts tend to be made using scripts, hence they will typically have a rhyme and reason to them. A pattern, or template that they all use. For example “john-smith-8783hukhfs”. First name, hyphen, second name, followed by a random string of numbers and letters. There is no hard rules for spotting bots, it’s more of a loose criteria that increases classification confidence. Like I said earlier, it is very difficult to tell the difference between a brainless machine, and a genuine living idiot. Both are incapable of independent thinking.
“You are not immune to propaganda”
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KzjHNSRgHJ8
Bots in the YouTube comments sections example images
AI, culture, marketing, and public opinion
In my view the public opinion of AI has soured across the board. With people becoming increasingly more aware of all the negative affects of AI. Exaggerated or otherwise, a cloud is gathering around the perception of AI in general. Everything from job losses, increased wealth disparity, shrinking middle-class, loss of privacy, increased sophistication of surveillance methods and software – such as facial recognition, to increased RAM and GPU costs. The blame of which is being placed at the feet of AI.
Then add to that the AI tools that actively hurt the ecosystems that they draw from such as image creation tools that use artists work to create their own renders, only to then compete with them for customers. This sentiment is especially pronounced in nerd spaces. I often see YT videos denouncing any AI use, and pointing out AI channels as inferior in quality as well as morally. AI channels are often portrayed as artistically bankrupt thieves in these circles. And within the documentary space, they are known to be rife with unchecked misinformation and historical/factual errors.
Now from the customers perspective AI products are often looked upon as being of inferior quality. Hence use of terms such as “AI slop”. Poor quality videos whose target audience are gullible, easy to dupe people. Such as AI posts on Facebook for older audiences who may lack the discernment to identify and dismiss them. Consider the reactions to large corporations when they produce AI adverts, it genuinely hurts their reputation. At least in the short term — although it could be a storm in a teacup. Genuinely hard to tell with online outrage.
Big company AI adverts that have hurt their reputations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy6fByUmPuE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWnP9f-ceqE
AI and technical debt
I see AI tools that create code and honestly I have never seen the purpose of these. Outside of hobbyist artists who want to create a video-game while avoiding the technical side of the creation. For example a visual novel game, or a narratively driven walking simulator. For serious companies/businesses I see little reason for them to use code generation tools, because they create as many problems as they solve. what is the reason a company would want products made by a machine with no oversight. With no one in the company who has intimate knowledge of the product. Hence incurring a huge degree of technical debt making the business dependant on the AI product/service. Because without it, they’d have to fight with an undocumented code-base that is alien in formatting, styling, and structure. And the bigger the codebase, the deeper the hole. The more AI is used the more AI needs to be used to keep the cobbled together boat afloat long enough to ship deliverables.
AI personal use
I am running out of time here so I have to move on. I want to discuss AI in my life. How I use it. I use ChatGPT, Duck.AI (which uses ChatGPT), and that’s about it. The funny thing is that I have not paid a penny to use these services. Typically I either use ChatGPT as a search engine, a first call for finding information quickly. Or I use it as for basic image generation.
Yes. Gasp! Despite all the moral grandstanding that it may have seemed like I was taking up against AI use in general; I use AI every day… I just don’t value it enough to pay for it. All my use cases are rather shallow, I either use it to search and sum things up, usually things of low stakes. Or I use it to generate images for my Dungeons and Dragons campaign — something that I would not pay money for. For example commission artwork. AI use in my opinion is in a similar vein to piracy. It is not theft, not does it represent a loss of a legitimate sale. A pirate is not a lost customer. Nor is a pirate a thief. A pirate is a pirate.
I use a free ChatGPT account. Which gives around 3 free image generations a day before it paywalls me. It took around 7 to 11 generations to create a Myconid Warrior wielding Soul Edge (From “Soul Calibur 2”), and a poisoned boomerang. This was done over days because the thing kept generating it wrong. Adding in details that I did not stipulate, or taking away things that I did state on an earlier iteration. It is an annoying process, and one has to learn to accept something that is 70% good-enough, rather than wasting time, energy, and tokens, additionally prompting for decreased returns.
Look at the image of the Myconid Warrior. It took several iterations to get the sword to not be held upside-down in it’s hand. I even had to create a mock up reference image for it to use as a template. I just don’t see a reason to give them any money. Additionally if ChatGPT went away, or terminated this service. Then I would just use another free image creation to make these reference images. And if they went away too (likely because they used ChatGPT under the bonnet), then I would do without. Using official artwork or random Google images to illustrate what I am describing to my players. It is not a big loss. I think I will elaborate more on this in a dedicated article, when I do I will link it below.
Acronyms used
AI – Artificial Intelligence
ChatGPT – Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer
EULA – End User Licence Agreement
GPU – Graphics Processing Unit
HP AI – Hewlett-Packard AI
LLM – Large Language Model
OS – Operating System
PC – Personal Computer
RAM – Random Access Memory
YT – YouTube
Closing thoughts
I am wrapping this article up as of 18:50 2026-08-15. Considering that I started this challenge at 14:00 on 2026-08-14. Already past midday for a 1-day challenge… It is safe to say that this challenge has been failed. Initial writing of article 1st draft at 12:00 2026-08-15 and published 22:16. However failed successfully. I do have an article done. Only it is a day late, and a dollar short.
This isn’t my greatest work I’ll admit. However it has revelled to me how little I actually know about this subject. Any one of the subject paragraphs above could be expanded into an essay of their own. With an equal exertion of research (an time) necessary. However this article has broadly outlined my current understanding of AI in general, as well as demonstrated my attitude towards the technology… Reading it back: I may actually be an AI Luddite. I seem to have the general depth of knowledge of a Luddite. The lack of differentiation between different technologies illustrates this well. It’s all AI baby — especially the tech that isn’t. 😉
Anyway. I’ll leave you with a relevant quote.
“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.” – Blaise Pascal
Thank you for reading.
Links, references, files, and further reading
