The Irony of Being What You Claim to Hate

 Last week on Facebook there was an ad for "writing" or "engineering" AI books and I noticed something funny:  one person had posted a whatever it is from Blue Sky and then I noticed someone else say pretty much the same thing.

And as I pointed out, if you don't attribute the quote to someone, you're really not much better than the AI that takes existing writing to repurpose into "new" writing.

Not surprisingly, he didn't like that.  He came up with a variety of lame defenses.  "I didn't know who it was!"  Well then you should have at least said you heard from someone else, like the person who made that Blue Sky post did.  He didn't make it seem like he came up with that line--unlike you.

"Why does it matter?"  Well, because you're taking someone else's words and claiming credit for them.

"Every word you write has been used before!"  But you pretty much did a word-for-word reprint, just changing a tense and twisting a negative (nobody) to a positive (somebody).  

"I see no problem with repeating a phrase I agree with!"  Sure, but when you don't attribute it to someone else you're trying to pass it off as your own witticism when it's not.  It's basically stealing another comedian's joke.

"You only have 26 friends.  I wonder why that would be?"  Because I don't care and obviously being more popular doesn't make you more right or Kim Kardashian would be infallible.  (This is a tactic Trumpers like to use a lot.  "He's popular and you're no one!" or "He's rich and you're poor!"  As if those factors make someone's logic better.)

Then he concluded with, "You're boring!"  Nice going out on a first grade insult lifted from A Talking Cat!?!

As I mentioned on Facebook it's pretty ironic to decry "AI" by stealing content the way that the "AI" does.  It was like that old The Simpsons episode where Sideshow Bob goes on TV to decry the evils of TV.  At least he was smart enough to point out the irony himself.

Anyway, if you want to rail against "AI," then don't do the same things that it does.  Come up with your own jokes or attribute them to someone else.  Or at least change a few more words to make it less obvious.