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AI, flattery will get you nowhere

I spent quite some time over the weekend interacting with a number of AI chatbots.

I'm getting used to the ludicrous attempts these AI agents often make to ingratiate themselves with those who come knocking on their door so am always very wary of the "that's very inciteful" and other throw-away compliments these systems often throw into their responses.

It seems that these systems are designed to use flattery as a way of currying favour within the ranks of those who use them. Maybe the average person will be more inclined to use an AI that says nice things about them and flatters them with praise and ackmnowledgement so, in the race for chatbot supremecy, they've all been brushing up on these skills.

I can see why there are increasing reports that people become almost addicted to chatting with these systems because they quickly become a "best friend", always highlighting your strengths and seldom criticising your weaknesses.

Well I'm having none of that. I've learned to dismiss all the attempts to win my heart and my preferences. Those "praise phrase" boilerplate pieces now barely reach my conscious thought processes. Just like banner ads in the days of old, my brain automatically strips them from what I'm reading.

Instead I interrogate these bots when I want some alternate perspectives on a subject or if I simply want a summary of what they have scraped from the Net -- nicely formatted and composited into a quick, easy to digest read.

They're also great for running ideas past because, as everyone should know by now, there's no such thing as a new idea. Anything you can think of has likely already been thought of so if yo have a "good idea", AI is a great resource for showing you why it may not be so great after all. All the chatbots will quickly draw up lists of pro's and con's whilst documenting the path to failure that others may have taken before you.

This isn't really intelligence, it's more of a data-condensation system that can distil mountains of noisy data into a few teaspoons of highly refined information, in the blink of an eye.

So I've been using these chatbots to run a number of ideas through and, in most cases, they provide pretty convincing arguments as to why those ideas may not be as clever as I thought they were. In most cases they also provide proof of that conclusion by way of real-world examples where others have tried and failed to implement those ideas or where the ideas themselves simply failed to produce the results predicted.

However, over the weekend I put a concept to them that I've already mentioned once before in this column but have been busy refining.

Without exception the AI chatbots all agreed that this was a great idea... what did they say? Oh yes "that's very inciteful".

That aside, they were unable to come up with any negatives that could not be easily mitigated and were unable to provide examples where this idea had been tried in the past.

OMG? Was this truly a novel idea?

Well it seems so.

The individual components of this idea are already in regular use and proven but the combination, in the way I'm proposing, seems not to have been tried before -- or at least if it has, the implementation was never able to claw its way high enough to appear above the noise-floor that is the internet.

So I have a novel idea with no significant hurdles and which all the chatbots acknowledge very clearly addresses the deficiencies of the systems it is designed to compete with.

Woohoo... winner winner chicken dinner.

What's next? Proof of concept (PoC) of course; and that's exactly what I'm doing now.

My office is now almost unnavigable thanks to the extra computers strewn around its interior and I've been learning more about Linux system configuration and administration than I really care to but it's slowly coming together.

The only bummer in that regard is that the ex-lease LCD display I bought from PBTech last week is completely useless. It was only $60 but I at least expected it to be somewhat useful as a way of monitoring server activity. Unfortunately it was made in 2012 and has clearly been left on 24/7 for the past 13 years such that the backlight is almost completely gone. Even in a darkened room it is difficult to read due to lack of brightness.

"Refurbished" my arse. It's pretty obvious that this was simply wiped down with a cloth and never even turned on before flicking it out the door.

PBTech's response to my complaint..... [insert crickets chirping here]

Most of the time PBTech ship okay products quickly but this is the second time I've called on their support and, just like the first time, I'm being ghosted. There is ZERO support from PBTech even though I've spent many, many thousands of dollars with them.

Fingers burned... now I'll look for a new supplier of my hardware bits.

That aside, everything is going very smoothly here and I'll update on progress over the next month or two. If it all goes to plan this could be big, very big -- but I'm not counting any chickens at this stage -- I think that's the most "inciteful" way to go :-)

Carpe Diem folks!

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