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I was lied to

Yesterday I was doing some research online.

So that I can be one of the hip-kids on the block, I decided to use AI to help me with a bit of that research.

Fortunately, I'm still old-school enough treat the utterings of any AI system with a healthy degree of skepticsm and that's really important because I'm about to drop a bombshell in local political circles that would open me to claims of defamation if I got anything wrong.

I asked AI whether a certain act was illegal.

It said yes and confidently trotted out the relevant act of parliament that would have been breached by such an act. It even quoted the clause of that act, with great confidence.

As all good journalists are taught to do (although few seem to bother these days), I checked.

The AI was absolutely right when it said the action involved was illegal but it was wildly halucinating when it supposedly quoted from the Act it referred to. Nothing it told me about what the Act said was true.

In short... it made up a whole lot of stuff that, on the face of it, sounded plausible and true. However, when I checked AI's utterances against the actual text of the Act it was clear that AI was just making this shite up.

This meant I had to spend quite a bit of time reading through the actual Act of parliament in order to firstly confirm that the law had been broken, secondly to find the exact section of the Act that had been breached and to discover the penalty (a fine of up to $10,000) that could be applied in the case of such a breach.

There have been several high-profile instances where lawyers have relied on AI when preparing cases and submissions to the courts -- only to be caught out when, as in this instance, the AI simply decided pluck fictional support material out of its cyber-arse.

I can't wait for the first reported case of "journalists" relying on AI's utterances when preparing a story and then finding themselves utterly embarrassed or sued as a result -- because you know it's going to happen.

After half a day's hard work, I've gathered all my double-checked evidence and am preparing to publish it.

I've also approached the local politician for comment and given him the chance to put his own side of the story, which he has but which also amounts to an admission of guilt. In fact this offending has been on-going for at least the past four years.

There's a moral to this story that all those in our local council should have learned quite some time ago. Don't abuse your power, especially if in doing so, you leave a person like me with a lot of spare time on their hands.

The honest reality is that I'd much rather be flying my RC model aircraft and drones at the local airfield as I had been doing for 20 years, until this council decided to abuse their power and accuse me of breaking a rule that doesn't exist (they have no record of this rule but still claim I have broken it -- refusing to retract their letter of accusation and the ban it contains).

I'm resourceful, tireless, intelligent and more than happy to spend my (now) spare time making sure that the residents of this district aren't subjected to the same abuse that I've faced. Now those within the ranks of council staff and governance who would abuse their power are finding that their petty actions are coming back to really bite them on the arse.

After my revelations as to what I believe is their terrible performance, one of the council's executive team has reportedly already resigned.

And, in the local body elections to be held later this year, I'm pretty sure that neither the present Mayor nor many of the current councilors will be re-elected to those positions as a result of my work to expose their inadequacies.

I've been working tirelessly to educate the local population as to the extent that their money has been wasted, their voices have been ignored and the incompetence of council has been covered-up. It looks very much as if I have succeeded in doing just that.

Every time I go for a walk I'm regularly stopped by people wanting to shake my hand and thank me for what I'm doing to keep the community informed and if I had a dollar for every time I've been asked to stand for mayor I'd be a rich man.

However, I have no intention or desire to stand for the mayoralty or council. Politics is only something I get involved in out of necessity, not by choice. I've also tried, at regular intervals, to get the council to work *with* me in a way that would benefit the local district -- but the answer has always been "no thanks" and "go away".

As I said... I'd much rather be flying my RC models at the local airfield with my friends but they removed that option. I suspect that only in October will our local council realise that they made a huge mistake by abusing their power in order to stop me.

Carpe Diem folks!

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