In the last month, I read a lot of articles about the widespread abuse of LLM tools (which are almost ubiquitously styled as ‘AI’ these days). New York magazine ran a feature at the beginning of May under the headline, ‘Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College’, which laid out a depressing vista of the academic world in the United States, where students can’t even be bothered to read essay prompts, much less the guff that ChatGPT actually coughs up for them to submit. The focus was on the U.S., but you can be sure that this behaviour is being replicated everywhere.
A week or so later, the Chicago Sun-Times was at the centre of an embarrassing episode where it published a supplement featuring a list of 15 books to read this summer, only for 10 of those recommendations to be complete fabrications, fever-dreams of an inadequate LLM tasked by a lazy prompt-inputter, apparently waved through by injudicious editors. Around the same time, British journalist Will Storr pondered whether writers have been sneakily using AI tools to ‘scam’ Substack readers, writing about the rise of suspicious ‘gruel’ on the newsletter and blogging platform.
Then, a few days ago, a Member of the European Parliament defended his use of ‘AI’ in the drafting of a letter to the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, which inexplicably contained lyrics from the Swedish House Mafia song, ‘Don’t You Worry Child’. That one prompted Waterford Whispers to ask if the politician in question should be replaced by ChatGPT to save on salary expense.
There were so many different examples of ‘AI’ abuse last month, that the author and Irish Examiner columnist Séamas O’Reilly, who has written a number of pieces about the topic, observed:
“With a trickling sense of dread I realise that I could, therefore, write an article just like this one every single day, each filled with brand-new examples of AI’s constant enshittification of the media we consume, factless posturing from its creators, marketing overhype from its torch-bearers, and bovine vapidity now normalised among those who use it.”
These types of stories are dispiriting, cringe-inducing and, in some cases, simply outrageous, but, no matter how shameful they might be, none of them will stop people using LLM tools in academia, journalism or politics. The tools are here to stay and they have their uses. Moreover, as much as some of us find it frustrating, the fact is that cheating in college isn’t new, lazy journalism has been a problem for years and politicians cut corners all the time. As Super Hans said: You can’t trust people.
The worry, though, is that this type of abuse of LLM tools has now become normalised and accepted. Gluttonous tech barons happily ignore the malign influence of their half-baked wares as they gorge themselves on a continuous flow of funding, while those who would seek to reduce the abuse of the technology are quickly overwhelmed to the point of despair (see the case of the teaching assistant who felt compelled to quit graduate school, outlined in the New York magazine piece) and, ultimately, it seems that quite a lot of people just don’t care.
It’s clear that something has to give on this front, but what’s the solution?
You will never catch every bad actor, but in most societies there is a rejection of half-assed behaviour, deliberate underhandedness and cheapness. When athletes are caught doping, they must endure the disdain of their peers and supporters, as well as a ban on competing in future. Plagiarism is generally regarded as a career-ending transgression in academia and the literary world, one which shreds the credibility of the transgressor. Restaurants where slop is served can suffer excoriating reviews which impact business and tradesmen who carry out shoddy workmanship are derided as cowboys.
Shouldn’t cavalier abuse of LLM tools inspire the same sort of revulsion and punishment? A clash of values is playing out, where genuine intelligence, human experience, artisanship and hard work is set against hollow facsimile and outright charlatanry. What do we want to win? What is it that we actually value? That’s the question.
Other things
Seamus Heaney or SeamusHeaney.exe?
Continuing on the theme of ‘AI’, do you think you can tell the difference between a poem crafted by one of the masters and one generated by a LLM? Times columnist James Marriott has challenged readers to do just that in his latest Cultural Capital newsletter. It might be harder than you think.
Fianna Fáil and history
Under the stewardship of Micheál Martin, Fianna Fáil is a party that has shaken off its history. That disregard for history has clearly filtered through to its representatives, if Cathal Crowe’s gaffe in the Dáil is anything to go by.
In an address decrying Israel’s actions in Gaza, deputy Crowe claimed that even the British army never shot or bombed Irish civilians in retaliation for the actions of the IRA. He apologised the next day, claiming that it was “a genuine slip-up” and party leader Martin snarled that people had over-reacted.
However, as The Journal columnist Carl Kinsella noted: “Maybe it’s plausible that you could forget one Bloody Sunday, but forgetting both is downright outlandish.”
What I’m listening to this week
Songs: Ohia – Farewell Transmission
GURRIERS – Approachable
Nothing is written 