Last year I tried to use gen AI for my for-profit blog1, partly because I didn’t want to be left behind on another new technology and partly because almost every blogger that I followed (at that time) was pushing its use2.
I spent several hundred dollars trying different things out, and while it was fun at first, it never actually did what I wanted it to do– or what those bloggers said it could do. Every output was just shitty enough that I’d have to spend hours fixing it, and by that point I might as well have just done the thing myself anyway.
It couldn’t help me do research, because it would literally make things up.
It gave me ideas for marketing, but it was just pushing the same tired five things that everyone else was already doing.
When I asked for its input on a business decision, it told me what it thought I wanted to hear and not actual advice.
And when I tried to use it for really data-intensive things, eventually it stopped remembering anything and I’d have to wipe it to start over, which was really annoying.
At the time, I didn’t know how generative AI worked. I had no idea that it wasn’t actually thinking, reasoning, or doing any research.
The way people (other bloggers) talked about AI was like it was a proper artificial intelligence, like a little thinking machine that could help you make Pinterest descriptions. It wasn’t until late last summer that I started seeing articles and videos about how gen AI actually works and why it’s bad for most of the things that people try to use it for.
Of course, in hindsight, it’s obvious those bloggers were pushing it because they’re making money from it. Meanwhile AI companies are stealing our stuff (our blog posts!) and regurgitating it back to us and we’re pretending that it’s amazing.
It felt like a big betrayal, that those bloggers cared more about making money than about actually doing something good for themselves or for the blogging community. We could’ve pushed back hard about this stuff and maybe helped a lot of bloggers, but instead we’re too busy making chatbots.
No, their goal to make sell something fast enough before the next sucker figures out it’s a bad bet. And I was that sucker!!
Being a for-profit blogger is hard enough without shooting myself in the foot with AI crap. I stopped using it and I stopped trusting anyone who uses it. I’m still blogging for-profit, but it’s not going to be my focus for a while. I’m just waiting for that bubble to pop…