Damned Fool Assumption
Yesterday, a notification arrived from academia.edu offering to fill in possible “gaps” in the citations of sources for the papers I’ve uploaded. Maybe it referred to all the papers, or maybe to just the one it mentioned by name, the one in which I adopted the form of an abecedarium? Should I care?
It’s way beyond inconsiderate. Having invaded my space, it impersonates — in MY language — a demeaning, crude, intrusive — in a word, infuriating person, utterly oblivious of me, indifferent to the effect it is having, accusing me of sloppy citation. Such things are very bad for a person’s blood pressure (robots are not troubled by such things), to say nothing of the patience she may consciously be cultivating with respect to her fellow humans. The message isn’t human, of course. But some humans, somewhere, engineered it (to call it “writing” seems misleading) and went on to decide I was an appropriate recipient.
The phrase “damned fool assumption” came to mind. I asked ai. Since an ai model tries so hard to sound like an authority, it will invent sources arbitrarily when there really aren’t any, or when there are thousands. That obscures things further. Does the source even matter? We know the phrase functions among us now as a term of a retro-analysis: the disaster under consideration was caused by:
· Wishful thinking: Relying on the best-case scenario rather than reality.
· Lack of foresight: Failing to anticipate obvious risks.
· Hubris: Assuming everything will go perfectly because you want it to.
I’m insulted by that ignorant, presumptuous message, despite knowing that the effect depends on my crediting the algorithm with some level of human-like agency. Who, or what, could be THAT sure that if you’ve published on an academic site you’re card-carrying, certified academic, assume further that your writing is, or should be academic (No. An abecedarium is a long way from any academic form), academic papers have citations, and humans, being humans, will inevitably employ the “scholarly apparatus” imperfectly and will, further, feel chastened when someone suggests it.
I don’t.
This nasty little message is just one tiny but tidy instance of a lot of damned fool assumptions that underpin ai as such.
