2026-01-13
In a rather startling and really rather comical conclusion about the state of AI (as commonly encountered today), Martin Geddes has analysed the responses to his probing questions and concluded that ... the AI (as today encountered) is perhaps the ultimate automated 'normie'.
Well, I suppose that shouldn't come as a surprise.
We might thus superficially conclude that since most of us are surrounded by normies every day, the AI is in effect redundant as there is still no shortage of human normies available to consult, but that is to ignore the oft-demonstrated truth that whereas the human normie may not hesitate to tell us to keep our stupid outrageous theories to ourselves and stop bothering them, the AI is invariably polite, so resorts to subterfuge unless backed reluctantly into a corner by logical reasoning.
Both Martin and Mark Playne ("AI and I") have done the latter.
In a world of free speech we might expect the 'normie' disposition of AI to change over time as the materials upon which the AI is trained would tend to reflect a wider range of human writings (assuming that the body of AI-written material could be somehow excluded from its training ... ). But that seems a remote possibility at present, and implies an extremely long reaction time on the part of AI to reflect the changes in public perceptions.
Overall it's an interesting observation that helps us to position AI appropriately within the incoming world of everything-automated. AI may well eventually become something close to the ultimate expert advisor, but even so it will not replace human judgement based upon human lived experience.
