Autostupid
bowing down to bots?
Are we becoming autostupid thanks to autotext and predictive text? I notice that Siri consistently tries to devolve my grammar and place unnecessary apostrophes in words, incorrect spellings for words that change the spelling depending on what part of speech it’s used as.
But it can’t see an obvious typo, and the words in the predictive text options will change as I tap one, usually to something that makes no sense whatsoever.
In addition to that, the bot I use to create videos used to only give me a menu selection for options to animate a photo, and I was disappointed that I couldn’t write my own prompt and had to choose a prewritten one from a menu. They’ve upgraded the system, and I can now write my own prompts, which I now do, but the first coulpe of times it was an option, I continued choosing from the menu of options I didn’t like instead of writing my own. Why? Habit. If I hadn’t become conscious that I was defaulting to the system without thought, I probably would have continued simply choosing the option that was closest to what I want rather than writing my own. There’s danger in this, and I see that I am not immune to being dumbed down by a machine until I simply default to it.
Be vigilant in your protection of your own intelligence, human, organic intelligence. Too many artificial ingredients will destroy you, whether it’s nutrition or intelligence.
About the Creator
Harper Lewis
I'm a weirdo nerd who’s extremely subversive. I like rocks, incense, and all kinds of witchy stuff. Intrusive rhyme bothers me.
I’m known as Dena Brown to the revenuers and pollsters.
MA English literature, College of Charleston
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Comments (7)
Amen to this…nothing I hate more than when Siri tries to correct a perfectly spelled and correct word for one it thinks is better
I try to not rely on any form of AI too much, even if it’s as simple as spellcheck or predictive text. Spellcheck used to mess up my texts to my mom, in fact, that she and I came up with a shorthand to explain to each other what had happened when it had happened: GDSC (Goddamn Spellcheck). Yeah, I’ll admit that I rely on it to sometimes fix things when I’m typing comments, but I always make sure that it makes sense before I post it and anything bigger than a comment, I try to not rely on AI. It is tempting, though, I will admit, since it does make life easier.
The caption was hilarious, lol. By the sound of your first paragraph, I will assume that Siri is useless. Thank you for bringing this up. It is a real problem, and it is terrifying to say the least.
Some excellent observations and often these tools tell us things that are wrong. It doesn;t like me writing this comment, it wants to rewrite it. We should always be confident in what we do, and remember these tools ar ejust tools. As I say they are artificial but not intelligent
Great writing by the way !
I agree I try stay away as much as possible but sometimes I am writing in different languages and I try find translations and it actually makes me discover something new as of all the issues you have written the no sense translations I actually learn as in past using dictionaries and synonyms from the new but they do seem simplified sometimes into just modern language which not always fits writing from the soul and heart raw writing not edited is qool it's human it's simple and for all if only more people would not bother for words and correction but the depth and going beyond of the languages structure people will not stick to being checked by the bots !
Totally agree—these tools are handy, but it’s way too easy to slip into autopilot and let them think for us. Staying conscious and intentional is how we protect our real, human intelligence.