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Medium Authors: AI is Stealing our Money
I ran into my first AI today, and it pissed me off. Because someone is stealing our money.
It was a comment on my most recent article about religion. The AI posted a seemingly innocent reply, with a link to “What is the Word’s Most Dangerous Religion?” Sounds interesting! Out of respect for a fellow author, I followed the link as a professional courtesy. I’ve done the same — posted a link to one of my articles that was relevant or a response to another author’s post, and I appreciated the return traffic.
But … this article had nothing to do with “dangerous” religions. It was click bait plain and simple, just a long essay explaining the features of the world’s major religions, in kinda boring detail. Exactly the sort of thing AI’s are good at. I got suspicious.
So I dug in more and checked the rest of the author’s stories. Exact same thing: each article was a bland dissertation about some topic or other, written in correct English but uninspired. But here’s the kicker. Usually you can tell what an author is about: they write about politics, sex, religion, history, technology … there’s some overarching theme to their writing. Or perhaps several themes; I write about religion, politics, and technology, but underneath they’re all about social issues and how various things affect our society.
