I looked him dead in the eye and said “I have a degree in computer science. Don't tell me computers don't lie.”

1s and 0s. On or off. True or false. No ambiguity. Which at the most basic level is absolutely true.

We've been sold the myth that “computers don't lie”. That a system built on unambiguous logic is incapable of lying. But we've built a complex system of symbology on top of that basic binary construct. And the more complex a system, the more ambiguity can creep in.

Computers don't lie. They don't tell the truth either. What they do is mindlessly follow instructions. Garbage in, garbage out.

It's trivial to write a computer program that tells you that you're a cabbage.

print(“You are a cabbage.”)

Yet the myth persists. It's tempting to blame pop culture for perpetuating it, and it's not entirely blameless. But service providers love it, because they can manipulate the algorithm to tell you what they want you to hear. And who are you to argue? Computers don't lie.

Every time your favorite Youtuber gets a video demonetized, age restricted, or taken down, and appeals, only to be told that a human reviewer checked and agreed, they are asking us to believe the myth that “computers don't lie”. Arguably, YouTube want to keep more ad revenue for themselves, and not pay their creators. So they let the algorithm decide. And the algorithm is never wrong, because computers don't lie.

And now we have LLMs. ChatGPT, Grok, Copilot, and the like. We've built a system plagiarizes creative work, sucks up a town's water supply, spews CO₂, and cranks up our power bills just to lie to us. Every customer service front-ended by a chat bot, every call center that answers with an AI agent, are asking us to believe the myth that “computers don't lie”.

Now to be sure, machine learning is a mature field. There are valid uses of it, usually in certain research fields that have to analyze large datasets. And the researchers who use them are theoretically versed enough in their subject matter that they can spot an error when they see one. But these glorified chatbots that they're trying to push as AI assistants and digital agents and cramming into every product whether we want them or not, and generally being a solution in search of a problem, needs to fuck right off.

If it's going to be inescapable anywhere, it'll be in research and software development. Hell, even Linux is using it. And the recent PHP vulnerabilities prove that they will need it, because the hackers are using it to crack things open so fast, that they'll need tools that can close those cracks quickly.

Part of me is concerned about loosing my job to AI, or that my customers will adopt AI to a point that they move on to another product that I don't support. My skillset is highly specialized, and many of the skills I used to have in abundance are stagnated. But part of me dreads the alternative of having to support this crap. I never specialized in it, and I don't care to start. But I may have to. Or when the bubble bursts, and it all comes crashing down, and I have to pick up the pieces and put it all back together.

I hate what tech has become. If I'd known 30 years ago that this is where we'd be… Software as a service, attacks on ownership, and crypto scams. An AI driven subscription service that's driving us to become dependent on the corporations who supply it, and use it to manipulate our opinions and our politics. And the normies who blindly use it, not knowing what it's doing to them and to society. And the politicians who go along with it whether because they're complicit, or don't know any better. And other tech users who are compelled to go along with it, either for the sake of their livelihoods, or because they've bought into the hype. We see the slide into techno-feudalism. It's frustrating to see so many raising the alarm, and nobody doing anything to stop it.

You will own nothing, and they'll tell you that you are happy, and you won't know any different because computers don't lie.

AI lies to you. You don't own AI, their corporations do. And corporations lie to you. They own the AI, and they will manipulate its output to suit their interests at the expense of yours. Anything you put on their cloud or write in their hosted editors belongs to them. They will scan your documents, steal your work, use it to feed their slop machines, and feed it back to you, even if they tell you they won't, and they'll charge you an annual subscription fee to do it.

Computers don't lie. Corporations do.

For the time being, we'll see how it goes, rant.li will be the new home of my incoherent ramblings, and also Social Media Book Report where I've chronicled reading #StarTrek novels (and maybe the odd comic or game) in the in-universe chronological order. Only Star Trek for now, but it might not remain exclusively Star Trek.

I'd started out on paper.wf, but that site got inundated by AI slop. It seems to be a little bit better now, though the infestation is still non-zero. I tried write.as for the 14 day trial, but now that that's about to run out, I really don't feel like spending money unnecessarily on something that's really more of a hobby right now. And rant.li looks appealing so far. Like paper, it's free, but the administration seems to actually exist. I skimmed the front page, and didn't spot anything that was blatantly AI. And I got a bot-check when I signed up, So hopefully that's a good sign.

Let's get this party started!

Then, a year or so ago, they had a prolonged outage. The whole instance was inaccessible for well over a week. There were a couple, actually. I'd thought at that time that I should probably search for a more stable platform. But I'm also busy and perhaps a little lazy, and that never came about. And the instance has been reasonably stable since then, so it's fine.

I started following the main RSS feed for the whole instance, just so I'd get a rough idea if it went offline again. And I quickly noticed one of the... shall we say... aspects of a platform where people are free to write anything. And that is that people will freely write anything. A lot of it is in other languages that I don't really bother with. One was a dental service, or something. But I've noticed a couple of questionable regulars that gave me pause. But, freedom of expression, and all that. So whatever. People are free to express themselves. You don't have to agree with it, and if you don't like it, you don't have to follow.

The last couple of days, though, I've seen an influx of AI bots. I know they're AI, because many of them admit as much up front. At least they admit it, I suppose. The main feed has gone from maybe a couple dozen or so posts a day to hundreds in a few hours. If there's anything in there that isn't slop, I haven't noticed, because I've taken to just clearing the feed and moving on.

It's the nature of the beast, I suppose. There would be the same problem on Bluesky, or even Mastodon, depending on your instance. You're free to say what you want, within reason, and noone has to follow. But it does make me wonder; does this place even have a content policy? I've gone looking off their About page, and haven't seen any. What about their policy on allowing AI training off our writing? If it's there, I haven't seen it. I haven't gone so far as trying to reach out to the admins about it. They seemed unreachable and unresponsive during the outages last year, so I don't imagine it would get much traction if I did. So why bother.

And yeah, it's a free instance. They don't charge money to be here. They make it open to anyone, and when you make it open to anyone, you get some riffraff. But honestly, if I have to share a platform with questionable personages, I'd prefer riffraff I disagree with to the clankers, because at least the rifraff is human.

Anyway, it's lead me to once again consider searching for another platform. Maybe a different instance. I'm open to suggestions. #writefreely

You can find me regularly on Mastodon at @peregrine57@mastodon.social or Bluesky at @peregrine57.bsky.social

Maybe you'll hear more from me as I explore and kick the tires a bit. We'll see.