My Life is Weird

This morning I was at Applebee’s with Mrs. Apple Pie, thinking with some concern about the way I haven’t posted anything on my blog for a while. The trouble was partly that nothing really had been happening worth writing about, but this was really a problem, since I opened my laptop at the restaurant to find I had lost seven subscribers from failing to post steady content.

As I pondered what to do, a fellow diner explained that she was very happy with her new implants. Mrs. Apple Pie seemed to have to objections, so the lady showed me. I’m not much for cell phones, so I don’t have a pic, but this gives a reasonable idea.

She wasn’t really holding an apple; I think the apple is just there because the AI that made this image was really struggling to work out the kind of thing that usually goes on at Applebee’s

Shortly thereafter, Russia invaded Romania. European political figures objected that this violated international law, as Romania was under the protection of Jordan. This seemed rather surprising, given that Jordan isn’t even in Eastern Europe, but fortunately, the attack left Russia open to counterattack by the military of Jordan, which had penetrated territory as far East as Moscow. Even more fortunately, this meant I now had something to write about. Wasting no time, I immediately set aside my meal and started writing another post for Things to Read, thinking as I did so, “Finally my readers will have a new thing to read!”

In case my American readers have trouble with geography

Other diners approached me to comment that it was good I was writing, because people don’t write enough anymore; while I wasn’t really sure I agreed, I mostly nodded at them because I wanted to focus on writing this post.

Unfortunately after about a half an hour writing this, I woke up to the realization that the best part of my day was just a dream. Rather than having an unusual and exciting experience at Applebees, actually, in reality, I had been assigned to an ethics committee trying to investigate the ramifications of modern technological progress.

I Swear I Can’t Escape Moral Philosophy

Yes this is what’s genuinely going on in my life right now. Why the higher-ups thought it was a good idea to throw us together and have us look at ethical issues in emerging technologies I’m not sure, but my objections were pretty much moot. On the plus side, a physicist I’ll call Kevin quickly took the reigns and worked out an outline for our report, and another guy I’ll call Zach worked up a decent PowerPoint for us to present. On the minus side, Zach was always making grandiose claims and telling odd stories about his past accomplishments that might have been true but probably weren’t, which pretty much implied we were working with a low Honesty-Humility sort of guy. All in all this wasn’t so bad, but the committee blew up when we figured out that all of Zach’s contributions had been unfiltered ChatGPT.

Yes that’s right, Zach faked his work for a report on ethics.

And while I never bothered to take a picture of him either, this at least gives a rough idea:

It’s supposed to say “ACDC,” but you know AI art. My sense is that even if Zach doesn’t like being depicted with a cheap artificially-generated image, he probably would find it difficult to form a coherent objection

Is it really bad to present AI-generated work as your own?

I wasn’t the one who checked Zach’s work or complained to our supervisors, but the ensuing discussions obviously brought this question to light. So he copy-pasted ChatGPT into a random PowerPoint. So what? Admittedly, passing off Chat-GPT’s work as your own might not impact on people’s ability to enjoy apple pie, which is arguably the only thing that matters from an ethical standpoint. Heck, it might even increase everybody’s overall utility; having Zach on the team was never dull!

On the other hand, cheating is the kind of thing I really do find annoying, and even if this is the most we can say about it, why isn’t that good enough? People are always struggling to make unconvincing ethical arguments when they don’t have to. There’s no need. Cheating bothers me, and it’s going to make me not like you. Whether it’s immoral or not, and whether morality even exists or not, seriously, who wants to live in a world where sloppy plagiarism is more common than random women showing off their plastic surgeon’s successes at Applebee’s?

(Yes I realize that’s the kind of thing a libertarian would say, whatever)