In today’s email was a news item about a new direction in data gathering. Everyone is aware that Google is King Snoop on the internet today but a new data source is growing that may challenge Google’s monopoly. Microsoft, among others, is launching AI data gathering software that can search ChatGPT products, adding scope to BING, Microsoft’s smaller version of Google.

Already, serious internet users have a number of sophisticated search engines similar to COPILOT which can search online documents for substance, not just a noun phrase.

This is comforting. Already we know that ‘official’ documents like term papers, legal agreements and corporate reports that have been produced by ChatGPT have serious errors and lack comprehension. It’s as though humans actually wrote these documents themselves. Now AI is adding second generation software that can interpret these ChatGPT documents. Does this compound the confusion? Is Donald’s Truth Social produced by this new software?

There is a mental disorder called savant syndrome (street term ‘Idiot Savant’). These are folks who have difficulty with the substantive experiences of daily life but are true experts about one small, narrow subject, truly beyond the capability of a ‘normal’ person. While the savant’s expertise in a narrow subject can’t be replicated, certainly AI is creating the ‘idiot’ portion.

So life will go on just like the old days before the internet – a world based on myths, misunderstandings and mysteries that emerge from nowhere – just like humans.

There is comfort in that.

Ancient Mariner