> I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

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happytoexplain 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

True. Even Adams himself would have been sickened by GenAI.

	▲	RajT88 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Happy Service!

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archagon 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Kinda funny that you're quoting a real author who would never in a million years have resorted to using slop generators.

"I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself." -Hayao Miyazaki

	▲	raddan 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I’m not so sure. Douglas Adams was an avid technologist who worked on two interactive fiction games: the famously-cruel Infocom Hitchhiker’s Guide and Starship Titanic. I don’t remember whether there was anything free-form about the dialogue in the HHGG game, but Starship Titanic had many bots you could talk to. It was immensely fun, and I suspect he would have loved the ability to spin out dialogue a little more naturally. On the other hand, the HHGG universe is just packed to the brim with deranged robots. Everybody loves Marvin, of course, but my favorites were the sycophantic ones like the elevators that sigh with pleasure upon delivering you to your destination. Adams always seemed to do perfectly anticipate the insanity of marketeers, and I expect that we’ll actually get some of this someday…