Technolandy

Day 50 (of 2025/26) #tEChursdAI presentation proposal regarding the Spaghetti Western that is AI…

Spaghetti Westerns refer to a series of films set in the North American ‘wild west’ (mid 1800s) but were filmed in Europe largely by Italian directors (most famous is the ‘Nameless Man’ series by Sergio Leone starring Clint Eastwood) – the most famous title that gets re-purposed as I am about to: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly (and if you haven’t seen them – I strongly encourage it – I recently rewatched one to see if it still held up and was captivated through all three in the trilogy… the camera angles; the lack of dialogue really shouldn’t won an Oscar for screenplay…; I don’t mind admitting to sometimes ‘skipping’ through some/many re-watched films to get to the good parts… I did not fastforward this time… just gotta do the trigger warning that this filming took place in the 1960s and there was a lot of ‘liberties’ taken… 

Anyways – the Good, The Bad, The Ugly… the Alternate Intelligence Cookbook:

The good: The Collaboration

When you get stuck or have a low-risk task to get done… AI does an amazing job. It likes to sort information… sometimes so much that it will create new data sets to make things more interesting 😎

When you need quick feedback, it provides it – and when in a collaboration mindset… when you see how it crafts your thoughts into a ‘gentle worded communication’ your brain takes notes and each time you create a new one, the better you get yourself… but we can’t pretend that writing is everyone’s forté… it’s partly why I am rebelling against the perpetuation of that 17th century communication strategy being the default method to demonstrate ones knowledge and learning. 

Is the problem that AI helps more learners put their thoughts and ideas into easily understandable (legible) script? Or are we actually more interested in critiquing the grammar and sentence structure and ‘flow’ of the essay than the points learned and knowledge shared? 

Not everybody is going to write for the Atlantic… and even then, they aren’t looking for many Jonathan Swift style Essays – and especially not works of five paragraphs with five colour coded sentences constructed within them. 

When we view Alternative Intelligence as a way to leverage and learn how to compose ideas into readable formats… in real time… isn’t that pretty amazing? Trust me – the good writers will continue to work their own craft… one of the reasons that I think the arts have less to fear of the AI jobification than the fine arts – because audiences will still get to choose between creations done by humans vs that done through automated intelligences more frequently than choosing a doctor based on how nicely they stitch up scars (mindfully dismissal in this example….)

The bad: The Do-er

I am not thrilled when I see AI being ‘used’ to generate and create without careful consideration and mindfulness… it’s too easy to have AI slop produced and while the racoons jumping on the trampoline are entertaining… the imagery being used is making it extremely complicated to determine critically if an image… a video… a voice… is from a actual, or virtual source. 

Same with writing. I am a big fan of AI assisted work (as above) but not when it is done without the human interaction. I’ve seen this many times in recent years: AI used in order to complete tasks for compliance purposes, but often not used when the relationship is there with the teacher and the feedback is valued on the learning… not just for scoring. 

I am happy to let my AI buddy help do some stuff for me that doesn’t really interest me… or to refine an email into a bit nicer tone when read on the other side… but I am not happy to just let it produce a campaign for my hybrid D&D group… the kids need language arts credits, and I’m the one who has to tell their teachers if they were taking part or not… there is a lot of connection for me… but I’m also busy, so I’m okay with it generating some images on our slideshow (hybrid – so kids online and in person… we need to all ‘see’ the same content). I’m more of the editor… darn, I keep sliding back into some of the good parts of AI even when I want to remind people of what to watch for… 

AI acting along based on a prompt (spoiler warning: asking questions may be the most important job of the near future!) AI creating slop without a human voice… that’s the bad that I see, because it does make me worry that the utopia I hope for could be come the dystopia that I only like reading about… 

The ugly: The Occam’s Razor of Tech…

I remain oddly optimistic about the future… but I also know that the subtle revolution that is occuring around us has two vastly different endings. I’m hoping that the world promised to us in shows like Star Trek and The Orville are where our society ends up – a lack of need for $ to make the society work and thrive – my upcoming dys/utopia fiction will show how ‘model cities’ might help be a recipe for broader society to follow… or a warning that jerks will ruin everything and 1984 and The Handmaids Tale will be seen historically as guidebooks rather than warning flags. The concept of ‘social capital’ is intriguing – and in beta testing in China, and getting closer in the UK – with its rewarding good citizens… pick up litter each day on the way to work and get a ‘reward’ like a free trip as a weekend getaway; alarming because the people who dropped the litter may have their travel rights taken away… and as the dollar gets digitalized… will we find that because of my cardiac history, my bank card will not ‘work’ when I go to the store and the items I pick up include deli meat? At least until salt free, but still as tasty, salamis can be “replicated”. But the jobs of the future? Gonna be niche, but potentially/hopefully in a nice way: provide value to others. That could be by being a professional MarioKart e-athlete or teaching students in-person or being an amazing barista. When it’s not about making money to pay rent and buy groceries… what would you do? 

If AI is the Spaghetti Wester, not only are we the ones holding the directors chair, the script won’t be written by AI… it’ll be written by how we choose to use it… the goo, the bad, the ugly… and the human…