The problem with AI is not just the times it gets things wrong, it’s the times it gets them crass and banal. Although, since AI simply dredges its realities and priorities from the whole online world, I guess it’s no more crass or banal than the rest of us.
Here’s an example. Reading a book about William Blake, I came across a reference to the Biblical city of Shiloh, suggesting that the word was sometimes used as a personification of France, in the same way that, for example, “Erin” is a personification of Ireland. This surprises me a bit, so I google the word and as seems to be the way, the first thing that comes up is not Wikipedia or Britannica but an AI overview. Which tells me...
Well, that’s me (and Blake) told. So I go a bit deeper, searching for “Shiloh France”. And I get...
So there we are. Nepo babies and shoes. I wonder what old Bill might have made of it.
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PS: Shiloh still unresolved, I check in Peter Ackroyd’s biography of Blake, which I read about 30 years ago. No joy, but he does make the rather bold claim that
...it can truly be said that he is the last great religious poet in England.
which I suspect would be news to Christina Rossetti, Gerard Manley Hopkins and TS Eliot, for a start. But it does prove that you don’t need AI to write nonsense.
PPS: Got it. It was Allen Ginsberg who made the French connection, apparently.
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