ChatGPT's 'Write an article in the style of Jen Gerson' is very uncanny valley, because if you showed me the below and asked me whose style it was aping I would be able to guess Gerson, but it's also just... off.
Let’s just say what we’re all thinking: artificial intelligence is either going to save us from our collective stagnation, or it’s going to destroy everything in its path like a very polite, exceptionally efficient Godzilla that can write you a birthday poem in the voice of Margaret Atwood while simultaneously hacking your bank account and telling you why your resume is unimpressive.
Either way, it will be Canadian policymakers who greet this existential inflection point with a bold, decisive shrug.
Yes, I know. We have an AI strategy. We’ve appointed committees. Task forces. There are billions in venture capital floating around somewhere — presumably tied up in a 78-page PDF presentation on “ethical frameworks for responsible AI governance in a pluralistic society” that no one has read past page four. Probably drafted with the assistance of AI.
And yet…
We’re still having conferences about whether ChatGPT can write too well, while tech giants quietly embed AI models into the guts of every system we use. It's already rewriting how we work, how we learn, how we interact, and most terrifyingly, how we think — and we’re still stuck in the part of the movie where the scientists argue over the meaning of the blinking lights.
This country no regulate things good. I get it.
But AI isn’t a blinking light. It’s a freight train. And we’re debating whether we should even bother checking the schedule.
A friend of mine sent me something written in the style of Matt Gurney, and told me, man, you must have been hungover when you wrote this. And I read it, and thought, wow, man. I must have been. I don't remember writing this, and it's not very good. But it was good enough for me to have bought it. It had touches of my tone.
I did something fun months ago when you did some writing on the Canadian military .I went to an AI (in this case Grok as I was testing it out), and ask something like "Give me a detailed plan with costing and consequences of Mark Carney committing to have 450000 troops and 50 nuclear warheads and 5 new artic bases in 10 years written to please Matt Gurney". Was a heck of a document ! It detailed ship needs, airforce needs, tax raises needed to pay for it, re election chances to actually last 10 years in government, etc. It even went on about the level of protests and economic damage with our allies to leave the nuclear treaty!
It wasn’t a surprise that they’d come eventually. The Enterprise made first contact two years ago in System J-25, and the report from that encounter circulated quickly through defence and intelligence circles. The Borg weren’t mysterious anymore; we knew what they were capable of. So what happened? Why was the decisive engagement not somewhere in deep space, but in our own backyard?
And let’s talk about Mars. Because a lot of people are asking: why, when the cube dropped out of warp, did the immediate defence of the Sol system consist of three lightly armed ships on a Mars picket line? Three ships. Against the Borg. That wasn’t a plan, that was a prayer.
Yes, Starfleet scrambled reinforcements. And yes, they fought hard at Wolf 359. But by now the casualty figures are everywhere: thirty-nine ships destroyed, tens of thousands dead, including some of our best officers. And even that meat-grinder didn’t stop the Borg. They blew through Wolf 359, shrugged, and kept coming. It took a desperate, improvised stand by the Enterprise — and the return of Captain Picard, of all people, from assimilation — to bring the cube down. That’s not a strategy. That’s a miracle. And miracles are a lousy defence doctrine."
We are spirits in the material world
ChatGPT's 'Write an article in the style of Jen Gerson' is very uncanny valley, because if you showed me the below and asked me whose style it was aping I would be able to guess Gerson, but it's also just... off.
Let’s just say what we’re all thinking: artificial intelligence is either going to save us from our collective stagnation, or it’s going to destroy everything in its path like a very polite, exceptionally efficient Godzilla that can write you a birthday poem in the voice of Margaret Atwood while simultaneously hacking your bank account and telling you why your resume is unimpressive.
Either way, it will be Canadian policymakers who greet this existential inflection point with a bold, decisive shrug.
Yes, I know. We have an AI strategy. We’ve appointed committees. Task forces. There are billions in venture capital floating around somewhere — presumably tied up in a 78-page PDF presentation on “ethical frameworks for responsible AI governance in a pluralistic society” that no one has read past page four. Probably drafted with the assistance of AI.
And yet…
We’re still having conferences about whether ChatGPT can write too well, while tech giants quietly embed AI models into the guts of every system we use. It's already rewriting how we work, how we learn, how we interact, and most terrifyingly, how we think — and we’re still stuck in the part of the movie where the scientists argue over the meaning of the blinking lights.
This country no regulate things good. I get it.
But AI isn’t a blinking light. It’s a freight train. And we’re debating whether we should even bother checking the schedule.
A friend of mine sent me something written in the style of Matt Gurney, and told me, man, you must have been hungover when you wrote this. And I read it, and thought, wow, man. I must have been. I don't remember writing this, and it's not very good. But it was good enough for me to have bought it. It had touches of my tone.
I did something fun months ago when you did some writing on the Canadian military .I went to an AI (in this case Grok as I was testing it out), and ask something like "Give me a detailed plan with costing and consequences of Mark Carney committing to have 450000 troops and 50 nuclear warheads and 5 new artic bases in 10 years written to please Matt Gurney". Was a heck of a document ! It detailed ship needs, airforce needs, tax raises needed to pay for it, re election chances to actually last 10 years in government, etc. It even went on about the level of protests and economic damage with our allies to leave the nuclear treaty!
"How did the Borg get so close?
It wasn’t a surprise that they’d come eventually. The Enterprise made first contact two years ago in System J-25, and the report from that encounter circulated quickly through defence and intelligence circles. The Borg weren’t mysterious anymore; we knew what they were capable of. So what happened? Why was the decisive engagement not somewhere in deep space, but in our own backyard?
And let’s talk about Mars. Because a lot of people are asking: why, when the cube dropped out of warp, did the immediate defence of the Sol system consist of three lightly armed ships on a Mars picket line? Three ships. Against the Borg. That wasn’t a plan, that was a prayer.
Yes, Starfleet scrambled reinforcements. And yes, they fought hard at Wolf 359. But by now the casualty figures are everywhere: thirty-nine ships destroyed, tens of thousands dead, including some of our best officers. And even that meat-grinder didn’t stop the Borg. They blew through Wolf 359, shrugged, and kept coming. It took a desperate, improvised stand by the Enterprise — and the return of Captain Picard, of all people, from assimilation — to bring the cube down. That’s not a strategy. That’s a miracle. And miracles are a lousy defence doctrine."
I didn't write that, but I agree with every word.
Singularity is five years away.