talk me down

half the time i see a critique i just want to yell "yeah, that's the kink!!" your "wtf why" is someone else's "omg hot" and that's why it's written like that

but at the same time there tends to be so much single-mindedness towards characters and picking sides. like i don't care if you hate a character. that's fun! (honestly i'm having a delightful time with the reactions to younger brother in double helix even tho i personally adore him) but you don't actually have to come to the end of every episode and think "hm who do i want to blame everything on for the next week." it's much more interesting, i promise, to explore the validity of multiple perspectives and even (surprisingly enough) that relationships are incredibly complicated, people make dumb decisions, there isn't even a dichotomy of 'good' and 'bad' that we have to fit everything into

i guess i'm lucky in that the other four people on this meeting were all generally negative towards it too, but still they have this perspective about its inevitability and capability that i haven't fallen into yet. like a lot of the conversation was basically we have been writing grants the hard way, have the skills built up, spend weeks going over it, but now people can come up with at least a convincing version in ten minutes - and quite possibly be competitive enough to get funded. it doesn't help that the grant reviewal process rn is a black box and could v well be an AI reviewing the AI-generated proposals. so no one's going to stop and go 'wait these numbers don't actually seem feasible' etc

and other examples too, of how people they know who aren't great writers or communicators have been using it with convincing results. i dunno i guess i'm just so pessimistic about the whole thing, i want to automatically dismiss its usefulness (not all AI, but the kind we're talking about here) but it's harder when someone you know to be smart and capable is describing their (less competent) family and colleagues accomplishing things they know they wouldn't be able to before. and to see them so scared about both their careers and any potential non-trade careers for their college-aged children being eradicated. makes it seem much more real

one of them said 'i guess i sound like AI' because she tested a paragraph of old writing when her son was having trouble getting past an AI detector. and i want to be like no those things are bullshit and AI sounds like you!! because you're a skilled professional who's been writing for decades. and no, we shouldn't even consider trying it ourselves to even the playing field. but i don't feel like i have the arguments to back that up and it's not really my place