ai is average (derogative)
yesterday a friend expressed surprise at how off putting ai sounds. he was especially bothered by the idea that ai represents the "average" of its training data. "why does the average of great human works and not-so-great memes read terribly?"
and i began thinking that perhaps average is not natural. average is a concept we've created to better track data and meet metrics. but without smoothening it isn't possible for someone to create "average."
humans each have our own spin, misspellings, and silly ways of communicating. even in my days of writing academic papers, the dryness had some personality to it. but ai takes all of that, breaks it down, and tries to build an average approximation of an answer. in the process it shaves off anything interesting, anything human.
ai sounds unnatural to us because "average" doesn't come naturally to us.
so, take solace in ai being average, because it means you aren't :)
*i realize this isn't a perfect explanation of how ai works, that is not the point.