Tag: artificial-intelligence

February 2026 comment

this story is the property of yi ching and no AI was used to write it

The Willingness To Be Deceived

I was recently told that the “singer” Sienna Rose has three songs in the Spotify Top 50 and is followed by 2.8 million fans as of early January, 2026.  Her picture as a pretty young Black soul singer appears if you search for her name on Google.  Among her fans are other popular singers.  But she is not an actual person.  Her name, her voice, her image, and her music are all products of Artificial Intelligence. 

And “she” is not the first nor the most famous AI singer.  Xania Monet, another young Black RandB “singer,” whose songs have appeared on Billboard and whose image is online and whose music is followed by over 600,000 on Tik Tok and Instagram, is one too.  Telisha Jones created her just four months after learning to navigate AI, using poetry that she writes for the lyrics, and finding accompanying music on a music app called Suno.  Jones has signed a multimillion dollar record contract for her creation Xania.  But at least the lyrics are written by a human so perhaps you can say that Xania is a cyborg since “she” has a poetic human soul.

I think what I find disquieting about this is not that AI is being used creatively.  That was inevitable.  If there is a new tool, why not try it out?  Build it and they will come.  The genie is already out of the bottle and there’s no getting it rebottled. 

No, what disappoints me is that people are so matter of fact in their acceptance of the product.  As long as it looks pleasing or sounds good, buy it.  If consumers happily accept the products of technology without caring if their newest pop star exists only on a hard drive, then who gets hurt if their love and loyalty is to an image?  Even human singers are fans of Sienna and Xania without stopping to think that this is a development that can seriously compete with them in the marketplace.  The producers of music probably don’t care if the idol that they have created and are promoting is human or AI as long as their music sales are high.  Especially since an AI singer is probably much lower maintenance than a human who may have personality quirks and demands that complicate relationships.

Imagination and creativity were once believed to be a defining trait of humans.  Has AI now infringed?  Analysis of literature by several writers led them to conclude that there are really only seven basic plots, though some would broaden the categories by finer slicing to thirty-six.  How these themes are elaborated is where imagination and creativity come in.  In music as well as in fiction.  New wine in old bottles.  But previously the grapes were gathered and pressed by humans.  Now AI, having all the world’s written words at its disposal to sift through and rework; to meet a command of say, ‘write me a song about a lost love or or a story about a swashbuckling solder of fortune in Ming Dynasty China,’ can mimic that creativity.  There is no ‘aha’ moment of inspiration and recognition involved but rather an electronic sorting through of a vast universe of published lyrics and stories to meet a command. 

None of this should surprise me.  It is known that people already have on-line avatars as their best friends and lovers in preference to interacting with living, breathing, complicated, humans.  Each of us in our own comfortable and comforting silo, without having to deal with other humans who may disagree with us or upset us.  More fragmentation and isolation.

But I am still bothered that people are so accepting, unconcerned, about what is taking place.  If AI ‘singers’ and authors are so readily received, then could this be an indication that the value that society places on imagination, inspiration, and creativity is becoming lost?  And with that loss, the diminished value of being a human being?

September 2024 Story

A Killer Rig

“We won!” John Dohe, the CEO of Reoltuff Motors reported to his board of directors.  “We beat out GM. Ford, Rivian, and Tesla.  Just got the official notice about the army contract to build the next generation of ACIR’s (Autonomous Combat Infantry Robots).  This will be big since it reflects our experience and leading position in building autonomous long haul big rigs,” “Good work and congratulations, John,” said the Board Chair.  “The long hours that your project team put in plus a strong lobbying effort, paid off.  How soon do we start?”

“We’ll be using the autonomous driving program for our rigs as the platform and we’ll build the combat requirements on top of that.  Our driverless rigs have been on the road for four years now and have been accident-free except when another vehicle was involved and was at fault.  So it’s a pretty well-proven place to start from.” 

ACIRs had largely replaced human infantry except in guerrilla warfare, where human irregulars still predominated as the enemy.  The trend towards using robots in combat began with the Ukrainian War, where the outnumbered Ukrainians ingeniously developed armed drones on land, sea, and in the air to take the place of humans and successfully used them against the Russian invaders.

Bill Sams, the lead engineer on the team, provided the Board with an overview of his plans.  “The military already has their friendly fire avoidance system, FIDS (Friend ID System), operational.  Basically an electronic dog tag that all personnel and all military equipment carry that identifies an unknown as friendly and not to be fired upon.  In contrast, the SKF (Seek and Kill Foe) attack module identifies all non-FIDS persons or objects as potential legitimate targets to be destroyed.  SKF is designed so that if the ACIR has exhausted its weapon stores it will continue to engage the enemy physically by ramming until it is disabled.  It should not be difficult to modify our existing driving program to add these modules.  We’ll just need to disable the collision avoidance system for non-FIDS encounters.  The ACIR vehicles themselves have been tested on all possible terrains and in weather and are mechanically reliable.  It remains to fit them with the with software and weapons.”

“Is there human oversight of the SKF before firing on a target or is it fully autonomous?” asked one of the Board members.

“It depends on the situation  If combat is occurring in a setting where there are civilians mixed in with the enemy, then a human observer would make the final firing decision.  If there are no civilians involved, then the ACIR would follow its programming,” replied Sams. 

“Any other questions?” asked Dohe.  “If not, we’ll let Bill go back to work.”

What seemed like a fairly straight-forward situation; of adapting a highly successful truck highway program to combat use, proved to be more difficult than envisioned.  But Sams’ team  finally succeeded and the first ACIRs passed their military trials with flawless performances.

However, in the process of adapting the civilian highway program to military use, some elements of the SKF combat software had been introduced, contaminating the program.  How this occurred was never fully determined: whether by programming error, maliciously by a disgruntled employee, or as an act of industrial sabotage.

Whatever the cause, the result was a stretch of horrific accidents on the interstate involving a newly manufactured Reoltuff rig.  (Civilian vehicles of course do not carry FIDS and so would become targets for SKF.) Two miles of the interstate was littered with smashed vehicles and the dead and injured.

One factor limiting the toll from being even worse was the fact that long haul rig were built one by one as orders were received and not mass produced like sedans so only one newly built rig carried the faulty software.  The other mitigating factor was that big rigs are not as maneuverable as smaller vehicles and so the collision avoidance system in on-coming traffic worked to prevent some head-on collisions.

But vehicles going in the same direction as the rig were not so lucky and were crushed from the rear.  There were terrible accidents.  The worse involved a school bus returning from an excursion that was rammed from the rear and driven off the road and into a river.  The rogue rig itself was finally stopped by a missile from a National Guard helicopter. The lawsuits that followed drove Reoltuff Motors to the cusp of bankruptcy.  Fortunately for the company the army continued to order ACIRs in large numbers.

Someone had to be blamed and Bill Sams became the scapegoat and was “early retired” with an aluminum parachute.