Category: perseverance

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AI Saves Time? – or: Ideas, Inspiration, Human Intelligence and the Machine

Image of a man, some bubbles with question marks in them and a figure that looks like an android, its hand raised in direction of the bubbles, its back to the viewer, the man looking rather strictly at the figure.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

AI, so it appears, saves time: Let it summarize a longer text for you which you do not have the time to read in full. Let it make (‘generate’ = Gen AI) a little image you could use in an online blog post. Even let it create whole (short) videos to use for posting and sharing online…

Well, so far the theory.

Yet, as so often is the case, theory and practice are not the same thing at all.

You can use AI for all of the above these days. But the fact remains that AI is not really intelligent. The term ‘Artificial Intelligence’ suggests it, of course. But that’s a marketing term. Using ‘create’ as a term makes it appear as if… there was actually something creative.

Because, what AI does is reuse already known material and re-assemble in a likely manner.

How Do I Know?

As a technical writer by profession I documented AI successfully. The US-agency Gartner mentioned that documentation specially in their Magic Quadrant on Metadata Applications in 2019.

Since then I also have tested all the popular AI tools you can use for such tasks online and offline, such as ChatGPT, Le Chat, Claude, ‘Copilot(s)’ or a plugin called AMP.
In technical writing you could use these as a sort of optimization tool. Once your text is ready, let the AI go through it and optimize according to standards.

But in technical documentation as such, content creation or creation of visual material, AI is not really helpful.

Why?

    • You need a good idea of where you want to go with this, of what you actually need.
    • You then need to write a prompt for your AI tool to have it generate what you want.
    • When the output is available, you need to check, for facts, for correctness of representation, for quality.
    • Very often the first few attempts fail because AI will just re-use already known data for the patterns to find and re-assemble.

That’s why you often see AI-generated images or videos that look strangely puppet-like, smoothed in all the wrong places or simply skewed.

Texts on the other hand will be somehow always ‘like that other one’.

The technology behind AI makes this practically an unavoidable scenario:

    1. AI is based on algorithms: they are like chains of formulas. These formulas basically depend on probability, statistics and their patterns.
    2. Once the AI’s framework is in place, it will be trained on certain data that fit its use case. The algorithms and their sequences may then be refined.
    3. Finally the new data such as online databases is used to find more patterns, of the same or similar.

Therefore, you cannot replace humans with AI.

Because, in complex uses cases, these things take time. Because, anything you will let an AI generate will always remind you of something. It will sometimes appear a little lifeless, even strangely familiar. But it will never be unique. Never have that feel about it. And miss out on that ‘spark of inspiration’ that makes human intelligence so special.

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No Way Out from Under the Putin-Trump-Edge? – The Ant Principle: Powerful in Droves!

Globe on a blue surface, Europe visible, with golden glowing lights behind it.
Image licensed via Adobe CC

In 2016 it already was clear and being published by reliable sources: Trump and Putin were in close contact. Over the years numerous interviews and remarks, recorded of Trump too, made two things very clear:

    • He admire(s)d Putin immensely for his way to (apparently) have people jump through hoops at his command.
    • He uses scare tactics to ‘make deals’. He proudly calls himself in front of cameras a ‘deal maker’.

But these also are facts:

The most powerful industry in the US is the one producing weapons.

The most needed resource in the US is oil, fuels from fossils, in general.

Now, perhaps even fighting for his life, this sorry excuse for a man called Trump uses any means in the book of cruelty and baseness to get his way.

    • The Ukraine war is welcome and even obviously one more cruelty that costs thousands of lives – to put NATO and the EU under pressure: Buy more weapons, raising their annual used on ‘protection’. Putin right behind it…
    • Tariffs raised purportedly to protect the US…
    • EU leaders have been called one after another to visit and ‘discuss’. The first to fall was Giorgia Meloni, Italy.
    • The first to go was Britain.
    • NATO seems at the mercy of the US, since they produce most of the weapons NATO-members so far buy – yet.
    • Trump has been known for bullying, corruption and bribery, as well as molestation in smaller contexts.
    • He is a convicted criminal on 34 counts. This also is a fact.
    • The Epstein papers are another instance and proof of that fact.

The only means to fight back is: Standing together. Because, the US depend on the EU just as much as the EU does.
The Office of United States Trade Representative states so itself in numbers, here.

Mr Trump has to be reminded of his ‘manners’ and the limits he comes off at.

This is no way to deal with a strong, international community. Period.

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The Cruelty of War as a Means to an End or: How Diplomacy, Human Conflict Patterns, and War are Related

Screenshot of NATO member states, current, taken at 21-01-2025_06-16-46 at https://www.nato-pa.int/content/membership-map

Yet once more Russia attacks Ukraine. Ukraine will answer in time… The news are often just a short glimmer of the actual blunt truth behind it all:

Just as in everyday conflicts, very often war is about power, about position, about prestige, about reputation – and about money as well.

What makes it a pattern too, is the way the opponents treat each other in frontline ‘reports’: It’s always the other party that is to be blamed. It’s always the others that didn’t make enough allowances or offered the real bargain to finally reach a truce.
And eventually an agreement to be observed by all.

Does anyone remember how this first got started? The idea had been that NATO after WWII would not extend into the East of Europe beyond a certain realm. In order to let the actual feeling of danger or threats be allayed in regard to Russia.

I still have to think of that little story I made up the other day about that situation:

A man lives in his house by himself, calmly attending to his (rather turbulent) internal affairs.
One day he opens the door and finds a huge, smiling hulk of a yet young, blonde, clean-shaven man with close-cropped haircut standing there – kindly looking at him, feet on his porch, legs wide, chewing gum – holding a machine gun. Telling him, with a broad smile that the man need not worry: He and his mates were just having a good time of it, doing nothing. Just brought their guns and tanks too…

Seriously, looking at maps, what would you think…?

There is no question about Russia’s internal affairs, i.e. its president Putin, being a cruel leader and dictator internally.

But this conflict did not start 3 years ago. It started long before that. And as long as greed and selfishness on all sides won’t make room for real negotiations, this will go on…

So, start getting down to brass tacks, d…arn it!

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Sons or Daughters… Rudyard Kipling: “If: A Father’s Advice to His Son”

Photo of a vertically shaped red rock before a blue sky
Image free license freepik.com

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

Holds true for daughters too…

Rudyard Kipling is not only author of ‘The Jungle Books’, that story of the ‘man cub’ Mowgli that is known across generations of children. He also was a memorable poet and writer, who wrote poems that are to the point and rhythm, as it were…as well as prose that is full of imagery and imagination.

His political views are rather doubtful and informed by the times he grew up in, but otherwise: Highly recommended. 🙃

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Sandpit Games all Over Again? – History Revisited: Cover Internal Weakness with External Conflicts

Image of a children's playground with toys on a sand mount
The ‘recipe’ is as old as the world’s oldest government or ruler:

To cover internal conflict and waning support of voters or subjects – start a war.

That way you will gather them behind you, in face of the (supposed) common enemy – and in addition earn your hero’s badge – if all goes well…

But what is ‘well’ in war? Is there a ‘going well’ except the ending it, as soon as possible?

Alas, it must be said that Mr Netanyahu has been known for being a ‘hardliner’ as far as Palestinian and Israeli settlers are concerned. From day one. This is not my opinion, this is fact that can be found in recent as well as older reliable sources.

This is in fact not about Iran vs Israel; it’s about the cruel attack in October by the Hamas.

More, though:

About the ‘Intifada’, in fact, originally, the forceful settling of Israeli settlers in Palestinian regions, and so many other larger and smaller conflicts that have been raised throughout the modern history of that region ever since it had been British territory and be declared as being part Israeli and part Palestinian national territory.

About so many, thousands and thousands of dreadful killings and deaths of the innocent that were and are completely unnecessary – if only, finally MAN as such would ‘buckle up’ – and GROW UP – and stop being bent on power and all the rest of the ridiculous rigmarole attached to that; sometimes wealth, a certain type of fame, influence, even fear induced in certain ‘enemies’.

Shame on all who continue this! War ist not a game!

Thanks for a president like Mr Joe Biden who keeps his head, sees more than just the surface – and will prevail in eventually creating peace, at last.

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Rudyard Kipling: “If: A Father’s Advice to His Son”

lioness reclining on a tree trunk
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

Holds true for daughters too…

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