AI fails

[briantrumpet]

I wonder what prompt she gave it... seems like a bold move anyway.

 

[briantrumpet]

This is more of a human fail: someone who has literally lost the plot, and rather than question what sort of material they might be capable of reading, just asks AI to do the hard/fun work for them. The "plowed through my summer book list" makes reading sound rather like filling out your accounts on a spreadsheet for the taxman. I'm back to the analogy of asking someone else to go to the gym for you and thinking you'll get something out of it other than an invoice.

"Reading buddy", my arse. Lift the weights yourself, man. That's the whole point. Learn to read more than just the words.

https://www.axios.com/2026/08/11/robot-book-club

 

[Pross]

“The robot agreed”, there’s a surprise - as previously pointed out the way you type a prompt generally impacts the tone of a reply.

I sort of understand what they are saying though. When I read Dickens I’m constantly referring to the guide printed at the back to understand what certain old phrases mean (same when I had to endure Shakespeare in school but I read Dickens’ stuff from choice).

 

[briantrumpet]

“The robot agreed”, there’s a surprise - as previously pointed out the way you type a prompt generally impacts the tone of a reply.

I sort of understand what they are saying though. When I read Dickens I’m constantly referring to the guide printed at the back to understand what certain old phrases mean (same when I had to endure Shakespeare in school but I read Dickens’ stuff from choice).

I think there's a difference between consulting a reference for opaque language (it's one of the central uses of dictionaries, of course), and just handing over interpretation and plot to a machine.

It's just that it strikes me that the author of the piece neither enjoys reading, nor knows what the point of it is, other than ticking books off a list.

FWIW, I generally dislike reading novels, so don't. I even skipped a whole year at school (Y11) so I didn't have to do English Lit O Level, as I hate being told what books to read and how to interpret them.

 

[Ian H]

Select that option and they prescribe maggots to deal with any infected wounds and leeches for everything else.

Here's an actual medieval medicinal recipe to cure or ward off Black Death (only for the wealthy, obv).
King Duarte of Portugal had a recipe that involved brewing a drink from pearls, coral, gold and camphor powdered into white wine, force-feeding it to a badger, then killing the animal and making a second powder from its organs, mixed with spices and unicorn horn. Finally one should drink this powder dissolved in vinegar. The unicorn horn (usually a narwhal horn), a panacea against poisons, could be worth ten times its weight in gold.

 

[briantrumpet]

Here's an actual medieval medicinal recipe to cure or ward off Black Death (only for the wealthy, obv).
King Duarte of Portugal had a recipe that involved brewing a drink from pearls, coral, gold and camphor powdered into white wine, force-feeding it to a badger, then killing the animal and making a second powder from its organs, mixed with spices and unicorn horn. Finally one should drink this powder dissolved in vinegar. The unicorn horn (usually a narwhal horn), a panacea against poisons, could be worth ten times its weight in gold.

Can you get it in Lidl? Or Waitrose only?

 

[briantrumpet]

I asked Gemini why the new trombone emoji was showing on Android and not on my laptop, and it confidently said because "there is no official trombone emoji in the current Unicode standard (Emoji 16.0)"

The only trouble is that the current Unicode standard is 17.0, released September 2025.

"You are absolutely right - my previous response was incorrect." said Gemini.

Now it's decided that it's because MS hasn't developed the new ones for Windows yet. Supposedly.

 

[briantrumpet]

I suppose that AI can't be entirely blamed for people who can't be bothered to do any work.

 

[briantrumpet]

No idea about the robustness of this, but it seems significant:

 

[Ian H]

That fits with this -
Figure of the day: 18%, the jump in homework scores for students aged 12-18 who used AI. But those who didn’t use it scored better in exams
From The Economist

 

[briantrumpet]

I particularly like the maggots... it's a nice touch.

 

[AndyRM]

Maggots aside, probably not far off. Doesn't look particularly appealing though.

 

[secretsqirrel]

I particularly like the maggots... it's a nice touch.

View attachment 16890

Not going to appeal to anyone with trypophobia…….or anyone really.

 

[briantrumpet]

I'm not entirely sure what 'shrimp scampi is' (I guess it's shrimps & scampi), but AI definitely doesn't... it seems to think they are like mini doughnuts.

 

[AndyRM]

Instantly made me think of Kerry Katona.