Jabber Schlocky

 Okay, quick-and-sloppy blog post incoming. Trying to barf out some thoughts between work and the rest of my evening commitments. I saw a BlueSky post today that jostled some thoughts and solidified (somewhat) some connections in my brain.

So you know how over the past ~20 years, the UI on consumer electronics has gotten more and more conversational in tone? Like, there's a lot less "the only buttons are OK or Cancel" and a lot more "the buttons are Let's Get Started and Not Right Now." Sure, specialized tools like Clip Studio Paint or whatever are still opaquely technical, but mass-market software is like "Hi! Let's get you set up!" but might not actually tell you what's actually happening.

Okay, stick a pin in that for a sec.

So you know how bosses are infamous for replying to your detailed and thorough email with "Let's hop on a quick call" and then verbally asking you everything you already clearly spelled out? And in fact, that's often their entire job: literally just chatting with people who know more than they do, until they manage to half-accidentally string together a coherent chain of key verbs and nouns that causes their subordinates to take action.

Okay, stick a pin in that for a sec.

So you know how lots of AI users say that AI has "democratized" the arts, that it's made writing or drawing more "accessible"? We keep pointing out that they've always had the opportunity to do those things, they could always pick up a pencil and put in the work, but they won't do it, and they don't see the difference between their prompting and the actual creative process.

Okay, stick a pin in that for a sec.

So you know how lots of us know the AI slop game ad that this post is talking about?

Media where a story is altered by your choices has existed for at least as long as I can remember (I was pretty young when I read my first Choose Your Own Adventure book, for example), but there are people who see the AI version as an exciting "new" thing.

Okay, stick a pin in that one too.

Now get out the red string and connect all the pins. Do you see it?

There is an entire type of person whose only skill is jabbering: they can always keep the conversation going, never at a loss for words. Because it's their only skill, they try to use it for everything, and get uncomfortable when a task can't get done just by them Conversing At It.

If a message on the computer gives them information and a choice between "Okay" and "Cancel," they would need to understand the information and the choice being presented, but they don't, so they feel confused and lost. But if it displays text and buttons that read like conversation, it's much more comfortable.

If they receive a detailed email, they're forced to parse information logically, which is beyond them. So they initiate a verbal dialogue, where they can rapidly voice fragmented un-thoughts, and the skilled employee will—automatically, just by trying to understand what they're saying and respond intelligently—take on the cognitive burden of chewing the ideas down into baby food for them to digest.

If they're given a pencil and asked to write or draw, they have to be able to clearly establish exactly what they want, and then reason out how they might produce it. And for a long time, the only way to substitute jabbering for that process was to be the Art Director and jabber at the Artist, which introduces an additional person and therefore feels like delegating (because it is). The appeal of AI is that they can jabber directly at the tool. All of a sudden, being good at nothing but spewing words is enough to make text and images appear.

And if they're given a Visual Novel or any other game with branching decision points, the fact that they must comprehend and interface with it on its own terms makes it feel inaccessible to them. The appeal of the slop game is, once again, that all they have to do is jabber. They can just throw the same conversational words at it that they throw at everything else, and something will happen (and in this case, probably something extremely affirming and ego-inflating, likely with boobs attached).

I think this doesn't get acknowledged enough. It's not just that AI enthusiasts are generically dumb, it's that they're people who think Jabbering Is Doing, and when a thing can't be done by jabbering, they treat it as either magical or gatekept. The promise of AI is that now you can do (an imitation of) nearly anything just by jabbering.