AI engines are, “In too many cases… simply hallucinatory lunacy generators,” says Tom Wark, author of Tom Wark’s Fermentation Substack. He was helped to this conclusion when Google's AI Just Made Up a Supreme Court Decision in lurid detail. The case it cited, New York Wine & Grape Products Association v. Heastie (2019) simply does not exist. And certainly wasn’t decided 7-2 (or 6-3) by the Supreme Court.

I found about this from my friend Clark Smith, a winemaker and musician who reads the blog.

His take: “I don’t share the general excitement about AI. It can certainly improve the writing of people with no writing training or talent. This would not include you and me.

“For example it generally knows how to spell. This is offset by its propensity to hallucinate.”

My nephew Paul is working on a term project. He put all my love song lyrics into an AI engine, and asked it to render them in the style of Cole Porter or Stephen Sondheim. Here are the results. Clearly the AI lost interest after a few lines and only did a few of the 10 songs. Is the AI better than I am? It certainly has less skin in the game…

Clark looked at the AI output and wrote, “I wouldn’t call the AI any sort of improvement. Your lyrics… are at least concise and without pointless blather. You speak from the heart. AI can’t fake that. As you say, you have skin in the game, and it shows.”