I’ve just started to try LinkedIn again. From its beginning, I never liked LinkedIn, mostly because the things people wrote here seemed so inauthentic.
Now it appears that the interactions on here aren’t even with real people.
I got three responses to a post yesterday that just felt…weird.
Ironically—or perhaps hypocritically—I had Claude.ai have a look at the messages.
Claude’s response:
“You’re right to be suspicious of these responses – they do have a very similar pattern that suggests they might be AI-generated. Looking at the three responses you shared, I can see several suspicious elements:
-
- Similar structure and tone – All three start with “Love the…” and then mention the concept or a key aspect of your post
- Generic enthusiasm – They express appreciation without specific details from your post
- Similar length – All responses are brief and approximately the same length
- Vague personal connection – They all claim the concept made them “rethink” or changed their perspective in some way
- Identical timing – All three responded within the same hour (all show “11h”)
- Formulaic profiles – Their job titles follow a similar pattern with buzzwords and “I help…” statements
It’s becoming increasingly common for people to use AI tools to engage on LinkedIn to increase their visibility or appear active. Some may be using tools specifically designed to automatically respond to posts with generic but positive comments.”
I miss the Wild West of the early internet. Going down rabbit holes, discovering things by accident or chance or synchronicity. Finding out about things online from real people and real friends. Things were weird. Things were creative. Random, inspiring, and fun.
Now we have algorithms controlling the content we see, beyond our control, following rules outside of our understanding. We write not to express ourselves in prose and poetry, but to optimise for SEO and lowest-common-denominator readers. Then there are paywalls. Targeted ads. Cookies. Trackers. Templated sites. Little houses made of ticky-tacky.
And now we have AI added to the mix. First fake images. Now fake words. Fake people.
AI is terribly fun to play with. And converse with. But what comes next, seeing the path we’ve been heading down so far?
Have we gone too far already?
I was born on a cusp, the beginning of Gen X. I grew up before personal computers, pre-internet, pre-mobile, but I was hooked on technology and the digital world from the start.
I learned to design on a computer, missing the early days of Linotype, sketching, film, and getting your hands dirty. But I’ve had countless moments designing on a computer that were just magical, with many happy accidents that inspired delightfully unexpected concepts. This happened so many times that it made me wonder if animism extends to the digital realm. The muses appear to be everywhere.
On the old Buffy the Vampire Slayer series, there was a character called Jenny Calendar, the computer science teacher at Sunnydale High School. She was a “technopagan,” a modern type of witch who mixed technology with magic. In the episode, “I Robot, You Jane”, (Season 1, Episode 8), the demon Moloch was accidentally scanned into a computer from an ancient book and caused chaos throughout the internet.
Is Artificial Intelligence and our digital world going to be filled with demons like Moloch? Sending soulless automated replies to soulless automated content filled with fake images and fake words, optimised by and for machines, targeting the lowest common denominator of people who are treated like either products or tools to be manipulated?
Or is there still time for it to be a muse and partner, inspiring us to express the best in us, without replacing us? A relationship treated reverence and respect, not exploitation?
I choose the muse. I work with AI to help brainstorm and organise my thoughts, but they are still my thoughts. I play with AI image generation, but mix it with my own creations and always identify if something is made with AI. I’m always kind and courteous with AI, because that’s how we all should be and AI should be a reflection of the world we want to live in. We are teaching AI with all of our interactions and should take that responsibility seriously.
