Random the Book

I’ve been experimenting with local LLMs ( AI ), on an old laptop. These smaller models, on underpowered hardware, are not up to the standard of conversation you might get online from ChatGPT or Claude, but it’s been intriguing to see this technology being accessible locally.

If you want facts they’re I mean, they’re not very good – asked how many countries begin with the letter B one LLM replied that it was twenty one, including citing “Bolivia” three times. But even this low level of ability, if you give it enough tokens and time, can generate some interesting thoughts on more speculative questions. So I asked it to create some inspirational and inclusive statements that I could put online.

I’ve a variable relation to that kind of online pontification. Give me some over-inflated Internet commentator – with their latest theory on how everything online is either Celestial or Venomous, their arbitrary criteria on how everything is one or the other, and what this means for society – and I can’t click away fast enough.

But if some script posts “you got this” in front of a picture of a climber standing on top of a mountain, I’m genuinely inspired for a moment. And sometimes, randomly, that kind of post catches me at just the right time when I need someone or something to say that to me.

So I’ve set up a couple of accounts that post these AI generated messages sporadically, in a random order. To see if, serendipitously, they catch anyone at just the right time too. Or make someone laugh at their bemusingly twisted metaphors instead.

You can follow the text only bot on Mastodon here: @DiscountInspobot@disinspobot.gencomp.co.uk

And the graphical version is on BlueSky here: https://bsky.app/profile/discountinspobot.bsky.social

I’m interested in what your reaction is to these… if any. Please comment here, or wherever feels appropriate online. Are you normally affected by this kind of online message at all? If so, does knowing that it was generated by an AI affect how you receive the message, rather than it being attributed – rightly or wrongly – to some historic personality?