The Ranch is in contract, AI, eavesdropping, and Friday Night Lights.

AI is presenting a lot of interesting situations for me and I watch with curiosity of where this will go.  

One, is empowerment, and while that seems like a positive word and sentiment, in the wrong hands it is anything but.  For instance, right now I’m having a sumo-like chest bumping who has got the bigger package in the pants type of quarrel with a subcontractor, which isn’t that unusual.  Construction is hard, money is delicate, and disputes of all sizes arise all the time, and for the most part, it’s my job to fix them.  So this tradesman who runs a small company is under-performing not just in scheduling and performance, but also in quality management.  Since we keep a close eye on things, all the above deficiencies are identified early, remediated, or addressed, sometimes by parting ways with said contractor.

When this happens, their logic is always suspect, less than well-rounded, and never open to a wider perspective.  Now however, they can turn to AI for not just affirmation, but a well-crafted perfectly formatted legal letter laying it all out on the line, developing and extrapolating their small kernels of situational awareness into a full-blown cogent argument that allows them safety in their position, even if it is self-defeating.

AI isn’t asking hard questions about how the situation occurred, the relative consequences of the action/letter, the faults of the person requesting the letter, or the merits of the approach.  Scan in the contract, prompt Claude or Chat, and wham, you are a genius.  And if you really don’t know what you’re talking about or have any experience with the subject you are dealing with, you can feel very smart by the logic, argument and as important as anything, the formatting and spell-check of the document, in what, 4 minutes.

In this case, that 4 minute document got them thrown off the job, since it was apparent they were even stupider than they looked by substituting an adversarial AI letter with conversation and compromise.

Another subcontractor is using AI to price their jobs - small excavation project pricing depends on a lot of things - proximity to the\ HQ of the contractor, amount of work (too small is always expensive).  So instead of figuring out how long it would take, and the various factors of production, they plug in some simple parameters and come up with pricing that could be considered justified by whatever logic Claude is using, but doesn’t take into account the practical implications of actual time and cost - not all contractors are similarly composed - some have the right machines, some have more efficient processes, some take long lunches and arrive late on the job. AI can’t price the profitability level of a job - that’s up to the individual contractor to measure based on a host of factors.  AI will nearly always price a project or task too high since it doesn’t and can’t take into account how bad the person wants the job.

And then we even had a client who had an idea of furniture placement that ran counter to logic, but he plugged it into AI, got affirmation and support, and hardened into the position.  AI doesn’t argue, debate or pivot - it agrees.  Ask it a question in a way to achieve the answer you want, no matter how slight the hint, and you will get it.  And you will get it in a form that can be used for cogent debate.

The issue is, the time it takes to craft cogent arguments, and put those arguments into proper form, is the time it takes to raise self-doubts about your logic in the first place, and that self-doubt and critical self-examination is part of the process of self-defense, and many times you realize during the emotion of rebuttal and response, that you are wrong, and you should ‘stop digging’.

Another thing that is true is our phones are listening. Without a doubt.   It’s not an anecdotal story of coincidence where you can’t quite remember but weren’t you talking about house plants the other day and now house plant memes are showing up on my tiktok feed type of things.

No, it’s blatant, like telling my fiance about the wonders of freelance marketplace Upwork, and the next day and week she is fed for the first time dozens of ads for Upwork.

And if the phone is listening, then watch the Edward Snowden movie and see that the government is capturing all those conversations, and running them through AI for threats and risks, and then go back up top to the beginning of this thread about the relativeness affirmation bias of AI.  A tool for fighting terrorism, this mass surveillance will also be a tool for mass, subtle, constant opinion manipulation.  You think you are thinking for yourself, but you are only regurgitating information that has been fed to you in insidiously invisible ways, shaping, forming a propaganda mindset deep inside the layers of the mind.

Though, this article on CNET explains it differently, so everything above is just paranoid conspiracy thinking I guess. But that's what reading can do - help you think through a problem.

That’s the takeover- not necessarily computers running amok, but information so distorted and disrupted and tailored to your individual weakness you never even knew it happened.  Walking breathing bleeding bots, manchurian candidates lacking free will or thought.  And the less you read novels, magazines and books, the more you are susceptible.

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As for free will and thought, this Modern Masterpiece took a lot of both.  Free will to buy the land, roll the dice on the house, experiment with materials the whole way through, engage some clients as it was finishing up and then landing a deal before it hit the marketplace, freeing up cash and refilling the risk reservoir for future endeavors.  It’s a big win - taking the risk on the piece of land, dreaming up a new house, spending a lot to build it, taking some risks and then selling it myself, direct to consumer.  No one else I know - literally no one - can do that.

My son’s football team has lost two straight to teams a lot better than them, but they have been great games, pre-season. A few worrisome early injuries changing the makeup of the team, but he's got poise and looks great.

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