Grok 3 Analyzes @doc_nad

"I wasn't lookin' but somehow you found me"

"Nobody Does It Better" (1977)

Carole Bayer Sager

I maintained my Twitter account even when the site was rebranded as X and I continue to post there regularly. Today I have some 99,100 posts on the site, most of which relate to this blog. They do get read and even generate a few responses as I gingerly approach that big milestone of 100,000.

Not all my readers are people. I was surprised to discover that Grok 3, xAI's chatbot launched almost six months ago, has been keeping tabs on me. I usually try to avoid AI results in my searches, but it is becoming more difficult. Anyway, if I'm the subject, I figure it's worth a look. Here's what I found on my iPhone, inadvertently, on July 27:

I never considered myself a "nostalgic blogger," but I can certainly see the argument. I don't approve of "their" as a singular pronoun, let alone one of my pronouns, but I suppose I don't get a say here. I definitely don't like the construction "celebrating New Yorker cartoonists and covers"—that's just bad writing. Why not write "New Yorker cartoonists and cover artist?" Calling Ronald Searle and Edward Koren icons is not something I would do casually, although not because I disagree. Readers can decide for themselves who is and isn't an icon. Finally, my interest in wrestling is news to me.

I repeated the search the next day with similar, but far from identical, results:

There is a newer iteration of the technology called Grok 4 included with a premium subscription. I have no plans to upgrade.

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A Kindred Soul 2.0

What is the world coming to? On Friday, someone left an unusual comment on one of my posts, last week's New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest here. It offers me, of all people, the chance to collaborate in creating New Yorker cartoons. The commenter assumes, I think, that I would like to be on the creative side of New Yorker cartoons—well, who wouldn't?—and that I would have to be the artist. That's an odd assumption to make on a post where I'm trying my hand at captioning, but probably not a terrible guess anyway.

Even stranger, the commenter created a brand new profile just for this comment, one that plays fast and loose with my own blog title. The profile apparently tries to match my interests too. To Kill a Mockingbird is a pretty good, if pretty obvious, choice for Favorite Books. For Favorite Music and Movies, though, Daft Punk and "The Ring" are not so spot on.

Well, there you have it: a probably fake profile and a probably fake offer of collaboration. For all I know there are AI bots that go around to millions of sites and try to engage bloggers by mimicking their interests. But to what end? Something nefarious, I suspect.

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My Entries in the Moment Cartoon Caption Contest for Summer 2023

Moment magazine's Cartoon Caption Contest for the Summer 2023 issue has three older Orthodox Jewish men exploring AIChat, presumably a stand-in for ChatGPT, on a desktop computer. My eight captions are shown below. No artificial intelligence was used in the writing of these entries. The drawing is by Benjamin Schwartz.

"Go ahead. Have it ask us anything."

"Get it to write me a funny line."

"I pronounce it meh."

"So where's the Yiddishkeit?"

"I'd trust my own fashion sense over that thing any day."

"Impressive, sure, but I'm still against counting it in our minyan."

"Now I believe you inquire what it's wearing."

"I hear it can scroll."

September 17, 2023 Update:  The Finalists

November 24, 2023 Update:  The Winner

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Peter Arno: Auction Postscript

After I bid unsuccessfully last week for two original works by New Yorker cartoonist Peter Arno, Invaluable wrote to me to suggest other, similar works I might like to pursue. What do you suppose they came up with?

The algorithms recognize that someone interested in the work of Peter Arno may also be interested in work by Peter Max. It must be nice to be a programmer.

Note:  This is reminiscent of what happened nearly a decade ago when I wrote a few posts about Walt Kelly's Pogo. See the aftermath of the algorithms we all live with here.

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