Are We Already Robots?
So, curious mind here wants to know: What do you think about LinkedIn these days?
I’ve been active on LinkedIn for a long while. It’s been largely apolitical, there hasn’t been much haranguing or people trying to dunk on one another, and it provides a platform to meet some seriously interesting and cool people – I have friends of long standing who I have met and communicate with only through LinkedIn.
It’s also serves up opportunities for me to do some good, from helping people transform their unemployment into purposeful employment; a one-off request where I shipped toilet paper to a quarantined Nepalese student in Dallas during the pandemic; even sparking a chain of events that resulted in 400+ people being airlifted from Afghanistan during the fall of that country to the Taliban.
About a year and a half ago, I ditched my 16-year romance with twitter because of a billionaire interloper and LinkedIn became THE platform for my social media time investment.
Curiously, it was around that time that things on LinkedIn seemed to start changing, and not for the better.
Sure, there had always been the pesky business dev, sales gnats hanging around, seeking a connection, and then immediately hitting you up for business. No foreplay whatsoever.
What I’ll call “the transactionals” are still there, though it seems increasingly that the business they want is your “business.”
Which is to say: Anyone else getting connection requests from attractive people, in my case, women (and more likely 'bots) who’d like to get to know you?
Here’s one from a woman – we’ll call her Susan – who according to her bio is “responsible for the company’s strategy and planning, needs and supervision of pharmaceutical R&D projects, ensuring that R&D projects are in line with the company’s strategic plan and market needs.”
And her opening entreaty to me?
“I am very interested in your major. We can make friends.”
And another one from an attractive blonde (at least in the photo presented) we’ll call Sarah, with the job title of “Senior Accountant.”
“It's a pleasure to speak with you here. I enjoy meeting professionals outside of my field and would love to hear your opinions in person.”
Yes, I added the emphasis on “in person.”
And yes, it's possibly the first time a senior accountant has ever wanted to hear my opinions, in person or not.
Having made the innocent mistake of responding to a couple of these in early days, I can tell you they don’t transition into traditional business convos.
Anyone else receiving these? I don’t know, perhaps I’ve displayed online behavior that indicates I’m a card-carrying member of “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and vulnerable to this???
So, there’s that, LinkedIn.
Then there is the new “feature” LinkedIn has incorporated. You know the one where the algorithms flatter you by asking for your “Expert Opinion” on some generically inane question, such as:
“Your team has heard rumors about big changes at work. How do you keep them focused and productive?”
Or…
“What are your top tips for being steward of a brand?”
I find the questions to be so, so, so primary. I’m sure the algorithms give you extra points for participating that somehow reward your involvement on the platform (more exposure for your posts, perhaps?). Plus, hey, this feature keeps you more engaged on the platform for longer (think advertising revenue for LinkedIn). So on that front, smart work, LinkedIn.
But as it was pointed out by a friend, these questions could be more about “using” unwitting users to train their AI on the spectrum of business subjects. Think about it: LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft which has invested more $10+ billion in, that’s right, OpenAI.
This would of course explain why these “expert” questions, absent of real-world context, feel like the work of a beginner, someone in “training.”
If this is true – and I can only offer it as suspicion – how do you feel about your ideas, sage advice, and business experience being intentionally solicited and then strategically used to train and monetize AI?
I know, I’m naive. Likely everything we put on the web gets scraped and used to train AI, including this blog post, right?
But naivety doesn’t discount the distant warning that’s washing about my ears – can you hear it as well? I’m listening and it sounds a bit like techno tinnitus, a faraway sucking sound coming from “the cloud” as our lived experience, aka personal intellectual property, is hoovered up and harvested on server farms hidden away where the cost of energy is cheap.
And every time they do this, I’m guessing, they’re sucking a bit of our souls as well, leaving me, a generally optimistic guy, to wonder: Are we already robots, marching heads-down on city sidewalks with eyes glued to our mini pocket computers, one step closer to the singularity, and giving it all up, for free, to the algorithms?
I’m all ears – and you? How do you feel about this?
Godspeed friends,
Russ
💬 Quote of the Week
"Oh, Yoshimi, they don’t believe me
But you won’t let those robots eat me
Yoshimi, they don’t believe me
But you won’t let those robots defeat me." – The Flaming Lips
Okay, so it's a lyric, not a quote, but it fits thematically. Why not take a break and watch the music video here.
💥 Quick Hits
• Mutual aid on steroids – Fifty nonprofits are joining together to build something special for the mutual benefit of all participants. (Need a primer on mutual aid societies? We wrote about it last year.)
• Inspiration Alley gets media coverage – For those of you following my efforts to start a community hub for creativity and social impact, you can check out a wonderful story about our new endeavor here.
• Thar she blows – In a historic first earlier this year, wind turbines in the U.S. generated more electricity than coal-fired generation for two consecutive months.
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