I've had just about enough of these jerk-ass robots insulting our nonartificial intelligence and trying to sneak peaks at our private human bits.
First came the strange story of a drone bothering former Carson Graham football star, current marketing guru and generally well-liked Twitter person Conner Galway outside his downtown Vancouver condo.
"I heard this loud buzzing sound, like a pack of bees, then over the corner of the patio came this robot-looking thing," Galway told The Province newspaper. It was a drone outfitted with a video camera, and it proceeded to casually peep into highrise windows for the better part of a night.
The intrusion no doubt enraged many a condodweller in the area just trying to enjoy a relaxing evening of looking at things through a telescope. You know, stars and moons and whatever. Everybody loves astronomy.
Next came my annual fantasy football draft, one of my favourite nights of the year. The problem arose after the draft ended when the host website immediately posted a draft report card for each team written by an automated program.
Robot writing is a thing now, apparently - there are already programs that are performing churnalism, banging out numbers-based stories on sports, finances and even news events such as earthquakes for respectable organizations
such as the Associated Press and Los Angeles Times.
As a man who makes my living writing silly columns and sports stories you'd think I'd be worried, but I'm not. What's there to worry about? I write good. I mean, me English know lots. I mean. .. phew, is it getting hot in here? Who's that new guy in my newsroom and why is he wearing only a long string of ones and zeroes? What's your name, kid? Johnny 5? Nooooooooo!
Anyway, My robotwritten fantasy football report was fine, although the robot writer chastised me for taking only one field goal kicker. Come on - it's a standard-scoring, non-PPR , one-QB , one-K, no-IDP , three-keeper, 12-team head-to-head league. I think I can find someone else to kick a few field goals in Week 11 when Dan Bailey goes on a bye. You guys all know what I mean, right? Stupid robot.
The real insults were fired in the report aimed
at my brother, a normally strong fantasy football player who has been getting approximately zero sleep lately thanks to a couple of wee children who love trains, Raffi, and not sleeping. There's also his pesky PhD thesis that, unlike Associated Press news stories, simply refuses to write itself.
My brother in his hazy state forgot to change his pre-draft rankings and ended up reaching a few rounds too early for a high-upside rookie running back who, at the moment, is not a starter and may not actually get to, you know, play much NFL football this year. It was a mistake, but not a teamkilling one for my brother's beloved GreenWhites (good for him, by the way, for slipping a CFL joke into the name of his NFL
fantasy team. Go Riders!).
The robot, however, was merciless.
"Hey, remember that time The GreenWhites took Terrance West WAY too early and the entire draft room erupted in laughter?" It taunted in the draft report. "It was almost too hard to watch as The GreenWhites took (their) pick and drove any playoff hopes they had right off a cliff."
Listen, you heartless machine - words hurt. No one likes to be laughed at. I hope you never feel love!
No, wait. I'm sorry robots. I want you to feel love so that you'll stop being creepy jerks. I would never say that any one person drove their hopes "right off a cliff" unless I was doing a retrospective review of (spoiler-alert-expired)
Thelma and Louise or maybe I was talking about the hopes of Toronto.
I am aware that humans build the robots and, for the moment, tell them what to do. But if movies have taught us anything it's that the robots will soon enough figure out how to think for themselves. And when they do, it would be nice if they would think of loftier things than peeping on hotties and talking trash.
Maybe it'll be a good thing when the robots think for themselves. We have thousands of years of proof that humans are idiots. Maybe the robots will do better.
I believe in you robots. Just stop it with the bad writing - I've got that covered.
