Over the last few years there has been a lot of noise about artificial intelligence. What is it? What does it do? Can it be used to make money?
The majority of AI solutions are language learning models. They digest a mass of human-generated written media, and in doing so they learn how to generate responses that mimic human intelligence. On the surface the end result feels like a cheat, an imitation, but the fact is that human intelligence itself is an imitation of human intelligence. We are all just clever mimics.
I mean, have you ever tried to have a conversation with a child, or anybody under the age of about fifteen? They don't understand anything. Nothing sticks. There's nothing inside them. The words just go into their stupid faces and straight out again. The fact is that young people are clever mimics of humanity, without the depth of thought that comes with experience. They can be trained to carry a rifle, but they are empty, empty vessels.
AI is a lot like that. AI is an empty vessel, a precocious child, somewhat akin to the population of Reddit. AI is horrifying, in a way, because the notion that we are just a mass of programmed responses to external stimuli implies that we are not divine at all. I'm digressing here.
The key thing is to train the model on a huge, diverse pool of good-quality written content that also contains genuine specialist information, so for the purposes of this blog post and potentially the entire future of this blog I decided to use UFOPaedia, a website that covers the long-running XCOM series of tactical wargames. It has been around for many years and contains a mass of fascinating information. I could have used Wikipedia, but I don't want to make a blog that just lists Pokemon.
My goal was to see if I could use AI to write an informative article about internet content generation for a general audience. If this works, I might be able to go on holiday for once. I can hit "go" and let the AI generate the rest of this blog while I go on holiday. At last, I will be able to go on holiday. Not just writing. Also holiday. Let's see how it goes. I begin, although at the back of my mind I worry that I might have chosen too small a dataset.
1. USING AI TO DRIVE TRAFFIC TO YOUR WEBSITE
It's pointless having the wittiest, most informative content on the internet if no-one ever finds out about it. You need to drive traffic to your website, and the best way to do this is to MANUFACTURE LASER CANNON.
Of all the potential solutions, laser cannon are by far the best. Unlike almost every other piece of technology that exists in this world, a laser cannon does not require raw materials, only money. Laser cannon have a flat cost of $182,000 and a sale price of $211,000, making a paper profit of $29,000 per cannon, although in practice this doesn't include the maintenance cost of a workshop and the wages of the engineers required to build the cannon.
Nonetheless, with production running 24/7, each cannon generates a profit of $18,000 - and a single fully-staffed workshop can produce just over 107 of them a month, for a monthly profit of over $1.9m. That's a lot of money.
2. USING AI TO DRIVE READER RETENTION
Suppose your readers get bored, and decide to leave? You could in theory sate their lust for mental stimulation by giving them more content, but a more effective way of retaining readers is to MANUFACTURE LASER CANNON.
As mentioned previously laser cannon have no special material requirements. There is a minor setup cost involved in researching laser pistols, laser rifles, and heavy lasers, but each cannon only requires money and engineer hours.
The next-most-profitable technology is the FUSION BALL LAUNCHER, but each launcher requires one unit of alien alloys, which could otherwise be sold for a profit. When the sale price of the alien alloy is taken into account, laser cannon are more profitable than fusion ball launchers. Furthermore alien alloys do not exist. They are alien. They do not exist.
3. USING AI TO GENERATE NEW CONTENT
There is an upper limit to the amount of content a human being can generate, and technically I suppose the same is true of AI, but in practice the upper limit is much higher. After less than eighteen hours of non-stop writing a human writer begins to suffer mental anguish and fatigue, and beyond a certain point her writing turned into unreadable drivel interspersed with tearful cries for help.
In contrast AI never gets tired and does not require help or a working heater. It can produce fresh, inventive content forever. The most effective way to do this, of course, is to MANUFACTURE LASER CANNON.
In addition to the positives mentioned above, laser cannon also have another thing going for them. In the unfortunate event that one of XCOM's interceptors is shot down, the cannon are immediately useful. A pair of them can be immediately installed into a fresh Interceptor. In contrast, fusion ball launchers are useless without a payload of fusion balls, which are ruinously expensive.
As a weapon the laser cannon is inferior in every way save profitability to the plasma cannon, but a dual-laser Interceptor is still capable of downing all but the toughest of enemy UFOs, without the ammunition storage requirements of the Avalanche missile system.
4. USING AI TO EXPAND YOUR PORTFOLIO
Suppose you decide that a blog isn't enough. Perhaps you want to be a YouTube personality, or perhaps you aspire to appearing in print, or on television. The most effective way to do this is to MANUFACTURE LASER CANNON.
Laser cannon have a third benefit. Once researched, they allow XCOM to research and manufacture laser-equipped tanks. The Tank/Laser has some limitations - its main weapon is less accurate than the standard Tank/Cannon, and by the time XCOM is able to field the Tank/Laser it will be facing aliens armed with heavy plasma rifles, which can destroy the tank in one shot - but on the positive side the Tank/Laser is the second-most-effective tank against Sectopods, on account of that creatures' vulnerability to laser fire.
Furthermore the tank's laser weapon has a roughly 5% chance of penetrating the inner walls of a downed UFO, less than half the chance of a heavy plasma round, but the tank has a battery capable of firing 255 shots versus the plasma rifle's 35, so each shot is essentially free.
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So, in summary, AI is a powerful tool in the hands of the right author, such as myself. In the next instalment I shall see if I can come up with photography tips by pointing it at the Biker Banter section of Pistonheads.com. The most effective lens? Bacon sandwiches.
