Fuck AI

Someone on my local Nextdoor needed to know how much her tree was leaning. She took a photo and overlaid a protractor and it was actually pretty resourceful.

Then she asked people to check the angle. You see, the protector was aligned with the ground, so a perfectly upright tree would be 90°. The tree was at the 65° mark. Damn near everyone said it was a 65° lean, when it was really 25° off from the 90° it should be.

I can't remember how it came up exactly, but she said she looked up if a tree should be 90° on Google, and Google said that would mean it's fallen over. I reminded her that Google's AI suggested glue to get cheese to stick to pizza and encouraged an ounce of critical thinking, asking where the tree would sit in her picture if it were at 90°. She went off about how math isn't her strength, that I'm being condescending (ok, maybe a little but holy crap don't take Google's word for this stuff!) and I think eventually blocked me after a few attempts to explain that she did not have a 65° lean and a tree would be 90° from the ground if everything were perfect.

The future sucks, and it's only going to get worse.