None of this is true.
It was generated by A.I., Artificial Intelligence. It's all a massive Sigh Ops conspiracy, just like the MAGAs warned, and was engineered by the secretive "Westward to Winco" movement.
This is my favorite tree in Portland. It’s one of those cedars at East Morescoreland Golf Course in Southeast, with that improbable limb growing downward from the massive trunk and resting on the ground before splitting off and shooting up again. It’s along the 18th hole, left and short of the green. I’ve had to chip over those limbs in an attempt to hit the green, but it’s tricky because you have to keep the ball low, too. Otherwise the hanging branches on the other side will slap your ball down for sure. Just like life.
I will tell you more about that tree in a minute. But first I have some truth to dispense.
I know I said none of this is true, but some parts are. Which is what I’m trying to tell you. It is difficult to tell whether information is real, or whether it was provided by people or by machines.
Just this morning I got a voice mail from Bill over at the Tax Group calling about my past filings. He’s all chipper and breezy. Hey it’s Thursday. (It was Friday, but…) They’re showing I may be one of the people that still have some past taxes due but they have a new zero tax program that they could get me on and it would make the whole past-due amount non-collectible. He’ll keep my file open until the end of the week, so give him a call back.
Which is funny because I got a voice mail from Jenny or somebody from Accounting last week who said their records show my small business is eligible for up to $500,000 in funding and they could approve it and get me the money in 24 hours. If I wanted. She was chipper and breezy, too.
I’m sure they are real people and have my best interests at heart. They sounded real casual, so the whole thing probably is low-key and no big deal to take care of these problems.
But I am not chipper and breezy about this.
On LinkedIn the other day, I was invited to apply for a job teaching A.I. how to write. The invitation said they needed high-level English users like myself to teach LLMs (“Large Language Models,” or chatbots) how to write. I could work from home, work as much as I want, and get paid $40 an hour, the invitation said. I don’t know if the invitation was from a real person, or if the note itself was A.I. generated.
That’s the level of uncertainty we operate with today. I doubt I could define Artificial Intelligence if you pressed an Israeli space laser to my head. I didn’t apply for the job. Or did I? Who do I bill for this hour? I mean hours.
You want to be freaked out? Go here. It will take you a company’s website. The company is named OODA. I sent them a message asking how they pronounce it and, if it’s an acronym, what the letters stand for.
I cannot tell you with any certainty what the company is and what its ranks of fearsome experts do, except it concerns Artificial Intelligence. They apparently enable intelligent action, but I don’t know what that means. The company is very go-go on Generative A.I. capabilities, which they think are different and better than the old fashioned A.I. that is baffling to most of us at the current time, or “now.”
“The exciting thing about these Generative AI capabilities, the thing that makes them significantly different than old fashioned AI like expert systems and machine learning, is that it is not just a technology. It is a profound shift between old and new. For the first time in the co-evolution of humans and technology we are able to elevate our tools to be teammates. Generative AI will change how we produce products and services and how governments serve citizens and support missions. Generative AI uses many previous AI techniques including machine learning but it builds on them to enable generation of new text, audio, images and video. It can create things that never existed before.”
I emphasized the last sentence, I think.
Here are some more true things: Rain, which we get in Western Oregon most of the winter, and a photo-as-painting of a duck down in Oaks Bottom, the wildlife refuge near our home in SE Portland. Both are real images, but I’m sure A.I. could create them and stick Taylor Swift in there somewhere. Splashing naked in the cold rain bubbles, maybe, or riding the duck, spurring it with cowboy boots.
Angered at having to putt around goose poop at the golf course, I opened fire with the mini-gun mounted in the back of my Mazda. Let the lifeless goose at the right serve as warning to the rest of those intrusive honkers.
The images are real, but the rest of it isn’t true. Well, I actually did come across a dead goose at the golf course. I don’t know if it got conked by a wayward ball or died of a broken heart, which I guess is pretty common among geese. The body was gone the next day. Some enterprising coyote hauled it off overnight, probably.
Now, some of this is true. I thought the dark-headed bird might be a golden eagle, but online experts said it was a juvenile bald eagle. In that case, it is glaring because its parents, in the tree there, went out for the day and left him at the golf course — the very same one with the bent tree and the dead goose. The baldie parents perch in this tree overlooking Oaks Bottom — the very same one as the shimmering duck! Coincidence? Sure. And Baldie, Bottom and Biden all start with B because…?
I heard the Ukranians are experimenting with drones disguised as birds of prey. The Pentagon is helping with the beta testing, whatever that is. It’s all hush hush, but that’s why you hear that whirring sound when the Oaks Bottom “eagles” fly back to their “nest.”
More truth. There’s that cool-weird cedar tree trunk limb and the dead goose beyond, in the grass. Then you see a ball in the leaves. Somebody hit it and couldn’t find it, you think. But then you realize it’s likely loaded up with a camera and audio capabilities, and can track people. Somebody probably placed it there. I don’t know if it recorded the goose’s demise, but you can bet investigators will be elevating their tools to be teammates as they take a look at the data. I don’t know if they need a warrant.
I don’t know what to think about that company, group, entity or organization — whatever it is — that calls itself OODA, mainly because I don’t know what they do. Their site is full of references to various hackers and “threat actors.” It referred to a recent report on “threat actors using LLMs to streamline vulnerability research, targeting, and malware development.” Which sounds important.
Here’s another OODA update: “The FCC has revealed the unanimous adoption of a Declaratory Ruling that makes voice cloning technology used in common robocall scams targeting consumers illegal. The rise of these types of calls has escalated during the last few years as this technology now has the potential to confuse consumers with misinformation by imitating the voices of celebrities, political candidates, and close family members.”
I don’t know if Bill over at the Tax Group or Jenny or from Accounting are chipper and breezy about that. I think I should call them back and ask.
The tree’s growth is one of those metaphors we used to talk about in Journalism. You see how that cedar, recognizing its great weight, chose to grow that limb downward to support itself. That tree grew itself a crutch and used it to get going again. And you can, too.
Apparently there’s a sad old story of how the tree grew this way. It seems an old pioneer, his name lost to history, was feeling poorly and sat down at that spot, leaning against the then-slender trunk. He died, and over decades the tree grew over the top of him, preserving his splayed out form for eternity.
I heard the tree is used these days for some kind of ritual gatherings by members of the Westward to Winco movement. Apparently they gather there and try to chip golf balls over those splayed limbs, then they ritually drive to the Winco store for cheap wine and 88-cent cans of cat food. Authorities worry the Westward to Winco movement members are threat actors engaged in some complex A.I. caper.
“For one thing,” an investigator said, “Winco is east of the golf course. They aren’t going Westward at all.
“But they are chipper and breezy,” the investigator agreed.
Ha! I don’t believe a word of it. Did you know that long ago John Killen’s father was the golf pro at Eastmoreland? Guaranteed true.
Well done. Great reading.
Please take their $40 and teach it/them how to write.