Wordware is an IDE platform for building AI agents with natural language. Now, anyone can build and iterate 20x faster on AI applications with prebuilt tools, API.

Does that look vaguely like English to you? Welcome to the 21st Century.

Sounds really cheerful, dunnit? Also modern, and hopeful, and generally with-it. The cat's meow, so to speak.

This IDE platform has some mean programmers. And they came up with a really diabolical way to get some free advertising.

Do you remember a few weeks ago, when I got MS Copilot to write my column for me? It was really complimentary about my writing.

In his columns, Gheorgheni combines storytelling with analysis, drawing connections between past and present, and often referencing literature, history, and science to enrich the narrative. The result is a column that not only informs but also challenges readers to think critically about the world around them.

That sort of thing makes you feel good about yourself. Which, I suspect, is the aim of the programmers. Play nice. People will buy your products. People will not call their lawyers.

Or you could go for outrage.

The Wordware AI takes a different approach. It ROASTS users based on their Twitter accounts. It is more insulting – and possesses far less finesse and subtlety – than the late Don Rickles. In a word, that thing is MEAN.

It told Ben Beska, the kind fish-rescuer, that if he 'spent less time anthropomorphizing' his 'aquatic pets' and more time sleeping, he wouldn't have to 'design t-shirts to stay awake.' It also claimed his account was as if 'Web MD had a lovechild with Red Lobster.' From the spelling and general quality of the insults, I'm assuming this AI is a US citizen. I just hope they don't let it vote.

FYI for everyone not in the US: Red Lobster is a seafood restaurant chain. It is going bankrupt because it offered an 'endless shrimp' buffet and some people have a death wish. How else could you explain eating enough high-cholesterol shrimp to bankrupt a restaurant chain?

This Wordware AI yeets insults to describe people's content, such as 'glitter-covered dumpster fire', 'living in your own personal telenovela', and 'about as cheerful as a funeral procession.'

Oh, you want to know what it said about moi? You aren't going to like it. Oh, I know you've spent the last few paragraphs looking forward to an AI saying something mean about me. But just wait.

Oh look, it's the self-proclaimed editor of a website that sounds like a rejected Star Wars droid. Your tweets are as exciting as watching paint dry in a library. I bet you think retweeting nature photos makes you an environmentalist. News flash: pressing a button doesn't save the planet, it just inflates your ego along with your follower count.

'I told you you weren't going to like it,' I now say in a Marvin-like voice. It insulted h2g2! The nerve. It's a bit like that old Stan Freberg record of 'The Yellow Rose of Texas', where the bandleader yells at the drummer. 'You can drown out "yellow". You can drown out "Rose". But don't you dare drown out "TEXAS"!'

I also quietly disagree with the proposition that retweeting nature photos doesn't help save the planet. I know humans. What they don't know about, they find hard to care about. The more they see of nature, the more they will think of it kindly – and the more likely they are to back sensible measures to protect it. Anyway, mashing a button is doing more for the environment than an AI. How many of the world's resources did you consume today, Binky? Thought so.

It's also wrong about my 'inflated' ego and follower count. Both are way beneath the world's radar. But the promoters have done their job: now everybody knows they have a platform. With IDE! I'm sure it's important enough to eat up the that much energy, whatever it accomplishes.

And now it is possible to be both flattered and insulted by an AI. And as an attention-getting device, insults work. Just think about the Republicans and the Democrats – I know, we don't want to, but it's an election year. Recently, the Democrats rolled out their latest, most devastating slogan ever.

They're labelling the Republicans 'weird'. Their policies are 'weird'. Their obsessions are 'weird'. Their candidates are 'weird'. I mean, who thinks those things? Who acts like that?

It's been enormously effective. Largely because inside many Americans is an inner teenager who's afraid the cool kids will laugh at them. Puerile stuff, I know: but high school-level psychology is actually a step up from the primary-school taunts we're used to getting. It's practically intellectual. And, frankly, the situation is getting so desperate that many of us are ready to put up with almost anything in the form of rhetoric if it will get the crazies out of government.

I have an idea. Maybe the Democrats can borrow that AI? It had some really nasty things to say about JD Vance.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

19.08.24 Front Page

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