AI as Exploitation Colonialism

12:06 Sunday, 27 September 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 57.67°F Pressure: 1012hPa Humidity: 81% Wind: 11.86mph
Words: 703

Wherein I opine on the exhausting subject of AI.

Yesterday at the Tinderbox meetup, which has pretty much become an AI meetup, Michael Becker was discussing a tool, a browser extension of some kind, that he had created with the help of AI. There was some mention of entities "licensing" this tool. This piqued my interest.

At some point earlier in the discussion, someone mentioned that the web has become something it was never intended to be. "Cyberspace," and the "worldwide web" lend themselves, conceptually, to a "place" or "space" metaphor. Somewhere we may "be."

The original web was populated by people, perhaps much as the world was populated, expanding outward from some origin. Africa in the case of humans, Southern California probably in the case of the web. These "digital natives" were the indigenous people of cyberspace.

Later, corporations appeared and began to "exploit" this new territory. Extraction industries consuming the natives' resources of attention, converting them into advertising dollars and growing enormously wealthy in the process.

But there were other resources that could be exploited, if only an efficient means (Read: "cheap") to do so could be discovered.

Enter "large language models."

"Training."

"Artificial intelligence."

Google organized all the world's information. OpenAI and Anthropic consumed it, homogenized it, and are trying to find a business model selling it.

That model may not exist, which may be an enormous problem for all of us very soon.

But the AI "product" has some very valuable features.

Value created by the uncompensated labor of others.

Let me digress here for a moment and say that I don't care or mind when people use AI for whatever things they find it useful for, except for things that are clearly immoral or illegal or unethical. And there's a lot of room for debate on the ethical front. AI enables a lot of smart, talented people to do things they might not be able to do as well, or as quickly, without it. And if that improves their circumstances, makes their life more rewarding, or easier, I'm quite ok with that. It's here, it's not going away (soon), and using it may help us better understand what it means.

Where I do have some objection is when someone uses an AI product to create something that is totally outside the scope of what they might otherwise have been able to achieve without it, and then seeking to monetize that creation.

If you've had a product you've developed and sold for years, and AI allows you to improve it, or makes it easier to support or maintain. That seems like pretty fair use to me right now.

This is the area that is presently the subject of much litigation and I think it'll be years, if not decades, before all of this gets sorted out.

But I don't think one needs to wait years to make a personal choice based on one's own moral center. If you're seeking to profit from others' labors for little more than the simple act of writing a good prompt, I think that's wrong.

But it's not illegal.

If you use AI to create something that is totally outside the scope of what you might otherwise have achieved without it, and then give that away free of charge, I think that's ok. You're not profiting from the uncompensated labor of others. Maybe you'll gain some reputational advantage, but I think it'd be modest.

Others have a more binary view of AI, that its origin relied on the uncompensated labor of others represents a form of theft, and anything using it is therefore fundamentally stained with an ethical taint.

I respect that point of view, though I don't necessarily share it.

Yet.

I reserve the right to change my mind. My view of AI has been evolving over time, and I'm less enthusiastic now than I was at the beginning. But it's far from the categorical rejection espoused by others.

In one sense, I hate AI because it sucks the oxygen out of the room whenever it comes up. Especially when you're in a room where you're hopefully going to be talking about something else.

But these are the times in which we live.

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Last Night's Sunset

08:51 Sunday, 27 September 2026

Current Wx: Temp: 53.26°F Pressure: 1012hPa Humidity: 84% Wind: 11.39mph
Words: 983

Fall is underway as the leaves begin to change color. I had my annual dermatology appointment the other day, and Maps had me take kind of a back way for the return trip. I often find that annoying, but in this case it was wonderful. Quiet country roads, and beautiful scenery.

One biopsy on my right calf, some liquid nitrogen to my left cheek, and if the biopsy is clear, I'm good for another year. In an interesting coincidence, this appointment was from a cancellation, otherwise I wouldn't have been seen until November. After I got home, I received a text from the dermatologist I'd been seeing in Florida saying I was overdue for my exam. Weird, but also kind of cool.

The Apple IIe arrived on Friday. It was very dirty, but I enjoy cleaning those things up. But first a brief diversion.

Back in the day, Quark produced a word processor called Word Juggler. It was originally written for the Apple III, but they later ported it to the Apple II. It received fairly good reviews, but the thing I remember about it that was pretty cool was that it came with a set of replacement keycaps with program commands printed on the front of the keys. I don't know why I thought that was cool, but I did.

In my first retro-computing period (2016-2019), I had a copy of Word Juggler. It didn't come with the keycaps though. I have never seen those up on eBay, though I have seen them from time to time on a IIe up for sale. In my present retro-computing obsession, I've tried to refrain from buying old software that really didn't resonate with me. It costs money and takes up space, and there isn't really that much satisfaction in just "collecting." But I do like to keep up with what comes up for sale.

A couple of weeks ago, a copy of Word Juggler came up on the auction site. I studied the pictures and it included a plastic bag of Apple IIc keycaps! Only one of which showed a command printed on it. I had no idea if it was a complete set, or if they were just regular keycaps and the previous owner just didn't or couldn't swap the one that was visible. Worth a shot though.

It was a "make offer" listing, I love those, so I made a pretty low offer and it was accepted. It arrived the week before last and, sure enough, it had a complete collection of Word Juggler command keycaps. It also had the wire keycap puller with the Quark brand on the handle. In a bit of irony perhaps, the text of the commands on those keycaps is way too small for me to read!

I will likely install them anyway. It will give me some spares if I ever buy another IIc in poor condition.

Anyway, that Quark keycap-puller came in very handy for that Apple IIe with the dirty keys. I've seldom had real difficulty removing keycaps from Apple II keyboards, but it was definitely quicker and easier with the puller. I dropped them all in a ziplock plastic bag with some warm water and dish soap and agitated them for a while. Easy-peasy, they came out looking like new, except for the space bar, which is apparently made from a different type of plastic because it had discolored more than the other keys.

The case had some yellowing, but it was modest. It had a monitor or stand over the lid, because the lid exhibited less yellowing. I think it was used in an environment with little exposure to UV, and later boxed up and stored because it's in very good shape.

It's an unenhanced Apple IIe, so it lacks the 65C02 processor and the revised ROMs. But it's also a later model IIe than my two painted case IIe's. I'll order another 65C02 for it, and I can use the OneROMs to install the "enhanced" ROMs.

It did have some evidence of insect habitation. There was a lot of debris and detritus beneath the keycaps and beneath the motherboard and power supply, which I discovered when I took it outside to blow it out.

There was one peripheral card I couldn't identify when I made an offer for the machine. It turns out it was an Applied Engineering Serial Pro, a serial interface card with a real-time clock built in. It has a Varta battery soldered to it, and it doesn't exhibit any overt signs of leakage on the card, but I suspect some sort of electrolyte must have leaked because there was some goo and corrosion on the card edge. It cleaned up pretty well, and I've seen worse, so I'm somewhat optimistic the card will work, but testing will have to wait until Mitzi's on her trip.

Before I plug the computer in, I need to remove the power supply and open it up to check the status of the RIFA capacitors. If they haven't already blown, they likely will not long after I plug it in, releasing the "magic smoke," and stinking up the house. I'll probably get to that before Mitzi leaves.

It also came with two 5.25" Disk II drives. They're later models, but pre-dating the UniDisk 5.25, which were roughly half-height and had plastic housings. These have the full-height, metal housings and, fortunately, all the rubber feet, which are often missing on these things. The IIe itself also had all its feet. The only thing it was missing was one little screw holding the case on. No big deal.

After Mitzi leaves I'll have several days to check it out and play with it. I have some cards I can install, including a Transwarp accelerator, and a Raspberry Pi Pico card I want to check out.

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