Someone Is Not Drinking the AI-Flavored Kool-Aid

November 12, 2025

Another short essay from a real and still-alive dinobaby. If you see an image, we used AI. The dinobaby is not an artist like Grandma Moses.

The future of AI is in the hands of the masters of the digital PT Barnum’s. A day or so ago, I wrote about Copilot in Excel. Allegedly a spreadsheet can be enhanced by Microsoft. Google is beavering away with a new enthusiasm for content curation. This is a short step to weaponizing what is indexed, what is available to Googlers and Mama, and what is provided to Google users. Heroin dealers do not provide consumer oriented labels with ingredients.

If you don’t believe that AI (despite its flaws and its penchant to just make stuff up) is being used to improve and enhance a user’s experience. Why not let smart software do everything? I think that what the Big AI Tech outfits want is to create a captive consuming cohort. This group will provide money and take guidance as a standard function of a smart service.

Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough.

Here’s another example of this type of soft control: “I’ll Never Use Grammarly Again — And This Is the Reason Every Writer Should Care.” The author makes clear that Grammarly, developed and operated from Ukraine, now wants to change her writing style. The essay states:

What once felt like a reliable grammar checker has now turned into an aggressive AI tool always trying to erase my individuality.

Yep, that’s what AI companies and AI repackagers will do: Use the technology to improve the human. What a great idea? Just erase the fingerprints of the human. Introduce AI drivel and lowest common denominator thinking. Human, the AI says, take a break. Go to the yoga studio or grab a latte. AI has your covered.

The essay adds:

Superhuman [Grammarly’s AI solution for writers] wants to manage your creative workflow, where it can predict, rephrase, and automate your writing. Basically, a simple tool that helped us write better now wants to replace our words altogether. With its ability to link over a hundred apps, Superhuman wants to mimic your tone, habits, and overall style. Grammarly may call it personalized guidance, but I see it as data extraction wrapped with convenience. If we writers rely on a heavily AI-integrated platform, it will kill the unique voice, individual style, and originality.

One human dumped Grammarly, writing:

I’m glad I broke up with Grammarly before it was too late. Well, I parted ways because of my principles. As a writer, my dedication is towards original writing, and not optimized content.

Let’s go back to ubiquitous AI (some you know is there and other AI that operates in dark pattern mode). The object of the game for the AI crowd is to extract revenue and control information. By weaponizing information and making life easy, just think who will be in charge of many things in a few years. If you think humans will rule the roost, you are correct. But the number of humans pushing the buttons will be very small. These individuals have zero self awareness and believe that their ideas — no matter how far out and crazy — are the right way to run the railroad.

I am not sure most people will know that they are on a train taking them to a place they did not know existed and don’t want to visit.

Well, tough luck.

Stephen E Arnold, November 11, 2025

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under AI, Business strategy, Marketing, News

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.