THIS WEEK ONLINE: Did an AI write THIS?

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• The Fitzroy Garage Boys SPEAK
• Please don’t use the ‘Q’ word
• Nick Cave vs. ChatGPT: ‘bullshit’;’the apocalypse is well on its way’
• The AI can have my job. Take it!
• The future of learning is AI-generated
• Local Dino Dealer wants $58k for life-size Titanosaurus

If you don’t immediately understand what is meant by “Fitzroy Garage Party”... bless you. Bless you, bless you. In a VICE Australia exclusive, Julie Fenwick tracked down two of the Fitzroy Garage Boys to tell all. Specifically, about the consequences of flooding the TikTok algorithm with a series of unbearably sincere “look at our cool pre’s in this cool suburb” videos. It was all so innocent, but these boys misunderstood the symbiotic significance of “Fitzroy”, the world’s most polarising suburb, where everyone is too busy accusing one another of “gentrification” and “co-opting” and “pretending to be poor” to realise the value of just a smidge of self awareness. As it turns out, the boys don’t even live in Fitzroy. They’re not even from Melbourne. And, they’d never heard of “gentrification” before this. 

People! The scoops, I tell you, the scoops.

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Is the gist of a letter written to and published by the Guardian. As Michael Di Iorio writes for Pedestrian, “Queer people can call ourselves whatever we want, thanks.”

It was an interesting move from the Guardian, oh so close to Pride Month and Sydney’s hosting of World Pride, to publish the letter from Karl Lockwood, of Brighton, which states: “I am a gay man of 66 years with many friends and acquaintances, and know no one who would refer to themselves as queer… It would seem a small minority of activists has encouraged the media to use the word without considering its offensiveness to many people.”

“We know exactly what is being implied when you say ‘other’ gays shouldn’t use the word queer,” writes Michael.

“Queer is a word that members of the LGBTQIA+ community use to dissolve the barriers between us and create a verbal safe space where everyone can be included. You see, there’s a difference between the ‘gay community’ and the ‘queer community’. Queer is all of us. It’s a shared struggle. It’s saying: ‘if I’m gay and you’re trans, my experiences are different to yours but I’m here for you. I’m here to aid you in your fight however I can, as it’s our fight now’.”

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It’s funny that some of Nick Cave’s fans thought he would be pleased with the notion they’d used an AI chatbot to generate songs that imitate his style. The man is an artiste… an auteur, the guy who blogged in a tumbling ChatGPT-triggered rage: “Songs arise out of suffering, by which I mean they are predicated upon the complex, internal human struggle of creation and, well, as far as I know, algorithms don’t feel…Data doesn’t suffer. ChatGPT has no inner being, it has been nowhere, it has endured nothing, it has not had the audacity to reach beyond its limitations, and hence it doesn’t have the capacity for a shared transcendent experience, as it has no limitations from which to transcend.”

In response to a ChatGPT-authored “Nick Cave” song sent in by a fan named Mark, Cave was resolute: “the apocalypse is well on its way”.

“What ChatGPT is, in this instance, is replication as travesty. Mark, thanks for the song, but with all the love and respect in the world, this song is bullshit, a grotesque mockery of what it is to be human, and, well, I don’t much like it.”

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Speaking of ChatGPT, it’s getting quite good. It’s likely to steal our jobs in the near future. I’ve long said this, but I think it’s really high time for us to give in. Stop resisting. Give the AI our goddamn jobs. It’s 2023, time for full-tilt automated luxury gay communism, and when the machines are fully in charge of running this godforsaken society we will finally be free to frolic and copulate and ideate and philosophise and freak the fuck out at will. What could go wrong?

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Oop – you thought we were done? Naive, even a little stupid of you. For we can wax lyrical about our open-source automated friends for all of eternity. As VICE Australia’s Aleks Bliszczyk reports, experts believe that AI technology is the future of learning. In school environments, the use of apps like ChatGPT has been characterised straight off the bat as 'cheating', but for those with an open mind, myriad possibilities are beginning to take shape.

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Langwarrin resident Mark Pottinger had burst into the cultural zeitgeist when his listing for “Jack”, a 19 metre long, 4 metre high, life-size replica Titanosaurus went viral on Facebook Marketplace. Notoriously home to some absolutely batshit listings, Mark’s dinosaur, listed at the bargain price of $58,000, was an early yet easy contender for the most insane sale item of the year.

I went and met the self-professed “Dino Dealer” at his 10-acre property south-east of Melbourne. What I saw was straight out of Queensland, a Palmersaurus mirage, all ancient rainforest ferns and gravel paths, fruit trees, a miniature railway track and a petite swimming pool. And dinosaurs. Dinosaurs everywhere.

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