Artificial stupidity and me: If AI can do this to my book, what will it do in an actual war? (Salon)

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The thin booklet got off to a reasonable enough start, explaining with its first sentence, "The U.S. media coverage that makes it easier to sell wars to the public, as well as the often-hidden cost of civilian casualties from errant U.S. attacks, are all harshly criticized by journalist Solomon." That wasn't a bad summing-up of my book.

But the study guide's second sentence was not nearly as good: "He guarantees that when Russia designated Ukrainian communities during the new attack, the U.S. media was everyone available and jumping into action with compassionate, piercing revealing." Rereading that sentence a few times didn't improve it. I began to worry.

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The computer-programmed assaults on the English language escalated. And so the "war on terror" became the "battle on dread." A key source of meticulous research that I cite in my book, the Costs of War project at Brown University, became "the Expenses of War project at Earthy Colored College."

At one point, my book's actual title — "War Made Invisible" — somehow became "War Caused Imperceptible." But the laughable malapropisms provided by artificial intelligence became more serious matters when I saw several dozen words forming badly mangled phrases — all attributed to me — inside quotation marks. I could imagine bleary-eyed students cramming on the night before a test or a term-paper deadline, reading the ostensible quotes and thinking that the author of my book must be an idiot.

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