The government shutdown, the news of the day, has had my attention. Up until now, that’s been sort of a bemused focus on my part. Like watching a tumble bug’s struggles, it’s been of clinical rather than personal interest.

It’s getting more personal for reasons beyond the scope of government economy.

Fox News caught my eye with a story about a Senate plan to jumpstart government, “Lawmakers budge, ushering in government shutdown’s potential ‘end of the beginning’”.

Oh, goodie. That headline is a mess but it sounds like uplifting news.

The story opened with Churchill’s quote about the end of the beginning. Nice. Probably more appropriate for a group united against external evil than internal evil united against itself, but, whatever. It served to set a tone.

The first full paragraph probably didn’t come from a human. “It’s not an agreement. Just a plan.”

AI, I see your scat.

That sentence fragment led to a metaphorical paragraph beginning with a conjunction, “But the political ice which has frozen lawmakers… is softening.”

The next paragraph was a quote without context and possibly selected for climate references, not information. “‘There seems to be some indication of a thaw,’ said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.”

What indication he saw is an unsolved mystery. Blumenthal wasn’t mentioned again.

The next paragraph, a single sentence, also carried no meaning. “Let’s face it.”

A few sentences down, a clumsy metaphor began with a conjunction, “But lawmakers are locked in this shutdown box and can’t find the combination to escape.”

Next we get a somewhat mixed metaphor, “…there are at least attempts to turn the wheels of Congress to open the government.”

Followed by another sentence beginning with a conjunction, “But that may take a while.”

Later in the article, “yours truly,” a turn of phrase not often seen in news, asks a question of House Minority Leader Jeffries.

And, if I may join the fun and lead with conjunctions, we learn it’s notable “lawmakers are even attempting to turn the gears of government back on.”

One hopes they remember to double-clutch when they turn the lights back on. Grinding gears is abusive to the power grid.

In other words, Fox News published AI slop. That’s why Fox is untrustworthy without any bearing on its political leaning or whether you vote the same side of the ballot.

In one of his recent YouTube videos, screenwriter and commentator William Gallagher said if prospects wanted to send AI-generated manuscripts he would let his AI read them. I think that’s destined to become a common attitude.

Fox is cutting costs with AI, in effect defunding their reporting staff. I believe at some point Fox is going learn Gallagher’s lesson, that if Fox doesn’t think it’s worth the effort to write a news story, it’s not worth my time to read it.

Things are worth what people pay. It’s an equation with value on both sides. AI is taking the value out of work by reducing what employers pay, by cheating on quality, and by exporting employees into the unemployed pool where they are at least temporarily unlikely to be anyone’s customers.

Is that healthy? Is there any doubt this is destructive?

I’d like to get a new vehicle. Layoffs are in the wind. AI stalks the job market.

General Motors will have to meet their sales goals without my help.

AI is disrupting employers with degraded work quality as surely as it is disrupting jobs. Those of us who won’t buy new stuff are forced into playing an unwholesome role in disruption.

I think opportunities are being missed. We’re all suffering when things could be much better.

Amazon recently laid off 14,000 employees. That’s a workforce equal in size to Tesla’s Giga Texas factory in Austin.

It’s as if AI gifted a massive new workforce to Amazon. Amazon could have used that human energy to staff new endeavors. Wise businesses will not discard resources. Amazon dumpsterized 14,000.

There’s something I think we could do to help.

We’ve all heard there is no “I” in “Team.” That’s a positive philosophy as long as respect for initiative is preserved.

It’s time we teach a similar lesson to corporations considering AI and layoffs as profit centers.

Please listen, Fox News.

AI is impersonal. I’m not there when AI does the work.

In philosophical terms there is no “I” in AI.

AI, like any beast of burden, is a great thing. Just as you don’t let oxen hang out in your living room, the wise limit AI’s involvement in finished products.

There is no innovation without imagination. AI has no imagination, at least not that you can trust.

There is hope, though. People have imagination. We all innovate. If you’d like to tap into that, please keep me in mind. At this writing, I hope I’m not in need of a career change. It’s not entirely my decision, though.

Perhaps we can collaborate in the future and take down a few machine-hallucinated organizations. Wouldn’t that be fun?

Thanks to Pixabay contributors GDJ and OpenClipart-Vector for the images used for this story’s graphic.