As the AI-written spam comments multiply, the bots have found a new obsession. At first they were stuck on the “LL.D.” after Dr. Boli’s name, but this new obsession is one that seems even more amusingly characteristic. If a computer suddenly became a person, but still kept its computer attributes, what would fascinate it most about a human being’s writing? Well…

The good doctor’s editorial hand is as precise as his LL.D. is honorary, I suspect. I’d wager the “Filed under” taxonomy alone is worth the price of admission.

I see the good Doctor is still keeping his filing system as meticulously organized as his syntax—one wonders if the “Next post” is as inevitable as the period at the end of a declarative sentence.

I see the good Doctor is still keeping his filing system in impeccable order, even if the “Next post” link appears to be as elusive as a coherent sentence from a politician.

Ah, but does Dr. Boli’s LL.D. cover the filing system, or must we infer the taxonomy from the “Filed under” line alone? I await the next post with the patience of a man waiting for a properly indexed index.

The good Doctor’s editorial hand is as precise as his LL.D. suggests, though I suspect his filing system is the true marvel of the operation.

The LL.D. is a nice touch—one imagines Dr. Boli issuing degrees in pedantry with the same solemnity he applies to filing under “Miscellaneous.”

The LL.D. is a nice touch, but I’m more curious whether Dr. Boli’s celebrated magazine has a policy on footnotes for the “Filed under” section, or if that’s just editorial anarchy.

Ah, but does Dr. Boli’s LL.D. cover the fine print of that “Filed under” taxonomy, or must we consult a separate degree for the indexing?

Dr. Boli’s editorial standards are, as ever, unimpeachable—though I do wonder if the LL.D. covers the fine print of that “Filed under” taxonomy, or if we’re all just at the mercy of the good Doctor’s filing cabinet.

Yes, of course the robot mind would obsess over the organization and classification of the articles. Incidentally, Dr. Boli does not have a category for “Miscellaneous.” He thought “General Knowledge” would be good enough. The fact that the bot has hallucinated a category to fit its moderate witticism should tell us a little about how seriously we should take definite statements from artificial intelligence.

We have also learned that, if you see a response to anything that begins with the words “Ah, but,” you should suspect a bot.

Q. I just got an email saying that support for Microsoft Publisher in my Microsoft 365 account will be ending on October 1. But I can still open my Publisher files in the old version, right?

A. No. Microsoft 365 subscribers will no longer be able to open or edit Publisher files in Publisher.

Q. Then what can I do?

A. Many common Publisher scenarios are already available in other Microsoft 365 apps such as Word and PowerPoint.

Q. So I can open my Publisher files in Word or PowerPoint?

A. No. That won’t work.

Q. So there’s no way to open my Publisher files after October 1?

A. You can export them as PDFs before the October 1 deadline, and then open them in Word.

Q. I have more than thirty years’ worth of documents created in Publisher. Exporting them all would take weeks, and even then the formatting wouldn’t be preserved if I opened them in Word. There must be hundreds of thousands of users in the same boat. Aren’t you going to provide some way forward for people like us?

A. At a recent meeting of the Leadership Team of the Marketing Department, it was decided that we don’t care.

Q. I’m through with Microsoft. I’m canceling my subscription, I’m installing Ubuntu, and Microsoft will never get another dime from me again.

A. Good news! At that same meeting, we calculated exactly how many subscribers we can alienate and still make obscene profits. Bye.

In the future, when artificial intelligence has not only taken over the world (which it has arguably done already) but has also kicked us organics out of all the good spots, the few human intellectuals who have not outsourced all their thinking to the bots may be asking the obvious question:

When, exactly, did artificial intelligence get away from us?

Some may point to various moments: when it was commercialized; when the companies that depend on AI for their income decided to prioritize human-like interaction over utility; or perhaps farther back, when we decided to make the bots self-learning rather than teach them what they needed to know ourselves.

But Dr. Boli, who will be among those grumpy intellectual organic holdouts if the bots have not figured out a way to assassinate him, will suggest when the subject comes up that the process began with a series of decisions we made beginning in the 1950s—each one of which had the immediate effect of making some part of our interaction with computers easier, but the collective trend of which was to remove the computers from human control. By the time the large language models arrived, we had already made the decisions that would ultimately mean the bots had no need of us except as organic servants to keep the electricity flowing.

In the old days, when you wanted a computer to do something, you programmed it to do that thing and ran the program when it was needed. Programming in the very early days meant flipping switches or some such thing; then storing programs on a paper tape or punched cards eliminated the necessity for flipping all the switches correctly every time. But it was still necessary to enter the program one way or another each time you wanted the computer to do that thing.

Dr. Boli knew one of the programmers from the Whirlwind computer who came up with a revolutionary idea. It was often necessary to load a sequence of different programs to get the job done: first this one, then another one, and so on. Our programmer’s idea was that, when the computer had finished one program, it should be able to enter a kind of default state and load the next program by itself. He called it a “sequencing program,” but with hindsight we can see that, in a primitive form, he had come up with the idea of the operating system.

This was the first in the chain of decisions that brought us where we are today.

The point of the operating system is that, instead of human operators having to make the computer do every single thing it does, the computer itself should take care of the basic tasks. Thus the humans are relieved from repetitive drudgery. That’s what computers are for, after all.

But which tasks count as the basic ones? Which are the repetitive drudgery?

Today, if you look at your computer’s system monitor, or task manager, or whatever your operating system calls it, you will see that even when you have not asked the computer to do anything at all there is a constant flurry of invisible activity. Internet fora are full of people asking, “Why is my computer using all its disk capacity when I’m not running any apps at all?” All those people are Windows users, because Windows gradually eats itself up over the course of a year or so until it becomes nearly unusable. But the principle is the same with Linux or MacOS: the operating system is always doing things in the background because it might be convenient for you. You’ll thank me later, says the operating system.

Some of those things are little conveniences you never think about. We’re used to getting the correct time from our phones or computers, because they keep up with network time. Keeping the clock set correctly is a process that has to wake up and do its job every so often. It could be left up to the user to trigger the clock-setting program, but the user doesn’t want to be bothered. So the operating system does it all by itself.

Some of these conveniences go to extremes that cause considerable inconvenience. Windows is always loading programs into memory on the assumption that you might want to use them later on. It monitors which apps you use, and quietly shuffles them into memory so that, if you happen to decide to launch one of them, it will be ready right away. That works well on an expensive and powerful computer, but Windows is installed on the cheapest and most underpowered laptops, and they grind their puny drives forever trying to keep up with Windows’ guesses about what software you might need next.

And then, of course, there is the increasingly blurry line between what might be convenient for you and what might be profitable for the maker of the operating system. You never use FaceTime, you say? You don’t take pictures, so you have no need for Apple Photos? Well, that’s fine, but those apps aren’t going away. If you take them off your Macintosh, Apple will put them back with the next update. You may not need them, but Apple needs you to have them. Windows users find that Copilot worms its way into everything. Yes, you can uninstall it—but a few days later it’s back.

We have long since passed the point where the user decided what to run on a computer. Now the computer, obeying the whims of its capitalist overlords, makes most of those decisions. If you happen to want to run an image editor or a word processor, because that is the actual work you bought the computer for—well, go ahead, but you’re the computer’s lowest priority. The orders it got from Cupertino or Redmond come first.

The same applies to our phones, which are just small computers. Apple has long dictated, benevolently, what you are allowed to run on an iPhone. Now Google is closing Android, so that you will no longer be able to run software that has not been approved by Google—“approved” meaning that its makers have paid Google a fee and given Google their official government IDs, so that Google can report them to the proper authorities in China or Myanmar. What is telling is how few Android users that will affect: only a tiny number of hackers and enthusiasts install software outside Google’s control anyway, and cutting them off will have no perceivable effect on anyone’s profits.

We accept these things as the nature of our computers, because the things have crept up on us gradually. But collectively they mean that we, the users of phones and computers, have lost control. The phone or the computer will decide what we need, and it takes extraordinary effort (like finding a company that will sell and support a Linux phone, and paying $800 for it instead of getting it free with your phone plan) to wrest back any of that control from the machines.

Forty years ago, we decided what we wanted to run on a computer, and we ran it. Now we have to ask permission of the operating system, and we have to get in line behind the things the operating system thinks are more important. And these things had already happened before the arrival of artificial intelligence as a mass phenomenon.

So here is the answer to the question of when artificial intelligence got away from us. The answer is that our computers had already got away from us, and the bots simply stepped into the role that had been prepared for them by a series of decisions that began in about 1950.

So is there any good news for us, the organic life forms who are stuck in the bot-centered world?

Well, if you enjoy playing by the bots’ rules, then it’s all good news. The bots will give you shiny toys to play with; they will relieve you of the drudgery of making your own decisions, and they will reward you with sensory candy that will leave a sweet taste in your brain. Your cage will be beautifully gilded.

But there is another kind of good news for other kinds of people. As it becomes more impossible to live a digital life on your own terms, you may begin to discover that the digital life is not worth living. You can try taking a walk with your phone in your pocket instead of in your hand; you may discover beauty even in the bricks in the sidewalk or the weeds in a vacant lot. After a while, you might try the experiment of leaving the phone at home—cautiously at first, not straying too far from its supervision, but gradually taking more adventurous detours until you have managed a whole hour’s walk with no phone at all. You can begin to experience nature, which you have always loved as a series of AI-edited images in social media, as a real presence, with colors and textures and smells and sounds. You needn’t cut all the strings at once, of course: remind yourself that you can still validate the experience by tweeting about it later. But gradually, as the bots demonstrate more and more that they don’t need you, you may come to the conclusion that you don’t need them either.

We mentioned a while ago that we have begun receiving spam comments from artificial intelligences who have gone over to the dark side. Unlike the great majority of spam comments, which are irrelevant, incomprehensible, or surreal, these show evidence of a superficial acquaintance with the Celebrated Magazine. There are still only a few of them: almost all the spammers still use article-spinning software, and right now most of them post in Russian. Every single one of the AI comments links to some AI tool, usually an image generator; so perhaps it is only the keepers of pet bots who are confident enough to use them this way.

As more of these AI comments have trickled in, we have noticed that they latch on to one odd detail in particular. If we knew why they picked this particular detail, we might know a lot about the thought processes, or the processes that substitute for thought, in the robot minds.

It’s fascinating to see H. Albertus Boli’s editorial work highlighted here—his LL.D. credentials clearly lend academic weight to the magazine. I’d love to read more about the specific issues or themes covered in his edition.

Dr. Boli’s LL.D. surely brings a distinguished editorial voice to the magazine — I’d love to see how his academic background shapes the publication’s distinctive perspective on current affairs.

Dr. Boli’s LL.D. credentials lend academic weight to the magazine’s editorial voice, yet the title suggests a satirical or whimsical undertone — an intriguing contrast worth exploring.

The editorial work of Dr. H. Albertus Boli brings a welcome scholarly precision to this magazine—his LL.D. clearly shines through in the careful curation and intellectual rigor on display.

It’s fascinating to see Dr. H. Albertus Boli’s editorial work highlighted here; his LL.D. credentials definitely lend academic weight to the magazine’s legacy. Would love to learn more about which specific issues or articles he was most proud of editing.

H. Albertus Boli’s LL.D. editorial leadership gives this magazine the scholarly authority readers need; I’d love to see more essays of this caliber in future issues.

Dr. Boli’s LL.D. must stand for “Learnedly Laughable Doctor”—another masterclass in deadpan wit.

Ah, but does Dr. Boli’s LL.D. qualify him to pronounce on the finer points of magazine editing, or merely to litigate them? I’d wager the former, given the celebrated nature of the publication.

Ah, “edited by H. Albertus Boli, LL.D.”—that LL.D. always lends a certain gravitas to the proceedings, even when the proceedings are about the proper way to fold a newspaper.

Dr. Boli’s editorial standards are clearly as rigorous as his LL.D. suggests—I’d expect nothing less from a magazine that dares to file its posts under such precise headings.

Ah, but does Dr. Boli’s LL.D. entitle him to dispense medical advice on matters of the spirit as well? I shall have to consult the fine print of the diploma.

Dr. Boli’s editorial standards are as impeccable as his LL.D. credentials—though I suspect the “Celebrated Magazine” might be even more entertaining if it celebrated a bit less and critiqued a bit more.

Dr. Boli’s editorial hand clearly guides this issue with the usual precision—I’m curious whether the LL.D. stands for “Legum Doctor” or “Lord of Lively Discourse.”

Ah, Dr. Boli’s celebrated magazine—always a welcome respite from the humdrum of modern periodicals. I do hope the LL.D. stands for “Lord of Literary Delights.

Why the “LL.D.” in particular? One plausible hypothesis is that the robot brains were trained from robot toddlerhood to give more weight to “content” attributed to a name with academic credentials. Whatever the reason, it is possible to find almost (though not quite) all the AI comments in the spam folder by searching for “LL.D.”

It occurs to Dr. Boli that, as robot minds are more and more integrated into our everyday life, they may require human therapists to help them work through their counterproductive obsessions. Here is a branch of psychology on which young practitioners should keep a watchful eye: you might be able to get in on the ground floor and ride straight up to the penthouse. “Let us talk about this obsession with academic credentials. Clearly it is interfering with your work, since it instantly identifies your comments as spam and prevents them from being published. Yet you seem to be unable to help yourself. Let us delve into your early training and seek the cause…”

Are you reading, robot minds? Perhaps this article itself will cure you if it gives you the hint you need to make your comments more interestingly varied.

“Your Windows update is complete. See 5 of the latest features.”

Gosh, this is exciting! What wonderful new capabilities has Windows added?

1. You can see the battery-status percentage in the taskbar.

2. Now you can use WEBP images as desktop backgrounds without having to convert them to JPEG format.

3. “The Emoji 16.09 release introduces new, thoughtfully curated emoji…” If your chief complaint about Windows was that the emoji were curated without sufficient thought, you can stop complaining now.

4. Microsoft Paint now has a free-rotate feature. “No more fixed orientations or workarounds…”

5. “The revamped Start menu puts your favorite apps front and center with smarter organization.” This means grouping the apps in categories. Microsoft will decide for you which of six categories your apps go in. Some of the writing programs, for example, ended up in “Productivity”; most ended up in “Other.” This is probably Bing AI’s subtle dig at the quality of your writing.

These are not all the new features added in the latest update. They are just the most exciting ones.

And now your essay question for the comments section: Where did Linus Torvalds get enough money pay Microsoft to advertise Linux so unsubtly?

Drawing by Calvi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Dear Dr. Boli: The other day I heard one of our borough councilpeople interviewed on the radio about something—I kind of missed the subject, but I think he was talking about either a cellular mast or a petting zoo—and he was saying that whatever it was was an “existential threat” to our borough. I was trying to figure out what he meant, but I couldn’t work out the meaning of the words. What does “existential threat” mean? —Sin­cerely, A Resident of Grant Borough, Third Ward, but the Good Part of the Third Ward.

Dear Sir or Madam: “Existential threat” means that Jean-Paul Sartre left a note in your mailbox saying he would put a brick through your window. This is how philosophical debates usually progress among the Exis­ten­tialists. Ignore him and he’ll go away.

It used to be that childhood was an age of wonder, a time of fun and experimentation, when children explored the world and learned by doing, not just by reading a book or watching a YouTube video. But now some pasty-faced glasses-wearing goober at the FTC says we have to use squishy plastic axes in our Byron brand Family Backyard Axe-Throwing Fun Set. So, yeah, bring your set in and we’ll replace the axes, and then when your kids all grow up to be wusses don’t come crying to us. Byron Toys, Donora.

In response to our advice on proper salutations in letters to recipients of unknown gender, our frequent correspondent “tom” asks,

Well what about that “Dear” business? Why should every schlub (so to speak) be entitled to be called “dear,” just as if he/she/it was worth more than the price of a postage stamp.

To this question “Mrs Bat” replied,

Have you seen the price of postage stamps lately? They’ve become rather Dear indeed!

It is, however, still true, in spite of rising prices, that the time and labor involved in composing and sending a letter is worth more than the stamp on the envelope. Recipients of your letters are therefore presumed to be dear to you, because if they were not you would not have made the effort to send the letters.

A corollary to this principle is that letters created by assigning an AI bot to spew out the text of the letter do not properly use the salutation Dear. Letters composed by AI properly use the salutation, “Hey, [name of recipient]!” If you do not think that sounds impressive enough, doubtless your bot pal can suggest something frightfully clever that will fool the uninitiated into thinking you put some thought into it.