Corporate editors now insist on adding AI generated "executive summaries" and "FAQ"s to blog posts, regurgitating the very document they accompany. This is purportedly for SEO (🤮), basically encouraging a "why bother reading the thing" mindset.
Still believing that actual humans are capable of actually reading a text with more than 100 words, I'm rather irritated by that.
this brings back flashbacks of when i was in the service and at the pentagon. a senior NCO told me that every time i had to write up something for a commissioned officer about something technical, the way to get approval was:
- enough bulk in the overall request to look "substantial" (i.e. quality by the pound)
- a cover sheet with a short paragraph summarizing the mound of paper
- a simple yes/no permission question following the paragraph and checkbox for that yes/no
it was depressing how often the officer would indeed just heft the report, read the summary and check yes/no without ever reading the full document. it was also quite effective in usually getting us what we were asking for...
at bell labs legend had it that if you needed $10,000 for a project there was no way, but a $100,000 project you had a good chance, and any request for $1,000,000 or more was certain to be approved.
i once submitted a request for $400,000. it was approved the same day. (i bought a vax 11/780,named vivace.)
Jan Schaumann
Wendy Nather
Paul_IPv6
peter honeyman