That’s a disconcerting image, Mr Robot
I went to the dentist today for the first time in…let’s just say, a very long time. For those who haven’t been Chez Weasel from the beginning, I had my entire mouthful of old bridgework replaced with shiny implants right before I left the States. The most important thing to me: they don’t come out of my head at night.
Anyhow, they haven’t given me any trouble, so I decided just to ignore them. Like, forever.
I’ve been getting headaches, though, so I thought it would be worth checking out. One exam and three x-rays later and…everything’s fine. Bone looks healthy, no erosion. I’m good. He said come back in two years.
Incidentally, there is such a thing as an NHS dentist, but you’ll apparently never get on the list. Everyone sticks their hands in their pockets for tooth work.
Next week – let’s see if a massage will shift these headaches!
April 2, 2026 — 5:03 pm
Comments: 4
AI isn’t the only one to hallucinate
Behold the two big fat simplified Chinese characters that Google OCR dropped in the middle of the page of the Victorian history book I’m working on. They were about that size, too.
Google Translate tells me it means “Lulu” – but of course it doesn’t mean anything. It’s pure glitch.
I asked ChatGPT to explain and it said modern OCR is trained on a multilingual character set and isn’t smart enough to stick with Roman characters. It saw a shadow or pattern I can’t see and dropped a character in. And once it’s farted one out, it said it’s not uncommon for OCR to repeat the character.
Google OCR has a little AI-sauce mixed in – which is one of the reasons its OCR is so clean – but not enough to know there wouldn’t be two big fat Chinese characters in the middle of an English history book.
This stuff isn’t taking anybody’s job yet. Managers who are firing on that basis are kidding themselves (or using it as an excuse).
April 1, 2026 — 6:01 pm
Comments: 4