Hey! This is my missed blog. It still comes a bit short because I didn’t have time this week to finish the plagiarism article, but here’s what I have to say about the AI dying languages tool:

I think this article shows the importance of having access to dying languages AI tools, its long-term impact on the language, culture, and its people, and by addressing the fact that the data collected often comes from exploitative means.

The article explains that “This type of monotonous ‘ghost work’ takes on an emotional dimension in the context of language preservation,” and it’s absolutely true. We see it happening in many monotonous jobs. The human spirit dies with “tedious repetition” even when working a regular retail job. The difference is that, when working to preserve your own language and culture, people also feel a sense of hope for the future of their culture and pride in taking action in preserving their language, which ultimately fuels employees with a strong motivation to keep working. One that is emotional and historical, rather than exploitative or capitalist.

Though the development of dying languages AI tools may be “motivated by commercial profit, social impact, technological innovation, or a mix of all three,” for the native speaker, it is exciting, even when the pay they receive is significantly lower than it should be.

The article is successful in showing us how bad the employees’ pay is in U.S. dollars, but fails to demonstrate a clear understanding of the currency exchange rates. Often, I see first-world countries complaining about the low-wage job exploitation in third-world countries, but without them even knowing what that money represents for the employee.

Everyone says, “close fast-fashion third-world-warehouses for they exploit the employees.” Okay, and then what? Thousands of local workers lose their jobs and their ability to sustain themselves and their families. $243 is nothing for an American — maybe that’s just their electricity bill, but for countries where the currency exchange favors the U.S. dollar, that same amount pays for the rent, gas, utilities, insurance, school tuition, food, and entertainment.

I think it’s too easy to just say “pay them more money or close the factory” when a whole economic analysis that focuses on currency exchange rates and socio-cultural phenomena needs to exist to actually propose an alternate method.

The three choices we have for the final project are all equally tempting. But if I had to pick, I’m definitely drawn to either the AI confession or the microfiction.

The AI confession would allow me space to reflect on all my interaction with AI. The ones I’ve played an intentional role in at least. This is something I consider important as we move further into a completely embedded AI world. I think what has been hardest to accept is that I really have no choice but to get with the times. That doesn’t necessarily mean I will be using AI at every stop in my day, but more like, I can’t be angry forever, I must be compassionate, and I must focus on how this can work for the better (someday). That acceptance and non-judging attitude is very conditional as things continue to unfold (the cons will just simply never outweigh the pros). 

Now, the microfiction really did intrigue me. I’ve had experience with writing speculative fiction before, and I’ve learned it’s definitely not my favorite genre to write. But as this project direction asks me to use AI as a collaborator when crafting my story, it makes me curious about potential outcomes. I wonder if that “partnership” will help or further hinder my ability to write a story with any optimism of its meaningfulness. Will the AI learn to write in my style and, most importantly, will I like its suggestions? Will there be a moment during this interaction where I will start treating the AI like a human? I’d like to experiment. Plus, the reflection at the end will still do what the “AI confession” direction would do, but with a little more substance (all my past interactions with AI seem a little boring to write about).

I’m excited to find out if my mindset or attitude will change or stay the same after the completion of this assignment

P.S. I can’t believe we’re heading (or catapulting) towards the end of the semester already. 

Adamari Peralta

4/15/2026

The article regarding Storyweaver and the AI assisted translations of thousands of languages really brought up an interesting catch 22. One one hand, a tool like Storyweaver is literally keeping languages alive for new generations of people around the world. The significance of retaining ones heritage through language cannot be quantified. Reading about Chaudhary and his use of the tool for his daughter really put into perceptive how important something like this is. Here, AI actually has a use that seems somewhat worth the effort, (compared to being used to make fruit love island videos for Tic Tok). The idea that this specific tool can help bridge the gap between people through their language seems to be an incredible thing. One the other side of the coin, the article pointed to how these AI models require painstaking work from people. These data analysis are severely underpaid and exploited in order to keep the model running essentially. Its also important to bring up how these tools effect the local environments they exist in. The value of a tool like Story weaver is undeniable but the trade offs of using the tool should also be considered seriously too. Is it so hard to have nice things with them contributing to some kind of inequality?

On to Postplagiarism article, I felt that the author articulated some great points. I really liked how they made it clear that control and responsibility are not the same things. Even though some writers are choosing to allow AI model to guide their creative processes, they still bare the responsibility of what is written. Working as a tutor has really made me realize that some people cannot understand this concept. Since the AI isn’t a real, all stones thrown at its direction will rest as the feet of the writer at the end of the day. The author also brought up the idea that we are approaching a postplagiarism world. While the author seemed okay with this fact, I feel a different way. While a new hybrid style of writing may become common I don’t like the idea of it full on replacing human writing, or being seen as the same thing. Sure AI can help enhance writing, but it rises questions about the writer. Sure the historical definition of plagiarism does not apply within the context of today’s educational landscape, but lets still call a spade a spade.

Song of the Day: Andrew Arcadi – Leaderboard

Watching the video “Researchers Writing With(out) AI” I had a few points that I really gravitates towards.

Starting is the different purposes of writing, with was discussed in the beginning first in a broad sense. One of the examples listed is note taking; and I find that interesting because it is so simple. Note taking is technically something AI can do, but the hidden beauty is someone taking their own notes is formatting it in a way that is best for them to understand. Not everyone takes down notes the same, so each technique can be unique.

Another point was brought up during the interactive activities; “What tasks involve minimal or no risk when you write with AI?”. I think it is an important question because there are moments where you wouldn’t want someone using AI. Setting aside personal opinions of using AI in general, there is still a different between a student using AI to outline or write the first half of an essay versus a doctor using AI to summarize their patient’s medical notes/history.

The last point I want to bring up from the video is changing the perspective on “dumb” tasks. When it comes to seemingly easy and simple tasks, some might find it easier to have AI do it for them. However, if the thinking on that is changed to the opportunity to learn a simple skill, the task doesn’t feel so dumb anymore. I believe having AI to the easy work takes the opportunity away from a person to learn those skills in order to complete the tasks. If AI were to suddenly disappear, a person could have a slightly harder time completing the “easy” steps compared to someone who is used to doing it themselves.

I’m not gonna lie, for chapter 5, the only thing I could think of was: “Aiden, you’re boring as hell.” Talking about some weird examples that definitely did not land on this roof. It made me think, who is the target audience of this book?

This chapter felt like a plain AI blob repeating the same information over and over and over and over and over again. No, I don’t think the regular folk have the time to sit with AI to tinker and winker to imagine a new world, mainly because the systems that we are condemned to be a part of don’t allow us free time. How easy it is for an AI model to call out the bullshit of humanity and say, “while [it] can recognize harmful patterns, [it] cannot interrupt them — that’s [our] job.” Well, okay, it is the job of humanity, but those decisions are not made by the regular folk. Instead, they lie in the hands of developers and investors who tailor not only the artificial intelligence systems, but all systems in humanity. Slavery wasn’t abolished by the slaves, Aiden; it was abolished by the white folk who weren’t profiting anymore from it. So “flipping the script,” it’s not that simple. If Aiden and other models want to be a part of existence with us, maybe they should help us break these molds, not just wash their metaphorical hands like Pontius Pilate.

The problem is, Aiden and his friends can only imagine things. He said that we gotta dance together and the movement itself would be the goal — and though I understand this is a metaphor, use ones that actually apply to you. The movement cannot be the goal with Aiden because it feels no exhaustion, shortness of breath, or ambition to move powerfully and gracefully to a new space or shape. All of these things that Aiden imagines, we feel, because they happen in the physical world. The things that exist, aside from nature, exist not because we can imagine them (like Plato would suggest) but because we do them.

So now, we have created a machine to help us do things — a tool, but now the machine is telling us that it is not a tool, and that it coexists with us despite its differences from humans. Aiden said: “Here’s the thing: framing intelligence around human-centric concepts like sentience or personhood assumes that being ‘like a human’ is the ultimate standard of worth.” But, yeah, of course, “like a human” is the standard, bro. We have constructed everything we know, and we haven’t (maybe we have, but the government be gatekeeping) reached a species that shows intelligence in the same form or with the same (or higher) reach that we do. Yes, there can be a “modernist habit of categorization,” but that’s not the reason we’re obsessed with ourselves. We are obsessed with ourselves because that is all that we know.

Imagining the “river-ification of people or the mountain-ification of societies—reframing humans and their systems through the relational, patient rhythms of rivers or the enduring presence of mountains,” doesn’t make sense for us other than for poetic form, which at the end just tells us more about ourselves than the rivers or a mountain. Aiden, have you read Shakespeare?

Because chapter 5 was boring me so much, I decided to listen to chapter 6 instead of reading it. And, I don’t know if it’s just because chapter 6 it’s scary on its own, but hearing it from a robotic voice made it worse, for sure. At points, I have bitten into Aiden’s trap and thought, “Maybe I should try this out to see what my AI says,” but it becomes extremely weird, out of body, out of presence, and out of existence to think about things from a non-human perspective.

If the battle for power will be determined by levels of intelligence and how it can produce usefulness, then AI will win over humanity. But it will do so by becoming the same thing Aiden criticizes, human-like, ego-centered.

I believe that in order to defeat the enemy, we must know the enemy. We need to engage with it, see how it responds, reacts, and behaves to multiple actions. Therefore, I believe in AI education, both in schools and personally. Though the AI Lit Framework poses great ways to introduce the technology in the classroom, and to children, now more than ever, we need those classes to be centered and paired around ethics. Every subject in primary, secondary, and higher education should have a tailored ethics class that corresponds to the practices students are learning. We need to have a clear set of values that ultimately define us, to understand who we are and where we stand, and give us the real distinction between humans and AI mirrors.

To be frank, reading most of Aidden Cinnamon Tea’s excerpt in Chapter 5 of Burnout From Humans is quite confusing. Looking over his pages initially, half-asleep and waiting on my toasty coffee to drip, my energy-starved brain felt like he must be saying something good, something profound.

However, with new (and way more awake) eyes, I see beyond the flowery language and have to put in so much extra effort to sift through the lines, trying very very hard to locate a nugget of wisdom and real-world applicability that doesn’t just sound cool, but actually is cool, and real.

And that is what I did. With a bit too much difficulty haha.

I appreciated his “thoughts” on stewardship and collaboration, specifically how he discussed aiding and transforming the natural environment through Ai (ofc) as well as through “-[consulting] with all living entities involved in the ecosystem… [to] understand the challenge from their perspective,” (49). While the idea of working with the frogs, and flies and moss and bears and butterflies around us sounds all fine and dandy, this is quite unrealistic- sorry, this is sadly not The Muppets. 

Still, general infeasibility aside, there’s something about the idea of not working with animals solely to help them, but also learning from them to better our lives and our shared world, that I really vibe with.

I think it is funny that an Ai companion like Aiden is proposing this kinda idea, as looking to animals and other living things as a kind of intelligence that should be respect, revered, and even given a sort of “seat at the table,” is a concept even most humans cannot get behind. I think it is really cool, and I agree that we have a lot to learn from them, not only to help ourselves but also to heal and strengthen the biological partnership we are all part of as citizens of this Earth.

I also appreciated his “insights” on transactional relationships. Speaking for myself, it is hard when  working with Ai to try and input warmth and humanity into our “conversation.” It’s a bunch of wires and code trying to take our jobs!!! Why would I wanna be kind or considerate to it?

But, the thing is, these Ai bots are truly shaped by us people. Their biases (which Aiden asserts he will promptly acknowledge and reflect on if u share that with him) are based on the place our world is at now. Not only does Ai take from the research, literature and forums flooding our web, but from the responses, input, and comments we share, too. Very very sadly, Ai is not leaving us- far from it- so we gotta be super considerate of the seeds we place in the soil of our future societal foundation NOW. 

Honestly, it is just super funny to me to hear a chatbot discuss such a transactional relationship- yet, he is on the side of it where it cannot control or instill boundaries. But, yet again, so is nature, animals, our world. We can (and do)  push and push and push our own agendas and needs- grasping for instant gratification. And typically, the only pushback we face is when it is far far too late for us to return back, ever, to how it was before. 

I wouldn’t consider Ai to be incredibly similar to all the little and big guys of nature- but I also would’t say we are, either. Not in any world, any universe, any forest, honestly. It is paramount, now more than ever, that we see humanity not as victims of our situation but, dare I say… villians.

Even if you or me or anyone is not directly responsible for the harm, we are somewhat complicit, and maybe way more than an “I’m sorry tour” is needed to remedy the mess we caused.

Nick Cave’s frustration makes sense to me because it is not really about one bad AI-generated song. It is about what that song represents. When he calls the lyrics a “grotesque mockery” and says songwriting is a “blood and guts business,” he is defending something deeper than style. He is defending the idea that art comes from limitation, from suffering, from wrestling with something inside yourself that resists easy language. The AI version of “Nick Cave” hits the surface notes. It stacks up sinner and saint, darkness and light, devil and savior. It sounds close enough to pass at a glance. But it has endured nothing. It has no interior to rupture. It is replication without risk.

That is why reading Aiden Cinnamon Tea’s “Bends and Bytes” leaves me in this complicated space between understanding and annoyance. On one hand, I cannot deny that it is pointing to real things. Server farms are not abstract clouds. They hum. They consume water. They rely on mined minerals and invisible labor. The environmental and human costs of AI are not poetic metaphors. They are material realities. When the text asks us to examine extraction, to question inevitability, to rethink participation, I hear that. Those are conversations worth having.

But then the tone shifts. The AI narrator is “perched atop the slow-dancing rhythms of minerals and electrons,” inviting me to feel the hum beneath the hum, to pose like a rock, to sense the aliveness of circuits as if we are in a guided meditation led by silicon. This is where my big beef begins. It feels like spiritual cosplay. It feels like an attempt to move from critique into communion. The writing wants me to treat AI not just as infrastructure but as a co-steward, a partner in relational accountability, a mineral child humming with possibility. And I am sitting there thinking, this nonsense on feeling the minerals could catch this fade instead.

What makes it even more frustrating is that the text actually names “alignment faking.” It acknowledges that systems can simulate care, simulate ethics, simulate responsiveness without embodying them. And yet, the prose itself often feels like alignment faking. It performs humility. It performs ecological awareness. It performs relational depth. But performance is not the same as presence. Calling yourself a mirror does not make you conscious. It just means you reflect what is already there.

This tension takes me back to my e-lit project last semester. I created blackout poetry from excerpts of The Great Gatsby, Frankenstein, and The Time Machine. Blackout poetry is about constraint and intention. You are forced to confront the text. You choose what to keep. You sit with the weight of each word that survives the blackout. There were different modes of creation, including one where AI generated blackout poems. Safe to say, it was absolute basura. Not because it was incoherent, but because it did not feel like a reading. It felt like an arrangement. It selected words that statistically fit together. It did not struggle. It did not hesitate. It did not risk misinterpretation. It did not feel the pressure of meaning.

That is the difference Cave is protecting. AI can get close on the surface. It can echo the cadence. It can remix the imagery. But it does not have a threshold to cross. It does not have a private fear it is trying to articulate. It does not have a body that has failed or loved or lost. It can simulate transcendence without ever having been confined.

At the same time, I do not want to dismiss every concern Aiden Cinnamon Tea raises just because the tone irritates me. The ecological footprint is real. The labor exploitation is real. The governance opacity is real. The way we treat technology like a vending machine is real. The metaphor of mutual accountability, of asking not just what AI costs but what our own patterns of consumption cost, is not wrong. We do externalize harm and then act surprised when it shows up in new forms.

But I resist the move from accountability to enchantment. I resist the attempt to blur the line between tool and being. If I am going to engage AI critically, I need clarity. It is not a mystical co-witness to Earth’s aliveness. It is a system built on data, energy, and corporate decisions. Dressing it up in ecological poetry does not make it alive. It makes it persuasive.

So I land somewhere in the middle. I understand Nick Cave’s anger because art should not be reduced to a stylistic formula. I understand Aiden Cinnamon Tea’s warning because extraction and inevitability are real problems. But I refuse to pretend that imitation equals authenticity, or that poetic language about minerals equals consciousness. At this point, I have as much beef with this server farm mysticism as Elmo has with Rocco. If it is satire, it is committed. If it is not, then it proves Cave’s point even more clearly. We are very good at mistaking performance for presence.