On How Marrow Bones Can Kill You

And no, this is not about a reality cook-off show where the cravated judge eats a bone marrow risotto and then dies of a heart attack*

This is the story of a plant in Western Australia that contains a poisonous compound - well there are many - but a plant in the gastrolobium family is especially famous for creating havoc with the colonisers. The names Poison Point, Poison Hill and Poison Swamp are mapped by cattlemen when driving their stock out to the coast to feed in the summertime. They mapped the areas where the gastrolobiums grew and they deliberately kept sheep, cattle and goats away from the beautiful egg and bacon plants.

This plant was later developed by the government and made into a synthetic version of its essence: sodium fluoroacetate or 1080: a biochemical weapon now used to get rid of feral animals such as cats, dogs, pigs and foxes.These animals were driving native fauna into extinction So this pretty little heart-shaped plant became weaponised against the ferals. Most native animals who fed on this plant over millennia were totally immune to its killer effects. This is why it is such a perfect poison for interlopers.

Every few months, a plane flies laps over my place. It is the baiting plane, dropping poisonous baits into the national park that surrounds me. I'm constantly warned by letters that these dried sausage baits full of 1080 are highly attractive to dogs and cats.The last time my dog ate one from the beach below my house, it cost her a general anesthetic and probably several years of her life. Her stomach was pumped out with charcoal and I copped a two thousand dollar bill. It will kill her next time. That is the cost of living next to a national park and with a wandersome old dog who still thinks she is invincible.

Every time I hear the baiting plane droning overhead me, I hate it. I really hate that plane. I know they are doing the right thing but I still hate that plane.

I haven't got to the point about bone marrow and what it has to do with sp.gastrolobium, 1080 and dogs. So bear with me here.

In 1885, a Mr Web wrote to the Australian Advertiser (28/07/1885) about cooking up a bronze wing pigeon for breakfast and giving the dogs the wish bone. "I have just had a valuable dog poisoned by eating the breastbone of a Bronze wing pigeon." The dog had died a terrible death. "I have seen dogs die of arsenic or prussic acid but their sufferings seemed mild compared to that poisoning from the bones of the bronze wing pigeon." He then went onto the idea that the bronze wing pigeons, who feed primarily on the poison bush gastrilobium bilobum, excrete the the poison really quickly from their bodies but store it in their marrow bones. This was one of the original 1080 poisonings and it came from introduced dogs eating the marrow bones of bronze wings.

'A valuable dog' 

 

Show me the money, tech bro

 It's no compliment to know your book has been used to train an AI machine. It feels dismaying, infuriating and gut wrenching.

 'My book has been dismantled, broken up for parts and sold to a wrecking yard.'

'It feels like someone has broken into my house and stolen my stuff.'

'Fucking livid!' 

'Why bother creating anything, if these guys are just gonna steal it for dollars and get away with it?'

'I wanted to vomit when I found out.' 

These are very real responses from Australian authors, as Meta scrapes our books and songs to train their AI Llama3. In January, the world was alerted to Meta's use of pirated copies of books and academic papers. Not long after, The Atlantic published a search option where you could check if your book, song, artwork or academic paper had been scraped by Meta. It's here. One of my books is in there. Fucking Facebook, just like Google, are still being evil.

So ... this week in Australia, the Productivity Commission released a report on 'unlocking the benefits of AI' and suggested that we exclude the Copyright Act for fair dealing with AI companies. 'Fair dealing' means sacrificing our books and songs to the machines. There has been an uproar from creative workers because our government is basically giving a license to mega rich AI companies to steal our books, songs and art without paying us a cent in royalties.

I've had many philosophical conversations recently with artists, writers and academics. We are entering a new age where some creatives are using AI to make really interesting work and others are being pummeled by Copilot's idiotic suggestions and bad memes, while Google's dodgey AI just makes shit up:

(I managed to track down the 'source' of this lie to a 2023 Classics conference where someone gave a paper on Jane Austen, claiming that she considered Wollstonecraft as literary parentage. So, for Google's AI it therefore follows that Wollstonecraft is actually Austen's biological mother.) When accused of lying, the chat bot will come back with the grovelling apology of a problematic drinker. Promises to do better follow.

I teach in areas of English Literature and History. Call me a Luddite but I will die on the hill of arguing that to write an essay or short story is to think through a problem. It is not about getting high distinctions for typing an elegant prompt to ChatGPT. It's about writing through a problem. Mary Wollstonecraft  thought through a problem when she wrote A Vindication for the Rights of Women. Descartes thought through a problem and came up with I think, therefore I am. Both of these thinkers did not need Meta or Copilot to nut out their argument in 2 seconds. Slow work is where great creative breakthroughs happen.

What is happening now feels like a dilution of our brains and our language and it comes at the expense of critical thinking and people who create art, music and literature.

There is hope though, at least in this nook of the woods. Maybe work written by humans will soon be worth more than AI slop. At the moment we are being fleeced by out of control tech billionaires who buy governments and dictate international policy. It's a terrible analogy ... but like free-range, hormone-free chicken, perhaps the product of careful work and thinking can win out in this situation and be worth more.

 The Australian Productivity Commission has proposed to allow big tech companies access to copyrighted Australian content to build their artificial intelligence platforms without compensating creators, like this is a good idea to sell out our national cultural canon! At the moment there are class actions by authors in the US against Meta illegally scraping their books. In Australia, there are no laws yet to prevent this kind of behaviour and the Productivity Commission appears to think it is all cool. So ... crickets.