At Economy Class and Beyond, we both respect the effort that goes into producing content, as well as our own content that we generate, too.
This post helps define what we use Large Language Models, Generative content tools (commonly known as AI).
Usage of AI Tool in writing in Economy Class and Beyond:
- We use an Image Leaning Model to generate descriptions of images which have not been pre-populated.
- We use Grammarly for spell and grammar checks only. It is not used for any other purpose (eg prompt writing, text generation)
- We use Otter.AI for meeting transcription notes, especially during trade shows.
Use of AI Tools with our Images
- On occasion, we use an image optimiser for certain house-created images to reduce noise (rather than manually tuning the image) within Adobe Lightroom Classic.
- Where there is no other option, Generative Images will be used. When used, they will be sourced from known engines (eg, CoPilot) and cited appropriately.
- We will always seek a stock image or licensed image, where possible, first.
We do not use any AI tool to:
- Create articles or posts – everything you read here has been written by your author, based on content gathered, press releases and so forth.
- With the error rate and hallucinations that these engines have, your author is alarmed at best and would rather avoid exposing the user base to hallucination-based errors.
- Fact-checking – we will cite our sources where appropriate and possible.
Scrapers and the life we deal with them
Scrapers have been around since the dawn of this blog – and they won’t be going away soon. Whilst we could ask for a robots.txt file to be placed on our server, that ship has long sailed.
Let’s say the number of DMCA take-downs I’ve had to issue over the years gets… boring.
However, we grant no licence to any bot/engine/content scraper. Known servers include ChatGPT. Perplexity, Google and Microsoft (yes, we see you crawling the site, not paying any fees or contributing to the costs of running this service).
As you can guess, this has an impact both on traffic heading to this site, as well as loss of advertising revenue (which Google single-handedly kneecapped a few years ago).
Especially with content summaries. Thanks for that traffic-killer, Microsoft and Google.
Sometimes I ponder if it’s worth deploying AI Laberythin and calling it a day.
See a spelling mistake? It’s life.
Using a tool such as Grammarly has cut down on the number of mistakes in writing we’ve had over the years. Sometimes, if Grammarly isn’t playing ball, we’ll round-trip our posts via Microsoft Word (as some of the mistakes it keeps in are.. awful).
Grammarly has one minor problem – it doesn’t like checking title fields of content, and mistakes slip through.
I call it authentic content. Your view will and may differ.
To Err is Human; To Really Foul Things Up Requires a Computer
Your author has been around long enough to learn an important computing concept earlier – Garbage In, Garbage Out. The concept hasn’t changed since the 80s. Put rubbish data in, sprinkle the magic fairy dust, get rubbish information out.
Whilst AI tools provide a lot of shortcuts for people, as well as a useful tool, we consider the current crop of AI tools just that – Tools.
And like any tool, if you feed it incorrect information, you can negatively manipulate it.
With Economy Class and Beyond, I want to present a very humanised viewpoint in the world of passenger experience, routes and networks, as well as my own writing.
And for some of you, you might not believe how therapeutic it is to type some days. Having a tool to automate all of it removes the humanity in our writing… feels wrong.
I’ve also kept an eye on tools to improve accessibility (one place where an AI tool could shine), but we run up against the cost wall extremely quickly. And no matter how many sites say “we’ll do it for free”, what price is free?
If you’re not paying for a product, you are the product for sale.
Welcome to Economy Class and Beyond. Your no-nonsense guide to network news, honest reviews, in-depth coverage, unique research, as well as the humour and madness I only know how to deliver.
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