We Don't Count Fingers Here

I have a day job at a Big Evil Financial Company. I do things there. They often feel irrelevant, but I'm paid for them regardless. I'm overpaid for my social value and I know that. I'm not a teacher or a nurse or someone that does real or important things or things that actually make people's lives better or make people happier. If I do anything (and I'm not always sure that I do much at all), I read, I write, I analyze, and I present things. Those are my skills, limited though they are. But my company, my industry, and most of the corporate world writ large, are pushing to automate those exact things with AI.

It's not a shock, admittedly. Generative AI has been coming for all kinds of white-collar industries for years now. And what a joy for the everyday manager! You would ordinarily ask a subordinate to find you a metaphorical rock. It might take them days to think about that rock, study the rock, build the rock, polish the rock. Now, your AI system finds a rock in seconds! What a relief! What a cost-saving!

But there's the problem. You, the manager might have a detailed and nuanced understanding of what rock is best for the moment, for the situation or the circumstance. That's the manager's value. It's indispensable to the bigger boss. But then again, your subordinate thought they were indispensable too Why can't the big boss put the same AI prompt in to get the same rock and cut you out of the loop too? To the hierarchy above you, you're just as expendable as those folks below you.

This problem has already impacted the sports media landscape. Have you heard of Data Skrive? It's a program used by ESPN and the like that spins out a game recap article by AI within seconds of the final buzzer. Is it always right? Sort of, I guess? Does it capture the import, the value, the resonance of a game? Not really, not at all. But dammit, it's fast as hell and doesn't have those pesky humans involved. Even if it strips everything about why we watch sports, even if it turns the event into nothing more than a gambling result, you can't deny that it is quick as hell.

What we're doing here at this strange little island in the online sports landscape, what you're doing here as well, it's subversive and revolutionary. It might feel normal to you. And it should feel like a normal thing! Talking sports and talking shit with fellow good-natured weirdos from around the country is the best thing. It's the same as chatting with the person on the barstool next to you, striking up conversation with someone that you ordinarily wouldn't, finding perspectives that you wouldn't see, hearing about fandoms that you would never hear from. It's a fantastic and wonderful thing that we have here. But it's not normal.

So much of the sports universe is trying to cash in on you. They want your money, your eyeballs, your attention. They want your DraftFanKingDuel bets and your daily fantasy picks. They want your attention and your banner ad clicks. Even the World Wide Leader of Sports, with the bajillions of Disney dollars behind it, has the same bullshit clickbait links at the bottom of every page, just like everyone else. It's a shell game. The prize isn't under any of the shells. They want you to peek under every one of the shells in earnest, though. We're the sucker. We're the mark.

As an identifier, it's admittedly not as useful as it once was. But for a time, it was easier to call out the AI-generated slop by counting the human figure's fingers. Fingers are complicated and the AI slop couldn't fully replicate the idea of the human hand. AI-generated content would invariably have an extra thumb, a bonus bogus forefinger, or too many hands altogether. Even now, AI can't always regenerate five fingers in a normal, totally believable way. It signifies that whatever you're looking at, it's probably bullshit and fake.

We don't pretend that we're making art here. We're not reporters or sportswriters or anything like that. But we're also not counting fingers and we don't want you to count fingers here either. We're not AI. We don't use it for the stuff we write and we won't ever make you question whether we do.

Our previews, our recaps, our retrospectives are just us making bad predictions and worse jokes on our lunch break. In that large landscape of sports media, we're so goddamn small. But we'll never make you count fingers.