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At this point in humanity we find ourselves increasingly being crowded out by Artificial Intelligence or at least what masquerades as being “intelligent” when it often isn’t. If you look around on various review websites for movies, music or television shows it’s not hard to spot when AI has been fed a topic and ordered to churn out a piece of text for content. There’s a lack of soul in it. The subtle nuances of humor, the off-topic references to other things, the use of puns or alliteration, it’s all lost on a bot that has been trained how to write by digesting millions of articles and averaging out the results. The only way to make it interesting is to have a human guide the AI’s hand, which is very telling in itself. It’s a bleak future we are barreling toward at full speed.

I think you can already guess where I’m going with this (because you’re not a bot). When machines can write reviews for outlets, the worth of reviews is degraded for both the authors and the readers. You may or may not agree with my take on Cardi B, but the fact that a lot of people wrote to me about it proves that having an interesting opinion about music still matters. It’s worth engaging with people who can respond to you with their reasoning behind a review, which is something ChatGPT or any similar service is never going to be able to do. It also means something when an album gets a very high score and there’s more to the review than “it’s good.” What about it is good? Is that review based on what the collective hive mind thinks or is it based on what the writer thinks will stand the test of time years or decades after writing it? Bots can’t duplicate that. AI can’t replicate that.

If you value real words and real reviews written by real human beings and not AI mimicking human intelligence badly, please consider supporting RapReviews with your pledge of any amount. $5 a month would be a great place to start. It’s less than you’d spend getting a robot to churn out bad reviews that would never actually lead to you being able to make an informed decision about what to buy or listen to. If we endeavor to do anything on this website it’s to give you information from real human beings meant for other human beings. None of us are robots or wanted to be treated like them. Trade one overpriced cup of coffee a month for something that will perk you up all year long. Thank you!