How do I teach an AI that doesn’t want to learn?

I’m sick of hearing about AI’s multiple talents.

Yes, it can interpret voice commands, show you some sass while you sit on your couch on a weeknight all by your lonely self, it can probably fly you a good chunk of halfway around the world in a modern aircraft.

You know what it can’t do and what really pisses me off about AI? It can’t take a hint if it has not been taught to take a hint.

Yes, recommendation engines like Spotify and search are fantastic when they work (which happens around 99% of the time — don’t ask for citation. I’m venting and probably inventing (data), go do your fact-finding on a newspaper website).

It is that pesky 1% of the time when, despite repeated attempts to teach it to remove something from my timeline because I. Simply. Don’t. Give. A. Fuck. About. That. Topic. Any. More, it refuses to learn.

So what happened?

Last year, I came across this Medium writer, philosopher, hack, goody-two-shoes named Umair Haque who writes his miles-long think pieces in a publication called Eudaimonia — it’s some sort of old Greek word meaning “I love to vomit philosophy by the pound”.

I’m not linking to his publication because that’s just mean in two ways — to him because he’ll see all these referral links to his page from an article which is going to take a giant dump on him. And to you because you might end up reading one of his articles and be tempted to…