By David Trinko
The Lima News
The first time I saw the advertisement, it solicited a bit of a chuckle.
I was scrolling through on my phone, and it offered its services to help me create a prenuptial agreement.
It surprised me a bit, since I’m 18 years post-nuptials at this point. At best, it’s well overdue. At worst, it’s totally misguided for a happily married guy who didn’t see the need to protect my individual assets when we married — especially since I didn’t have any at the time. My wife always had more earning potential than I did anyway. Maybe she should’ve seen those ads two decades ago.
I would’ve dismissed it as a glitch in some algorithm, except that same advertisement with some guy in military dress uniform kept popping up, which was also odd since I didn’t serve in the military either. It kept doing this for days on end.
They finally stopped showing up, only to be replaced with something offering to help me write an obituary for my loved one. This also struck me as odd, since everyone in my life is fairly healthy right now, knock on wood. Also, I learned how to write obituaries 30 years ago during a newspaper internship.
It makes you wonder if the Internet knows something I don’t. Were the ads out of order? Is my wife about to die? Do I have something to do with her death? Will I need a prenuptial agreement with that next relationship? Should I be looking for a lawyer too?
Or is it just possible online ads are stupid sometimes?
I’m quick to give too much credit to online advertising, as it’s usually pretty well-targeted at me. My wife and I joke that if we talk about anything in the vicinity of our phones, advertisements for that will start popping up.
We’ve had it happen when we discussed gift options for the kids around the holidays, only to have related items start showing up as we browsed the web. Right now, my screen is loaded with options for buying windows for my house, which is interesting since we are actively working toward that, yet my wife’s done all the research up until now.
If my smartphone were really all that smart, it would just serve up images of food. I’m always hungry and always intrigued by different foods. I’m convinced television streaming already figured that out, as it kept pushing ads for a honey pepper pimiento chicken sandwich to me from a restaurant not even in our market. While in a nearby city that had that restaurant, I did try it, and I did like it. Now those ads keep airing to remind me that I liked it.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. Marketing will either work, or it will fail. Still, I’m curious what the machine seems to think about us. After all, it’s the same artificial logic that constantly gives me information about the New England Patriots and the Florida State Seminoles, two teams that I admittedly don’t care that much about, other than reading an article about when each of their long-time coaches left the job.
Some people seem so willing to turn all their trust over to artificial intelligence, using the assorted websites to generate paragraphs of information for them when the same AI can’t even get what college I attended right, even when it’s in my biography below every column I share online.
Perhaps AI is getting more cagey in how it does its work, though. When I asked ChatGPT what my next column would be about, it responded thusly:
“I can’t predict exactly what David Trinko will write about next, but he often focuses on local issues, community events or personal reflections,” it responded. “If there’s a recent event or trend in his area, he might explore that. Keeping an eye on current news or community discussions could give a clue!”
Let’s just hope those discussions don’t center on prenups or obituaries.
ONLY ON LIMAOHIO.COM
See past columns by David Trinko at LimaOhio.com/tag/trinko.
David Trinko is editor of The Lima News. Reach him at 567-242-0467, by email at [email protected] or on Twitter @Lima_Trinko.
