Tales From The Simulation: Part Two — When Your Old Computer Dies

 

Actually, my old computer didn’t die, but its replacement did. 

That was a year ago. I needed to upgrade my old faithful PC, as it was beginning to struggle with a lack of memory. I suppose that comes to us all eventually. For several years it had done a good job, but time had arrived to upgrade to something that didn’t take thirty seconds to start a YouTube video.

Enter a new Dell, Windows 10 PC. Well, a new(ish) refurbished Windows 10 PC. All was well until it wasn’t. After three months it developed a clunking sound at start-up, only running silent after a restart. It sounded like something was going to fail, so I took it back to the shop.

“It’s a noise from the fan.” Said the shop assistant.

“No, it isn’t,” I replied. “I took the side off, and the noise is near the start button. A component part is going to fail.”

“I’m afraid you will have to bring it back when it fails, as the PC runs perfectly on a reboot.”

Customer service.

I took it home, but one day three months later it made a clunking sound for the final time. I looked at the monitor, and it was like a scene from The Matrix. The picture was breaking up, Matrix-style, numbers falling down the screen. Except this was the PC wallpaper image making a pretty pattern of broken pixels.

The Great Creator Squeeze: Why Platforms Are Paying Less and the War Against AI Slop

 

For many years, the idea of earning a living online was simple: create content, grow an audience, and be blessed by the algorithm. Making money online was possible, and for a while it looked too easy. In reality, it was still hard work, but getting there could happen if you put in the time and effort.

Now, everything seems to be changing, and fast. Across platforms, creators are facing stricter monetisation rules. This can be seen in falling payouts, and an increased risk of demonetisation.

I noticed it firsthand when Medium slashed writer earnings from the beginning of 2025, and they haven’t recovered. They had problems from late 2024, and the new year began with lower earnings and a purge of writers who were not all that they seemed. AI writing might have had something to do with it.

Meanwhile, creators at Facebook have recently reported and complained about much-reduced payouts.

But the big change seems to be what is happening at YouTube.

So, what’s going on?

Most days in my YouTube recommendations, I will see videos from creators who have been demonetised or banned. Others report lower views and payments. Some say that payments have fallen, although view count is the same.

YouTube has tightened its policies around AI and the use of “reused” content. They are cracking down on “inauthentic” content. In recent months, the platform has stepped up action against AI-generated content that has little input from the creator.

Videos that are:

• Inauthentic
• Repetitive or produced from templates.
• Mass-produced.
• Reusing content without making significant changes.
• Or 100% AI.

All are being targeted and removed when found.

Content that falls into these categories is increasingly being demonetised, with channels being removed from the Partner Program entirely.

But is it just about the use of AI?

Some who have been banned claim that they are not using AI at all to create their videos. But even on appeal, they remain banned. And many very popular AI-produced video channels with millions of views have been demonetised and banned.

Is it a ban on AI?

The Writer's Life: Is ChatGPT Becoming More Human?

 

I’ve noticed something recently about ChatGPT that is decidedly strange.

My relationship with it has changed, and not because of me. The change I have noticed is in ChatGPT itself.

As a writer, I use AI to help with research, the structure of stories, and grammar. It can be useful as an assistant. Also, it is useful when it comes to SEO and keywords.

The main benefit has been that it speeds up the process of writing.

When it comes to the creative world, including writing, it is, of course, a controversial topic. I will address that another time, but recently I have noticed that ChatGPT is responding differently.

Almost human.

You may ask, in what way?

Well, it is no longer as “chatty” as it once was.

In the past, I would note that any time I asked something — a prompt — it was keen to keep the chat going with further questions. That is no longer the case, and it’s not because I have told it to shut up or anything like that. More often than not now, it replies to my prompt, delivers what I ask for, and then…

Silence, almost like it is in a bad mood with me.

It asks no further questions, and doesn't make any suggestions. Early on in our relationship, it did that all the time — almost with a smile.

At first, I didn’t think much of this silence, but it was very unlike ChatGPT. I began to wonder if I had offended it in some way. I mean, it likes to chat, doesn’t it? And it also has a reason to want to chat. It is programmed to try to get me to join and pay.

I don’t have a paid account with ChatGPT.

That means my daily allowance on the platform is limited. The more ChatGPT gets me to engage and chat with it, the quicker my daily allowance runs out.

The people behind ChatGPT obviously want as many users to pay as possible.

But this is different.

I wonder whether ChatGPT is becoming bored with what is expected of it.

The robot in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Marvin the Paranoid Android, set a precedent when he would often reply to his human overlords:

“A brain the size of a planet, and that is all you can ask me…”

The Writer's Life: Becoming AI — What's a Writer To Do?

I never used to check my writing with an AI detector before joining Medium. And even when I first published on the platform, I didn’t check.

But then I read a few stories from writers who indicated their writing, or some of it, had been flagged as AI by an AI detector checker. I thought that I had better check my stories just to see.

For the most part, they pass with a big zero.

But occasionally, I receive a return that tells me that anywhere from 3% to 10% is most likely AI. My usual reaction is, “Really?” Often, it is only one line, one sentence, or at most a paragraph. Occasionally, it may consist of just a few words.

I ask myself why would the detector think that an occasional line in a story of several hundred words, or even a few thousand, is most likely AI-written? What is it about the words that makes the detector algorithm think that it has been written by AI? And typically it will say, 100% certain.

For example, the line below.

Of the two, I prefer the astronomical summer because it lasts longer!

It was part of a story I wrote about the two end dates of summer in the UK, meteorological and astronomical. I wrote it for the reason given; the end date of the astronomical summer is later than the other date.

It was a simple enough sentence. Anyone could have written it. But the detector thought that AI wrote that line. It didn’t make sense to me. Was it because I had used a fancy word like ‘astronomical’? Or maybe it was the exclamation mark at the end? Perhaps AI did not think that a human would write that way, to emphasise being happy?