r/Squamish

Man wearing 'Raven Contracting' vest in Rona yesterday, don't spit on the floor and get emotional when you're called out on it. I thought perhaps it was a cultural thing and you were unaware of the rudeness of expecting someone to clean up your faith and others to walk in it. However, you legit believe we were all picking on you. The massive loogie you horked up was disgusting and even if you were on a construction site would be revolting, in the interior close confines of the contractor desk area of the local lumberyard it was beyond nasty. Kudos to the young staff girl for standing up to you and explaining that it was not a polite behavior.

I have been dismayed at the amount of AI generated messaging I have seen around the municipal elections. I'm seeing clearly LLM written posts from candidates, and also large amounts of AI-generated "analysis" from local residents commenting on municipal affairs.

Two of the worst places for it are the Facebook groups "Squamish Speaks", and "Squamish Residents for Responsible Development" (SRRD). I listened to the Sea to Sky Elections podcast which the SRRD admin was a guest on, and he spent a fair amount of time singing the praises of AI for research and messaging.

Anyone who has used AI extensively knows that it is no substitute for expertise. I believe it can be used effectively, but only when combined with astute subject matter understanding. What I find most concerning is how sycophantic it is. Users are convinced that they are doing important and valuable work, and uncovering revelations.

There has been a lot of talk over the past decade about the negative impacts of bots and manipulation on elections. It's disappointing to see that these bots no longer need to be mysterious entities hiding in the darkness; now they are brought directly to us by people within our community. Handing over so much of the political discourse to AI models is incredibly dangerous.

Do all the corrugated plastic election signs get properly recycled after the election(s)? It seems like such an unnecessary, outdated way to market oneself.

As far as I know, we don't have a local drop off for recycling these? Unless I'm wrong and GFL takes them?

Every election year these things bother me to no end.