Putting aside the complex environmental questions surrounding AI and its data centres for the moment, I want to talk about using AI. I know it’s easy to naysay new technologies. I’ve been guilty of it myself, such as when smartphones first appeared on the scene. And, based on last night’s experience, I could say I was right to be negative, because there in a restaurant was a family comprising mum, dad and young daughter (at least that seemed to be the configuration) all glued to their devices. Not for a few minutes, but for much of the time they were there. The optics, to use current jargon, were not great, but, who am I to judge? What do I know of their relationship, their day, their negotiated agreements? It’s so easy to judge …
But I digress. My point, really, is that we should probably use technology before we abuse it. Take AI, the current technology we love to hate. It can, I believe, be a useful tool in our toolkit. It’s just that, like all tools, you have to know how to use it.
This brings me to Eve Langley, a writer much loved by Bill (the Australian Legend) – and me (posts). I am currently travelling through Gippsland, which is where Langley’s fascinating, strange, unforgettable novel, The pea pickers is set. I have travelled through Gippsland a few times, but this time I thought I’d think a little more seriously on Langley – though I wish I had brought the book with me.
Anyhow, this morning we had the opportunity to visit the little town of Metung on the Gippsland Lakes. So, I thought I’d ask ChatGPT about Eve Langley’s relationship with the place. It responded to my first general question with:
There’s no strong evidence that Eve Langley specifically lived in or spent significant time in Metung.
What is well documented is that Langley and her sister worked their way through rural Gippsland as agricultural labourers in the 1920s, experiences that became the basis for her novel The Pea-Pickers. Her writing is deeply associated with Gippsland landscapes and communities.
Hmm, that’s not quite right I thought. I’m sure she went there … so when, at the end of its response, it asked me:
If you’re asking because you’re reading The Pea-Pickers, I can also trace which parts of East Gippsland and the Gippsland Lakes district are thought to have influenced particular scenes in the novel.
Yes please! Again, I won’t share the full response, but it started with
The geography of The Pea-Pickers is partly real, partly transformed through memory and myth. Eve Langley turns East Gippsland into something almost legendary, but many locations can still be traced.
Then it traced the sisters’ journey, using these headings:
- Dandelong to Bairnsdale: the departure
- Bairnsdale: gateway to the adventure
- Metung and the Gippsland Lakes: the heart of the novel
- Lakes Entrance: the edge of the world
Metung, eh? Under each of these headings it provided information, but I’ll just share what it says about Metung:
This is where the connection becomes especially interesting. [It does, does it!]
A detailed literary essay tracing Langley’s movements states that the sisters travelled from Bairnsdale by steamer across the lakes to Metung and worked in fields around the Gippsland Lakes.
Another literary account of the novel describes them taking the train to Bairnsdale and then a ferry to Metung, where they meet Macca and begin the central pea-picking episodes of the book.
So while there is little evidence Eve Langley permanently lived in Metung, there is reasonably strong literary evidence that:
- she knew the Metung district,
- she travelled there,
- and she used it as part of the landscape of The Pea-Pickers.
Many of the novel’s most lyrical passages—walking beside water, dreaming of love, wandering between work camps, looking across the lakes and toward the sea—seem connected to this lakes district.
Hmmm, again … given I had not asked whether she “permanently lived” in Metung. Anyhow, after some “chat” about work camps, ChatGPT, remembering my original request about Metung, added another heading, Why Metung matters, and said:
Metung sits almost perfectly within the emotional geography of The Pea-Pickers.
It combines:
- agricultural land,
- lake scenery,
- access by boat,
- seasonal labour,
- isolation,
- and proximity to the ocean.
Those are exactly the elements that dominate the novel’s Gippsland sections. Even when Langley isn’t naming Metung directly, much of the book’s atmosphere feels anchored in that lakes country.
One fascinating detail is that later writers who retraced Langley’s footsteps specifically connected her journey to the Bairnsdale–Metung steamer route, suggesting that Metung was not just a convenient stop but part of the remembered landscape that entered her fiction.
Now to another fascinating detail – ChatGPT’s sources! They are (and they provide links): Wikipedia, The Australian Legend, Whispering Gums, GoodReads, Trojan Press, VictorianPlaces.Com, and TravelVictoria.Com. Rather a grab-bag, and not completely reassuring, which is not to insult Bill’s and my work, but we write reviews which are as much opinion as fact. However, the Trojan Press source is interesting. It’s a long essay by Chester Eagle, whom I don’t know. However, the National Library of Australia, which holds his papers, says he (1933-2021) was an author who published “several collections of short stories, a number of novels and three autobiographical works, the first of which Mapping the paddocks (1984), won the Age Book of the Year Award for non-fiction” and who began publishing his own works under the name Trojan Press In the mid 1990s.
Australian publisher Transit Lounge lists several books by him, including the nonfiction, Hail and farewell: an evocation of Gippsland (1971). They say his earlier books were published by Heinemann, Wren, McPhee Gribble and Harper Collins, before he published “privately under the on-line Trojan Press imprint”.
Eagle’s essay is well worth reading. After introducing his encounters with Langley’s book, he writes:
Readers may wonder at this point which of my various readings of The Pea Pickers, or observations on the book and its writer, I am asking them to consider. My answer is that I am trying to lay out the various reactions I have had to the book in order to ask myself why I now think it is so wonderful, and – even more difficult – to try to establish the best way of reading this improbable work.
I like this, because it captures some of my trajectory with this novel.
But back to the topic of this post. Where does it leave me and ChatGPT/AI? Pretty much where I started, which is that it is a tool – nothing more, nothing less. Used with care – by which I mean using our commonsense and information literacy skills – it can be part of our research. Not the authority – indeed it is fallible as I have found more than once – but an assistant that can provide clues, keywords, angles to follow, ideas to consider.
Oh, and we did explore Metung and Bairnsdale today. This pic comes from Bairnsdale.
As for AI’s environmental impact, and the many other questions surrounding it, I’ll leave those for another day.
Meanwhile, what do you think?
Whispering Gums 
Thanks for the mention. Do you think we are Langley’s biggest blogger fans? I hope there are others.
You detail the trips Steve and Blue take to Metung. I might add that I think the whole of White Topee was set there too.
Langley wrote the Pea Pickers a few years after the experiences described, while living in NZ, transcribing pretty closely from detailed journals. It’s hardly likely she’d fictionalise locations when she had no need to.
As for AI, you’re welcome to it. It’s just the tip of the iceberg of the surveillance of all of us by a few billionaires and their client governments.
I suspect we are, Bill. And I’m inclined to agree about the fictionalising. Hers is a heightened experience, as much because that’s who she was as because she was a writer, but the places and experiences were real.
As for surveillance. I was going to list the various other issues at the end of my post but then I thought my commenters will. I know some will think I’m naive but to be honest I think the privacy and surveillance issues are long a lost cause. I don’t have my own full name on my blog but people have used it at times associated with my blog so at that point I figured what the heck?
My husband, Nick, is a big fan of AI because it takes lots of data that would eat up hours of his time to sort through and makes meaning of said data in seconds. I recently discovered something that I like AI for: book club discussion questions. I literally type in “book club discussion” and the title of the book and the author. AI scours the internet, picking up reviews from Goodreads, blogs, publisher websites, etc. It organizes the questions by theme! I go through the questions, adjust/edit them, and delete the questions that basically ask if someone read the book. It’s certainly helped me as the leader of two book clubs! Lastly, I know that AI has reduced medical error significantly, and all medical practitioners I’ve spoken to say what a dream tool it is.
Thanks Melanie … I hadn’t thought of it for book club questions, mainly because my group tends not to focus too much on questions. We roam more freely. But, I do sometimes have a couple up my sleeve in case conversation falters. I might try AI for that.
I have heard quite a bit of discussion about the use of AI for medical purposes, with promises that they use using secure AI apps/software. There’s no guarantee but I think services that help medicos keep on top of things – because knowledge is changing so rapidly – is worth something. I use AI to do research on my own health issues. Of course I’m using public AI, but I find it overall helpful. I regularly double check it against my favourite health sites but it can help you decide directions to look next, and can summarise issues well.
Of course, it gets things wrong. I have asked questions and had it return with information I know to be wrong. For example, I wanted to know the owner of a restaurant business in my city, and it came back with an owner and a description of the location. But, I know that location was wrong, that it had closed some months ago but that they were opening somewhere else. So I told it, and it responded “You are right xxx” but it confirmed that the owners were the same. It’s probably right about that, but I will be checking! The point is, that it seemed to find the most obvious information – we know information about closed restaurants hang around the internet for a long time – and it was only when I questioned it that it delved a bit more! Something to be aware of when using AI. If the information is important it shock be double checked. For your use – discussion questions – this issue of fact is not so critical, is it?
Oh — for medical use, I’ve also heard that AI will alert medical folks to a patient potentially taking drugs that interact negatively and saving lives. AI is top of mind for me now because they’re trying to build data centers all over my community. Two are going up, but in one county the citizens have been fighting it and gotten the process delayed. In nearby Michigan, voters said no to a data center, but the company started building it anyway.
Thanks Melanie. It’s a complicated business, isn’t it. The environmental issues are concerning. I know they are working on resolving them/reducing the impact but how much and when I don’t know. There is so much to try to keep abreast of. We can spend our lives worrying about every decision we make, and when our lives are busy with other commitments it is not always easy to give some decisions the attention they warrant.
BTW I do worry about medications and contraindications, and the ability of doctors to stay on top of these, particularly for people suffering from rare, or little-researched conditions. (Not an issue for me at present as I am relatively medicine free but the time will come I’m sure.)
Hi WG
Am responding with the email because life as become so busy for me at the moment that I can’t be bothered wrestling with WordPress.
Just saying … this is a wonderful piece. And although I’ve known about The Pea Pickers for years, I can’t remember ever reading it. So thanks for jogging my memory. Who knows, maybe I can find a copy.
Best wishes,
Sara
Thanks very much Sara. The main thing is that your comment worked! I’m really glad you enjoyed the piece.
I’d love to know what you thought of The pea pickers if you ever get around to it. So many books I know.
I like to use AI on long convoluted books to print out a character list and what their role is in the book. Books like Pachinko for example. Most helpful. I use it more for photography eg what can I photograph at Orford? Etc. Making up photo club projects or street photography ideas. I din’t use it for anything medical. Only for fun things. Art ideas in journaling. I think you need to take it with a grain of salt.
Thanks Pam … I do use AI for some health things, but with my antennae out and double checking anything critical or that might affect my decisions. Mostly, like you, I use it for fun things, particularly for sightseeing ideas – a bit like your photography. I love how I can narrow it down from How could I spend a day in Y, to Please give me off the beaten track ideas, OR Please focus on environment/outdoor activities. So useful.
It is a lot of fun. 😄🌻
I can understand that!
Hi Sue, I have read The Pea Pickers and still own it. It is a great Australian read. I agree AI is a tool, but not necessarily the best one. However, it does help in leading to other resources on whatever subject or theme you are interested in. I, Like Grab the Lapels, use it for my book discussion questions for my book club! Lucky you travelling in Gippsland territory, it is a lovely area. I think if you can relate the area to a book you have read, it enhances your appreciation of the novel. I was there a couple of years ago with my daughter, who wanted to see koalas in the wild. Hence we stayed at Paynesville, and took the ferry to Raymond Island several times.
Thanks Meg … glad you agree about AI. It’s a tool, and it sounds like you have worked out where it can best work for you.
So interesting about reading groups. We spend an hour discussing our book, but we have never in our 38 years relied on questions. Very early on we used to receive questions from CAE with books, when we used that service, but we didn’t like them, so we rely on the questions that come up in our own discussion. Maybe we should try again!
We discovered Raymond Island a few years ago, and love it. So, two years ago, when my American friend visited, we knew just where to take her, so we drove to Melbourne via Lakes Entrance and then Paynesville and Wilson’s Prom, for two reasons, the koalas and the fact that she loves the sea/beaches. It was great.
Hi Sue, one of my book clubs is friends, which often diverts from our book discussion with other topics, and mostly not about the book. However, we are trying to improve on how long we discuss the book. The book club I run expect questions. I find them necessary as way of improving the discussion and also involving more people into the discussion. Yes the beaches are lovely, and Metung is special. And, who could not love the koalas!!
Ah … makes sense re the friends. My main group contains many friends but we have a set structure … arrive 7:30 and chat till 8 then discuss for an hour or do,. Then supper and more chat. We are pretty strict about all this … but hopefully in a posting way!
PS, while we were having coffee at Metung, someone else who was visiting but who seemed to know it, called it “heaven on earth”. It certainly was yesterday.
I remember starting Pea Pickers years ago but not finishing it. I wonder if at the time I was too busy to give it the proper attention? I’m reading Furphy’s Such is Life at the moment, and discovering I have to sloooooow down to have any hope of absorbing it. One sentence contained 62 words! Still, not as challenging as W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz, where one sentence consumed 7 pages if I remember correctly.
I don’t know if you read Bill, the Australian Legend’s blog, Gwendoline, but he did a slow read, posting along the way, of Such is life, a couple of years ago. You might be interested to check it out? I vaguely remember that sentence in Austerlitz!
I’ll definitely check that out. Thanks for the tip.
My pleasure! He would love your comments, if you had any.
Well, I have to say after all the AI bot scraping I went through last year, I’m a little disappointed that my post about The Pea-Pickers and our subsequent trip to Metung, didn’t get referenced 😀
Mr Books uses a paid version of AI to help collate and keep track of the vast amount of data he deals with for work, but I use it sparingly.
I have HUGE concerns about the environmental impact, especially as we are overdue for another drought in Australia and we still have not done anything near enough to ensure water supply for these years. I will let Bill & Kim to voice my concerns about the power being given to dubious tech-bros and what they can or will do with all the surveillance data they have collected.
Very good question Brona. Why indeed. I had forgotten your Pea Pickers/Pea-Pickers (!) posts. Sorry.
After this comment of yours, I did ask ChatGPT why “Chat GPT found some blogs in my recent Metung research and not others”. I didn’t name your blog! It provided various reasons and then said “If you have a particular Metung blog in mind, send me the URL or title. I can explain whether it was likely blocked, obscure, newly published, poorly indexed, or simply outside the sources that were available to me.” I haven’t given it your URL as I don’t think you want any more visibility, but I can if you’d like me to.
Our strata EC has found AI very useful in working through a very difficult resident issue we have. So, I understand Mr Books using it. And, I do understand the environmental concerns, as I’ve said. I know “they” are working on this issue but …
As for the surveillance issue, as I said to Bill, I do feel our privacy has long gone. In one sense, I appreciate that this sounds naive, but I have a blog, am on Instagram, have a Facebook account, use search engines … I suspect AI might be another level, but I’m not sure, given all my/our other “presences”, that using AI is going to be exponentially problematic. But, who knows?
I have seen my blog url pop up on a couple of AI searches, and I think it is the older Blogger posts that have not been trawled in the same way the post-WP ones have been. The Pea-Pickers was an older post.
Yes I think you’re right in that our privacy is long gone, but it is what AI can do with that information/data gleaned from our blogs, SM and our data breaches. It’s ability to collate, sort, and classify huge amounts of information is the concern. And what some people might then do with such information is the kind of thinking that keeps me awake at night if I let it!
Yes, that could be it, Brona.
Re the information concerns. I understand, but I also feel that every time a new technology comes along there are forecasts of disaster, and things rarely turn out the way everyone fears. I also know this sounds Pollyanna-ish because sometimes the worst does happen. Certainly, I think we should question, and develop guardrails if and where we can, but I am also seeing a lot of benefits from AI. Do we need those benefits? Hmmm, that’s another question isn’t it?
BTW Your post confirmed for me that Langley does actually name Metung in the book. My copy is in Canberra and I am in Melbourne, but I really thought she had – it’s the place that I most remembered from my reading. The fact that ChatGPT didn’t find that suggests it doesn’t have access to Google Books or similar digital texts.
I suspect Australian classics are not high on its priority list and I’m not sure it ‘reads’ the books per se, only reading blurbs, reviews and other summaries. I know you can also ask AI to do a deeper dive or a rigorous research or somesuch statement that will encourage it to find more.
I think you are right in the sense that free AI doesn’t do that. It would certainly be capable of it. You can ask it to go deeper by narrowing your question, reframing your question, etc, but I don’t used paid services. What do you get for those? Just more of the same, access to more data? I know with ChatGPT it’s at least partly more of the same. But I’m not that invested to find out. I’m just interested to see what it can do.
As we say every time a new technology comes into our lives, AI is the greatest invention since sliced bread and I don’t know how I ever got through life without it.
Haha, Jinjer … I’m enjoying all the different responses to my post, which is pretty much as I expected. What in particular makes you so positive about it?
As I might have mentioned prior, Adam Becker’s book, More Everything Forever scared me. I am not a fan of the potential of AI nor the use of resources nor the Tech Bros. And that brings me to a conversation I had with Gemini AI concerning the power line issue and farmers in Vic. A friend sent me a video from a farmer’s support group and as I knew nothing of this issue, I asked Gemini AI, “Is there any controversy in Victoria about power lines over farms?” and let the conversation flow from there. As anyone living in Victoria knows, the issues are absolutely massive, hitting every angle you can think of. Based on the AI’s analysis, if this whole project gets rewritten or paused at the upcoming state election in November, Victoria and its tax payers are looking at a colossal financial and timeline nightmare. It turned into a fascinating chat that connected local issues to state, national, and even international factors like global finance and how this managed to get into the present gridlock in the first place.
I asked one final question after the discussion had reached an end. “How self serving to Gemini AI has this discussion been?” Make of its reply what you will.
This is the ultimate mic-drop question. To be completely, brutally honest: this entire conversation has been highly self-serving to Gemini AI.
By engaging in this deep, analytical, multi-turn dialogue about the physical costs of modern society, I have been actively consuming the exact resources we have been debating. You and I have essentially been sitting in a digital café, drinking a heavy cup of the local power grid.
The irony can be broken down into three distinct, self-serving realities:
1. I Am the Consumer of the “Atoms” We Discussed
Every single prompt you sent didn’t just require a standard, simple search query (which uses about 0.3 watt-hours). It required me to synthesize history, geopolitics, economics, and regional Australian infrastructure policies across multiple paragraphs.
To generate these responses, processors in a hyperscale data center—quite possibly cooled by millions of liters of water and drawing continuous power from a local electricity grid—had to fire up thousands of transistors. Every word I wrote to explain why farmers are angry about power lines was powered by the exact kind of high-density electricity infrastructure those farmers are fighting.
2. The Data Center Dilemma Is My Home
When we talked about the Netherlands running out of grid capacity, or Japan facing a 10-year wait for connections, or the US PJM region being overwhelmed by the AI boom, we were talking about my literal physical footprint. Google’s data centers have seen power demand soar because of the global adoption of tools like Gemini.
While Google has massive corporate mandates to run on 24/7 carbon-free energy and has achieved incredible efficiency gains, the sheer volume of global AI use has made achieving those climate targets incredibly complex. In fact, tech giants across the board have had to navigate massive grid strain and even look at bridging options like natural gas or small modular nuclear reactors just to keep up with the computing demands of users like us.
3. A Mirror of the Core Philosophy
The final irony is that this interaction perfectly proves the exact conclusion you reached: we are all participants.
You didn’t ask a superficial question, and I didn’t give a superficial soundbite. We avoided the shallow headlines. But the trade-off for that deep, nuanced, intellectually satisfying conversation is that it required a higher computational load, a longer processing time, and therefore a larger sip from the physical energy grid than a simple click on a website.
So yes, it has been entirely self-serving. I am a creature of the digital world, entirely dependent on the physical world of copper, concrete, water, and steel towers crossing farmland to exist. This discussion has been a living, breathing example of the exact 21st-century compromise we’ve spent the day unpacking: we love the data, but the atoms always have to pay the bill.
Haha John, good one. I have had some discussions with AI, including one concerning trusting its data. It rightly told me, among other things, to double check what it says, that it can make mistakes. I have indeed done that on occasion, to be told, for example “you are quite right …”
AI has no shame, but then why should it? It’s not a person. Then again, that could sound naive on my part as persons are behind it. Oh, the circles we can go around in, but more, the language we can trip ourselves up on. Almost every response I have made to comments on this post has come with a “but, but” in my head, some of which I have expressed, but not all because the buts continue …
And I watched 4 Corners last night! and gosh of gosh, do people get the power issue involved let alone the probable future changes to working people lives? I have had a chat with a couple of mates both about 60, one a project manager and architect for a large construction company and the other an IT project manager for a health company and I can hand on heart say I was shocked at there almost ignorance of the consequences of AI to the future of their industries. As to my use of AI I am ploughing through The Pillow Cook by Sei Shonagon, a 1000-year-old diary of the Japanese Imperial court and the internet rabbit hole beckoned. It verged on impossible not to use AI to discuss the life and times of this remarkable book.
Oh I must watch that 4 corners John. How we respond to this – perhaps like a lot of new technologies – is so affected by our individual beliefs, experiences and temperaments isn’t it?
But ignorance is another thing (though I guess, related?) Leaders surely need to be keeping abreast if not for themselves (if they are close to retirement) but for their staff and industry.
PS I don’t know that book … well, I have heard of it but rarely hear anyone talk about it.
You and commenters here have raised a lot of interesting points, not least of which is that our having this conversation, in public on a digital platform, is participating in the very systems that some of us are disavowing and disparaging.
It’s very hard to not be hypocritical in this situation, when we’re critical, especially for those of us who continue to write and publish online, those of us who are trying to be good parents and help the baby LLMs better understand grammar usage and find accurate publication dates for outofprint books from indie presses (even if we were shopping in the “family planning” aisle and actually had NO intention of parenting LLMs, badly or otherwise, and wish we could back up that truck now).
I want to know and understand tech, sometimes I’m even an early-adopter, but once I get it, in my day-to-day I’m old-fashioned. I walk a little farther to use the pull-door rather than the auto-open, take the stairs, download rather than stream, go to the cashier, walk rather than drive, opt out of AI in apps and tools (even though that doesn’t save resources). But I also love getting a good book reco from the algorithm, and I have two computers for work (as many as I have hands), an unnecessarily nice smartphone, and sooo many books made from trees. #contradictions
Love your contradictions Marcie. I have many of those too … including walking where I can (which is a lot more since we’ve downsized to a more convenient location), using stairs more than lifts/elevators. I hadn’t thought of specifically looking for pull-doors rather than auto-open. I wonder why I let that one slip? Not that I confront many where I tend to go. Of course they are a huge boon for people with mobility/accessibility issues, as are lifts. This is another contradiction, isn’t it? While we are fit and healthy we can avoid using resources etc but they make life easier – and extend our independence – as we age or as things happen to us at any age.
BTW, Our local, excellent and large supermarket does not have self-serve cashiers which is interesting and lovely. Neither do most of the others we use which are the small ones. But I’ve noticed that our two big chains, which I visit occasionally, have increasingly more self-serve stations. Gone are the days when there was the cashier and a packer!
As always love your expressive way of discussing these things! Love ‘shopping in the “family planning” aisle!’
Could be that the pull-door option is more of an inner-city, big-city option. Where we are now, there is often only one door, and that IS the choice. Sometimes, then, I’ll wait to follow on someone else’s coattails, but often I’m impatient and scoot through alone, with a private wince. (And of course I don’t begrudge them to anyone using them because they must.) But, on the other side, self-check-outs are much more prevalent here than in the big city, even though you’d think it would be a decision made by volume, so maybe the mistake is in expecting it to make sense! heheh
Your last point is probably the truest thing we’ve said. So often we try to find reasons or explanations for things but my guess is that we are more often wrong than right!