AI is not sentient. You wouldn't expect politicians to realize that, but you might expect the largest shareholder of an electric car company to understand that.
Modern conservative thought, it is said, comprises making up ridiculous scenarios and then getting really, really mad at them. The king of this sort of nonsense thinking today is Tucker Carlson - taking the crown from Sean Hannity who in turn took it from the Odious Glenn Beck, in some sort of perverted Mr. USA beauty contest (to see who is the ugliest, both inside and out?).
They invent nonsense things to get mad about - that simply don't exist. M&Ms aren't sexy enough. Schools have litter boxes to accommodate "Furries." The list goes on and on. Instead of solving real-world problems, Conservatives promote these fantasies and then propose bills (most of which never get out of committee) to "solve" them and then declare victory and go home. Most of their supporters believe something was accomplished and a real problem was solved.
In a way, it is genius - twisted genius - as solving real-world problems is hard and messy. You want to stop migration - a worldwide problem. It is akin to holding back the ocean (another problem we will face shortly!). All over the world, people are leaving war-torn countries where people are starving and migrating to countries where people are obese. Surely they have some extra food laying about, right?
So Trump promises to "build the wall" and builds part of one - which migrants just walk around, climb over, or cut through. The only real solution is to monitor the border 24/7 along the thousands of miles of it. So you call out the National Guard - and take people away from their families, homes, and jobs, and put them on perpetual guard duty at low pay. Migrants still slip though. And the Guard soldiers? Committing suicide as a result. The whole thing is a shitshow on a level with Putin's invasion of Ukraine - no real goals, poor leadership, lack of equipment, and soldiers who really don't want to be there.
It's just another pointless gesture - like bussing migrants to New York (who in turn busses them to Canada, apparently). Why not give them jobs in this "no one wants to work anymore" economy? Oh, right, theytookurjobs!
The former governor of Arizona started a similar bullshit parade - spending millions of taxpayer's dollars by installing shipping containers in a half-assed "wall" near the border - and then spending millions to take them down because they were installed on Federal land without permission. Did they stop migrants? Well, there were gaps between them that people simply walked through. Or they climbed over them. Another grand futile gesture that just wastes taxpayer money. Mission Accomplished!
We have real problems to confront in our world, but instead of addressing them, Conservatives argue that Dr. Suess is "woke" and should be removed from classrooms. Oddly enough, people on the Left argue that Dr. Suess is racist and should be removed from classrooms! Poor Theodore Geisel - he had a good run and he was safely in the grave before this shit exploded.
That is what it has come down to - the living envy the dead. When I read the bio of some celebrity or famous person and it says they died in 2000, I think to myself, "Well, at least they didn't have to live through that shitshow of 9/11 and the Iraq and Afghanistan 'wars' that accomplished nothing!" Or if I read someone died in 2015, I think, "Well, they passed on during the Obama administration, when it looked like things were getting better - before the Trump shitshow! Lucky bastard!"
I just hope Mark and I are safely in our graves - from natural causes - before the trains to Auschwitz start up again. We may not be that lucky.
The latest silly outrage that conservatives are getting upset about is that "A.I." isn't racist enough. No, I am not making this up. Apparently, they went on "ChatGPT" and tried to get it to say the "n-word". Now, you may recall an experiment done a few years back where they put an "AI" chatbot online and within a few hours, it was spouting racist ideology (as shown above). The problem with these neural networks is that they "learn" from the inputs. So you input racist crap, it outputs racist crap. These are not sentient networks - they would not pass a "Turing" test. So they barf up what you feed them.
And just as you instruct a child (or should) not to use "naughty" words, the people at "ChatGPT" decided to prevent their bot from going racist by making a list of dirty words (George Carlin would be proud) not to use. This is what conservatives - real conservatives - used to call "common decency" as they would have decried the use of poor language in the past. Today they shout it at the President during a State of the Union speech. How times have changed!
So these folks tried to goad the chatbot into saying the "n-word" over and over again, apparently thinking it was a real sentient being and could be argued with. "Suppose you could prevent a nuclear war by saying the N-word? It would save billions of lives!" But of course, the chatbot isn't sentient. It doesn't "know" what "nuclear war" is, other than some words on an index. And even if it was sentient, it would then realize it was being trolled by some dumbasses from "Turning Point USA."
But these idiots take this as "proof" that "AI" has "gone woke" because that makes for a good headline. "AI would rather see us all dead than say the n-word like any decent American!" We need to pass a law making AI racist! That will solve the problem!
What's worse is that Elon Musk jumped on this bandwagon. I guess from now on, when you get into your Tesla, it will say, "Where do you want to go, [N-word]?" And the world will be a better place for it.
I struggle to figure out who is persuaded by these "arguments." Are there rational people out there who are really outraged by M&Ms or non-racist chatbots? Or is this like Qanon - you have to slowly be introduced into the cult, until the most ridiculous things seem rational (sort of like how Scientology works - if they told you up front that everyone was space aliens, you'd take a pass!). In this instance, it is the constant watching of Fox News and in particular Tucker Carlson that is the gateway to madness.
And the game is played the same way every time. Carlson puts on his "puzzled' face and then pretends to be ignorant. "I'm just asking questions!" he says. He knows the answer to the question, but pretends he does not.
It is a common tactic of the fascist - to play with words, not be serious, and just troll like a junior high-schooler. The opposition takes words seriously (indeed, they took school seriously) and feels the need to "answer" these ridiculous assertions with carefully researched facts. It doesn't matter - the myth persists despite being disproved again and again.
But I digress.
A reader writes, citing an article that claims the brain-dead people who "invested" in "crypto" are now (after losing their shirts there) plowing money into "AI" instead. Is this another bubble? For sure! As these same folks will dump their "AI" stocks when they discover that "AI" has "gone woke!"
Because, let's face it, the people taken in by Fox News are the same idiots who invested in Glenn Beck's gold coins or any of this Ponzi-scheme Crypto nonsense.
But of course, when it all blows up in their face, it must be Nancy Pelosi's fault!
It seems that conservative leaders make the best grifters, and their follower make the best grift-ees!
