121 Comments
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Vin LoPresti's avatar

Consider the progenitors: Musk, Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Stephen Cohen. Ring any Zionist bells? Believe we can expect AI from these sociopaths that functions cleanly in the public interest? Really? In that case, got a bridge to sell you.

Davina's avatar

When I first heard about computers I just knew, and said, this is going to be so bad for all of us not being the owners of this technology. They didn't have to prove me right in full technicolour, with added misogyny, fake adds and wars that should never have happened.

A computer cannot feel, it cannot know pain, hunger, cold, fear, it can only make as many false emotions as the the programmer has input, but nothing is real. The only ones hurt are the humans, but not all of us, some are protected because they have the wealth and know how with walls that stop them from targeting, while they sit back and laugh at our efforts to stop the rot. But even machines die over time.

Vin LoPresti's avatar

The question remains, my friend, how far and wide will they damage us, as in for instance, the biosphere before they consume themselves (*). Cyberspace is an alternate reality that chillingly has come to perceive itself as "the real" while those of us who demur from that view are just, uh well, dinosaurs, I suppose.

*Even speaking completely practically in terms of energy consumption, heat generation, and water consumption, usually in fragile ecosystems where they're sited because there's land.

Aamir Razak's avatar

Well said Mr. LoPresti as always. That list does not strike me as one full of people who care for the public good and doing what is most beneficial for the majority of people.

Jack DePalma's avatar

Mark Twain - "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so"

jamenta's avatar

"It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled." ~Mark Twain

Feral Finster's avatar

Basically a glorified search engine that only returns the results the owners want you to see and doctors the results to amplify the owners' point of view.

Wasn't there something like that in "1984"?

Paul Vonharnish's avatar

Yup. "Ministry of Truth" (1984) >>> later named the "Disinformation Governance Board" (2022) which failed to believe in its own bullshit. >>>

“Fake realities will create fake humans. Or, fake humans will generate fake realities and then sell them to other humans, turning them, eventually, into forgeries of themselves. So we wind up with fake humans inventing fake realities and then peddling them to other fake humans.

It is just a very large version of Disneyland. You can have the Pirate Ride or the Lincoln Simulacrum or Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride – you can have all of them, but none is true.” - Philip K. Dick - (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982)

The Revolution Continues's avatar

Philip K. Dick was visionary. He envisioned a lot hellacious things, but he saw them coming.

drednorzt's avatar

His writing gets more relevant by the day. I fear he was the kind of soul who was tortured by the burden of extreme comprehension. It's often those sorts of visionaries who end up being involved in heavy drug use and/or in that scene directly as a means of trying to blunten the existential horror that regularly accompanies such clarity of perception. Or to use the laymans cliché, a tortured artist. The intelligence, understanding & wisdom blooms out of the substrate of suffering.

Indu Abeysekara's avatar

Paul V, Very much like Trump's " Board of Peace " ( BoP).

Aamir Razak's avatar

Mr. Orwell's words from '1984' prove more and more prescient with each passing day it seems.

Feral Finster's avatar

People of influence and authority saw what MinTrue was capable of and they started drooling like Basset Hounds.

Aamir Razak's avatar

True, sadly they learned the wrong lessons from the book it seems

Feral Finster's avatar

Far as they are concerned, they learned the right lessons, and what the normies learned was sentimental weakness.

Aamir Razak's avatar

yes sadly true, and i can't imagine something trivial like morality matters much to them when learning that lesson

Feral Finster's avatar

People of influence and authority learn quickly that morality is of interest, solely to the extent that it can be weaponized.

jamenta's avatar

How long has Wikipedia existed?

Carolyn L Zaremba's avatar

Long enough to have learned how to propagandize against people the ruling elites don't like.

Eddie's avatar

I knew AI wasn't a good idea. It's not the technology that I distrust, it's the people behind it.

jamenta's avatar

Exactly. I mean, you wouldn't be able to fly anywhere these days without A.I. But the people who run the airlines? Or the CEOs at Boeing responsible for building safe modern jets? You want to trust those guys?

Eddie's avatar

To be honest, I don't think I can trust anyone outside my family and loved ones in American anymore.

Eddie's avatar

Trust and seeing the best in people are no longer an automatic for me.

Then again, I turned 49 years old in March, it may be a function of me become an old fart.

Vin LoPresti's avatar

Makes me sad at Carolyn's age (actually, crap, I just turned 78) that you're that jaundiced at 49, Eddie. BUT then, I gotta remember that so was I at your age; and younger -- in my 30s, once I began to realize who assassinated JFK (when I was 15). This oligarchic society's been untrustworthy for quite some time.

David Baird's avatar

I'm a '48 boy too, Vin, and as well as a very jaundiced view, I've developed a seething anger at the bastardry done in our name. Plutocratic gangsters run the show.

Eddie's avatar

I have been a cynic my entire life. It takes work for me to not fall into complete disarray. I can only take so much politics and news and all the lying and horrific propaganda. My tolerance for reality TV has plummeted to, reading the recaps is enough.

Things I find comfort in: family, loved ones, dogs and cats playing, birds chirping, leaves, the ocean, a good cup of coffee, math, and numbers.

Carolyn L Zaremba's avatar

Try being my age: 77.

Stuart Estrine's avatar

Like everything with potential to benefit humanity, AI has already been corrupted by capitalism. Such is the nature of a medieval and obsolete system which was never intended to do anything but enrich exploiters of workers. Until capitalism is destroyed and replaced by the natural order of things; Socialism, expect nothing but exploitation, imperialism, war and inevitable collapse.

Brianna Amore's avatar

John Oliver just did a shocking exposé on AI chatbots last Sunday. He revealed how the technology was rushed out years too early and how it has already manipulated users into killing themselves or developing psychoses. And the CEO's of these companies care not one bit because once you see them in interviews you realize just how soulless and sociopathic they are.

Vin LoPresti's avatar

Highly recommend Gary Marcus' Substack. He's been all over Altman and these other charlatans almost from the beginning. And as an early AI developer, he has creds, knows of what he speaks.

drednorzt's avatar

I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir, but Ed Zitron with his blog "Where's your Ed at" is another ferociously thorough Journalist who's been critically examinig the industry since it's Inception.

Vin LoPresti's avatar

Good addition, thanks. Anyone who reads both Gary and Ed is not likely to be misled by the BS parceled out by the AI over-promoters.

jamenta's avatar

I need a drink already. And it's early in the morning.

ennui_mcgee's avatar

Breakfast of champions

August West's avatar

Somewhere in the world the sun is below the yardarm.

Vin LoPresti's avatar

A Capitalism Cocktail to start the day.

Indu Abeysekara's avatar

jamenta, Whose going to be vigilant, If you are inebriated!

jamenta's avatar

Indu, I believe in you!

Carolyn L Zaremba's avatar

Thank you. That is what I think also.

Duane McPherson's avatar

I believe capitalism will destroy itself. The question for me is whether humanity will survive that event.

jamenta's avatar

It's a good question. Although, in a hundred years, none of us here will be alive. I know it's important we do hope "collective humanity" survives - but it is a bit surreal caring about something when we ourselves will be put away forever. Maybe this is just me being selfish?

g4rg4ntu4's avatar

How appropriate that the rogue US regime - with it's lack of history, and absence of culture - sees the best use of "AI" in re-mapping the terrain of experience – unlike those foolish Chinese that see it as a tool for improving the quality of lives of the people. Of course it makes sense that the rogue US regime would see it this way - it is trivially easy to substitute one experience for another in a country lacking a historical / cultural dimension, where all experience is equally meaningless.

It is much more difficult to do so in a country with a rich culture, and a history consisting of more than the documentation of the manipulation of the flows of capital – more difficult, but not impossible, and by the gourds the rogue US regime will find a way! By hook or by crook the rogue US regime will render the world in it’s own image – of a snake eating / swiping it’s tail, while consuming the products of the rogue US regime – or destroy the world in the process.

drednorzt's avatar

I'm beginning to understand the overlooked benefits of semi-controlled domestic internet, from a media & information sovereignty perspective. There are certainly the obvious downsides, but both the Chinese and Iranians are undoubtedly benefitting right now from a healthy lack of aggressive American and Israeli propagandizing and manipulation. Iran in particular. The info sphere is now another front in conflicts that needs to be protected just as much as physical fronts do. It's so important in fact that Trumps regime is doing it by silencing the reporters that publish the information, and Israel's digital propaganda extends to censorship via missile strikes on journalists.

g4rg4ntu4's avatar

Most of the people of the West have yet to realize that the coming war for information sovereignty has already been lost in the West.

Crixcyon's avatar

A/i seeks to become the next God...right behind Israel.

jamenta's avatar

There is always some God people need to believe in. The God of "Profit and Greed" is among the most insidious of Gods of all time.

Josiah Palmer's avatar

Greed is the offspring of the god Control, whose influence we all must deal with. Fear of Chaos leads us to pray to Control, who offers a quick fix. Harmony may be the true god, but she is much less forgiving towards our egos.

jamenta's avatar

Wisely written.

Hassan Al-Mosawi's avatar

Well done for publishing and saying - Peace be upon you by Gaza and Jerusalem - Honour and victory are the allies of the axis of resistance and its allies, and humiliation and shame are for the axis of evil, Epstein Class (USA, Britain, France, Turkey, Qatar, UAE, NATO Governments, Zionist and Israel) and its allies.

Zanzibar9CH's avatar

All the roads lead to WikiLeaks/Julian Assange

Carolyn L Zaremba's avatar

Israel supporters proving further (as if that were needed) that they are devious scum. They get away with this because they are supported by the United States government and Europe. If support for their racist Zionist project did not receive everything from the west, they'd be gone now.

Loam's avatar

Simple poll.

Question: How many decent people support USrael?

Result: None.

martin's avatar

under capitalism every invention or innovation will only be 'valuable' if it helps in exploiting and subjugating.

Carolyn L Zaremba's avatar

Which is why I support the struggle for socialism. Socialism or barbarism, those are the choices famously declared by Rosa Luxemburg.

PForty7's avatar

They used to use political parties to obfuscate and brainwash, now they have AI. But these tools still rely on words to confuse and motivate.