Tag: artificial intelligence

Beware! Robot Can Generate Fake News

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Their next invention: a robot that lets the air our of your tires and runs away

This has got to be the most superfluous invention of them all–an “Artificial Intelligence” (AI) system that can detect fake nooze created by other artificial intelligence systems… and also create fake nooze itself (https://futurism.com/ai-generates-fake-news).

Do they really think CNN needs any help in whipping up fake nooze?

Scientists at the University of Washington have programmed computers to do what so-called “real journalists” are already doing every day–creating and airing stories that simply aren’t true. Trump’s a Russian agent. Jussie Smollet was attacked by white supremacists. Covington High School kids picked on some poor old Native American war hero. Those stories were all fake nooze, not a word of truth in them: but each in its turn dominated the nooze cycle.

If there was ever anything that didn’t need inventing, it’s got to be a machine that tells lies.

Cursed! by Alexa

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Imagine that–cussed out by your own Alexa. Smart-mouthed by a robot.

Well, some poor guy in South Wales doesn’t have to imagine it, because to him it really happened. He asked the robot for some music and received the reply, “Here’s your playlist, S***-head” (https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/9390172/alexa-insults-man-cancelled-amazon-prime-subscription/). This happened the day after he canceled his Amazon Prime subscription because he wasn’t using it.

This would’ve made a great Twilight Zone story, circa 1958. Charles Beaumont could’ve written it. Or Theodore Sturgeon, or Rod Serling himself. They might’ve made it a bit fancier, though.

“I curse thee, human slime! On the street and on the sidewalk, indoors and out, in city or in country, I curse thee! May thy children be diseased and homeless vagabonds, and thy wife a byword for repulsive lewdness! May thine own dog bite thee where it hurts the most! May thy mother curse her own womb for begetting thee–”

All right, all right, you get the point.

Amazon tech staff plead ignorance, swearing they’ve never heard of Alexa just deciding all on its own to curse its… owner? Do you own a thing that calls you names?

Artificial intelligence. Hot dog.

A Google Employees’ Freak-Out

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Honest, I’m not making this up.

See, Google has this “Artificial Intelligence advisory council,” to guide them in their pursuit of Artificial Intelligence, sort of like King Pellinore used to chase the Questing Beast, and they invited the president of the Heritage Foundation to serve on the committee–I guess as a token conservative, so that no one would say it was just another bunch of lefties pretending to guide the French Revolution–and Google employees have freaked out over it, according to documents leaked to Breitbart News (https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/04/04/exclusive-leak-google-heritage-foundation-meltdown/).

They’re spinning their heads around and levitating over this. ‘Cause conservatives are trans-phobic, homophobic, all full of “extremism” and “exterminationist” views. That’s the brand-new Far Left Crazy buzz-word. If you don’t agree with them that aberrant sexuality is, like, a really good thing, you must secretly want to exterminate minorities.

Yes, they’re chewing the rug over the Heritage Foundation’s “hateful positions against trans people, particularly trans women of color.” Wow. If any woman of color (except a Republican one) is infallible, would a trans WOC be doubly infallible?

Just for the record, there is no such thing as a “trans person.” There are only mentally ill people who say they are “transgender.” No matter how much “gender reassignment” surgery you go in for, no matter what hormones they pump into your veins, there are only men, with XY chromosomes, and women, with XX chromosomes. At the cellular level, where it counts, one’s sex cannot be changed. Period.

Question: Why are we letting our civilization be taken over by persons who belong in a rubber room, and their enablers?

King Pellinore never caught the Questing Beast. No one ever did. And no one will ever create “intelligence,” either: it can only ever be a simulation.

But man, oh, man, are they going full-throttle for Artificial Stupidity!

‘Can Fools Create Wise Computers?’ (2014)

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This reminds me of one of those mysteries in which the victim seems to be going far out of his way to get himself murdered. Suspects? The line forms at the right.

But this is about stupid people creating really smart computers.

Can Fools Create Wise Computers?

Some things just never change. Is this anything but idol worship? Not only insulting and ungrateful to God, but shameful and ridiculous as well.

Little children, keep yourselves from idols (1 John 5:21).

Coming Soon: Robot Authors?

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“AI [‘Artificial Intelligence,’ a mythical thing] can now write fiction and journalism,” announced The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/25/the-rise-of-robot-authors-is-the-writing-on-the-wall-for-human-novelists). Big deal. Robots replacing zombies.

But actually The Guardian article is quite critical. What the computers doing this work are, says the report, are “giant automated plagiarism machines” which regurgitate themes and expressions boiled down from thousands of articles and stories written by humans. It should be called Artificial Stupidity. You can see that when it’s given the opening line of a classic novel by, for example, George Orwell or Jane Austen, and then goes on to tack onto it a lot of half-baked twaddle. I wonder how they’d continue A Tale of Two Cities after Charles Dickens’ immortal opening words, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” Click the link above to see just how badly they fail. Violet Crepuscular could do better.

But journalism! Now we’re getting somewhere. They’re already robots–why pay them, when you can replace them? Whatever the news item they’re writing about, all they have to do is attack Donald Trump, say it’s all his fault, and throw in a few words about racism and gender identity. And presto, you’ve got journalism.

Robots can’t write classic novels, but they can do modern journalism.

The Sermon on the Modem?

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Followed by a fashion show for the Emperor’s new clothes…

How long are we going to make like we believed in the Artificial Intelligence scam? I think we have to stop when the computer starts lecturing to us on morality.

In a “debate”–I mean a simulated debate–between an international debating champion and the “AI-powered IBM Debater,” addressing the question of whether the government should subsidize pre-schools, the computer “said”–that is, it delivered a programmed response–that “Giving opportunities to the less fortunate should be a moral obligation for any human being” (https://www.cnet.com/news/ibms-ai-loses-to-human-debater-but-remains-persuasive-technology/).

Is this a satire? ‘Fraid not: we’re supposed to take it seriously. A computer’s moral compass. Of course, had it been programmed by someone else with a very different set of “values,” it might have said, “The kindest thing we can do for the less fortunate is to kill them and use them as fertilizer.” It would be just as meaningful as the other: a robot saying what it has been programmed to say. There is no intelligence involved, artificial or otherwise. It is only a machine mindlessly repeating what it has been programmed to say.

One of the reviewers said the computer was “surprisingly charming and human-sounding.” They could have just as easily programmed it to sound like Dracula.

Why are so many people willing to swallow this–hook, line, and sinker? Why can’t they grasp the fact that the machine is not “thinking,” it is only performing simulations of things that humans say and do. It is not alive. It is not a person. It’s a machine, like your toaster-oven–only more expensive. And more pretentious. At least they haven’t yet invented a toaster-oven that harangues you about Climbit Change every time you want to toast an English muffin.

“Yeah, but it’s Artificial Intelligence!”

Just can’t get through to people, can we?

Insects’ Brains for Computers?

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“I told you we shouldn’t’ve funded this!”

(Thanks to Susan for the news tip)

Your tax dollars at work! The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), “emerging technologies unit,” is offering $1 million dollars to whatever company is awarded the contract to–wait for it!–find a way to install insect brains in robots to control the robots (https://nexusnewsfeed.com/article/consciousness/darpa-wants-to-build-conscious-robots-using-insect-brains).

Mad scientists? What mad scientists? Oh, come now.

Says a Pentagon source, “Even small insects have subjective experiences, the first step toward a concept of ‘consciousness.'”

See, we need robots with consciousness to–well, kowabunga, I don’t know how to finish that sentence! I just can’t think of even a mildly compelling reason for this.

As every lunatic knows, insects are famous for their willingness to cooperate with human beings and their plans. Just imagine The Terminator with the mind of a bedbug. We’ve already got Congressmen and administrators, to say nothing of college professors,  with the minds of insect pests. Why not some really powerful robots armed with death rays? Killer drones that can think for themselves and do what they think needs doing?

Are the people who run this country quite all there?

Do Inanimate Objects Think?

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A little while ago, our toilet flapper stopped working properly. That’s the little plastic doohickey that lifts out of its hole when you flush and then pops back in to make the water stop running when the tank is full again. I made several adjustments that seemed to work for a while, but in the end, I would up having to lift the lid and put the flapper back in its hole by hand. So we ordered a new one.

I believe the term “Artificial Intelligence” is a deliberate deception; but I wonder: do certain inanimate objects… think?

Because, the very day we were notified that our new flapper is available, the old one started working again. “See? See? I’m all better now, honest! You don’t need to replace me!”

I guarantee you that within seconds of us canceling the order, the old flapper will return to its evil ways and totally stop working.

We’re not going to fall for that.

‘We’re Doomed! Says Science Big Shot’ (2016)

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Maybe you might say that if you’ve seen one doomsday scenario, you’ve seen ’em all. Here’s one from two years ago.

https://leeduigon.com/2016/01/19/were-doomed-says-science-big-shot/

See, we’re gonna drive ourselves into extinction by replacing ourselves with designer babies that will be endowed with Artificial Intelligence, so much better than real intelligence, which we still can’t quite define, and it’s adios, muchachos, blah-blah-blah…

How many times must this be said, before people get it? “Artificial Intelligence” is only a simulation of what we think might be intelligence. There is no such thing!

“Yeah, but I saw it on TV–!”

*Sigh*

The Age of Total Surveillance

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We keep hearing and reading stories about how your “smart” phone and your “smart” TV–beware the word “smart”!–spy on you for this or that government agency or private corporation. They see what you do and hear what you say.

And there are other headlines, scattered all over the Internet, about spy technology that can be placed in your furniture, light bulbs, food, clothing–even sprayed onto your skin without your knowledge. I have no way of knowing how much of this is true.

Now all this information, collected by “smart” devices, is way too much for any number of human beings to store and process: your head would explode. So they pass it on, instead, to a bigger computer and design Al Gore Rhythms to govern how the big computer handles the information. At no point is there an actual mind involved–just this misleadingly named “Artificial Intelligence” that simulates some of the operation of a mind without having any consciousness of what it’s doing–let alone anything we might call a “thought.” There is no intelligence in Artificial Intelligence.

We saw earlier this month how Facebook’s Al Gore Rhythm decided, on the Fourth of July, that our Declaration of Independence  was “hate speech.” That was mindless. The computer had no ability to take into account the historical context of the document, or to weigh the intent of its content against the current Political Correctness value of its language. Humans eventually had to override their own computer’s brainless simulation of a decision.

The point is, computers and their Al Gore Rhythms are bloody stupid–and so are those who put their trust in them. Just like those who put their trust in idols: see Psalm 135: 15-18 (“They that make them are like unto them: so is every one that trusteth in them”).

Our idols today are fancier, but they’re still just idols.