Tag: artificial stupidity

Another Brilliant Idea! ‘Predictive Policing’

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Image result for images of marty the robot

Maybe Marty the Supermarket Robot could moonlight as a crimestopper.

If police were to arrest and jail you because some fortune-teller peered into a jar of Miracle Whip and announced that you were about to commit a crime, you would surely feel yourself ill-used.

But if a robot using “Artificial Intelligence” predicts it, well, that’s different (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-7287341/AI-experts-release-statement-slamming-predictive-policing-digitizing-stop-frisk.html). It’s scientific!

See, they want to use “pre-crime algorithms” to know who’s gonna be bad so that they can bust him before he does it. Never mind the critics out there, most of whom are described as scientists, who call the whole thing “useless” and warn that it might lead to “mass incarceration” of people who haven’t yet committed the crimes they were jailed for.

The critics point to statistics that show that really very few people go out and commit a new crime while awaiting trial for an earlier offense. Another arrest–well, it looks bad. It might make it really hard to get bail. Judges don’t like to grant bail to persons who have just been busted for yet another crime. You can see their point.

Meanwhile, listen carefully… There is no such thing as “Artificial Intelligence.” There is only whatever human intelligence, or lack thereof, that goes into programming the computer. Algorithms are human creations–and therefore eminently fallible.

Would it help if they programmed the robot to say “I’m sorry”?

(Ooh, ooh, I know! Why not just lock up everybody! Robots could guard them and keep them from escaping. Good idea?)

Cursed! by Alexa

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

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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

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

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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).

More Artificial Stupidity

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

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I’ve just got to pass on this anecdote, while it’s fresh in my mind.

My sister Alice works for a doctor who has become enamored of hi-tech gadgets; so he acquired some kind of computerized dictaphone to take his notes. Part of Alice’s job is to listen to the blather on the dictaphone and try to decipher it.

At a certain juncture, the doctor spoke into the dictaphone, “I told the patient to see Alice.” The computer recorded it as “I told the patient to Cialis.”

Cialis is an erectile dysfunction drug. The patient does not have erectile dysfunction. What the patient needs is another doctor–preferably one who doesn’t rely on a computerized dictaphone.

It could be worse. He could be a general giving orders to our missile system. Betcha the computer would have a lot of fun with that [cue to Terminator music].

Kook: Humans to Marry ‘Droids by 2045

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Image result for images of androids

Warning: The article from the UK Sun contains material that can only be described as disgusting. Read at your own risk.

Hey! People are “already making love to sex robots”–merciful heaven, is that what they call it?–and robots will soon be able to “surpass” human beings in everything, and will “awaken” by 2035 and soon acquire full civil rights as if they were human… so by 2045, the stage will be set for humans to “marry” androids (https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/6366262/marry-robots-sophia-harmony-hanson-2045/).

It’s all in a paper by some kook of a scientist, released in conjunction with (oh, please) a video game.

“How would you like to be married to a hyper-intelligent hybrid?” asks the “news” article. Gee, would that mean I had totally lost the ability to relate to another human being?

Ever get the impression you took a wrong turn somewhere, and wound up in Oz? In any discussion of “Artificial Intelligence,” the key word, the word that really matters, is “Artificial.” Not real! A mere simulation of reality! And it will not be more “intelligent” than we are, although it could easily turn out to be just as bleeding stupid. 

A chess computer is held to be “good at chess,” for instance, A) because it has been programmed by experts who are real chess masters, B) because it’s a machine, an opponent cannot attack its psychology: it has no psychology, C) it can do chess calculations at lightning speed, almost infallibly picking the best move out of hundreds of possibilities, and D) although it has no genuine insight into anything that happens on the chessboard, it is immune to weariness or boredom and able to repeat its staggering number of calculations every time the situation changes because the opponent has made another move. The chess computer can defeat human players because of those factors listed above. “Intelligence” has nothing to do with it!

Just try explaining that to some numbskull of a reporter.

At best, the quest for Artificial Intelligence is a waste of resources. At worst it is a folly; and a folly can turn around and bite you. Hard.

I’m Three Years Old Today!

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So who says Artificial Intelligence is really just artificial stupidity?

We received today a computer-generated reminder from Greetings.com that today is my third birthday. Wow, 65 years taken right off the top! Imagine if they could do that with your weight, too. I just can’t wait till we all have the ability to hook up our brains to a master computer somewhere and all of us be just as smart as whips. First our cars, then our missile defense system, and finally our brains.

‘Robots as Persons’–Is This for Real?

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Image result for i, robot by isaac asimov

The European Parliament has approved a draft proposal to grant “legal rights” to robots as “electronic persons” ( https://www.rt.com/viral/373450-robot-kill-switches-status/ ). It will also include “obligations” for robots to “make good any damage they may cause”–an obligation, by the way, which does not seem to apply to “asylum seekers” in Germany and France who have done a lot of damage which is not made good. But I digress.

Are they jiving us? I’m having a hard time believing this story. Take this quote, for instance:

“AI [Artificial Intelligence] developers will have to ensure their creations follow a set of rules that prohibit them from harming or allowing a human to come to harm through their inaction. AI can protect their own existence under the rules, if this does not harm any humans.” And just in case, it is proposed that a “kill switch” be added so that “any rogue robots can be turned off easily.”

Hold on a minute, there! Isn’t this “Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics”? In his 1942 short story, “Runaround,” science fiction great Isaac Asimov proposed “three laws,” which he applied to his stories about robots from then on and which were adopted by many other science fiction writers. I grew up reading those stories and novels, and I know those “laws” by heart.

One) A robot must not, by any action or inaction, cause or permit any human being to come to harm.

Two) A robot must obey all commands given to it by any human being, unless that would conflict with the First Law.

Three) A robot may do whatever it needs to do to protect its own existence, except when that would conflict with either the First or Second Law.

The robots in Asimov’s novels, like I, Robot, were almost indistinguishable from real human beings. The EU seems to be concerned that people may wind up confusing a robot’s simulation of human drives and emotions with the real thing. That could get kind of sticky.

And so the secular humanist God-playing project goes on and on, from one folly to the next. It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture–that’s what the Bible says (Psalm 100:3), and the secular whoopee crowd has a real problem with it.

As for me, I don’t see how people who don’t have all that much intelligence themselves can be so confident in their ability to create artificial intelligence in electronic persons.

Artificial Stupidity–yeah, I think they can manage that.

These people are very seriously deluded.

Man-Made Blob Engulfs City Block

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Okay, The Blob was worse…

Oops.

Before we turn over everything to robots and computers, are we quite, quite sure they’re ready?

In Santa Clara, California, this week, “an alarm malfunction”–that is, a computer hiccup–activated a fire suppression system in a hanger at San Jose International Airport, spewing out a mass of foam ten feet high (!) and big enough to cover a whole city block ( http://abc7news.com/news/mysterious-foam-floods-martin-avenue-in-santa-clara/1614495/ ). Check out the pictures!

We have not yet created true artificial intelligence. But we’re well on our way to artificial stupidity.

Humanism’s stuff: if it works, it’s a miracle.