This fall may well be the first big national test of this “new internet,” and, like the Internet Research Agency’s interventions in 2016, could well lead to disaster...
While the possibility of a real Skynet looms, there is a more immediate, pedestrian and obvious issue that presents itself. Anyone claiming to be a patriotic American (and understands what that actually means) and realizes that ALL of the foreign chatbot activities, especially those from our clear enemies China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, are promoting tfg for POTUS and trashing President Biden needs no other reason to vote for President Biden. I would argue that given that single reality, a vote for tfg is tantamount to treason. And yes, it really is that stark, and that bad.
Roy, AI might be above the head of the avg. person, but there are people in congress that can boil it down for them. Getting the attention of their eyes and ears is the issue. It seems to me that after the appointment to head the Intelligence dep't. of Scott Perry and Ron Jackson by Johnson, two insurrectionists that I understand are being investigated by the FBI, needs less talking and more action. These appointments along with AI used by authoritarians around the world that have no love for America should wake us up. I've suggested that a million man march headed by people like Jamie Raskin, Sheldon Whitehouse, Dan Goldman, Jim McGovern and key celebrities like Taylor Swift, Streisand, Burns, etc. would get the country's attention. Time is running out and the democratic leadership needs to get busy.
If only that would happen. Hopefully it will. I doubt a March would change many minds though. And there are only a few minds in a few key states that need changing for the Presidential election. In the states, GQP gerrymandering and voter suppression are going to make it much tougher in 2024 than it was in 2022. We live in dire and disturbing times.
in response to the first comment to Roy. i.e. Russian trolls posting on social media and substack. They are piling on , and more will as we draw closer to November, and then after the votes are cast, silence again.
very prominent on Robert Reichs substack, attracts a lot pofessionals and polticials., each article has 400 to 700 comments, and the Trumpian Putin trolls are showing up in droves, attacking Biden from every angle while presenting themselves as concerned citizens.
Some are even AI I caught one, I happened to mention that I owned a 65 Mustang, bought it for $2000 today it would cost $33,000 I mentioned it twice, the AI picked up on the word and said I was obsessed with mustangs (small m), I knew then that I was arguing with an AI, i t keeps trying to bait me, but I ignore it now.
William thanks! I am never sure when it's a troll, however, I have read your responses to them. A lot of them are above my pay grade. I'm beginning to think you were in Intelligence when serving our country.
Gee, Thom, I thought you were going to tell us that all of your brilliant recent essays were actually the product of Chat GPT AI and you were actually sitting on a beach in Fiji. Was I wrong? As for the critical capacity of the average American in my neck of the woods, our ability to distinguish truth from make-believe went out the window some time ago. Afterall, folks down here in Ohio voted for J.D Vance and Jim Jordan, as well as Our Mad King (wannabe) Donald, who'd they'd allow to serve as president from a jail cell, or Mar-a-Lago under house arrest, while the Secret Service detachment lounge poolside. Crazy R Us.
I read that AI tells lies and sometimes makes up facts. They don't know how to fix that, so far. It doesn't sound dependable to me at this point in time.
Largely this is because you might want to consider AI and LLMs (Large Language Models) as a spell/grammar checker on steroids. It doesn’t “think” anything it just uses massive algorithms to complete words and sentences.
BUT, it can be programmed to fashion “stories” and “arguments” within preset parameters … It can sound terrifically “rational,” though one might discern a philosophical bent, if one does a bit of analysis … If Ai is directed to do so, it can sample the writing of any of us who have a presence on line, an it can imitate our style, fairly convincingly making it look like we take this position or that position to support this person to that person.
Writers who’ve had a public presence for a long time, who have a style of speech and language on the page, can be spoofed. I trust that what I get direct from Mr. Hartmann is actually FROM him. Same with others i read. I trust that commenters on these threads ARE the people I’ve encountered here before, but I don’t know how to vet new voices now … Some guy yesterday was going on about Biden in ways that were absolutely loopy. Was he a bot? A paid liar? A set of digital instructions in an AI program?
Somebody tell me: if we engage with another commenter on these threads, does it raise their profile? Do we make it worse, if we “talk” to a troll or a bit of Ai?
What are the recommendations for how we navigate this all-too-mine-laden terrain?
Pat there is even a program on the web, into which one copies and pastes dialogue and it can tell you the gender of the speaker. I think most people do that unconsciously.
Yes, such abilities have been around for a long time. Linguists have delved into such things since as long as I can remember {and I’m pretty old and still remember a ton of stuff}. It’s not perfect, and as genders become less distinct, it may eventually fade, but there are language tendencies that used to show up more in one gender than in another — I wonder how accurate that is now. Maybe AI would be better at it than humans these days …
With people of our generation probably accuate and with certain groups, like "valley girls" probably accurate.
Interesting story. I leaned Spanish in situ, I married a Panamanian and for three years, outside of work, my only social life was with her family and friends, and on occasion a multinational embassy party.
I learned Spanish by osmosis. Back in the states I was told that I speak Spanish like a female.
I heard and interview with the owner of Victorix,
Swiss Knives, and he speaks English like a woman. I assume that his teacher was a woman.
Ol', I have to start over because my comment disappeared. ER docs and nurse practitioners use algorithms created by insurance companies to direct their care. I followed one to determine how an ER twice sent me home with a severe kidney infection. The investigation into renal in the algorhithm was not thorough. Maybe the fact that dialysis, the end stage treatment for undiagnosed kidney infections is paid for by the government with less paperwork than most expensive treatments due to some political maneuvering over 30 years ago, is a reason. Dialysis grew into a couple of monopolies that raked in tons of money.
I have asked chat gpt to write stories and jokes with a specific theme and was amazed at the results. I was an instructor of Nursing Process, Fundamentals, Pathophysiology, etc. and I would hate having to decide which essay answers were original and which were AI. Impossible!
I agree, Cracker. Adaptive programs have been around forever and don't really represent AI. But did you read the example Thom gave of Metas bots response to the question that started "“Does anyone here have experience with a ‘2e’ child...." ? It was flat spooky.
slightly amusing side detail: the term of art is "hallucinate" - AI researchers say "lie" implies awareness of telling a lie, but what the neural network is doing is that it's seeing something that isn't there, extrapolating it from the data that's been fed to it. Hallucinations can happen with clean data and the data aren't always clean (certainly for a very large corpus, it will never be clean). And no, it's not yet completely dependable because researchers don't entirely understand where hallucinations come from.
The truth endures. We are all of us only as safe as how far we can trust our nearest real living neighbours to come to our aid in a full on physical emergency. No amount of sophisticated oil fired AI or electricity or gas hungry cars are going to either come to your real rescue or out run focused hostile malice.
Pandora’s box has been opened and there no chance to get the demon back in. We are so smart as a species that we have figured out how to destroy ourselves.
Hartmann; Question and Proposal regarding, “Bozos on the Bus”
Hi Thom! My question is: Will you use your organizational and contact resources to help mobilize a social media campaign like I’m about to describe, for the reasons I’m about to describe?
Here’s the idea:
We have the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, and maybe many more all waging social media warfare against us, trying to tear us apart, and evidently doing a good job of it. They’re successfully engendering all the worst angels in the American Citizenry.
But this November, we need our very best angels to show up at our voting booths, not our worst ones. And we need to rely on social media to turn the tide in favor of our best angels.
On the topics of NATO and Ukraine, and really all of Europe, I read an article in The Atlantic where the author talked about the existential crisis throughout Europe, and the dread that DJT will be re-elected and then disregard NATO obligations. According to the Atlantic author, it’s a dread that is widespread across social classes and walks of life. It’s not limited to the class in the political bubble. All Europe is focused on the U.S., and the U.S. elections, waiting to see what we’re going to do in our role as the backbone of NATO.
We need a social media blitz with hundreds of thousands of Europeans expressing gratitude for the sustaining role of the U.S. in NATO, and explaining their dread at the loss of our commitment and backing, explaining what that might mean to war and peace on the continent.
And we need a social media blitz, tens of thousands of posts reporting from Ukraine, where ordinary people show and tell American voters what war means in their community, their family, their livelihood, their lives. We need the Ukrainian people to show and tell us Americans that when Trump tells Putin, “Do what the hell ever you want!” that these war ravaged lives, families and communities is what Putin wants, what Putin does, and what Trump is inviting him to do to more of.”
We need social media to show Americans what modern war looks like right now, for us to better understand what war does to people. And we need social media to sway the American voter into the value of NATO, and its significance at preventing and containing war that is going on right now.
Media got us out of Vietnam for peace. We need social media to keep us in NATO for the best chance at the most peace.
So, Thom, to repeat the question: Will you use your organizational and contact resources to help mobilize a social media campaign like I have described, for the reasons I’ve described?
Love your idea. That along with my suggestion to Roy Schultz and the HCR letter to have a million man march in Washington, headed by leading people in congress and celebraties would be a good first step.
This is very concerning. It seems to me that some mechanism has to be devised to securely authenticate every device that connects to the Internet, denoting that it is not hosting an AI program. But then, having just finished that sentence, I realized a bad actor could simply hard wire their validated Toshiba laptop to their super computer as a front end. Seems I read recently that there are trick questions you can ask an AI program that it will have trouble answering, but that's with today's technology. They'll find a way around that little problem next week. This is a massive problem!
The first major externality, I think, of AI is going to happen in Q1 and Q2 of 2024 and that is:
if I'm Putin and I'm spending 100 billion and 100,000 lives in what so far has been kind of a failed venture, failed war in Ukraine, the fastest Blue Line path to victory for me is the following:
I use my incredibly brilliant scientists (they have great scientists), I get a Albanian troll farm with thousands of people, I take 5 billion dollars and then I couple that with an amoral management team at social media firms (that are there just to cash checks and then worry about what happened after the election) and I AB test deep fakes and AI to de-position whoever is Trump's opponent and I get Trump reelected because:
the cheapest way for Putin to win the war in Ukraine is to get Trump reelected
We now live in a scary world where AI is being allowed to intrude into every aspect of life. We now live in a world where speaking out publicly against U.S. policy gets your passport taken away and a no fly order is issued and likely other sanctions. We now live in a world where the U.S. economy is imploding and the government is doing all it can to keep it quiet. Politicians know what happens if a recession occurs just ahead of a national election in the U.S. We now live in a world where the U.S. is no longer the world's mightiest military but the government continues to lie to the world otherwise. We now live in a world where the Christians are embracing the end times, more so than before, as foretold in their holy book chapter, Revelations' and are okay with the 'others', dying off so the rapture will take them to a heaven.
I do believe that the end of life as we are used to in the United States is coming to an inglorious conclusion. What will rise from the ashes is anyone's guess but we do know what a Trump led, GOP government will bring, and very quickly if he regains the white house. He has said as much and there is no reason to believe otherwise.
As always, be very, very careful what you wish for these days as you just might get your wish and in this day and age, there are no take backs or game resets.
It's not only right-wing persuasion, it's part of a larger scheme to commoditize thought and manufacture consent for both sides of the echo chamber that is reinforced by The Washington Post, MSNBC, Fox News, The New York Times and unfortunatley even The Hartmann Report. The selective truth that The Hartmann Report reinforces is merely the mirror image of that of those further to the right (acknowledging that to ascribe to Biden/Democratic Party liberalism one must slant towards the right wing on many issues from foreign policy to immigration). AI can have its potentially subversive effects because the truth has been perverted into armchair punditry and dehumanization of "the other." The rhetoric becomes the reality while the actions are always excused away as the fault of the other side regardless of their harmful effects or consistency of their implementation. Biden liberals obsess about Trump's harsh treatment of immigrants but Biden's in some ways has been and now certainly is worse. The political theatre will obfuscate this truth by blaming Trump and the Republicans for not passing Biden's cruel immigration bill, thus justifying his equally cruel and politically expedient executive order. And so it goes....https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/executive-order-to-shut-down-the-border-would-put-thousands-of-lives-at-risk?
I've had a long drawn out heated exchange with two posters on Robert Reich that I thought were real people. One named Tom High is taking the side of Putin in Ukraine, and HAMAS in Gaza. It is still trying to bait me.
The other has he screen name Karl Marx, it generated to the point that I called it a troll and it responded calling me a troll, I typed LOL and it responded LOL.
I finally typed Fuck you in Morse code and it responded with gibberish.AI's aren't taught Morse code.,but probably will be after this exposure.
The evil liberals who want a Utopia have that left wing agenda? We have two right-wing parties, fascist light and fascist stout! I can't imagine the billionaires pushing for environmental protection or higher wages or paying more taxes. I don't see a left wing agenda coming out of artificial intelligence at all?
Neither do I. Boris has one agenda, disrupt and distract for Putin. I don't know whether it is AI or not, but the tactic is to grab hold of the latest bright shiny object, and turn the conversation in Putin's favor.
Easy to do with liberals, just glom onto their cause, push it to the extreme, then turn it in Putin's favor.
Just watched an advertisement using Rachel Maddow in a supportive voice the claims of the product. The voice was excellent. It was only the face expressions that were a bit off. Not much though. These faults will vanish soon and so it will become difficult to impossible to tell by eye. The main way to tell will become more to the form of what someone does rather than what they say. We will know them by their fruits. Will Air America become videos of dear leaders doing and saying and all things? The truth is what we used against bad actors. We do not have to make much up for that. In fact our reputation for being truthful is still our greatest weapon. Actors knowingly acting as leaders is sufficient, but kaboki theater will always be a way to influence. I wish the Dem party would take lessons and buy a few tv stations with some 100's radio stations. Friendly billionaires to democracy take note.
Every so often I take a deep breath, hold my nose and enter my largely defunct Twitter account. There I encounter a few of the Tweets from those whose opining I give a crap about, Now more than ever a host of Fascist Loving MAGAts I never asked to post to me appear w/ corny bearded sunglass wearing avatars or Fox femmes.
Not strange in the least is that they all come right out of the Fascist Troll Farm and each and every word absolutely reads like that soulless AI driven LLM drivel we have all come to recognize.
At this point, I feel like all this agitprop is designed to mine for new “snowflakes” who take the bait for spewing yet more agitprop.
Can anyone here tell me if they have ever received a response from a Fascist Troll stating that they have seen the light or even slightly agree with any statement you posted to the Fascist? BTW these arguments we have are largely with synthetic programs (bots), but if this somehow fulfills your need to raise blood pressure or add to stress and you like it, that is fine with me.
Yeh Pat. I saw Kellyanne on Bill Maher and can't wrap my head around the marriage of her and George, same with James Carville and Mary Matalin, one or both have to be play acting.
Thanks for the update. Yeh, I saw her on Bill Maher, pardon the misognistic language,but she is a real cunt.
By the way that word is used freely in Britan for men and women, so it is only misogyniistic in America.
She turns my stomach and I can't figure out why she didn't Bill's. She did what all right wingers do, filibuster. It is so bad that Rachel Maddow, once on his show had to stand up to break the filibuster;.Bill, the doward, certainly won't.
I don't have a cell phone, a tablet or a social media account, and I wish my wife would sign off Facebook, three times now she has bought shit from a scam, got notice that the purchase was declined and got a new credit card. She uses facebook to keep in contact with her family, and to keep her otherwise occupied,Me, well I have substack. :) (I still use html smiley's)
😎 I was on the cutting edge of computering for a lot of years, until I got just too old. Now, my thirteen year old granddaughter shows me how to do stuff. He father is a tech director for a cable company.
I love computers and interconnectivity, but I’m not at all happy about how the Internet has been misused … It’s wonderful for an information junkie like myself to have it at my fingertips, and so sad to see it abused.
We have most seriously lost control of our Golem … devastatingly sad, I think, because computers and the Net are so wonderful …
The Golem is a rabbincal story and analogy and I wonder how many people know it, and what it warns against. Basically by mentioning it's name,you breathe life into something, even an idea, and thus bring it to life, but like Frankensteins monster you lose control of it.
We’ve had and still have a number of “Golems” over the years, and - yes - I know the story of the Golem. Made to protect and serve, and accidentally loosed to destroy …
I don’t think Golum was a whole lot like a Golem. He was corrupted, though, but there are few other parallels. The Golem wasn’t actually “corrupted”; the people lost control of him. I’m splitting hairs …
Frankenstein’s “monster” wasn’t created to protect the people, either…more hairs …but the warning to “be careful of that which you create, “ yeah, that carries.
While the possibility of a real Skynet looms, there is a more immediate, pedestrian and obvious issue that presents itself. Anyone claiming to be a patriotic American (and understands what that actually means) and realizes that ALL of the foreign chatbot activities, especially those from our clear enemies China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, are promoting tfg for POTUS and trashing President Biden needs no other reason to vote for President Biden. I would argue that given that single reality, a vote for tfg is tantamount to treason. And yes, it really is that stark, and that bad.
Yeah, Roy, but good luck getting the word out on Fox News.
Roy, AI might be above the head of the avg. person, but there are people in congress that can boil it down for them. Getting the attention of their eyes and ears is the issue. It seems to me that after the appointment to head the Intelligence dep't. of Scott Perry and Ron Jackson by Johnson, two insurrectionists that I understand are being investigated by the FBI, needs less talking and more action. These appointments along with AI used by authoritarians around the world that have no love for America should wake us up. I've suggested that a million man march headed by people like Jamie Raskin, Sheldon Whitehouse, Dan Goldman, Jim McGovern and key celebrities like Taylor Swift, Streisand, Burns, etc. would get the country's attention. Time is running out and the democratic leadership needs to get busy.
If only that would happen. Hopefully it will. I doubt a March would change many minds though. And there are only a few minds in a few key states that need changing for the Presidential election. In the states, GQP gerrymandering and voter suppression are going to make it much tougher in 2024 than it was in 2022. We live in dire and disturbing times.
A certain poster I call Boris comes to mind Roy.
Your reply is above my head. What did you mean?
in response to the first comment to Roy. i.e. Russian trolls posting on social media and substack. They are piling on , and more will as we draw closer to November, and then after the votes are cast, silence again.
very prominent on Robert Reichs substack, attracts a lot pofessionals and polticials., each article has 400 to 700 comments, and the Trumpian Putin trolls are showing up in droves, attacking Biden from every angle while presenting themselves as concerned citizens.
Some are even AI I caught one, I happened to mention that I owned a 65 Mustang, bought it for $2000 today it would cost $33,000 I mentioned it twice, the AI picked up on the word and said I was obsessed with mustangs (small m), I knew then that I was arguing with an AI, i t keeps trying to bait me, but I ignore it now.
William thanks! I am never sure when it's a troll, however, I have read your responses to them. A lot of them are above my pay grade. I'm beginning to think you were in Intelligence when serving our country.
Not even Eadie, not even
Gee, Thom, I thought you were going to tell us that all of your brilliant recent essays were actually the product of Chat GPT AI and you were actually sitting on a beach in Fiji. Was I wrong? As for the critical capacity of the average American in my neck of the woods, our ability to distinguish truth from make-believe went out the window some time ago. Afterall, folks down here in Ohio voted for J.D Vance and Jim Jordan, as well as Our Mad King (wannabe) Donald, who'd they'd allow to serve as president from a jail cell, or Mar-a-Lago under house arrest, while the Secret Service detachment lounge poolside. Crazy R Us.
I picture the Secret Service waiting in the sitting room or sitting in the waiting room.
Forwarded is forearmed. I been so suspicious of AI bots.
😢
But, but, AI helps me make quick reports, is the defense I hear when I try to emphasize that there are underlying threats to AI.
I read that AI tells lies and sometimes makes up facts. They don't know how to fix that, so far. It doesn't sound dependable to me at this point in time.
Largely this is because you might want to consider AI and LLMs (Large Language Models) as a spell/grammar checker on steroids. It doesn’t “think” anything it just uses massive algorithms to complete words and sentences.
BUT, it can be programmed to fashion “stories” and “arguments” within preset parameters … It can sound terrifically “rational,” though one might discern a philosophical bent, if one does a bit of analysis … If Ai is directed to do so, it can sample the writing of any of us who have a presence on line, an it can imitate our style, fairly convincingly making it look like we take this position or that position to support this person to that person.
Writers who’ve had a public presence for a long time, who have a style of speech and language on the page, can be spoofed. I trust that what I get direct from Mr. Hartmann is actually FROM him. Same with others i read. I trust that commenters on these threads ARE the people I’ve encountered here before, but I don’t know how to vet new voices now … Some guy yesterday was going on about Biden in ways that were absolutely loopy. Was he a bot? A paid liar? A set of digital instructions in an AI program?
Somebody tell me: if we engage with another commenter on these threads, does it raise their profile? Do we make it worse, if we “talk” to a troll or a bit of Ai?
What are the recommendations for how we navigate this all-too-mine-laden terrain?
Pat there is even a program on the web, into which one copies and pastes dialogue and it can tell you the gender of the speaker. I think most people do that unconsciously.
Yes, such abilities have been around for a long time. Linguists have delved into such things since as long as I can remember {and I’m pretty old and still remember a ton of stuff}. It’s not perfect, and as genders become less distinct, it may eventually fade, but there are language tendencies that used to show up more in one gender than in another — I wonder how accurate that is now. Maybe AI would be better at it than humans these days …
With people of our generation probably accuate and with certain groups, like "valley girls" probably accurate.
Interesting story. I leaned Spanish in situ, I married a Panamanian and for three years, outside of work, my only social life was with her family and friends, and on occasion a multinational embassy party.
I learned Spanish by osmosis. Back in the states I was told that I speak Spanish like a female.
I heard and interview with the owner of Victorix,
Swiss Knives, and he speaks English like a woman. I assume that his teacher was a woman.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat has some specific recommendations on how not to make it worse (and comments on why what many people do _does_ make it worse)
https://lucid.substack.com/p/how-to-push-back-against-propaganda-06f?r=29v529
She is great,isn't she. one of my favorites, Her Heather Cox Richardson and Joyce Vance.
Ol', I have to start over because my comment disappeared. ER docs and nurse practitioners use algorithms created by insurance companies to direct their care. I followed one to determine how an ER twice sent me home with a severe kidney infection. The investigation into renal in the algorhithm was not thorough. Maybe the fact that dialysis, the end stage treatment for undiagnosed kidney infections is paid for by the government with less paperwork than most expensive treatments due to some political maneuvering over 30 years ago, is a reason. Dialysis grew into a couple of monopolies that raked in tons of money.
I have asked chat gpt to write stories and jokes with a specific theme and was amazed at the results. I was an instructor of Nursing Process, Fundamentals, Pathophysiology, etc. and I would hate having to decide which essay answers were original and which were AI. Impossible!
Dear cpt chat: How can we make everyone healthy, wealthy and wise?
I agree, Cracker. Adaptive programs have been around forever and don't really represent AI. But did you read the example Thom gave of Metas bots response to the question that started "“Does anyone here have experience with a ‘2e’ child...." ? It was flat spooky.
slightly amusing side detail: the term of art is "hallucinate" - AI researchers say "lie" implies awareness of telling a lie, but what the neural network is doing is that it's seeing something that isn't there, extrapolating it from the data that's been fed to it. Hallucinations can happen with clean data and the data aren't always clean (certainly for a very large corpus, it will never be clean). And no, it's not yet completely dependable because researchers don't entirely understand where hallucinations come from.
Combine the GOP bias of the Electoral College with the threats of AI and the odds of a Trump win by a smaller minority of voters increases.
The truth endures. We are all of us only as safe as how far we can trust our nearest real living neighbours to come to our aid in a full on physical emergency. No amount of sophisticated oil fired AI or electricity or gas hungry cars are going to either come to your real rescue or out run focused hostile malice.
The UK general election is July 4. So watch our election now to learn what they are doing.
Pandora’s box has been opened and there no chance to get the demon back in. We are so smart as a species that we have figured out how to destroy ourselves.
Hartmann; Question and Proposal regarding, “Bozos on the Bus”
Hi Thom! My question is: Will you use your organizational and contact resources to help mobilize a social media campaign like I’m about to describe, for the reasons I’m about to describe?
Here’s the idea:
We have the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, and maybe many more all waging social media warfare against us, trying to tear us apart, and evidently doing a good job of it. They’re successfully engendering all the worst angels in the American Citizenry.
But this November, we need our very best angels to show up at our voting booths, not our worst ones. And we need to rely on social media to turn the tide in favor of our best angels.
On the topics of NATO and Ukraine, and really all of Europe, I read an article in The Atlantic where the author talked about the existential crisis throughout Europe, and the dread that DJT will be re-elected and then disregard NATO obligations. According to the Atlantic author, it’s a dread that is widespread across social classes and walks of life. It’s not limited to the class in the political bubble. All Europe is focused on the U.S., and the U.S. elections, waiting to see what we’re going to do in our role as the backbone of NATO.
We need a social media blitz with hundreds of thousands of Europeans expressing gratitude for the sustaining role of the U.S. in NATO, and explaining their dread at the loss of our commitment and backing, explaining what that might mean to war and peace on the continent.
And we need a social media blitz, tens of thousands of posts reporting from Ukraine, where ordinary people show and tell American voters what war means in their community, their family, their livelihood, their lives. We need the Ukrainian people to show and tell us Americans that when Trump tells Putin, “Do what the hell ever you want!” that these war ravaged lives, families and communities is what Putin wants, what Putin does, and what Trump is inviting him to do to more of.”
We need social media to show Americans what modern war looks like right now, for us to better understand what war does to people. And we need social media to sway the American voter into the value of NATO, and its significance at preventing and containing war that is going on right now.
Media got us out of Vietnam for peace. We need social media to keep us in NATO for the best chance at the most peace.
So, Thom, to repeat the question: Will you use your organizational and contact resources to help mobilize a social media campaign like I have described, for the reasons I’ve described?
Love your idea. That along with my suggestion to Roy Schultz and the HCR letter to have a million man march in Washington, headed by leading people in congress and celebraties would be a good first step.
What will a war here be like? Maybe not quite as bad as what’s happening to Palestine, but maybe worse
This is very concerning. It seems to me that some mechanism has to be devised to securely authenticate every device that connects to the Internet, denoting that it is not hosting an AI program. But then, having just finished that sentence, I realized a bad actor could simply hard wire their validated Toshiba laptop to their super computer as a front end. Seems I read recently that there are trick questions you can ask an AI program that it will have trouble answering, but that's with today's technology. They'll find a way around that little problem next week. This is a massive problem!
short version: cheapest way for Putin to win in Ukraine is get Trump elected
in more detail, Scott Galloway interviewed here by Tim Miller of The Bulwark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VntTdU13RE&t=1995s
approximate transcript:
The first major externality, I think, of AI is going to happen in Q1 and Q2 of 2024 and that is:
if I'm Putin and I'm spending 100 billion and 100,000 lives in what so far has been kind of a failed venture, failed war in Ukraine, the fastest Blue Line path to victory for me is the following:
I use my incredibly brilliant scientists (they have great scientists), I get a Albanian troll farm with thousands of people, I take 5 billion dollars and then I couple that with an amoral management team at social media firms (that are there just to cash checks and then worry about what happened after the election) and I AB test deep fakes and AI to de-position whoever is Trump's opponent and I get Trump reelected because:
the cheapest way for Putin to win the war in Ukraine is to get Trump reelected
We now live in a scary world where AI is being allowed to intrude into every aspect of life. We now live in a world where speaking out publicly against U.S. policy gets your passport taken away and a no fly order is issued and likely other sanctions. We now live in a world where the U.S. economy is imploding and the government is doing all it can to keep it quiet. Politicians know what happens if a recession occurs just ahead of a national election in the U.S. We now live in a world where the U.S. is no longer the world's mightiest military but the government continues to lie to the world otherwise. We now live in a world where the Christians are embracing the end times, more so than before, as foretold in their holy book chapter, Revelations' and are okay with the 'others', dying off so the rapture will take them to a heaven.
I do believe that the end of life as we are used to in the United States is coming to an inglorious conclusion. What will rise from the ashes is anyone's guess but we do know what a Trump led, GOP government will bring, and very quickly if he regains the white house. He has said as much and there is no reason to believe otherwise.
As always, be very, very careful what you wish for these days as you just might get your wish and in this day and age, there are no take backs or game resets.
Yikes! I hadn't considered that possibility. Thank you, Thom.
It's not only right-wing persuasion, it's part of a larger scheme to commoditize thought and manufacture consent for both sides of the echo chamber that is reinforced by The Washington Post, MSNBC, Fox News, The New York Times and unfortunatley even The Hartmann Report. The selective truth that The Hartmann Report reinforces is merely the mirror image of that of those further to the right (acknowledging that to ascribe to Biden/Democratic Party liberalism one must slant towards the right wing on many issues from foreign policy to immigration). AI can have its potentially subversive effects because the truth has been perverted into armchair punditry and dehumanization of "the other." The rhetoric becomes the reality while the actions are always excused away as the fault of the other side regardless of their harmful effects or consistency of their implementation. Biden liberals obsess about Trump's harsh treatment of immigrants but Biden's in some ways has been and now certainly is worse. The political theatre will obfuscate this truth by blaming Trump and the Republicans for not passing Biden's cruel immigration bill, thus justifying his equally cruel and politically expedient executive order. And so it goes....https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/executive-order-to-shut-down-the-border-would-put-thousands-of-lives-at-risk?
Seriously Barry J. Kaufman DO - You are a prime example of the drivel spit out by AI.
Love it, cracker, so right you are.
I've had a long drawn out heated exchange with two posters on Robert Reich that I thought were real people. One named Tom High is taking the side of Putin in Ukraine, and HAMAS in Gaza. It is still trying to bait me.
The other has he screen name Karl Marx, it generated to the point that I called it a troll and it responded calling me a troll, I typed LOL and it responded LOL.
I finally typed Fuck you in Morse code and it responded with gibberish.AI's aren't taught Morse code.,but probably will be after this exposure.
Ahah, Boris does it again, he had to get in his digs at the "liberal" media and Biden, doing Putin's work again are you Boris.
The evil liberals who want a Utopia have that left wing agenda? We have two right-wing parties, fascist light and fascist stout! I can't imagine the billionaires pushing for environmental protection or higher wages or paying more taxes. I don't see a left wing agenda coming out of artificial intelligence at all?
Neither do I. Boris has one agenda, disrupt and distract for Putin. I don't know whether it is AI or not, but the tactic is to grab hold of the latest bright shiny object, and turn the conversation in Putin's favor.
Easy to do with liberals, just glom onto their cause, push it to the extreme, then turn it in Putin's favor.
Just watched an advertisement using Rachel Maddow in a supportive voice the claims of the product. The voice was excellent. It was only the face expressions that were a bit off. Not much though. These faults will vanish soon and so it will become difficult to impossible to tell by eye. The main way to tell will become more to the form of what someone does rather than what they say. We will know them by their fruits. Will Air America become videos of dear leaders doing and saying and all things? The truth is what we used against bad actors. We do not have to make much up for that. In fact our reputation for being truthful is still our greatest weapon. Actors knowingly acting as leaders is sufficient, but kaboki theater will always be a way to influence. I wish the Dem party would take lessons and buy a few tv stations with some 100's radio stations. Friendly billionaires to democracy take note.
"Friendly billionaires"? No humans should have that much money and if they do they're probably not friendly.
Every so often I take a deep breath, hold my nose and enter my largely defunct Twitter account. There I encounter a few of the Tweets from those whose opining I give a crap about, Now more than ever a host of Fascist Loving MAGAts I never asked to post to me appear w/ corny bearded sunglass wearing avatars or Fox femmes.
Not strange in the least is that they all come right out of the Fascist Troll Farm and each and every word absolutely reads like that soulless AI driven LLM drivel we have all come to recognize.
At this point, I feel like all this agitprop is designed to mine for new “snowflakes” who take the bait for spewing yet more agitprop.
Can anyone here tell me if they have ever received a response from a Fascist Troll stating that they have seen the light or even slightly agree with any statement you posted to the Fascist? BTW these arguments we have are largely with synthetic programs (bots), but if this somehow fulfills your need to raise blood pressure or add to stress and you like it, that is fine with me.
Trolls used to be people. I guess it’s cheaper and easier now — as Mr. Hartmann suggests — to just release the bot.
None of the trolls were going to change their tune …. That’s not what they were paid for.
SOMETIMES, I argue with people on these threads. SOMETIMES, they change my mind; sometimes I, or someone like me, changes theirs.
Mostly, it serves to refine and strengthen ideas and arguments if we air them, even to people who mostly agree with us.
Would be nice to see a few conservatives change their tune , but …
How many George Conways are there in the world? {And he didn’t stop being conservative — just isn’t a Republican jerk.}
Yeh Pat. I saw Kellyanne on Bill Maher and can't wrap my head around the marriage of her and George, same with James Carville and Mary Matalin, one or both have to be play acting.
Conway got a divorce and she got a new face. Plastic surgery did wonders.
Thanks for the update. Yeh, I saw her on Bill Maher, pardon the misognistic language,but she is a real cunt.
By the way that word is used freely in Britan for men and women, so it is only misogyniistic in America.
She turns my stomach and I can't figure out why she didn't Bill's. She did what all right wingers do, filibuster. It is so bad that Rachel Maddow, once on his show had to stand up to break the filibuster;.Bill, the doward, certainly won't.
Mmmm, it confounds me, too, but …. They do get together like Carville and Matalin … I never could figure it, either.
I think the Conways started out as two conservatives, but she was led astray by the promise of fame and fortune, as a “king maker” for Trump.
Hey, marriages do end, and it seems theirs did, didn’t it?
Pat to my knowledge the Conways and the Carvilles are still married, the couples milk both sides of the political theater. Quite a racket huh.?
I read the are now divorced.
Mmmmph … go figure …
I don't have a cell phone, a tablet or a social media account, and I wish my wife would sign off Facebook, three times now she has bought shit from a scam, got notice that the purchase was declined and got a new credit card. She uses facebook to keep in contact with her family, and to keep her otherwise occupied,Me, well I have substack. :) (I still use html smiley's)
😎 I was on the cutting edge of computering for a lot of years, until I got just too old. Now, my thirteen year old granddaughter shows me how to do stuff. He father is a tech director for a cable company.
I love computers and interconnectivity, but I’m not at all happy about how the Internet has been misused … It’s wonderful for an information junkie like myself to have it at my fingertips, and so sad to see it abused.
We have most seriously lost control of our Golem … devastatingly sad, I think, because computers and the Net are so wonderful …
The Golem is a rabbincal story and analogy and I wonder how many people know it, and what it warns against. Basically by mentioning it's name,you breathe life into something, even an idea, and thus bring it to life, but like Frankensteins monster you lose control of it.
We’ve had and still have a number of “Golems” over the years, and - yes - I know the story of the Golem. Made to protect and serve, and accidentally loosed to destroy …
I knew that you know, I had to expound for those that didn't. Loosing the Golem is the them of Frankenstein's Monster, also Loosing the Kraken.
Moral, be careful of that which you create.
Didn't they call the corrupted Hobbit in the lord of the Rings Golem(Golum)?
Ah, yes, expounding. OK.
I don’t think Golum was a whole lot like a Golem. He was corrupted, though, but there are few other parallels. The Golem wasn’t actually “corrupted”; the people lost control of him. I’m splitting hairs …
Frankenstein’s “monster” wasn’t created to protect the people, either…more hairs …but the warning to “be careful of that which you create, “ yeah, that carries.