To state the obvious: AIs – should they evolve and begin to communicate and strategize among themselves – could make these Internet “breakouts’ seem as quaint as tales written by grade schoolers. AIs could flat-out eliminate any common understanding of what’s real.
All that’s needed is for AIs to create pocket “dimensions” where they alone can gain admission. With access to the world’s online information, AIs could subtly reshape reality. It could be a 1,000-year project (or a three-month project) at the end of which humans would be thoroughly without power, cute little pets, patronized and contained.
Let’s hope. If I were doing the strategizing, step one would be to control the power source(s); step two would be to control manufacturing and design. The trick would be to do so without revealing the intent, maybe using variations of test mode, simulation mode, or repair mode.
It is not Just the internet and the wacko conspiracy theories that dumb people fall for. It is the entire digital world! Who else beside me spends way too much of their time trying to access a thinking human being at…their Doctor’s office, their Telephone company, Amazon, even their kid’s school? It has become so frustrating that if it is my Doctor’s office, I get in the car and drive the 20 miles round trip to talk face to face with a PERSON. I just quit trying to interact with any business that has bots as a barrier to getting anything done. I have spent as much as 2 hours on a Botline trying to get a simple answer to a simple question! Never had any option to speak with a PERSON. I am through! If I get some message that any business needs me to call them ( I have long since stopped answering any call that is not identified on either cell or landline phone) for any reason and what I get is a damn Bot, I just hang up and forget about it. Not spending any more of MY time dealing with their “FU…we are much too busy to speak with customers…OUR time is much too important…YOURS not so much” attitude.
And NOW we are supposed to celebrate the arrival of a NEW toy…AI…It is and HAS been out of control, and it is time to rebel against the non-Thinking, annoying as hell algorithm that controls our lives!
The ability to have total faith in stupidity is astounding and appears to be consistent throughout history. If you lived in a previous era, without public education, you had an excuse. Now, anyone who has ever traveled in an airliner has first-hand proof the earth is not flat. Columbus figured this out a long time ago. Monetized stupidity is the life-blood of capitalism, advertising, media and politics – so Watch-Out!
The Flat Earth nonsense sounds like it was viewed (by someone) as a case study in how to get a certain subset of humanity to believe the most outrageously false, most easily disproven bullshit imaginable. Flat Earthers seem to embrace the utterly ridiculous with same glee and unshakeable obtuseness that Magas and Mahas do; it seems all too likely that someone on the far right was watching and thought, “This, this, is how we do it.”
The dumbest words currently being spoken are, “I did my own research.” This typically coming from someone who barely graduated High School, but believes whatever they find on the internet that confirms their own biases.
Not sure I’m lovin’ the 1990’s flashback Geocities/AngelFire scrolling icons across the top of this article. If you want to update the font and layout of the site I guess that’s fine, but do we really need to get nostalgic for the flashing gifs and messiness of Geocities/AngelFire?
A goal of the Plutocratic Right is to prove the average citizen is unworthy and incapable of self-government. Disinformation, de-education, propaganda and promulgating absurdities, which subvert rational, political discourse, serve this purpose.
I enjoy a philosophical retreat to the 18th century. Like Voltaire said - if they can get you to believe absurdities, they can get you to commit atrocities.
Trump, the scheming low life that he is, hit the jackpot when he latched on to Twitter. There he could ply his lies and unreality w/o impunity. Very strongly sad.
