No, that broken robot does not need human rights

A guy who works for OpenAI makes an observation. I agree with the opening paragraphs.

AI is not like past technologies, and its humanlike character is already shaping our mental health. Millions now regularly confide in “AI companions”, and there are more and more extreme cases of “psychosis” and self-harm following heavy use. This year, 16-year-old Adam Raine died by suicide after months of chatbot interaction. His parents recently filed the first wrongful death lawsuit against OpenAI, and the company has said it is improving its safeguards.

It’s true! Humans are social creatures who readily make attachments to all kinds of entities. We get highly committed to our pets — people love dogs and cats (and even spiders) and personify the animals we keep — furbabies, you know. They don’t even need to be animate. Kids get attached to their stuffies, or a favorite blanket, or any kind of comfort toy. Some adults worship guns, or cuddle up with flags. We should not be surprised that AIs are designed to tap into that human tendencies.

We should maybe be surprised at how this author twists it around.

I research human-AI interaction at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI. For years, we have seen increased humanization of AI, with more people saying that bots can experience emotions and deserve legal rights – and now 20% of US adults say that some software that exists today is already sentient. More and more people email me saying that their AI chatbot has been “awakened”, offering proof of sentience and an appeal for AI rights. Their reactions span the gamut of human emotions from AI as their “soulmate” to being “deeply unsettled”.

It’s not that humans readily extend humanization to all kinds of objects…it’s that AI is becoming more human! That people think AI is sentient is evidence that AIs are sentient and deserve rights. Some people are arguing for rights for software packages before being willing to give puppy dogs those same rights. This is nuts — AI is not self-aware or in need of special privileges. Developing social attachments is a human property, not a property of the object being attached. Otherwise, I’ve been a terrible abuser who needs to dig into a landfill to rescue a teddy bear.

This author has other absurd beliefs.

As a red teamer at OpenAI, I conduct safety testing on their new AI systems before public release, and the testers are consistently wowed by the human-like behavior. Most people, even those in the field of AI who are racing to build these new data centers and train larger AI models, do not yet see the radical social consequences of digital minds. Humanity is beginning to coexist with a second apex species for the first time in 40,000 years – when our longest-lived cousins, the Neanderthals, went extinct.

AI is an apex species? It’s not even a species. It is not equivalent to the Neanderthals. It is not in competition with Homo sapiens. It is a tool used by the already-wealthy to pry more wealth out of other people and to enshittify existing tools.

Why are they on the front lines?

Here’s the same thing I said the other day, only far more amusingly.

Where is the Democratic leadership? We’ve got a couple of do-nothings like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries doing their best to dodge responsibility, rather than standing up and fighting back. The Democrats have no coherent policy on health care to oppose the quacks who have taken over our scientific institutions, and on the issue of immigration, they seem to be Republicans Lite. I dread the next election — I’ll be voting against every Republican on the ballot, but I won’t be enthused about voting for the opposition.

OK, I’m warming to Tim Walz.

“medbeds”

Watch this video. Are you fooled? Does this look at all convincing to you?

It’s not even a good AI video. On technical merits alone, it’s crap; but it’s also touting a non-existent medical technology that it doesn’t bother to explain how these “medbeds” would work. It was promoted by the President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump, making it merely the latest in a long string of cringe.

In reality, the video, first flagged by Media Matters’ Alex Kaplan, did not air on “My View with Lara Trump,” as it claimed, or any other Fox News show. These so-called med beds do not exist. Yet many QAnon devotees insist the non-existent technology secretly keeps John F. Kennedy Jr. alive. As investigative journalist Jacqueline Sweet has discovered, the earliest mention of the video’s claim comes from a now-deleted Instagram page that “uses a common fake name for fake doctors in romance scams.” By sharing the AI footage of himself, Trump is giving his MAGA followers false hope that he will soon grant them access to the elites’ magic product. The video was eventually deleted from Trump’s account on Sunday morning — but not before it gained traction online.

Trump defenders, as they are often wont to do, rushed to laugh off the incident as a harmless joke. But a quick social media search reveals that a lot of people who are dying or watching a loved one fade away with cancer and other illnesses really believed it. QAnon-type spaces were excited at the possibility that Trump would finally release all the hidden cures. Many MAGA believers have refused medical treatment because they believe med bed tech will restore their health in minutes. This is both depraved and heartbreaking.

How would crawling into a bed with a plastic bubble over it improve the quality of your health care? I don’t know. They don’t know. This is pure cope: the people who are busily dismantling the functionality of conventional health care are trying to compensate by inventing fantasy magical technology to replace it.

This is not a real thing.

Just another liberal-atheist terrorist

There was a terrible mass shooting in Michigan — the killer drove a truck into a Mormon church, set it on fire, and killed four. What I mainly heard in the aftermath of the tragedy was that the killer hated Mormons, thought they were an anti-Christian cult, etc., etc., etc., and Fox News was practically drooling at being able to pin this event on a leftist god-hating atheist fanatic. That’s what we do, after all.

Trump has declared,

PRAY for the victims, and their families. THIS EPIDEMIC OF VIOLENCE IN OUR COUNTRY MUST END, IMMEDIATELY!

That hope that the bad guy was on the correct side of the political spectrum has been fading away as we learned more about the guy. He was a Marine who served in Iraq. He drove a pickup truck with two American flags flapping above the bed.

Sanford’s political beliefs were reportedly conservative, and he was seen wearing a T-shirt endorsing Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election bid in a photo shared on Facebook, according to the Daily Mail.

The suspected shooter’s T-shirt also featured a graphic reading “Make liberals cry again.”

A Google Street view of Sanford’s home taken in June showed a “Trump-Pence” sign affixed to a back fence, the Detroit Free Press reports.

Meanwhile, the motive for the attack is unclear, just as you might expect from a sneaky liberal commie.

How are you holding up, Oregonians?

As a former resident of Oregon, and a frequent visitor to the lovely city of Portland, I was dismayed to learn that it is now war ravaged, and that our president is declaring Full Force war against the city.

At the request of Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, | am directing Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists. | am also authorizing Full Force, if necessary. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

War correspondents have been dispatched to the battle zone, reporting on the horror of the ongoing battles.

Earlier Saturday, there was no sign of any federal presence downtown, where people jogged along the Willamette River, relaxed by a riverside fountain or rode bikes on a sunny fall day.

“Where’s the emergency?” asked resident Allen Schmertzler, 72, who said he was “disgusted” by the president’s decision.

Another, John McNeur, 74, called Trump’s statement “ridiculous.” He pointed out that he was taking “a leisurely stroll” along the river on a peaceful, sunny day.

“This place is not a city that’s out of control,” he said. “It’s just a beautiful place.”

That sounds like the Portland I remember. Where are the Antifa sieges taking place? I remember a very nice donut shop near the OHSU school of medicine, I hope it isn’t being shelled or bombed. We used to take the kids to OMSI, are you able to get past the barricades to the museum any more?

I don’t want to care about Jimmy Kimmel, or Disney Corp.

It’s good news that right-wing broadcaster Sinclair had to reverse course on their attempt to get late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel fired, but I have to get real about this situation. Kimmel is an entertainer, not the leader of a progressive opposition party — he’s just a guy. He’s a court jester. What we should be aware of is the fragility of that position when an autocrat takes offense at relatively mild jokes and tries to destroy a person, and we also have to recognize that there are all these undeservedly wealthy people who will eagerly jump to do the wanna-be king’s bidding. If we get rid of Trump, Sinclair will still be there pushing propaganda for the very worst people in the country.

Is this a victory for free speech, though? Allow me to not-at-all subtly draw your attention to the real winners.

Facing the threat of lost advertising dollars, Sinclair said it “received thoughtful feedback from viewers, advertisers, and community leaders representing a wide range of perspectives.” Nexstar separately announced an end to its blackout of Kimmel shortly after this article published.

I hope I was clear…the ones who really control everything are the corporations with advertising dollars, that is, capitalism. There is a link between advertising and the will of the people, but it’s weakened by the reliance of those corporations on persuasive lies.

There is still some genuinely good news, though. Sinclair got nothing, their attempt to impose their rotten political beliefs on everyone was thoroughly repudiated, and they ran off whimpering with their tails between their legs.

I do wish this victory was over something more significant than propping up a media figure.

So that’s what Jey McCreight has been up to…

They’ve founded a new organization, Beyond X and Y.

As the copy on their web page says:

We’re a trans-led volunteer team of biomedical experts defending trans rights by educating the general public and political leaders about the real science behind trans identity and gender-affirming care.

Sign up for their newsletter and find out more!

An American sickness

We have a chain restaurant that advertises with intimidatingly large flags

I don’t have any flags flying from my house, which makes me an exceptional American. OK, maybe not too exceptional — most houses don’t have flagpoles and aren’t waving their patriotism in everyone’s faces, but having been to Europe and Australia and Asia, I know that in comparison we tend to be a flag-happy nation. But really, the only places, other than official places like the county courthouse and schools, that display a flag also tend to be draped with MAGA nonsense, with pickup trucks covered in ugly political bumper stickers parked in front of them.

That’s fine, I appreciate seeing another visible signifier. But then, I was sent this tweet from Eric Daugherty, a Florida Republican nobody, who has somehow earned the approval of Twitter to send out mass notifications. He is shocked, shocked, shocked that some Americans might see no problem with other country’s flags.

How strange and peculiarly American. Mexico is an ally, and Mexicans are our friends, so she is showing support for an allied nation. We are not enemies, although MAGA seems to think so. It does not diminish us to exhibit solidarity with Mexicans and residents of Mexican descent, especially when an American regime is in power and trying to oppress them.

As for the cost, you can buy a pack of 25 small Mexican flags for less than $20 on Amazon. You don’t need to be George Soros to afford that. Also, people voluntarily attend these kinds of protests without demanding payment — I was at a couple of them earlier this summer. If I ever get out to another protest, maybe I’ll sink some pocket change into getting a few flags-onna-stick to hand out.

If I want to be daring, maybe I should get a bunch of Canadian flags, too.

Anything to counter this weird “patriotic” obsession with the American flag. Did all those years in school pledging allegiance to a stupid flag poison our brains?