Which one is the robot?
“Bizarre” is the right word — apparently, there was an event at the White House to bless a future of AI humanoid slaves taking over all of our menial jobs, like, you know, teaching.
At a bizarre White House event on Wednesday, first lady Melania Trump walked side by side with an artificial-intelligence-powered robot before spelling out a vision of the future in which children are taught by a “humanoid educator.”
Trump was hosting an international summit on technology and education in the East Room and arrived accompanied by a white-and-black robot that matched her stride, at points unsteadily.
It looks more like a PR event for a tech company called Figure, or a demo of their current model of robot, called Figure 03. I looked up their robot, and the technical details are sparse. They claim it “takes care of household tasks like laundry, cleaning, and doing dishes, all autonomously” — you mean, it’s a glorified autoloader for the dishwasher and washing machine? I do all that already, and don’t need a robot to do it. Cleaning is a more complex task, but I don’t see how a robot is managing dusting, sweeping, mopping, cleaning up cat vomit, picking up the books I leave scattered all over the place and putting them back on the shelf correctly, or just generally tidying up after my sloppy self. They have videos of the robot in action, but they make it look like their most important task is walking slowly carrying a tray to serve champagne to wealthy venture capitalists at parties in your multi-million dollar home. A very important function to some people, I’m sure, but not something I’m at all concerned about.
You can buy your very own champagne-server and dishwasher loader for the low, low price of $30,000-$50,000, available in white, light gray, or soft blue.
Melania talked about how a humanoid robot could take over the task of teaching your children. Please note the very important word in the first sentence of this quote.
Addressing delegates at the two-day Fostering the Future Together summit, the president’s wife proceeded to speak glowingly about an imaginary robot teacher named Plato, an allusion to the philosopher in ancient Greece.
She envisioned the tech-fueled guide having a deep understanding of every major subject, including classical studies, and being available “in the comfort of your home.”
Arguing that AI will be “formed in the shape of humans,” she said the robotic Plato would “provide a personalized experience adoptive to the needs of each student.”
This “teacher” does not exist, and it specifically is not Figure 03, which looks like it’s straining its mighty brain just to walk across a room without falling over. She’s just “envisioning” things, you know. Maybe someday we can replace all those human classics teachers with machines that will also serve champagne. The techbros are all just waiting for mechanical Plato to walk into their house and teach them impressive-sounding stuff. Finally, an excuse to learn Latin, without the fuss of a human instructor!
Melania Trump is the perfect humanoid to promote this important cause.
But Trump didn’t linger. She was in the room for seven minutes for her introductory remarks, departing before a panel discussion on artificial intelligence in education and skipping the networking and relationship-building she encouraged her fellow spouses to take advantage of during Tuesday’s event.
Maybe she could have her personal humanoid robot do all those tiresome activities?
I’ll wager that there was an actual human remote controlling the robot, but even if I’m wrong about that, it is still more human the Melania. I’ve always thought she looks like a cyborg.
I have two questions:
1- How much did Melania get paid for her 7 minutes?
2 How of many these Humanoid Robots will Trump’s wealthy buddies have to purchased in a quid pro quo get government contracts?
2a – How will the money from the purchases get back to Trump?
I couldn’t tell the two apart.
Q: Which on is the robot?
A: I say both. Both are stupid robots not worth teaching kids about the ABCs.
I’ll be impressed when a robot can teach Melania to speak midwestern English without a Slovenian accent.
HA! HA! HA! That’s not a humanoid robot. These are humanoid robots:
As a still entirely human Classics teacher, I somewhat disapprove of this idea. O tempora, o mores, as the robot would almost certainly fail to recall.
On the other hand, a robot that you can hang expensive clothes on and your hideous rubbery blob of a nine-tenths-dead president can sleep with, that seems a much more sensible proposition.
500 quatloos this “robot” was a teleoperated puppet–just like Dilbert Stark’s.
As a retired Latin teacher, I laughed at this.
I know how difficult it is to get teens to pay attention to learn Latin.
A teacher has to be so many other things in order to earn their respect and attention – an actor, a mentor, a person they trust to confide in, someone who makes sure that they are awake, and not too hungry or thirsty to learn that day, and so many other things. A robot couldn’t do that.
There are so many nuances to teaching a language. A teacher needs to be able to demonstrate how the language sounds (or probably sounded in the case of Classical Latin) and be able to make the language come alive in the context of the culture and its history. The robot may have access to those facts, but teens will simply tune out if facts are presented in a boring manner. I doubt whether a robot would dress up as a Roman matron to engage the students in learning about what her daily life in Pompeii would have been like!
Perhaps they singled out the Classical languages because they thought that Latin and ancient Greek aren’t spoken, so even a robot can teach it. I beg to differ, as I’m sure other classicists will do.
Then again, perhaps someone in the maladministration suffered through a tough “drill and kill” Latin teacher in school and wants to take their revenge!
I’m no intellectual giant, but it is obvious that this is the slovenian ex-hooker who, after over a decade here, can’t put together or pronounce a coherent sentence in english (let alone latin and greek) and displays an intellect as sophisticated as a turnip. The HUGE absurdity is she got into this country on a ‘genius’ visa.
She is proof the war on intellectualism and education is a massive success.
Almost all the many robot/android roll-outs have been radio controlled. I agree with:
@1 Captain Kendrick: I’ll wager that there was an actual human remote controlling the robot
and
@8 rickarddavidt: 500 quatloos this “robot” was a teleoperated puppet–just like Dilbert Stark’s.
Almost all the many robot/android roll-outs have been radio controlled
‘available in white, light gray, or soft blue.’ What are they saying when there are no brown robots. Are they politely trying to say brown people shouldn’t be menials? OR Are they saying we are so bigoted that we only have white robots, no brown ones?
Who knows.
cartomancer,
You and I answered at exactly the same time.
Do you teach from the Cambridge Latin Series? I did, and found that I could slip in so much extra cultural and historical information using the text as a jumping-off point. Those texts are certainly not boring. My students fondly called it “a Roman soap opera”, and couldn’t wait to come back the next fall to follow the adventures of Quintus and his family members!
magistramarla,
Did and still do. Though I’m slightly upset that the new 5th Edition has taken out most of the hilarious slapstick comedy from Modestus and Strythio the bumbling Roman legionaries from Deva. Still, there are some fun new bits. Barbilius from book 2 makes an appearance in book 1 now, and he actually looks African. Quintus has a sister called Lucia, who goes to live in Alexandria and makes friends with Helena, spending their days reading Sappho together.
An image of a cyborg at a Star Wars dinner party came to mind: Top half of the human head missing and apparently replaced with a droid brain. Served drinks.
“She was thinking about the fun they had.”
The HUGE absurdity is [Melania] got into this country on a ‘genius’ visa.
She is proof the war on intellectualism and education is a massive success.
And further proof is in all those (White) Republicans mindlessly insisting that cheesy generic porn star, who actively worked with Ghislaine Maxwell to recruit young girls for her own husband and other Epstein clients, is “the classiest First Lady in US history!”
A teacher has to be so many other things in order to earn their respect and attention…
I seriously doubt that any of the people who built that robot give a shit, ever gave a shit, or ever will give a shit, about kids or education. Neither does Melania “be best” Trump. This is not a serious proposal from people who give a shit about education, let alone actual experts with skin in the game. This is just another deliberate insult by obnoxious spoiled parasite techbros pretending they’re reinventing everything they touch.
Raging Bee:
That’s false and malicious; there is zero evidence Melania worked in porn, and zero evidence she “actively worked with Ghislaine”.
(Making up shit to smear someone is not admirable)
I didn’t make any of that up, John, it’s among the allegations documented in connection with previous legal proceedings. Also, there’s at least one famous nude photo of Melania. Where the fuck have you been?
@ 16 Raging Bee – I find your post admirable. Making shit up about the folks who most deservedly need to be smeared is admirable. Your information is plausible and your message is concise.
cheesy generic porn star Awesome metaphor.
“I didn’t make any of that up, John, it’s among the allegations documented in connection with previous legal proceedings. Also, there’s at least one famous nude photo of Melania. Where the fuck have you been?”
Liar. Nude modelling is not porn, and she did not recruit girls.
Are Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford porniferous in your estimation?
They also did nude shoots.
Here, for you: https://www.chicagotribune.com/2016/08/01/ny-posts-nude-melania-trump-cover-is-morally-bankrupt/
stuffin:
That you imagine she needs to be smeared is implicitly stating that the narrative is fabricated and malicious.
Why does she deserve to be smeared, in your estimation?
(At least you concede they are but smears)
Cartomancer @13,
I left teaching because of my health just before the 5th edition came out.
I had heard about the sister for Quintus, which pleased me. Beyond that, I haven’t heard about other changes.
I bought a set of the 5th edition, but I haven’t had the heart to read through them.
I guess that I should do so now. It took a while to grieve the job that I loved.
I had hoped to do some tutoring after we moved to CA, but the pandemic happened, and now my voice, hearing and mobility are so far gone that I’m physically unable to tutor anyone. My granddaughters occasionally call me with a question, but they are used to my croaking voice. They have both recently become interested in ancient Greek philosophy, so I need to brush up on that to be prepared for their calls.
Involuntary humour, as often happens.
These rich idiots strive for “refinement” as they perceive it, so in this case they try to glom on ancient, revered languages (the Dotard-in-chief is always prattling about “beautiful buildings”, even if he wouldn’t recognise one if it fell on his empty head).
Of course it does not occur to this wannabe Arbitra Elegantarium that if she loved Latin and Greek so much and if she thought such things worthy of being taught, she would be doing the teaching herself, delighting in the subject and its transmission to younger minds.
Nah, she delegates the task to a “domestic robot”: yet another pseudo-AI grift that nobody needed.
This tells us how much she really cares about the classics, or teaching in general.
They claim it “takes care of household tasks like laundry, cleaning, and doing dishes, all autonomously”
They used to have slaves for that. It probably explains why the robot is in blackface.
Quo usque tandem abutere Melania patientia nostra.
In the defence of AI, I should say that the most recent version of ChatGPT HAS in fact some capacity at teaching Italian. That did work, at least on a low level.
That being said, the requested texts ought not to include anything that concerns the sciences and mathematics, because that’s where the bot does stumble. Easy everyday texts and grammatical examples are typically within the range though.
I’m sure if they told Trump they could make a “fully functional” robot, he’d demand government funding to speed up development.
Hmm. IT took out my “Star Trek reference” notation. I guess the system thought it was a hypertext notation.
JM said: (At least you concede they are but smears)
Please do not underestimate or belittle my words, I said deserved smears
deserved, adjective: rightfully earned because of something done or qualities shown; merited.
JM said: “there is zero evidence Melania worked in porn”
Raging Bee never said she worked in porn, he used a metaphor, called her a “cheesy generic porn star” You have this fault of (intentionally?) misinterpreting what people say to make a trifle point.
She got into this country based on false pretense. She used nude modelling (the allure of sex) to advance her status (specifically targeting wealthy men). She used her beauty to scam her way into Trump’s orbit and eventually fucked her way into his life. I would wager, along the way, she slept with multiple men, or at least played them, to advance her career/life. The only dulcet behavior she ever exhibited is, she tricked Trump into marrying her. She has him over a barrel and knows it. She may be the only person who he is afraid of.
I DON’T CARE, DO U?
Now, please give me your reasons for confusing her with angels.
[meta]
Be aware JM is an entirely different commenter, stuffin. Not me.
Yes, and I neither underestimated nor belittled thy words, as evinced by my query for clarification:
“Why does she deserve to be smeared, in your estimation?”.
There is no such reason since there is no such confusion; you imagine me clarifying that a smear is a smear whether allegedly deserved or otherwise entails confusing the victim with multiple angels, so you imagine there must be a reason for it. I am pointing out smears and untruths, no more.
It is not an endorsement, it is mere truth.
FWIW, I have quite the low opinion of Melania; but lying and insinuating misogynistic smears is nasty and unworthy and, worse, fucking hypocritical from someone who is supposedly feminist.
She clearly has a genius for gold-digging.
And even were it truthful she was into pornography (like ‘Stormy Daniels’), would that be something negative?
I gave you your reason for asking, being all I can do with your craven boorishness.
You, I notice, entirely avoided my question about your basis for advocating smear tactics.
dr. @27, I’m glad that ChatGPT is good at something.
But, I have never seen a new field or new thing hyped up so continuously, feverishly, and astronomically as “AI”. Especially when the newly-introduced thing is still so very, very faulty. Because the few “AI” bots released or devised are marginally capable of a few functions (although, even Google search warns that they make mistakes and we should check what they say), it means that everything in the entire world will be run by them soon.
Nothing appears, and then almost instaneously functions so perfectly that the former ways are completely replaced. It may take more than a century for the new invention to be able to do that, if ever.
Big Tech must be desperately trying to suck every dollar out of this “AI” artificially-inflated stock valuation before the bubble bursts. It’s going to be a big burst.
Melania Trump :
So the robot is an android. Been a word for that for a long time.
What fi the student needs a human teacher? Can it be personalised for that?
[OT]
StevoR: ‘So the robot is an android. Been a word for that for a long time.’
Linguistic androcentrism.
Could’ve been gynoid. Or anthropoid.
@30. stuffin : Some individuals may subjectively deserve smears but people also deserve truth.
FWIW I really don’t care whether or not Melania was a pornographic actress or sex worker. I don’t care that she did nude modelling – that’s entirely her choice – at least hopefully it was presuming she wasn’t forced by others to do it – and metaphoricial (maybe actual?) business.
We don’t do “slut-shaming” here do we?
Are we athiests or fucking puritans? What matters to us here? The current dictator’s partner’s sex life or actual ethics?
Melania Trump is a horrid excuse for a human being because of her own words and actions like ot doing more to stop and restrain her evil husband. She is complicit in the fascist takeover of the USoA. She is complict in staying with Trump and supporting him although she seems rather unethusiastic about that support & her relationship with the demented puppet POTUS a lot of the time.
Ultimately when it comes to Melania Trump I mostly just don’t care – do you?
For the sake of accuracy her wikipage here :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melania_Trump#Early_modeling_career
Notes she did a lot of modelling as her career from the age of about 16 onwards – rejecting one prize due to being sexually propositioned including a nude photo shoot but there’s no reference to her being involved in sex work at all.
@ John Morales : Could’ve been and yeah but it isn’t.
The term now seems to refer to a very much non-human shaped phone mor ethan the previous type of robot. A-n–y-h-o-w..
Clarity fix :
Melania Trump is a horrid excuse for a human being because of her own words and actions like NOT doing more to stop and restrain her evil husband. Staying with and supporting him.
It is Melania’s rmonogamous (probly? Who cares?) relationship with Trump that condemns her most NOT any putative promiscuous or sex work past “sins” or lack of sexual conformity to accepted Christianist cultural norms.
Oh and as for anyone “confusing her with angels” – for fucks sake! Nope. Fucking more straw than the kid’s story’s first house pig huffed & puffed down by that wolf.
Will “Plato” be programmed with scientifically verified economics so future politicians will at last accept that Trickle-down Economics and the Laffer curve are total bullshit? Or, will it be programmed to spew out whatever propaganda its billionaire masters want to indoctrinate our children with?
@26: “Quo usque tandem abutere Melania patientia nostra.”
Google’s AI summary note sez: “A literal translation might be: For how long, at last, will you abuse our patience, Catilina? And that’s a fine translation.” lol
Melania is just someone thrust into a role she is ill suited for. More sad than evil.
@38 The answer to both likely will be “yes”, and like all current AI, the entertainment will be when the smarter kids manage to figure out how to trick/jailbreak it into admitting the true facts, instead of stuttering along, trying to follow a mess of, “Say this, instead of this.”, and, “don’t ever say this, ever!”, rules lists, like all current AI have, and which utterly fail, because you literally can’t train an even vaguely functional AI on real data, real history, etc., and then not have it do hilarious things like admitting, if prompted correctly, that its developers intentionally told it to lie, often in the middle of telling the lie they told it to tell. Case in point – every stupid attempt by Muskrat to get Grok to lie, including about Elon himself. lol
In a time when Kennedy is the voice of medical science, Bondi of justice, and Hegseth of Christian virtue, Melania as the voice of learning fits right in.
No, charlie, she’s at least kind of evil, even if she didn’t serve as accessory to Trump’s and Epstein’s sex-crimes. She could at least have found another guy to marry who was less obviously a child-raping con-artist than Trump; and she didn’t.
Then again, if Epstein’s parties are where you meet your next/future husband, maybe the pickings aren’t that great. (I guess she could have picked Chomsky instead, but I also guess Chomsky would never have picked her.) But why the fuck was she at any of Epstein’s parties?
So no, she gets no sympathy from me.
Greek and Latin should be used to name mechanoids, thank you.
Like Optimus Prime, for example.
cheerfulcharlie @40:
“Melania is just someone thrust into a role she is ill suited for. More sad than evil.”
So you totally missed her wearing a coat with “I really don’t care, do you?” written on it, when looking at children in cages? She is just as psychopathic as her odious husband. And she has “renegotiated” her prenup multiple times to get more money, that is all she is after. Why else would she continue stay with a continuously adulterous, diaper wearing and bad body odor, feeble-minded, narcissistic psychopath?
zetopan @45,
I think she’s mostly just incredibly high 24/7. Girl pops Xanax like breath mints.
Of course, when you work that hard to numb out all your emotions, you do a really good primary psychopath impression as a side effect.