Artificial Intelligence, AI for short, is dangerous.
Musical instruments can be used to create beautiful and soul-stirring music, such as Beethoven’s 9th Symphony; they can also be abused to grind out aural rubbish such as Screaming Lord Sutch’s Lord Sutch and Heavy Friends, which a BBC poll found to be the worst album of all time.
Artificial intelligence can be twisted to produce ugliness, distortions, and lies.
On my smartphone, I asked Meta AI, thru Facebook, “Is Biden healthy?”
This is the answer I received:
President Joe Biden has generally been considered healthy for his age. In 2021, his physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, released a medical report stating that Biden was “healthy” and “vigorous” and that he was fit to serve as president.
However, like many people his age, Biden has had some health issues, including:
– A history of brain aneurysms (Successfully treated in 1988). – A pulmonary embolism (treated in 1988). – Atrial fibrillation (an irregular heartbeat). – High cholesterol. – Acid reflux. – A minor foot fracture in 2020. – COVID-19 in 2022 (mild symptoms).
Despite these issues, Biden has maintained an active schedule and has been cleared by his doctors to continue serving as president.
While I am not a doctor, but clearly the president is that the president is “an old 81” and at the very least, should submit to a full cognitive exam from a qualified and unbiased team of psychiatrists.
Meta AI doesn’t mention Biden’s frequent mental wanderings, the most recent of which was last month’s disastrous Biden press conference that was abruptly ended by Karine Jean-Pierre.
Let’s check into Meta AI’s opinion on the presumptive Republican nominee for president, Donald J. Trump.
“Is Trump healthy?”
Former President Donald Trump’s health has been a subject of interest and controversy. In 2019, his then-personal physician, Dr. Harold Bornstein, wrote a letter stating that Trump was in “excellent physical health” and that his lab results were “astonishingly excellent.” However, there have been some concerns and controversies surrounding Trump’s health, including:
– Obesity (he is reportedly 6’3″ and weighed 230 pounds in 2019). – High cholesterol. – A history of fast food consumption and poor diet. – Questions about his mental health and cognitive abilities. . – A bout of COVID-19 in 2020 (he was hospitalized for a few days). – A history of esophageal reflux and sleep apnea.
It’s important to note that Trump’s health records have not been fully disclosed, and some of his medical information has been disputed or controversial.
Shameful.
As the Washington Post says, “Democracy dies in darkness.” It can also choke to death from lies.
Yes, Trump’s diet sucks and he’s overweight. Yet one Meta AI distortion about Trump jumps out: “Questions about his mental health and cognitive abilities.” Trump’s political rallies are an exercise of streams of consciousness. No one ever questioned James Joyce’s cognitive abilities. The same goes for legendary baseball manager Casey Stengel. Trump’s mind is as sharp as a pin, while Biden can’t even make it through a brief speech in front of a teleprompter.
“Controversy” and “controversial” are used in Meta AI’s account of Trump’s health, but not in Biden’s health rundown.
I could go on and on, but two more things: I’ve always been skeptical about the established line that Biden’s “minor foot fracture” was the result of the then-president-elect playing with his dog. And while Meta AI while mentions that Trump suffers from sleep apnea, it’s been widely reported–but not by Meta AI–that Biden uses a CPAP machine to treat his sleep apnea.
If America ever collapses, an Edward Gibbon of the future will need to include a chapter or two about social media in that account of the decline and fall.
I played around the Meta AI a bit more, not every answer about Trump’s health was a biased as the one documented here, but perhaps Meta AI was getting wise to me.
I’m sure Meta AI has a file on me that includes the words “right-wing lunatic.”
John Ruberry regularly blogs, without the use of AI, at Marathon Pundit.
I have avoided using Artificial Intelligence since it first appeared on the scene a couple years beacuse it has a pronounced leftist bias built into it. This was done organically by the high tech companies that invented this technology.
Today, President Biden is issuing a landmark Executive Order to ensure that America leads the way in seizing the promise and managing the risks of artificial intelligence (AI). The Executive Order establishes new standards for AI safety and security, protects Americans’ privacy, advances equity and civil rights, stands up for consumers and workers, promotes innovation and competition, advances American leadership around the world, and more.
As part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s comprehensive strategy for responsible innovation, the Executive Order builds on previous actions the President has taken, including work that led to voluntary commitments from 15 leading companies to drive safe, secure, and trustworthy development of AI.
Like all Leftist proposals, this proposal sounds benign on the surface. It is not until this section that the Marxist nature of this executive order becomes apparent.
Irresponsible uses of AI can lead to and deepen discrimination, bias, and other abuses in justice, healthcare, and housing. The Biden-Harris Administration has already taken action by publishing the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights and issuing an Executive Order directing agencies to combat algorithmic discrimination, while enforcing existing authorities to protect people’s rights and safety. To ensure that AI advances equity and civil rights, the President directs the following additional actions:
Provide clear guidance to landlords, Federal benefits programs, and federal contractors to keep AI algorithms from being used to exacerbate discrimination.
Address algorithmic discrimination through training, technical assistance, and coordination between the Department of Justice and Federal civil rights offices on best practices for investigating and prosecuting civil rights violations related to AI.
Ensure fairness throughout the criminal justice system by developing best practices on the use of AI in sentencing, parole and probation, pretrial release and detention, risk assessments, surveillance, crime forecasting and predictive policing, and forensic analysis.
buried in the order is a provision that stipulates that AI must help to advance the leftist agenda. The order mandates that AI must be programmed with a foundation based on “equity.” Not to be confused with “equality,” the Left’s “equity” agenda is based on Marxism.
Whereas “equality” teaches that everybody should be treated equally, no matter their race or sex, “equity” asserts that people should be treated differently depending on their skin color, “gender identity,” or mental state. Under the “equity” ideology, for example, a transgender would be given advantages, such as securing a college scholarship or being offered a job, over a normal person.
Expand bilateral, multilateral, and multistakeholder engagements to collaborate on AI. The State Department, in collaboration, with the Commerce Department will lead an effort to establish robust international frameworks for harnessing AI’s benefits and managing its risks and ensuring safety. In addition, this week, Vice President Harris will speak at the UK Summit on AI Safety, hosted by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
The project’s web site cautions, in bold print no less, “No decisions have been made about the following monuments.”
Yeah, right. BS! Imagine that you work at a company where the annual reviews are conducted each December. But in June you are informed that you’ll soon have a mid-year review but then are told, “Don’t worry, nothing is wrong.” At that point a wise person will begin the process of résumé updating.
The statues, reliefs, and plaques include monuments honoring four presidents, several memorials recalling the first Europeans to visit Chicago, Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette, as well as generals, a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and many public art pieces with Native American themes. And yes of course those two Columbus statues. Oh, if you are one of those people who believe Leif Ericsson was the real European discoverer of America don’t be smug. He’s on Lightfoot commission’s list too.
This not a list of shame. It’s a tragic shame that there is such a list.
Five of the 41 monuments are Abraham Lincoln statues–and there are five Lincoln statues in Chicago. Hmm. Widely considered by liberals and conservatives as the greatest American president, the Great Emancipator’s presence in Illinois is profound and inescapable. “Land of Lincoln” is emblazoned on every Illinois license plate as is Honest Abe’s visage.
I live on Lincoln Avenue in a Chicago suburb–that street winds its way south into Chicago and Lincoln Park, where you’ll encounter what Andrew Ferguson in his book Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe’s America says is “what is generally thought to be the greatest Lincoln statue of the nineteenth century, a towering figure by Augustus Saint-Gaudens.” That makes this statue, generally referred to as Lincoln Standing although its formal name is Lincoln: The Man, a masterpiece. Yep, a masterpiece. So much so that it has been recast several times, and those Lincoln: The Man reproductions can be found in Parque Lincoln in Mexico City, Parliament Square in London, Forest Lawn Cemetery–Hollywood Hills, and the Lincoln Tomb in Springfield. Earlier this month Little Marathon Pundit and I visited the Detroit Institute of Arts, where we found one of the many miniatures of Lincoln: The Man.
Of course back in Chicago the original artistic triumph is “under public discussion.” In Grant Park sits another targeted Saint-Gaudens work, Abraham Lincoln: Head of State.
Also troubling is the aforementioned Marquette and Jolliet memorials on this list. Jolliet, while crossing the Chicago Portage in what is now southwestern suburban Cook County, noted that it would be an excellent location for a canal, one that would connect the watersheds of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. Lincoln, while a member of the Illinois legislature, was a proponent of the Illinois-Michigan Canal, which opened 17 decades after the Marquette-Jolliet expedition. While that canal very well may have been built without either men, if it hadn’t, Chicago may have ended up like many other small cities on Lake Michigan, like Sheboygan, Wisconin. (Oh, I’ve been there–it’s a lovely place by the way.)
George Washington has two “nominations” from the Chicago Monuments Project, including his horseback statue in his namesake park. McKinley Park’s statue of William McKinley is in peril too. Does that mean their park names will be next? While Grant Park doesn’t have a Ulysses S. Grant statue–Lincoln Park does. He has a nomination too, as do his fellow union generals Phil Sheridan, on Sheridan Road no less, and John Logan, whose statue stands in Grant Park.
Lori Lightfoot is a failed mayor in a city that is in clear decline. Failed mayor? She’s up for reelection in a little more than two years and already there is speculation as to who her opponents will be. Since I declared Chicago a city in decline last summer its retail cash cow, North Michigan Avenue, has been hit by the announment of two closings, a massive Gap store and Macy’s at Water Tower Place. Chicago’s streets are potholed disasters, there are omnipresent red-light cameras to contend with, the murder rate is soaring, as are the number of car jackings. Taxes are oppresive, and its financial millstone, the worst-funded municipal pension progam in the nation, has never been properly addressed. Oh, this appears to be a little thing but graffiti is no longer routinely cleaned up along Chicago’s expressways. The proliferation of kudzu-like graffiti foreshadowed New York City’s descent in the 1970s.
Instead Lightfoot zooms in on statues and monuments to pander to her leftist base.
The ultimate responsibility for this real-life dystopia of course goes to Chicago’s misguided voters. What was it that H.L Mencken said of democracy? Ah yes, here it is, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”
Chicago voters are a special kind of common people it seems
That being said there has been surprisingly little anger here in the Chicago area about these possible monument removals, as coverage has been modest and a major snowstorm earlier last week, on top of another one, had people focused on more immediate needs.
But that needs to change. Click here on the Chicago Monuments Project web site to offer your thoughts. As always, please be polite–but be firm too. The form asks for a ZIP code. A Chicago one will make you more acceptable to those reading the replies; choose any 606 ZIP code between 60601 and 60661. Just saying.
John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit. He has visited Lincoln’s birthplace, his Springfield home, Ford’s Theatre, and the Peterson House, where our 16th president passed away.
One of two prototypes purchased by the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Strategic Capabilities Office for its Ghost Fleet Overlord program, aimed at fielding an autonomous surface ship capable of launching missiles. (U.S. Defense Department)
Military drones are popping up everywhere. In Afghanistan and Iraq, we became used to seeing Predator drones flying around with Hellfire missiles, flown from bases in the United States and providing a near 24/7 watch for opportunities to blow up terrorists. The latest batch of drones are now becoming increasingly autonomous, meaning they can not just think for themselves, but react faster than a human and respond to an ever changing environment. In the news recently was how Artificial Intelligence that beat a top US Air Force F-16 pilot, and previously the Navy discussed how its Sea Hunter would operate as an autonomous missile barge.
But I’m not here to talk about technology, not only because details are classified, but also because any technological issues will solve themselves over time. Human engineers are pretty smart. If some piece of code doesn’t work, we’ll find a solution. Technology isn’t holding us back in the realm of military drones. People are, and unfortunately people are the real weakness, as emphasized in this quote:
“AI matters because using drones as ‘loyal wingmen’ is a key part of future air power developments,” said Teal Group analyst Richard Aboulafia via email. “It’s less important as a fighter pilot replacement.”
If we build an AI that is smarter, faster and all around better than top notch fighter pilots, why on earth would we not replace pilots? The Army just raised the minimum contract for pilots to 10 years, which in military human resources speak means that they can’t keep these people in. All the military services struggle to retain people with skills like flying, electronic warfare, cyber, and anything else that requires significant technical expertise. Using AI to fill these billets gives the military significantly more flexibility in where it sends its manpower. This manpower can be used to lead squadrons of drone aircraft, or on people who lead armies of online bots in cyberspace. It’ll require more training and expertise, and certainly a culture change in how we view people in the military.
Besides being short sighted about replacing people, the other weakness we are going to find with autonomous systems is that we do a terrible job writing out our intentions. I worked with some highly skills folks on the Navy’s autonomous sea systems, and one of the biggest challenges was turning what we call “Commanders Intent” into code. If a vessel is out looking for an enemy, its easy to say “Kill this type of enemy when you see them.” It’s harder to give instructions like “Taking the current geopolitical events into consideration, make a judgement call on whether to shoot down an adversary aircraft.”
To put it bluntly, what does that even mean? The military throws around the idea of “Commanders Intent” like its some sort of magic that springs forth from someone’s brain. In reality, its a lot of processing happening in the back of your mind that constantly takes in data from the world around you. The military benefits from having extraordinary people that stick around long enough to reach command. These extraordinary people find ways to take an ugly bureaucracy devoted toward mediocrity and somehow make it work. As our military bureaucracy has grown, this has gotten more difficult. Extraordinary people are less likely to stick around to fight a bureaucracy devoted to maintaining status quo, especially when business is happy to snap them up and pay them more. Autonomous systems give us a chance to drop much of the bureaucracy and focus on intent, strategy and “end state,” or what we want the world to look like at the end. If we don’t embrace this change, we’re missing out on the truly revolutionary changes that autonomy gives us.
Future warfare is going to feature autonomous systems, and its going to highlight how weak human beings are in a variety of areas. Rather than fight this, the military should embrace autonomous systems as a chance to recapitalize manpower. It should also begin training its future commanders, flag and general officers, about how to actually write out their intent, and stop relying on chance to give us great commanders. We can’t let a military bureaucracy devoted to maintaining a status quo on manpower stifle the massive innovation that AI offers us.
This post represents the views of the author and not the views of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.
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