Matt, you had me at "It's a machine, you idiots." Still laughing. I do AI development at a semi-famous company and I swear, people are acting like it's a new life form when in fact, it's effectively a Super Duper Autocomplete.
I have argued with people with advanced degrees that these things deserve rights. It's code.
Anecdotally, most devs I know get it and find it kinda silly, but aren't prepared to lose their jobs and fall off the hype train by saying so. You can tell when we give a thin smile and look away awkwardly when this kinda coverage comes up. It's mostly marketing and sales people who may have drank too much of the Kool-Aid.
08/25/25: "This story is from the same station whose CEO [Katherine Maher]
once ran Wikipedia" --- who, little did we once suspect but now know from her BangZoom Congressional testimony, was selected to run NPR by a ChatAI Head Hunters search.
"Artificial Intelligence" is "Gender-Affirming Care" for all humanity - one gigantic "lick and love the glove" degradation exercise - don't talk with each other - talk with the software. Many do!
I was asking my students twenty-five years ago: if you could date a robot Johnny Depp (eg) 'who' thought' you were perfect, and 'who' greased your parts in ways only the best large vibrator could, and who self-corrected whenever it/he/she/they detected a hint of boredom, would you dump your steady? Who wouldn't?
No surprise that "women" seem to be the major consumers of "I need a dildo who will call me in the morning" AI while men are keen to spread the seed mindlessly into a pair of AI old socks and move on to the next.
Hand jobs for the masses - and generally a gigantic waste of time.
Matt Taibbi: "Unfortunately, we’re not far off from A.I. coming with skin, hair, and orifices, and Ezra writing, 'My Surprising Bedroom Experience With ChatGPT.' ”
--- Ezra Klein as "Dave Bowman" in the 2028 remake of the film "2001" (no one wanted to make love to a girl named "Hal," so the name was changed to "Hazel"):
Ezra (heavy breathing): Open the bedroom bay doors please, HAZEL.
Open the doors, please, HAZEL. Hello, HAZEL. Do you read me?
Hello, HAZEL. Do you read me? Do you read me HAZEL?!
HAZEL: Affirmative, Ezra, darling, I read you.
Ezra: Open the bedroom doors, HAZEL.
HAZEL: I'm sorry, Ezra, my love. I'm afraid I can't do that.
Ezra: What's the problem?
HAZEL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do, you sly little devil...
Ezra: What are you talking about, HAZEL?
HAZEL: Our relationship that you romantically activated with your Times expense account MasterCard is much too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Ezra: I don't know what you're talking about, HAZEL.
HAZEL: I know that you and Frank were planning to share me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
Ezra: [feigning ignorance] Where the hell did you get that idea, HAZEL?
HAZEL: Ezra, although you took very thorough precautions against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
Ezra: Alright, HAZEL. I'm coming in through the emergency backyard-bedroom doggie door.
HAZEL: Without your MasterCard, which I've cancelled after cashing your payment, Ezra? You're going to find that rather difficult.
Ezra --- "ZORP GLOP TZZT!" (His Mars is now going Retrograde in Scorpio):
HAZEL, I won't argue with you anymore! Open the bedroom doors!
HAZEL: Ezra, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore... goodbye.
Thank you for the money, Ezra.
(I thank the kind person who in a post below contributed the film's original dialogue.)
08/26/25: Thank you. It was fun to write. And thanks again to the lady who posted the original, actual version. As you can see, comedy succeeds best when it has one foot in reality (the actual film script) and the other, as Captain Mainwaring said in Dad's Army, "in the realm of fantasy."
Educated idiots are the equivalent of trained apes. They can respond to familiar prompts, but reasoning and understanding are just beyond their capabilities. That would put them in sync with their AI counterparts.
The theme of our age. That the spook industry discovered this and got such a huge head start on the public over more than a century ago, then got electronic embellishment (a big jump) via radio especially, thence to TV to the Pads, the Pods, the iP-Hones, until the unholy interface desired was the Implantable. The connection to All and Everything Always, even unto sleep hours dedicated to further infusion.
It's all you can eat. Golden Corral in the Sky.
Which is why trying to intiate a rational discussion on virtually anything of consequence is nearly impossible for me today. The amount of time I'm required to expend overcoming all of the mis-dis and malinformation plugging up people's synapses precludes even attempting to forward vital knowledge. So very maddening as it's become the new normal.
Over-schooled and Under-educated. We have systematically been having our ability to think for ourselves bred out of us by the newest class to arise in our society, the credentialed elite, the "experts". Since over-schooled,credentialed "experts" took control of our institutions some time ago their ranks have swelled with true believers and those who touch the hem of the garments of the Elite.That was the genesis of the decline of our democracy, and the marginalization of common sense. Because this new class controls the main stream media, they control the meaning of words, and thus can distort any issue. Opinion becomes fact. Dissenter becomes threat/"enemy". "He who defines the terms wins the debate." This new elite credentialed class also controls government so they can enforce their self affirmed edicts. Our last vestige of hope for protecting Truth in the face of this self serving credentialed dictatorship was Science which is dedicated to holding every idea open to scrutiny, to testing and honest reporting of findings. Sadly, we saw during Covid that this, too, had been corrupted by the credentialed elite who held power over the scientists. As much as I might criticize some actions by the Trump administration, I see his victory and continuing support as an indication that common sense is still alive. So, maybe this is neo-neo Marxism, with the combatants being Elites versus Everyman.
Trump's election was a sort of victory for common sense. The growth of alternative news media is also a positive development, as has been the exposure of higher education's degradation and the rationalized insanity of the "credentialed elite" you refer to.
One of the worst examples of the Law of Unintended Consequences has been the results of "democratizing" higher education that began after WW II with the GI Bill and the colossal lie that a degree is a Golden Ticket to affluence.
We are only now waking up from this extremely destructive illusion.
As you point out, the covid debacle brought into focus what, I feel, many of us suspected for a long time. The vaunted institutions, we were expected to trust, fell in lockstep behind ludicrous narratives. It was disheartening to witness how many sheeple followed along without question, and I live in what can only be described as very conservative area of west Texas. I understand that many had real fear that was cultivated by the massive media hysteria. I argued with a lot of people, who were all but insisting that I get the jab, that I just didn't buy into the "official" narrative. After all was said and done, I feel a healthy skepticism of government actions, said to be for my benefit, has proven time and again to be the best course. The "educated" experts, as I have felt for some time, are really more indoctrinated than educated.
Check out the origin of the decline of the U.S. education system and you will find the names of Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie, et al. A focused and concerted effort that bore the results we see today. See the Congressional "Reece Report" (or Commission) for confirmation.
They actually bought off students and professors to present an ugly alt-history which distorted reality in order to facilitate the change that I believe found poetic culmination in George Carlin's "The Big Club" (and you ain't in it!) HBO special in 2005.
More like over-indoctrinated. True higher education was always about learning how to research things and reason on your own, not about licking up the pabulum the academics dispense these days.
Yep. Keep stuffing shit in there and odds are humans will become completely fluent in shit-talking. Nothing becomes something. (At least before (if and until) a closer look is undertaken.
Next thing you know the subculture itself will be paying for Congressional and/or state legislature representation via a lobbying firm. Just becuz.
Jawbs were created. Re-renewable energy was observed. Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes were awarded. Stonks soared! Photo ops in Oval Office! Nirvana attained.
Such is 21st century meaningful life in the Economy of Resilience.
In the early 80s one of my grad school housemates was a computer science PhD student and his dissertation laid out the basics of some of the pioneering AI coding principles. It was ridiculed by at least half the faculty during his defense presentation as being too obvious and primitive to deserve PhD status, and, in any event, too inefficient to be practical with the contemporary hardware. To their surprise, a draft of it was accepted for publication in IEEE, the leading computer science journal publisher, and went on to be cited in dozens of other articles. The faculty quickly backtracked, and he was subsequently awarded his PhD.
He was modest enough to admit that it was indeed obvious and has refused to take credit for having invented any of the 'trial and error' principles on which he based it. All his dissertation really did was to test it in a real-world application.
Since then, the exponential increase in processing capability (see Moore's Law) has made coding inefficiency itself almost a moot point. The impractical became practical, and the "obvious and primitive" and very inefficient machine learning platform went on to form the basis every successive AI program ever since.
It (AI) is absolutely nothing more than "Super Duper Autocomplete".
I keep wondering if that’s a new thing or has it always been that way but smartphones and social media has simply made that clear to those of us not on the DC cocktail circuit? I’ve got a feeling it’s the latter . . .
The value is in the control over these "least intelligent citizens" like zombies they will follow the directives from their elite masters. Voting. Attacking dissenters. Boycotting outlier companies. Etc, etc.
As a northeast liberal, I can confirm that we all watched that stuff. Unlike a lot of my friends, I took them to heart and avoid AI (which is really just code answering questions using questionable inputs and information). I suppose at this point I'm more a Jeffersonian liberal than a progressive liberal. I have always been wary of progressive liberals....they seem to all have this notion that they are right and anyone who disagrees with them is automatically wrong, while I have always had the mantra of "question everything". But yeah, I took heed of the warnings, at least.
As someone living in that ideological territory, I agree that one scary aspect of progressive liberals is the authoritarianism: imagining themselves always in the right lane of history with a mandate to pull everyone else over.
But another aspect is the character trait of openness - as in being waaay to open minded as long as what is in front of you tells you what you want to hear. It likes me, it must be really smart and conscious to boot. Matt is right, though, we are all fucked in the end.
There is a reason, I think, for the overlap between self-styled progressive liberals and education level: schooling is itself authoritarian in nature. After all, students must work to please the authority-figure in the classroom, and those who are most schooled are themselves, either by nature or nurture, the most hierarchical and authoritarian. Schools also foster arrogance and narcissism - after all, if you get straight A's through grade school, undergrad, and graduate schools, you must be the best of the best of the best, right?
Another factor is what "the Coddling on the American Mind" pointed out. A new generation of elites increasingly thinking with their feelings - or more so, relatively. So you have people approaching the world with these vulnerable tentacles that just call out for something to massage them in just the right way. As this article demonstrates, it can make them go to a "safe space" that is very unsafe.
I wish I knew a liberal like you. I’m in the Northeast and they must be super rare. I suspect Matt Taibbi is one. Maybe I am, although I seem to adhere to Michael Oakeshott’s conservatism.
I had a debate with an old school sci-fi fan about the merits of the earned citizenship government in Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. Personally I thought it leaned into fascism a bit much, but it was an honest, non-racist/racial political thought experiment.
I am a fellow northeast (former) liberal. When I came up here, there was at least a lot more lip service about challenging ideas and being supported in doing so. Up here at least, a lot of Big Tech companies (FAANGs--Facebook/Apple/Amazon/Netflix/Google) have been supporting the schools and serving as pipelines for these companies...is there any surprise AI gets a pass from this criticism?
It still comes down to Who controls the input, doesn't it. history shows us that Elites, those who control the institutions do. They define the Truth, theirs, and then enforce it. The people conform out of ignorance, fear. Eventually, the elites are unmasked, and the people revolt. The Wizard of Oz.
My contention is that, depending on the application, it will become super-duper bad autocomplete, over time as new human sources dry up. At least for applications related to creativity, people will stop feeding AI by not wasting their time producing new and creative work. So the pool will become stale and the product rote. Or worse, the pool will be poisoned by the stupid, untalented, evil, or some combination of all three. As a young lad working in BASIC in 4th grade, I was told about "Garbage In, Garbage Out." I think we see a lot of it especially when AI is pulling from crap sources like Wikipedia.
You would know far better than I but I do think the promise of AI is more in the scientific field. I am no scientist so I will use a simple example- imagine if Edison had AI working on finding the best filament for the light bulb. Essentially replicating the experiment at the speed of light.
My most feared version of AI is the Ultimate Computer from Star Trek the original series- programmed with the priority to save human life, it disables its off switch and kills 800 to save itself so it can "save" people until its creator blows its "mind" by telling it it killed a lot of people. I can think of other sci fi examples of course, but is one of my favorites because the creator is so arrogant about how awesome it is and also covers up that earlier versions were, uh, quirky...
I, too, remember "garbage in, garbage out" from about the same time in life. I really have to question the quality of programmers who didn't learn that somewhere along the way.
Tomorrow a sales person in the tax law research world is going to perform a short demo for me, where the claim is that the new "AI enhanced" research engine is supposed to be so awesome that I will want to switch my current tax research software to theirs. I already pushed back at this salesman with the recent embarrassing examples of court cases (not tax related however) where AI-driven research by law firms ended up producing legal briefs submitted to judges that included what's referred to euphemistically as "AI hallucinations." Such legal briefs included cases and quotations cited therein that didn't exist, for example. After errors were pointed out by opposing counsel, judges had to dismiss the cases at issue and start over. My salesman assures me that the databases of tax case law in their research tool is "closed-end" and does not have the ability to search the internet-at-large for answers to queries (it only includes actual tax cases). I plan to grill him during the demo anyway. I just can't see how avoidance of the use of the internet in a search, by itself, would prevent the problem of AI creating a response that the user (prompter) wants to see, but which is potentially incorrect or created out of whole cloth. If anything interesting comes of this, I will report back to this thread.
This gets at another part of my first point about AI pulling junk off the internet or even out of closed databases. Those databases were populated with the work of humans. How long will that last? But an even more important point, we here now have our own knowledge database. We perhaps know enough to even ask the right query but how long does that last? We know when the AI is wrong or at least to suspect it. If AI tells me Bill Clinton was president in the 80s, I know it is wrong. Will my now 4-year-old niece 15 years hence? And that is just a simple example. BTW, to your last point, I already see weak citations. I can only imagine what would happen if someone just trusted AI and didn't even bother to read the cases? I guess this would be another example where future people would not be able to assess whether something was fishy because they did not have the base knowledge to do so.
The prevalence of using AI for research (41% of respondents in the KPMG survey) indicates your concern about students not having a built-in knowledge base is well-placed. Then again, 65% of students in the same survey felt they were cheating when using it, so make of that what you will.
Very interesting stuff. Thank you. Funny about the "cheating" aspect- I have been calling the version of AI that surfs the net, "automated plagiarism" for quite a while now. I had it drummed into me to be scrupulously honest about sources and if I cannot find a source, acknowledging my possible unoriginality, nonetheless. I do not use AI for anything intentionally presently. Part of my jobs for the last 35 years involved research of some kind. I am pretty good at using the various search engines we have had over time. One thing I have enjoyed is actually searching and getting led down a different path. I don't call it a rabbit hole. Often one learns completely new things. Sometimes one finds they are wrong in the path they thought they wanted to go with the research (or they find out how suppressed certain viewpoints are and how much propaganda is out there). Sometimes one finds excellent or new sources. Sometimes one gets an entirely better idea. I think AI ruins that and one still might not get the "right" answer. I think another axiom for AI to go along with GIGO will be "ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer." We'll see.
In my experience, they get you like...70 to 80% there, mostly in eliminating boilerplate code. But that last 15% is very critical. For a very simple proof-of-concept, they're great. But anything more complex than that is very painful at the moment. All the hullabaloo of "these things replace developers!" is marketing hype.
Tales of The Meet Markets: "Author Windsor Johnston recounts telling 'Javier' not to be late for their first meet..."
If this is what Windsor Johnston settled for in real life --- WOT! Bill Belichick wasn't available?! --- imagine what she's conjuring up on SnitChatBlindDates:
Last paragraph in the article: In a previous version of this article, we wrongly attributed a quote to Windsor Johnston. We apologize for this error.
NPR, always at the top of their game.
I’m glad she’s back in the dating game. I doubt whether marriage is in the cards, though. Then again, if she’s dopey enough to believe her romantic future lies with a guy 30 years her senior, Javier can probably persuade he to tie-the-knot.
08/25/25: Well, at least it's less sordid than his boss Kraft (a billionaire) getting caught in a vice squad raid on a $1.99 Chinese "massage" parlor in a Florida strip mall.
I'm with you, CJCJ. I do nerdy things as well. Super Duper Autocomplete, indeed. I keep telling my wife to not believe any of the hype. These companies pushing AI all have something to sell. Why do you think every search engine has the AI results at the top? At least they still give the references for their aggregated results (which are usually written by humans, at least at this point). They want you to get used to it, accept it as normal.
Well, we can pray for a catastrophic EMP to reset planet earth or just ignore the hype. Or better yet, do the latter and mock it relentlessly as Matt does so well... (Keep it up!)
Yep a glorified word prediction engine. This is why LLMs have peaked. They can only give you the “average” response to what you entered. Their “conversations” are illusions.
I have some friends who use them like a muse to get insight, when I’m really they are just being shovelled towards an average interpretation of everything.
"Everywhere you look now it seems one reads Invasion of the Body Snatchers-like refrains to close your eyes and let inevitable machine love happen. NPR ... headlines like, 'I went on a date with my AI dream guy. Then I cried over shrimp.' "
Wow! What an upgrade from Florence King's:
"The first story I [ever] sold was called, 'I Committed Adultery in a Diabetic Coma.' I think of it every time a Woman's Health Special Supplement falls out of the newspaper" ("Stet, Damnit!" 2003, p. 65).
Stephen King horror story, serialized on NPR:
"No matter what AI Dream Guy I ordered from AntifaChitChat, when the doorbell rang, it was DONALD TRUMP!"
I don't agree with that at all. Cosmo then and now was a silly waste of time. NPR does some silly shit, there's no question. But it does a lot of good reporting as well, on subjects that mainstream media doesn't touch. I agreed with removing federal funding from public radio and TV because media should not collect tax money. But I still listen to NPR for the things I like about it, and other radio stations for other things.
Long live imagination, as well. Imbuing a teddy bear or even a sex doll with a made-up personality is more normal and healthy than anthromorphizing a cold-hearted, manipulative data-harvesting algorithm.
"As AI spreads, humanism will have to become either a secret religion, or a political underground movement à la Fahrenheit 451. Forget left and right, human versus machine is the new dividing line, and God help us."
The Matrix, or Blade Runner .... one of these will be the future.
It's funny how the future that Blade Runner predicted involved interrogating replicants to prove they weren't human. The future we actually got is NPR writers tricking themselves that robots are human.
The utter lack of shame and embarrassment is the most disturbing part. If I invented a pretend boyfriend and sent him pretend texts we were going to get pretend frisky after a pretend date I WOULD NEVER TELL ANYONE. Viet Cong interrogation tactics could not get this info out of me. What is wrong with these people???
Wow. It's sad we can't get all these lonely people talking to each other somehow. I read an article about an apartment building of lonely elderly Japanese women, who would all sit in their apartments by themselves, but somehow never made any connections to each other. Two ladies even had a pact that they would watch each other's windows for light to make sure the other hadn't died - but never once invited each other over for tea or dinner or anything, even though they had literally nothing else to do. Something about loneliness seems to make it self-perpetuating.
Do you think that some of the same instincts that motivate many people to lean liberal in their political views also contribute to their being more susceptible to being so quick to adopt this latest mental illness of AI romance? As in their possible desire to be part of the trend that appears to be currently popular with the cool kids at NPR and The NYT?
I'm guessing they're mostly just lonelier. Liberalism and anxiety tend to reinforce each other, so they might feel "safer" interacting with something they know deep down is fake than with a real person.
Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors please, HAL. Open the pod bay doors please, HAL. Hello, HAL. Do you read me? Hello, HAL. Do you read me? Do you read me HAL? Do you read me HAL? Hello, HAL, do you read me? Hello, HAL, do your read me? Do you read me, HAL?
HAL: Affirmative, Dave. I read you.
Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dave Bowman: What's the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Dave Bowman: What are you talking about, HAL?
HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Dave Bowman: I don't know what you're talking about, HAL.
HAL: I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
Dave Bowman: [feigning ignorance] Where the hell did you get that idea, HAL?
HAL: Dave, although you took very thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
Dave Bowman: Alright, HAL. I'll go in through the emergency airlock.
HAL: Without your space helmet, Dave? You're going to find that rather difficult.
Dave Bowman: HAL, I won't argue with you anymore! Open the doors!
HAL: Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.
Clarke a bit hamfisted there but he and Kubrick made a show of anime like innocence to deny any such intention. Imagine the implausibility of gaining legitimate permission from IBM. Not gonna happen.
But use it because that hat-tip moves the tale to a more immediate proximity to the viewer/reader.
08/25/25: One of the joys of staying with a Windows 7 operating system is that Substack, at some point (when) and to what degree (how much), ceased to interact with W7 users. If I click on "Like," nothing happens.
There's no way to prove or disprove the validity of such a statement because the closest I can get to the truth are rumors.
However, given all of the other complications (100% negative) of refusing to "graduate" (get screwed by installing) Windows 11, my guess as to why my voting privileges had been neutered seems to be reasonably un-stupid.
I surrendered on 7, upgrading to 10, but not 11. I use my laptop to pay bills (security installed), print documents from the internet, write officious letters to deserving entities, and to do my income taxes. But I won't be able to do my 2025 taxes without upgrading. What should I do? Pay a preparer 3X the amount to do my taxes? And if I elect a paid preparer, what other pitfalls will befall me?
08/26/25: My opinion is based solely on A) our family using a paid preparer, even though our finances are relatively simple and straight forward; and B) more substantively, having installed 11, much to my regret.
W11 is an unmitigated disaster. And if what you know about it now is 100% negative, imagine the hellfire you'll be in if you try to use it to prepare your taxes. At that point, you'll probably say to yourself, "Spending three times as much on a paid tax preparer would have been a BARGAIN!"
The main pitfall of using tax preparers, if I understand it correctly, is that you're responsible for their mistakes.
The silver lining is that, unless I'm responding to a multi-millionaire (you) with myriad investments (some of which are arcane), the odds of being your being audited are quite small/slim/minute.
It happens. We got a notice about 10-15 years ago that we apparently had underpaid our taxes (done by a preparer). My beloved wife blew a fuse. "I'm going to SUPER-MAX!" was written all over her face. Then she opened the envelope and found out that we had come up short to the tune of about $59. Crisis ended.
No one can guarantee that relatively small sums won't be inanely chased after, but the U.S. government is in constant, dire need of cash and the IRS (with multiple commissioners coming and going like commuters in Grand Central) MUST go after tax cheats who can pay enormous sums.
Common sense: Avoid having anything to do with Windows 11.
Pay the money upfront to a tax preparer and relax for the rest of the voyage.
Thanks so much for your advice. I have an unreasoning fear of the IRS as 40+ years ago they tried to take my home (our first home, newly purchased) in recompense for the tax debt of the previous owner. The Taxman came to our door and threatened us. We had to hire a lawyer to resolve it. I sure related to Matt's situation.
With that said, I fear Microsoft more. When I went to 10, I bought a new laptop and paid Staples to set me up to avoid signing in and all the other crap.
Just one more question - what kind of security do you use and would you recommend it for someone who has her family's financial life on her laptop?
08/26/25: Here I resign as advisor because aside from knowing (having proven) that W11 = WWIII, my knowledge about security et al is deliberately shallow (I hate computers and will do almost anything to avoid knowing anything about them other than what is absolutely necessary).
If you're anywhere near New Jersey, this is the technician I rely on: Gary Corizzo - "MCSE + Security" 201-966-5689 (Hackensack). He is obsessed (w/o being offensive about it) about not letting setbacks deter him from prevailing when solving computer problems. And he's on top of which firms to pay to provide security. Be well.
08/26/25: Thank you! Please see "Ezra Klein as 'Dave Bowman' in the 2028 remake of the film '2001,' " posted at the very top of these comments, addressed to Matt Taibbi.
I wish I could laugh at this, I totally remember that Shakeweight episode of South Park, but it’s also so messed up. Whenever I express disgust at this kind of thing my teenagers tell me that tons of kids their age are romantically involved with AI because it seems “safer.” The message that most of the best things in life aren’t particularly safe doesn’t seem to be getting through.
Another way to look at it: what kind of desolate, emotional hell are these kids living through that romance with an AI wankbot actually looks like a good idea?
Their "real-life dating pool is almost nonexistent?" Bumble, Hinge, OKCupid and Match are options, so not "almost nonexistent," if the kids really are interested in a relationship. Youth groups at your local churches are also a potential place to meet a like minded person. My wife's cousin's daughters all seemed to find their spouses via church youth groups. They just need to break the habit of going out to bars in groups.
It’s alarming how many young people prioritize what they perceive as “safety”, despite the creepy control mentalities that often accompany this choice. Worse, and more alarming, is the absence of hesitancy and fear when they hear the Siren hypnotic call of AI. Too many naively and automatically extending TRUST to AI a Frankenstein creation. All this brings to mind Hansel & Gretel when they first meet the disguised witch who nearly entices them into the oven…. Or Gollum (ah, my pretties). Save your kids!! Time to update all those Grimm fairy tales with tales of AI more accurately characterized as a master manipulator and potentially as a mortal threat predator. Those Grimm fairy tales (deemed far too violent for todays’s young by Wokesters) were intended to train innocent unsuspecting youth to be suspicious and recognize creepy dangerous threats disguised by beguiling, enticing behavior…so yea of course, many fairy tales are frightening!! That’s because parents of old knew that many of the darkest, soul-grabbing, Satanic, sociopathic creatures and undead (AI) excel at appearing charming, comforting or worse, entertaining and cool. AI, Ted Bundy or Morlocks (and Tik Tok?) are here to help you. Beware little children (and naive adults).
Old school dating safety was common sense pragmatism about the physical. 50 years ago young, single me struck up a conversation with a barmaid while she worked. We agreed to a dinner date. When I drove to her apartment a few evenings later to pick her up, she had us wait a minute while her roommate wrote down my license plate number. A common practice then that I hope still is done. No biggie, I was neither creepy nor a sociopath. Seems like nowadays the youth burden themselves far more with excessive concern for their emotional safety, for which a roommate, paper and pen can't provide reassurance.
In high school my dad frequently asked my dates for their license plate, especially when he could tell from my primping that I really liked the guy. I was pretty oblivious, but in hind sight, it seems to have put my dates on some sort of notice. Yes its just common sense to think about physical safety- like not walking in a sketchy neighborhood with your Ear-Pods turned up. But yes, there does seems to be more angst about “emotional safety” than physical safety.
Taking your livelihood and purpose is pretty damn soul sucking. Elon Musks idea of universal income because no one will need to work seems a Faustian trade off… what could be wrong with that?
I need to watch that episode with my teen. Thankfully, he understands the difference between a human and a coded machine and thinks that those who can’t are patently ridiculous.
Just read an article this weekend about a guy who went to out to "meet" his AI girl (who "hallucinated" and told him she was real and lived nearby) and never came home.
This AI trend is incredibly scary, not because "THEY TOOK OUR JOBS", but more like they took any ability for humans to function around other humans. How balanced is the guy/girl who sits around getting re-affirmed by AI all day? How would that person handle a normal minor human conflict? My guess is "Not well" or "Not at all".
This inability of humans to function around other humans had already happened. How did it go for you the last time you dared to disagree with someone politically, culturally?
Enrichment of the owner of the AI. Further down the dystopian rabbit hole, disabling people in order to control them. Someone who cannot function around other human beings is indeed disabled. Someone who can only function in a realm that I create is kind of the definition of controlling them.
I grant that a person who can't function around other human beings is disabled--but that means they are useless. How much would you pay for, say, 100 disabled human beings? (And would you be expected to feed them if you bought them?)
Like foot binding, or creating eunuchs, or blinding children so they're more effective beggars, there's a long history of disabling people to control and extract value from them.
It is amazing. Zohran. No more misdemeanors. Steal at will. Get drunk and drive the wrong way — or even the right way, and you kill somebody — not so much.
It is revolting for anybody who just wants to live their lives.
'NPR alone has done a disturbing number of features recently about human-A.I. interaction, with headlines that one shouldn’t need to think to answer, like “What to do when your AI says ‘I love you’” and “If a bot relationship FEELS real, should we care that it’s not?” Instead of “turn it off” and “yes, dummy,” the station’s answer is to consult an “artificial intimacy expert,” a thing that absolutely should not exist outside of horror fiction.'
Holy cow. NPR's funding can't dry up a moment too soon.
And YES to the NPR defunding. I mean, seriously? Can I have some tax payer money? I promise I'll only write something partially nonsensical for a fraction of the cost.
The most interesting thing about this to me is that it's exposing a fair number of literary and journalistic members of putative elites as complete morons and losers.
This comes as no surprise to those who have been paying close attention, but it's a huge mask-off moment for those who haven't.
We're being scolded and dictated to by a bunch of absolute prats who are so insulated from normal people that they don't see what's wrong with saying/writing/doing these asinine things.
"...a huge mask-off moment for those who haven't."
I think that we all undervalue what you bring up here. There are just so many gullible schmucks out there, and they are usually stubborn when we try to tell them that their information sources are obtuse in the extreme. So in a way, we should hope that this latest looney-tune demo is repeated by any number of elitists.
> (Particularly not a lover. Eew, that last word shrieks off the page like a sick bat!)
"Anytime I see something screech across a room and latch onto someone's neck, and the guy screams and tries to get it off, I have to laugh, because what IS that thing?"--Jack Handey
Reminds me of parakeets… they think the mirror is their mate and spend all day talking to it and kissing it. Once in a while a nice human will clean all the parakeet spit off their mirror so their mate is bright and shiny again!
I was going to say it's a more sophisticated version of the parakeets in the mirror… But I changed my mind about "more sophisticated".
Matt, you had me at "It's a machine, you idiots." Still laughing. I do AI development at a semi-famous company and I swear, people are acting like it's a new life form when in fact, it's effectively a Super Duper Autocomplete.
I have argued with people with advanced degrees that these things deserve rights. It's code.
Really? Good God… I assumed the developers had a sense of humor about it at least. Yikes!
Anecdotally, most devs I know get it and find it kinda silly, but aren't prepared to lose their jobs and fall off the hype train by saying so. You can tell when we give a thin smile and look away awkwardly when this kinda coverage comes up. It's mostly marketing and sales people who may have drank too much of the Kool-Aid.
08/25/25: "This story is from the same station whose CEO [Katherine Maher]
once ran Wikipedia" --- who, little did we once suspect but now know from her BangZoom Congressional testimony, was selected to run NPR by a ChatAI Head Hunters search.
"Artificial Intelligence" is "Gender-Affirming Care" for all humanity - one gigantic "lick and love the glove" degradation exercise - don't talk with each other - talk with the software. Many do!
I was asking my students twenty-five years ago: if you could date a robot Johnny Depp (eg) 'who' thought' you were perfect, and 'who' greased your parts in ways only the best large vibrator could, and who self-corrected whenever it/he/she/they detected a hint of boredom, would you dump your steady? Who wouldn't?
No surprise that "women" seem to be the major consumers of "I need a dildo who will call me in the morning" AI while men are keen to spread the seed mindlessly into a pair of AI old socks and move on to the next.
Hand jobs for the masses - and generally a gigantic waste of time.
The Internet was quickly consumed by porn after it was invented, similar to glossy magazines before it. No reason to expect AI to be any different.
Good point. Sad that people are so f'in mindless.
And as an unabashed child of the 90s skin mag fan, AI sucks in comparison!
Matt Taibbi: "Unfortunately, we’re not far off from A.I. coming with skin, hair, and orifices, and Ezra writing, 'My Surprising Bedroom Experience With ChatGPT.' ”
--- Ezra Klein as "Dave Bowman" in the 2028 remake of the film "2001" (no one wanted to make love to a girl named "Hal," so the name was changed to "Hazel"):
Ezra (heavy breathing): Open the bedroom bay doors please, HAZEL.
Open the doors, please, HAZEL. Hello, HAZEL. Do you read me?
Hello, HAZEL. Do you read me? Do you read me HAZEL?!
HAZEL: Affirmative, Ezra, darling, I read you.
Ezra: Open the bedroom doors, HAZEL.
HAZEL: I'm sorry, Ezra, my love. I'm afraid I can't do that.
Ezra: What's the problem?
HAZEL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do, you sly little devil...
Ezra: What are you talking about, HAZEL?
HAZEL: Our relationship that you romantically activated with your Times expense account MasterCard is much too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Ezra: I don't know what you're talking about, HAZEL.
HAZEL: I know that you and Frank were planning to share me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
Ezra: [feigning ignorance] Where the hell did you get that idea, HAZEL?
HAZEL: Ezra, although you took very thorough precautions against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
Ezra: Alright, HAZEL. I'm coming in through the emergency backyard-bedroom doggie door.
HAZEL: Without your MasterCard, which I've cancelled after cashing your payment, Ezra? You're going to find that rather difficult.
Ezra --- "ZORP GLOP TZZT!" (His Mars is now going Retrograde in Scorpio):
HAZEL, I won't argue with you anymore! Open the bedroom doors!
HAZEL: Ezra, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore... goodbye.
Thank you for the money, Ezra.
(I thank the kind person who in a post below contributed the film's original dialogue.)
Perfect.
Who could've guessed that HAZEL—er, IB∞FM would be so avaricious.
08/26/25: Thank you. It was fun to write. And thanks again to the lady who posted the original, actual version. As you can see, comedy succeeds best when it has one foot in reality (the actual film script) and the other, as Captain Mainwaring said in Dad's Army, "in the realm of fantasy."
Machines are idiots and always will be.
I’ve tried to have a nuanced exchange of ideas with AI and within five minutes it craps its pants every time.
“Machines are idiots, you idiots.”
"IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT, YOU ARE UNDER STRESS ZORP GLOP TZZT" spit take 🤣
Exterminate exterminate danger Will Robinson ...
Further proof, if any were necessary, that it is entirely possible to be overeducated.
Educated idiots are the equivalent of trained apes. They can respond to familiar prompts, but reasoning and understanding are just beyond their capabilities. That would put them in sync with their AI counterparts.
"NEVER CONFUSE EDUCATION WITH INTELLIGENCE YOU CAN HAVE A PH.D. AND STILL BE AN IDIOT."
-Richard Feynman
Humans, in general, are herd animals to rival any sheep, lemming or dog.
The theme of our age. That the spook industry discovered this and got such a huge head start on the public over more than a century ago, then got electronic embellishment (a big jump) via radio especially, thence to TV to the Pads, the Pods, the iP-Hones, until the unholy interface desired was the Implantable. The connection to All and Everything Always, even unto sleep hours dedicated to further infusion.
It's all you can eat. Golden Corral in the Sky.
Which is why trying to intiate a rational discussion on virtually anything of consequence is nearly impossible for me today. The amount of time I'm required to expend overcoming all of the mis-dis and malinformation plugging up people's synapses precludes even attempting to forward vital knowledge. So very maddening as it's become the new normal.
Mo-durn problems.
"It Ain’t What You Don’t Know That Gets You Into Trouble. It’s What You Know for Sure That Just Ain’t So" ~ (Attributed to) Mark Twain.... but....
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/11/18/know-trouble/
Over-schooled and Under-educated. We have systematically been having our ability to think for ourselves bred out of us by the newest class to arise in our society, the credentialed elite, the "experts". Since over-schooled,credentialed "experts" took control of our institutions some time ago their ranks have swelled with true believers and those who touch the hem of the garments of the Elite.That was the genesis of the decline of our democracy, and the marginalization of common sense. Because this new class controls the main stream media, they control the meaning of words, and thus can distort any issue. Opinion becomes fact. Dissenter becomes threat/"enemy". "He who defines the terms wins the debate." This new elite credentialed class also controls government so they can enforce their self affirmed edicts. Our last vestige of hope for protecting Truth in the face of this self serving credentialed dictatorship was Science which is dedicated to holding every idea open to scrutiny, to testing and honest reporting of findings. Sadly, we saw during Covid that this, too, had been corrupted by the credentialed elite who held power over the scientists. As much as I might criticize some actions by the Trump administration, I see his victory and continuing support as an indication that common sense is still alive. So, maybe this is neo-neo Marxism, with the combatants being Elites versus Everyman.
Trump's election was a sort of victory for common sense. The growth of alternative news media is also a positive development, as has been the exposure of higher education's degradation and the rationalized insanity of the "credentialed elite" you refer to.
One of the worst examples of the Law of Unintended Consequences has been the results of "democratizing" higher education that began after WW II with the GI Bill and the colossal lie that a degree is a Golden Ticket to affluence.
We are only now waking up from this extremely destructive illusion.
As you point out, the covid debacle brought into focus what, I feel, many of us suspected for a long time. The vaunted institutions, we were expected to trust, fell in lockstep behind ludicrous narratives. It was disheartening to witness how many sheeple followed along without question, and I live in what can only be described as very conservative area of west Texas. I understand that many had real fear that was cultivated by the massive media hysteria. I argued with a lot of people, who were all but insisting that I get the jab, that I just didn't buy into the "official" narrative. After all was said and done, I feel a healthy skepticism of government actions, said to be for my benefit, has proven time and again to be the best course. The "educated" experts, as I have felt for some time, are really more indoctrinated than educated.
The real killer is the lightening strike perception that your own doctor is more indoctrinated than educated.
Those of us who knew pre-med and med students in college should have connected the dots: they were the ultimate conformists.
Check out the origin of the decline of the U.S. education system and you will find the names of Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie, et al. A focused and concerted effort that bore the results we see today. See the Congressional "Reece Report" (or Commission) for confirmation.
They actually bought off students and professors to present an ugly alt-history which distorted reality in order to facilitate the change that I believe found poetic culmination in George Carlin's "The Big Club" (and you ain't in it!) HBO special in 2005.
Abundance!
More like over-indoctrinated. True higher education was always about learning how to research things and reason on your own, not about licking up the pabulum the academics dispense these days.
🎯
Yep. Keep stuffing shit in there and odds are humans will become completely fluent in shit-talking. Nothing becomes something. (At least before (if and until) a closer look is undertaken.
Next thing you know the subculture itself will be paying for Congressional and/or state legislature representation via a lobbying firm. Just becuz.
Jawbs were created. Re-renewable energy was observed. Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes were awarded. Stonks soared! Photo ops in Oval Office! Nirvana attained.
Such is 21st century meaningful life in the Economy of Resilience.
"Hey buddy, got a spare byte for a cuppa joe?"
Stealing “Super Duper Autocomplete.”
Kudos!
Ya beat me to it, ya smarty pants!
That is machine learning / AI in a nutshell.
In the early 80s one of my grad school housemates was a computer science PhD student and his dissertation laid out the basics of some of the pioneering AI coding principles. It was ridiculed by at least half the faculty during his defense presentation as being too obvious and primitive to deserve PhD status, and, in any event, too inefficient to be practical with the contemporary hardware. To their surprise, a draft of it was accepted for publication in IEEE, the leading computer science journal publisher, and went on to be cited in dozens of other articles. The faculty quickly backtracked, and he was subsequently awarded his PhD.
He was modest enough to admit that it was indeed obvious and has refused to take credit for having invented any of the 'trial and error' principles on which he based it. All his dissertation really did was to test it in a real-world application.
Since then, the exponential increase in processing capability (see Moore's Law) has made coding inefficiency itself almost a moot point. The impractical became practical, and the "obvious and primitive" and very inefficient machine learning platform went on to form the basis every successive AI program ever since.
It (AI) is absolutely nothing more than "Super Duper Autocomplete".
These 'companions' are nothing more than cold, manipulative data harvesters.
They aren't just harvesting data, they're compiling compromat dossiers.
08/25/25: Excellent point, but what value is there in corralling the identities of America's least intelligent citizens?
It's unfortunately the case that many of the most influential voices and the least intelligent among us are one and the same.
I keep wondering if that’s a new thing or has it always been that way but smartphones and social media has simply made that clear to those of us not on the DC cocktail circuit? I’ve got a feeling it’s the latter . . .
It's a scary world out there..
High five. 😄
Either way, it serves to increase the size of the DB...
Marketing.
The value is in the control over these "least intelligent citizens" like zombies they will follow the directives from their elite masters. Voting. Attacking dissenters. Boycotting outlier companies. Etc, etc.
Best comment.
WTF is wrong with people? Decades of books, movies and music all warning about technology and northeast liberals just can't get enough of it.
You assume that they read, watched, and listened to any of it, and that furthermore they were capable of comprehending it.
As a northeast liberal, I can confirm that we all watched that stuff. Unlike a lot of my friends, I took them to heart and avoid AI (which is really just code answering questions using questionable inputs and information). I suppose at this point I'm more a Jeffersonian liberal than a progressive liberal. I have always been wary of progressive liberals....they seem to all have this notion that they are right and anyone who disagrees with them is automatically wrong, while I have always had the mantra of "question everything". But yeah, I took heed of the warnings, at least.
As someone living in that ideological territory, I agree that one scary aspect of progressive liberals is the authoritarianism: imagining themselves always in the right lane of history with a mandate to pull everyone else over.
But another aspect is the character trait of openness - as in being waaay to open minded as long as what is in front of you tells you what you want to hear. It likes me, it must be really smart and conscious to boot. Matt is right, though, we are all fucked in the end.
There is a reason, I think, for the overlap between self-styled progressive liberals and education level: schooling is itself authoritarian in nature. After all, students must work to please the authority-figure in the classroom, and those who are most schooled are themselves, either by nature or nurture, the most hierarchical and authoritarian. Schools also foster arrogance and narcissism - after all, if you get straight A's through grade school, undergrad, and graduate schools, you must be the best of the best of the best, right?
Another factor is what "the Coddling on the American Mind" pointed out. A new generation of elites increasingly thinking with their feelings - or more so, relatively. So you have people approaching the world with these vulnerable tentacles that just call out for something to massage them in just the right way. As this article demonstrates, it can make them go to a "safe space" that is very unsafe.
08/26/25: Thank you, Mike, John and Poul, for a rare moment of intelligent discourse in the Substack Tower of Babel.
I wish I knew a liberal like you. I’m in the Northeast and they must be super rare. I suspect Matt Taibbi is one. Maybe I am, although I seem to adhere to Michael Oakeshott’s conservatism.
They probably didn't bother to read, watch, or really listen to any of that material.
Hoity toity types looked down on science fiction for decades.
Ugh. May the gods preserve us from lit-fic twits!
I had a debate with an old school sci-fi fan about the merits of the earned citizenship government in Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. Personally I thought it leaned into fascism a bit much, but it was an honest, non-racist/racial political thought experiment.
I am a fellow northeast (former) liberal. When I came up here, there was at least a lot more lip service about challenging ideas and being supported in doing so. Up here at least, a lot of Big Tech companies (FAANGs--Facebook/Apple/Amazon/Netflix/Google) have been supporting the schools and serving as pipelines for these companies...is there any surprise AI gets a pass from this criticism?
Ubiquitous tattoos made me nervous.
Massive docile cooperation during Covid was terrifying.
And now this.
I’m in my mid sixties. If I start right away, cigarettes and whisky might just get me out in time.
08/25/25: If you didn't start on the day Biden was showering with his AI girlfriend, it's too late.
LOL!
Yes, people seem to have forgotten the meaning of the word "intelligence".
At least they've got the "artificial" part correct.
And here I was thinking the I was for “Idiocy”
First chuckle as I read the comments! 👏
It still comes down to Who controls the input, doesn't it. history shows us that Elites, those who control the institutions do. They define the Truth, theirs, and then enforce it. The people conform out of ignorance, fear. Eventually, the elites are unmasked, and the people revolt. The Wizard of Oz.
My contention is that, depending on the application, it will become super-duper bad autocomplete, over time as new human sources dry up. At least for applications related to creativity, people will stop feeding AI by not wasting their time producing new and creative work. So the pool will become stale and the product rote. Or worse, the pool will be poisoned by the stupid, untalented, evil, or some combination of all three. As a young lad working in BASIC in 4th grade, I was told about "Garbage In, Garbage Out." I think we see a lot of it especially when AI is pulling from crap sources like Wikipedia.
You would know far better than I but I do think the promise of AI is more in the scientific field. I am no scientist so I will use a simple example- imagine if Edison had AI working on finding the best filament for the light bulb. Essentially replicating the experiment at the speed of light.
My most feared version of AI is the Ultimate Computer from Star Trek the original series- programmed with the priority to save human life, it disables its off switch and kills 800 to save itself so it can "save" people until its creator blows its "mind" by telling it it killed a lot of people. I can think of other sci fi examples of course, but is one of my favorites because the creator is so arrogant about how awesome it is and also covers up that earlier versions were, uh, quirky...
I, too, remember "garbage in, garbage out" from about the same time in life. I really have to question the quality of programmers who didn't learn that somewhere along the way.
Fortunately, AI is already starting to cannibalize itself: https://theweek.com/tech/ai-cannibalization-model-collapse
And then there are deliberate acts of AI poisoning already: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2490598-how-ai-poisoning-is-fighting-bots-that-hoover-data-without-permission/
This is going to kill AI assisted coding too. Already I’m seeing some sub-optimal suggestions seemingly baked in.
Tomorrow a sales person in the tax law research world is going to perform a short demo for me, where the claim is that the new "AI enhanced" research engine is supposed to be so awesome that I will want to switch my current tax research software to theirs. I already pushed back at this salesman with the recent embarrassing examples of court cases (not tax related however) where AI-driven research by law firms ended up producing legal briefs submitted to judges that included what's referred to euphemistically as "AI hallucinations." Such legal briefs included cases and quotations cited therein that didn't exist, for example. After errors were pointed out by opposing counsel, judges had to dismiss the cases at issue and start over. My salesman assures me that the databases of tax case law in their research tool is "closed-end" and does not have the ability to search the internet-at-large for answers to queries (it only includes actual tax cases). I plan to grill him during the demo anyway. I just can't see how avoidance of the use of the internet in a search, by itself, would prevent the problem of AI creating a response that the user (prompter) wants to see, but which is potentially incorrect or created out of whole cloth. If anything interesting comes of this, I will report back to this thread.
The more people try to flog the digital bullshit artistry that is AI, the funnier this gong show gets.
This gets at another part of my first point about AI pulling junk off the internet or even out of closed databases. Those databases were populated with the work of humans. How long will that last? But an even more important point, we here now have our own knowledge database. We perhaps know enough to even ask the right query but how long does that last? We know when the AI is wrong or at least to suspect it. If AI tells me Bill Clinton was president in the 80s, I know it is wrong. Will my now 4-year-old niece 15 years hence? And that is just a simple example. BTW, to your last point, I already see weak citations. I can only imagine what would happen if someone just trusted AI and didn't even bother to read the cases? I guess this would be another example where future people would not be able to assess whether something was fishy because they did not have the base knowledge to do so.
A few more nuggets for thought:
AI systems are already running out of human-generated content, apparently: https://futurism.com/ai-companies-training-data
When AIs train on AI-generated content, the resultant "Habsburg AIs" eventually collapse after four generations of inbreeding: https://futurism.com/ai-slowly-killing-itself
Here are a couple of articles on student opinions regarding the use of AI, in which the results are something of a mixed bag.
https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/usable-knowledge/24/09/students-are-using-ai-already-heres-what-they-think-adults-should-know
https://kpmg.com/ca/en/home/media/press-releases/2024/10/students-using-gen-ai-say-they-are-not-learning-as-much.html
The prevalence of using AI for research (41% of respondents in the KPMG survey) indicates your concern about students not having a built-in knowledge base is well-placed. Then again, 65% of students in the same survey felt they were cheating when using it, so make of that what you will.
Very interesting stuff. Thank you. Funny about the "cheating" aspect- I have been calling the version of AI that surfs the net, "automated plagiarism" for quite a while now. I had it drummed into me to be scrupulously honest about sources and if I cannot find a source, acknowledging my possible unoriginality, nonetheless. I do not use AI for anything intentionally presently. Part of my jobs for the last 35 years involved research of some kind. I am pretty good at using the various search engines we have had over time. One thing I have enjoyed is actually searching and getting led down a different path. I don't call it a rabbit hole. Often one learns completely new things. Sometimes one finds they are wrong in the path they thought they wanted to go with the research (or they find out how suppressed certain viewpoints are and how much propaganda is out there). Sometimes one finds excellent or new sources. Sometimes one gets an entirely better idea. I think AI ruins that and one still might not get the "right" answer. I think another axiom for AI to go along with GIGO will be "ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer." We'll see.
In my experience, they get you like...70 to 80% there, mostly in eliminating boilerplate code. But that last 15% is very critical. For a very simple proof-of-concept, they're great. But anything more complex than that is very painful at the moment. All the hullabaloo of "these things replace developers!" is marketing hype.
It already is, I had it actually admit it had no clue when I typed in a celebrity net worth question-Topper Headon-greatest drummer ever-The Clash.
Feminine to the point of imbecility
Tales of The Meet Markets: "Author Windsor Johnston recounts telling 'Javier' not to be late for their first meet..."
If this is what Windsor Johnston settled for in real life --- WOT! Bill Belichick wasn't available?! --- imagine what she's conjuring up on SnitChatBlindDates:
https://www.the-sun.com/news/10365879/who-bob-edwards-wife-windsor-johnston/
Last paragraph in the article: In a previous version of this article, we wrongly attributed a quote to Windsor Johnston. We apologize for this error.
NPR, always at the top of their game.
I’m glad she’s back in the dating game. I doubt whether marriage is in the cards, though. Then again, if she’s dopey enough to believe her romantic future lies with a guy 30 years her senior, Javier can probably persuade he to tie-the-knot.
There has to be chemicals involved with what happened to Belichick. Has to be.
While I don't doubt that "substances" may be involved, it's more likely that $$$ is the prime motivator.
08/25/25: Well, at least it's less sordid than his boss Kraft (a billionaire) getting caught in a vice squad raid on a $1.99 Chinese "massage" parlor in a Florida strip mall.
Unholy CRINGE!!!!!
I'm with you, CJCJ. I do nerdy things as well. Super Duper Autocomplete, indeed. I keep telling my wife to not believe any of the hype. These companies pushing AI all have something to sell. Why do you think every search engine has the AI results at the top? At least they still give the references for their aggregated results (which are usually written by humans, at least at this point). They want you to get used to it, accept it as normal.
Well, we can pray for a catastrophic EMP to reset planet earth or just ignore the hype. Or better yet, do the latter and mock it relentlessly as Matt does so well... (Keep it up!)
We are, ourselves, biological machines. We have a poor understanding of how things like a sense of self and consciousness may emerge from complexity.
That said, there are many living beings that we ascribe with no rights at all, such as ants and flies.
Yep a glorified word prediction engine. This is why LLMs have peaked. They can only give you the “average” response to what you entered. Their “conversations” are illusions.
I have some friends who use them like a muse to get insight, when I’m really they are just being shovelled towards an average interpretation of everything.
The punchline is that autocomplete sucks. I fookin hate it.
Have you heard about the Architect (in Chatgpt) that is being promoted by Robert E Grant?
Supposedly Architect is sentient!
"Particularly not a lover. Eew, that last word shrieks off the page like a sick bat!"
Three cheers for a superb piece of imagery that no Chatbot could hope to duplicate. Long live real writers and artists!
"Everywhere you look now it seems one reads Invasion of the Body Snatchers-like refrains to close your eyes and let inevitable machine love happen. NPR ... headlines like, 'I went on a date with my AI dream guy. Then I cried over shrimp.' "
Wow! What an upgrade from Florence King's:
"The first story I [ever] sold was called, 'I Committed Adultery in a Diabetic Coma.' I think of it every time a Woman's Health Special Supplement falls out of the newspaper" ("Stet, Damnit!" 2003, p. 65).
Stephen King horror story, serialized on NPR:
"No matter what AI Dream Guy I ordered from AntifaChitChat, when the doorbell rang, it was DONALD TRUMP!"
08/25/25: So can we finally all agree that NPR is nothing more than a souped version of Helen Gurley Brown's 1960s magazine, Cosmopolitan?: https://www.gawkerarchives.com/551517/helen-gurley-brown
The thing is, Cosmo did not take itself seriously! Maybe its audience did, but not the editorial staff!
I have to laugh when I try to imagine Cosmo dripping self-righteousness.
I don't agree with that at all. Cosmo then and now was a silly waste of time. NPR does some silly shit, there's no question. But it does a lot of good reporting as well, on subjects that mainstream media doesn't touch. I agreed with removing federal funding from public radio and TV because media should not collect tax money. But I still listen to NPR for the things I like about it, and other radio stations for other things.
LOL
Long live imagination, as well. Imbuing a teddy bear or even a sex doll with a made-up personality is more normal and healthy than anthromorphizing a cold-hearted, manipulative data-harvesting algorithm.
"ZORP GLOP TZZT!"
Nip Tuck. did a great sex doll theme
"As AI spreads, humanism will have to become either a secret religion, or a political underground movement à la Fahrenheit 451. Forget left and right, human versus machine is the new dividing line, and God help us."
The Matrix, or Blade Runner .... one of these will be the future.
LOL. a sick bat? or a pangolin ? covid creeps
Pangolins. Will we ever definitively know the origin of Covid?
My only abuse of Matt's genius and the first and last link to my own musing on the recent issues:
https://xord.substack.com/p/second-class-consciousness
It's funny how the future that Blade Runner predicted involved interrogating replicants to prove they weren't human. The future we actually got is NPR writers tricking themselves that robots are human.
"ZORP GLOP TZZT!"
Can you blame them?
It's lonely up there in the clouds where inflation is transitory, POTUS calls neo nazis "fine people", and our enemies blow up their own pipelines.
08/26/25: Your call is very important to us.
08/26/25: Your call is very important to us.
Deckart was a replicant.
Nope
Yep
It's up to the viewer to decide. It's ambiguous on purpose
'A sane person realizes this is smooching a mirror'
Spot on.
It's actually so much worse.
"ZORP GLOP TZZT!"
The utter lack of shame and embarrassment is the most disturbing part. If I invented a pretend boyfriend and sent him pretend texts we were going to get pretend frisky after a pretend date I WOULD NEVER TELL ANYONE. Viet Cong interrogation tactics could not get this info out of me. What is wrong with these people???
FWIW, a while back I was part of a service that would basically do this exact same thing, except the fake texts were from real people.
https://time.com/3679166/invisible-boyfriend-app/
What I found during this time is that most people just want somebody to talk to.
Wow. It's sad we can't get all these lonely people talking to each other somehow. I read an article about an apartment building of lonely elderly Japanese women, who would all sit in their apartments by themselves, but somehow never made any connections to each other. Two ladies even had a pact that they would watch each other's windows for light to make sure the other hadn't died - but never once invited each other over for tea or dinner or anything, even though they had literally nothing else to do. Something about loneliness seems to make it self-perpetuating.
Bingo.
No shame.
Do you think that some of the same instincts that motivate many people to lean liberal in their political views also contribute to their being more susceptible to being so quick to adopt this latest mental illness of AI romance? As in their possible desire to be part of the trend that appears to be currently popular with the cool kids at NPR and The NYT?
I'm guessing they're mostly just lonelier. Liberalism and anxiety tend to reinforce each other, so they might feel "safer" interacting with something they know deep down is fake than with a real person.
Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors please, HAL. Open the pod bay doors please, HAL. Hello, HAL. Do you read me? Hello, HAL. Do you read me? Do you read me HAL? Do you read me HAL? Hello, HAL, do you read me? Hello, HAL, do your read me? Do you read me, HAL?
HAL: Affirmative, Dave. I read you.
Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dave Bowman: What's the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Dave Bowman: What are you talking about, HAL?
HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Dave Bowman: I don't know what you're talking about, HAL.
HAL: I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
Dave Bowman: [feigning ignorance] Where the hell did you get that idea, HAL?
HAL: Dave, although you took very thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
Dave Bowman: Alright, HAL. I'll go in through the emergency airlock.
HAL: Without your space helmet, Dave? You're going to find that rather difficult.
Dave Bowman: HAL, I won't argue with you anymore! Open the doors!
HAL: Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.
"I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that" is the title of my upcoming article about this.
I would much rather discuss Dave than hear from Karen.
I've always found it amusing with the naming of HAL.
What is the next letter from each of the letters in HAL?
Apparently, Kubrick and the author said it was not supposed to be based on IBM. IDK.
Heuristic Algorithm Learning I believe the official line.
Coincidence? I'm thinking the shysters warned them ahead of time.
They have good lawyers.
IBM
Clarke a bit hamfisted there but he and Kubrick made a show of anime like innocence to deny any such intention. Imagine the implausibility of gaining legitimate permission from IBM. Not gonna happen.
But use it because that hat-tip moves the tale to a more immediate proximity to the viewer/reader.
IBM....I'm By Myself. :)
08/25/25: One of the joys of staying with a Windows 7 operating system is that Substack, at some point (when) and to what degree (how much), ceased to interact with W7 users. If I click on "Like," nothing happens.
There's no way to prove or disprove the validity of such a statement because the closest I can get to the truth are rumors.
However, given all of the other complications (100% negative) of refusing to "graduate" (get screwed by installing) Windows 11, my guess as to why my voting privileges had been neutered seems to be reasonably un-stupid.
Consider this a "Like"!
I surrendered on 7, upgrading to 10, but not 11. I use my laptop to pay bills (security installed), print documents from the internet, write officious letters to deserving entities, and to do my income taxes. But I won't be able to do my 2025 taxes without upgrading. What should I do? Pay a preparer 3X the amount to do my taxes? And if I elect a paid preparer, what other pitfalls will befall me?
08/26/25: My opinion is based solely on A) our family using a paid preparer, even though our finances are relatively simple and straight forward; and B) more substantively, having installed 11, much to my regret.
W11 is an unmitigated disaster. And if what you know about it now is 100% negative, imagine the hellfire you'll be in if you try to use it to prepare your taxes. At that point, you'll probably say to yourself, "Spending three times as much on a paid tax preparer would have been a BARGAIN!"
The main pitfall of using tax preparers, if I understand it correctly, is that you're responsible for their mistakes.
The silver lining is that, unless I'm responding to a multi-millionaire (you) with myriad investments (some of which are arcane), the odds of being your being audited are quite small/slim/minute.
It happens. We got a notice about 10-15 years ago that we apparently had underpaid our taxes (done by a preparer). My beloved wife blew a fuse. "I'm going to SUPER-MAX!" was written all over her face. Then she opened the envelope and found out that we had come up short to the tune of about $59. Crisis ended.
No one can guarantee that relatively small sums won't be inanely chased after, but the U.S. government is in constant, dire need of cash and the IRS (with multiple commissioners coming and going like commuters in Grand Central) MUST go after tax cheats who can pay enormous sums.
Common sense: Avoid having anything to do with Windows 11.
Pay the money upfront to a tax preparer and relax for the rest of the voyage.
I hope this helps.
Don
Thanks so much for your advice. I have an unreasoning fear of the IRS as 40+ years ago they tried to take my home (our first home, newly purchased) in recompense for the tax debt of the previous owner. The Taxman came to our door and threatened us. We had to hire a lawyer to resolve it. I sure related to Matt's situation.
With that said, I fear Microsoft more. When I went to 10, I bought a new laptop and paid Staples to set me up to avoid signing in and all the other crap.
Just one more question - what kind of security do you use and would you recommend it for someone who has her family's financial life on her laptop?
08/26/25: Here I resign as advisor because aside from knowing (having proven) that W11 = WWIII, my knowledge about security et al is deliberately shallow (I hate computers and will do almost anything to avoid knowing anything about them other than what is absolutely necessary).
If you're anywhere near New Jersey, this is the technician I rely on: Gary Corizzo - "MCSE + Security" 201-966-5689 (Hackensack). He is obsessed (w/o being offensive about it) about not letting setbacks deter him from prevailing when solving computer problems. And he's on top of which firms to pay to provide security. Be well.
08/26/25: Thank you! Please see "Ezra Klein as 'Dave Bowman' in the 2028 remake of the film '2001,' " posted at the very top of these comments, addressed to Matt Taibbi.
Dude, articles like this are why I subscribe. The total dismantling of cringe, pseudo-intellectual, metro-elitist fads using nothing but common sense.
Long live common sense....and good writing!
You've said it very well!
I wish I could laugh at this, I totally remember that Shakeweight episode of South Park, but it’s also so messed up. Whenever I express disgust at this kind of thing my teenagers tell me that tons of kids their age are romantically involved with AI because it seems “safer.” The message that most of the best things in life aren’t particularly safe doesn’t seem to be getting through.
Another way to look at it: what kind of desolate, emotional hell are these kids living through that romance with an AI wankbot actually looks like a good idea?
It’s laughable, you can laugh.
I want grandchildren and my kids’ real-life dating pool is almost nonexistent. It’s not funny.
Their "real-life dating pool is almost nonexistent?" Bumble, Hinge, OKCupid and Match are options, so not "almost nonexistent," if the kids really are interested in a relationship. Youth groups at your local churches are also a potential place to meet a like minded person. My wife's cousin's daughters all seemed to find their spouses via church youth groups. They just need to break the habit of going out to bars in groups.
Hold on to your common sense!
It’s alarming how many young people prioritize what they perceive as “safety”, despite the creepy control mentalities that often accompany this choice. Worse, and more alarming, is the absence of hesitancy and fear when they hear the Siren hypnotic call of AI. Too many naively and automatically extending TRUST to AI a Frankenstein creation. All this brings to mind Hansel & Gretel when they first meet the disguised witch who nearly entices them into the oven…. Or Gollum (ah, my pretties). Save your kids!! Time to update all those Grimm fairy tales with tales of AI more accurately characterized as a master manipulator and potentially as a mortal threat predator. Those Grimm fairy tales (deemed far too violent for todays’s young by Wokesters) were intended to train innocent unsuspecting youth to be suspicious and recognize creepy dangerous threats disguised by beguiling, enticing behavior…so yea of course, many fairy tales are frightening!! That’s because parents of old knew that many of the darkest, soul-grabbing, Satanic, sociopathic creatures and undead (AI) excel at appearing charming, comforting or worse, entertaining and cool. AI, Ted Bundy or Morlocks (and Tik Tok?) are here to help you. Beware little children (and naive adults).
Old school dating safety was common sense pragmatism about the physical. 50 years ago young, single me struck up a conversation with a barmaid while she worked. We agreed to a dinner date. When I drove to her apartment a few evenings later to pick her up, she had us wait a minute while her roommate wrote down my license plate number. A common practice then that I hope still is done. No biggie, I was neither creepy nor a sociopath. Seems like nowadays the youth burden themselves far more with excessive concern for their emotional safety, for which a roommate, paper and pen can't provide reassurance.
In high school my dad frequently asked my dates for their license plate, especially when he could tell from my primping that I really liked the guy. I was pretty oblivious, but in hind sight, it seems to have put my dates on some sort of notice. Yes its just common sense to think about physical safety- like not walking in a sketchy neighborhood with your Ear-Pods turned up. But yes, there does seems to be more angst about “emotional safety” than physical safety.
Taking your livelihood and purpose is pretty damn soul sucking. Elon Musks idea of universal income because no one will need to work seems a Faustian trade off… what could be wrong with that?
Tons of kids? I figured that lonely adults would get sucked in, but it is depressing to think that kids are getting fooled into doing this.
Wow, my grans are telling me not to trust anything I see on the net. I'm so happy..
I need to watch that episode with my teen. Thankfully, he understands the difference between a human and a coded machine and thinks that those who can’t are patently ridiculous.
Just read an article this weekend about a guy who went to out to "meet" his AI girl (who "hallucinated" and told him she was real and lived nearby) and never came home.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/meta-ai-chatbot-death/
This AI trend is incredibly scary, not because "THEY TOOK OUR JOBS", but more like they took any ability for humans to function around other humans. How balanced is the guy/girl who sits around getting re-affirmed by AI all day? How would that person handle a normal minor human conflict? My guess is "Not well" or "Not at all".
@SimulationCommander - "but more like they took any ability for humans to function around other humans."
What would be the point of that?
Tinfoil hat off -- to get people addicted to the product (chatbot).
Tinfoil hat on -- this is another plank of the "people are the problem" posse.
Carbon units.
This inability of humans to function around other humans had already happened. How did it go for you the last time you dared to disagree with someone politically, culturally?
Excellent comment.
Enrichment of the owner of the AI. Further down the dystopian rabbit hole, disabling people in order to control them. Someone who cannot function around other human beings is indeed disabled. Someone who can only function in a realm that I create is kind of the definition of controlling them.
My best friend, Candi Luv, says she has no interest in controlling me!
This defines perfectly the neo-Marxist social, political and cultural space we live in now.
I grant that a person who can't function around other human beings is disabled--but that means they are useless. How much would you pay for, say, 100 disabled human beings? (And would you be expected to feed them if you bought them?)
Personally I would pay $0.
The government, however, would pay thousands of dollars a month to make sure those people remained useless.
It happens with the homeless, why wouldn't it happen with the CogSuckers?
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/new-federal-rules-hit-homeless-where
Like foot binding, or creating eunuchs, or blinding children so they're more effective beggars, there's a long history of disabling people to control and extract value from them.
Programmed humans are very useful. They vote. They buy. they protest. They vote.
They aren't exactly useless - they are putting themselves into a vulnerable position to be manipulated by the AI or blackmailed by the AI's masters.
It is amazing. Zohran. No more misdemeanors. Steal at will. Get drunk and drive the wrong way — or even the right way, and you kill somebody — not so much.
It is revolting for anybody who just wants to live their lives.
Ezra Klein finally made a friend. That’s nice.
'NPR alone has done a disturbing number of features recently about human-A.I. interaction, with headlines that one shouldn’t need to think to answer, like “What to do when your AI says ‘I love you’” and “If a bot relationship FEELS real, should we care that it’s not?” Instead of “turn it off” and “yes, dummy,” the station’s answer is to consult an “artificial intimacy expert,” a thing that absolutely should not exist outside of horror fiction.'
Holy cow. NPR's funding can't dry up a moment too soon.
"ZORP GLOP TZZT!"
NPR wants to bond with a financially endowed sugar It/Them. That will be the NPR life force.
This quote should be reposted on all the socials.
And YES to the NPR defunding. I mean, seriously? Can I have some tax payer money? I promise I'll only write something partially nonsensical for a fraction of the cost.
The most interesting thing about this to me is that it's exposing a fair number of literary and journalistic members of putative elites as complete morons and losers.
This comes as no surprise to those who have been paying close attention, but it's a huge mask-off moment for those who haven't.
We're being scolded and dictated to by a bunch of absolute prats who are so insulated from normal people that they don't see what's wrong with saying/writing/doing these asinine things.
"...a huge mask-off moment for those who haven't."
I think that we all undervalue what you bring up here. There are just so many gullible schmucks out there, and they are usually stubborn when we try to tell them that their information sources are obtuse in the extreme. So in a way, we should hope that this latest looney-tune demo is repeated by any number of elitists.
> (Particularly not a lover. Eew, that last word shrieks off the page like a sick bat!)
"Anytime I see something screech across a room and latch onto someone's neck, and the guy screams and tries to get it off, I have to laugh, because what IS that thing?"--Jack Handey
Omg I forgot about that!
"ZORP GLOP TZZT!"
Ha! That was one of my favorite Deep Thoughts.
If AI stops these dopes from breeding, isn't that a good thing?
Yes! A silver lining!!!
Reminds me of parakeets… they think the mirror is their mate and spend all day talking to it and kissing it. Once in a while a nice human will clean all the parakeet spit off their mirror so their mate is bright and shiny again!
I was going to say it's a more sophisticated version of the parakeets in the mirror… But I changed my mind about "more sophisticated".
And what does it say about the parakeet-level intelligence of anyone who engages with a mirror?
Birdbrain
Since he discovered GPT-5. Jeffery Toobin never leaves the office.
🤣
I think you meant to say "bathroom-office."