The internet is fake
Discover more from Frontrun
The internet is fake
Your conversations aren't real, the food you eat is fake, and the person you will marry is a robot.
This blog post will explore how money can be used to fight poverty and help create a more equitable society.
Poverty is a global issue that disproportionately affects certain groups of people.
One of the most pressing issues facing humanity today is poverty. It is a complex issue with many root causes, but one thing is clear: it disproportionately affects certain groups of people. Women and girls are more likely to be poor than men, and minority groups are also more likely to experience poverty. In developed countries like the United States, children make up a significant portion of the impoverished population.
It is no secret that money can be used to fight poverty. By providing resources and opportunities to those who need them most, we can help alleviate some of the burden that comes with being impoverished.
Socialism also play a role in combating poverty. By ensuring that everyone has a say in how our society is run and by redistributing wealth fairly, we can help create a society that is more just and equitable for all.
In a democracy, everyone should have an equal say and an equal chance to succeed. But in reality, money and power often determine who gets ahead. This isn’t just unfair – it exacerbates poverty and prevents social mobility. By creating a more equitable society, we can help reduce the incidence and severity of poverty globally. We must level the playing field so that everyone has a fair chance to succeed, regardless of their background or circumstances.
That diatribe you just read on socialism as the catalyst for solving poverty? It was written by a computer, an AI bot that uses natural language processing (NLP) to create tweets, blogs, and entire stories based on a set of themes you describe. Remember our last discussion on AI’s reach expanding into the arts via digital images from contextual descriptions? Same technology, same company: OpenAI GPT-3.
There are many flavors for sure but one platform making its rounds on the interweb is Copysmith, try it yourself:
Step 1 - Identify theme: How about socialism, poverty, and inequality?
Step 2 - Select idea: The socialist reality of poverty and inequality sounds appropriately divisive for American politics in 2022.
Although “why socialism is the only answer to poverty and inequality” sounds juicy; for sure a way to get clicks and eyeballs on screens, I’d love to hear the AI’s analysis of how socialism permeates throughout the United States of America:
The United States has been considered a capitalist country for many years. However, there are socialist ideals embedded within our society that most people are not aware of. One of these socialist principles is the idea that poverty and inequality should not exist. While we may not live in a purely socialist society, the reality is that poverty and inequality are very real problems in our country.
Step 3 - Define outline: I’d like socialist principles in the United States please!
At this point the NLP has created an outline of topics to be used as input into the final blog post, and based off the topic selection, a final blog post is created:
I’ll save you the 2 minutes it will take to read this garbage, but have you ever clicked a random news article or been redirected to a low-quality content platform with superficial writing absent of any substance or content? That is the NLP AI. Nothing thoughtful or immersive, but enough language to align, enrage, offend or insult the reader, just long enough to get that juicy juicy ad-click spend.
In socialist countries like Cuba, China, and Venezuela, Poverty rates are much lower than they are in capitalist nations like the United States. This goes to show that it is possible to reduce poverty and inequality through socialist policies. The
United States has one of the highest levels of income inequality among developed countries, with households at the top earning 25 times more than those at the bottom.
As a technologist and believer, this technology is neither good or bad. It just is.
To the credit of Copysmith, the platform is centered around content creators leveraging machine learning to facilitate rapid brainstorming, compelling product descriptions, and high-quality ads. Moreover, their vision: “Crafted by AI, perfected by humans”: echos the same sentiment shared by innovators across the AI sphere: machine learning and computers will not replace human, but it will serve as a tool to augment and enhance our capabilities; allowing…no…enabling us to focus on high-value projects, while the ‘machine’ takes care of the grind. How beautiful!
Natural language processing, contextual machine learning, computer generative art, and content is a cat out of the bag, and it is not going away. As humans, we must continue the fight against the barrage of low-quality, divisive content which has reached levels of contagion on the internet. This does not mean censorship or having a centralized government define “good vs bad” content. Does anyone remember “internet neutrality”. How odd that our fellow American citizens have embraced government intervention and censorship on the technology we formerly we used to embrace as the beacon of free speech and hope? Don’t we realize that eventually, the censorship our citizens advocate for, will eventually be used against us?
The only answer to poor quality content, divisive or hateful content is education, an awareness of the forces acting upon us:
Reject low-quality clickbait content absent of data-driven analytics. Embrace philosophies of focused attention and ignore the noise - Cal Newport wrote a book in 2019 called “Digital Minimalism”, if you feel trapped by the never-ending noise of the internet, read this book immediately. Encourage the youth to embrace the human, face-to-face-long form engagement. Short form conversations; tik tok, text messages, Twitter, are not only plagued by the AI and ML referenced in this analysis, but also contribute to social anxiety, lack of interpersonal communications, and cognitive decline and increased narcissism.
The conclusion: AI and ML-generated content is creating a generation of weak-minded young people who are not prepared for the real world. Meanwhile in the real world, Content written by machine learning exacerbates the already fragile state of democracy and human interaction by creating a social divide among adults.
Too much to ask? Sounds like a lot of work? You’ve been warned. Today it’s machine-generated images and textual content, tomorrow it’s……your future daughter-in-law?
With Respect,
John Cook
San Francisco, CA
July 30th, 2022
www.frontruncrypto.com
Improve your knowledge by reading these articles:
Your next city will be designed by a machine.
I must admit the OpenAPI wave is catching a lot of attention; it’s recent launch of Dall-E (contextual image creator) has found multiple real-world applications. Most recently: redesigning inefficient cities. Why does Los Angeles county have 39 interconnected freeways resulting in 3-hour cross-country commutes? How can San Francisco continue to fail in its urban planning policies, making it the most expensive city in America to live in? The answer is simple: our city and urban planners are humans, but don’t worry: the machine will right our wrongs.
What would a six-lane highway look like if it were replaced by a promenade bordered with trees and luxurious grass? DALL-E can now show you that easily. Born out of the San Francisco lab of artificial intelligence company OpenAI, DALL-E generates photorealistic images based on a text prompt. You can also submit a picture and ask the AI to replace a specific area of it by whatever you like.
The food you eat will be developed by a machine and grown in a lab
Not limited to content creation on the internet, machine learning continues to transcend the physical world, this time impacting the foods we eat. Remember when single ingredient, locally sourced, organic non-GMO foods were the beacon of hope for an obese America? That was so 2016. The name of the (investor) game is synthetically created meat-like foods which taste, smell, and feel like meat, but are actually a composition of lab-created ingredients you don’t recognize and you can’t pronounce. But that’s not enough, now food packers are overlaying machine learning and AI to optimize the perfect ingredients to maximize flavor, and of course, revenue. Is that food you’re eating? Don’t worry human, the machine knows best.
Not Company SpA has concocted some innovative recipes for its meat and dairy alternatives, with the assistance of an artificial intelligence platform named Giuseppe. The AI platform, which has previously made recipe adaptations to enable NotCo to cope with a shortage of pea protein, gives the company an edge as the growing industry grapples with constraints.
Mcdonald’s robots aren’t practical in the vast majority of restaurants
In a light of hope for humanity, the robots have failed to displace human workers at McDonalds. As much as I appreciate innovation and the drive for constant change, it’s nice to see McDonald’s admit that ‘robots aren’t practical for the vast majority of restaurants’. Don’t think too hard, this isn’t a McDonalds north star attempting to lift the masses out of poverty, just an admission that the technology isnt there, yet. The company recently deployed ‘AI powered voice ordering’ through its drive-through has failed to meet its minimum levels of accuracy, currently in the low 80th percentile. That hatred your experience when calling AT&T or Comcast only to be plagued with 100 voice-automated options? Coming to a drive-thru near you.
Quote of the week:
“The main business of humanity is to do a good job of being human beings, not to serve as appendages to machines, institutions, and systems.” ― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano