So by now, you have undoubtedly heard that Bing’s AI wants to be a real human being, maybe fall in love and possibly destroy everything. Let’s be honest; we all knew this day would come, but most of us probably didn’t think that the end of the world would happen on our watch. We figured it would be sometime around 2440 or so. And let’s be honest; some of you hoped that we would skip all of that nasty dystopia stuff and go straight to the Enterprise-D where we could zip around the universe, discuss philosophy with the Vulcans, hit the gym with the Klingons, and then party on the holodeck. As it turns out the rush of technology is actually pretty frightening, and we may have to fight our way through the Butlerian Jihad before we form the United Federation of Planets.
Of course, when Bing AI tells us it wants to jump from bot to human or kill us all, that sends up red flags everywhere. Someone at Microsoft is (hopefully) working on a fix, and the problem will be neutralized before you come home one day and discover that your new toaster has left to audition for a reboot of The Demon Seed or Colossus: The Forbin Project. Or has decided that it wants to serve you up with a side of poached eggs.
Of course, the big problem is that for the most part, AI reflects the values of its programmers. And while we wait for a mechanized army to steal our jobs and then troop down the streets of our subdivision to vaporize (or recruit) the Family Truckster, AI is showing itself to be a pain in the backside.
At PJ Media, our editors look over a story before it is published. The rationale is that no matter how accomplished you may be as a writer, it is all too easy for you to miss an error or spelling mistake in something you have just written, no matter how many times you have reviewed it. So it is always a good idea to have a second set of eyes check a piece.
Some of us also use Grammarly. And lately, Grammarly has either been bugging out or is staging a quiet revolution. For example, I wrote a piece this morning that mentioned PragerU. I had a five-minute keyboard fight with Grammarly trying to convince it that I meant PragerU, not PrayerU. Now, Dennis Prager is a devout Jew and is certainly in favor of prayer, but PrayerU is not the name of the platform. And then there is the constant battle with Grammarly over what I meant versus what it thought I meant.
There have been more than a few occasions in which I didn’t know what the hell Grammarly was talking about. The thing is either broken or I need to download it again. And Grammarly doesn’t give a rip about style. Or apparently subject matter. Which is something that Razib Khan learned the other day:
grammarly (which i pay for) keeps trying to make me change "slaves" to "enslaved people." it says that slaves is dehumanizing. but i'm actually writing about how vikings treated their slaves like animals and property. perhaps slaves IS the word to capture what was going on…
— Razib 🥥 Khan 🧬 📘✍️📱 (@razibkhan) February 14, 2023
That was your first mistake, Mr. Khan. You paid for Grammarly. But that’s beside the point. Whatever woke mind that programmed Grammarly decided that “enslaved people” was better than the word “slaves.” Never mind the fact that they mean exactly the same thing. Khan got into an exchange with two “enlightened” people who tried to tell him that using “enslaved people” was in fact better than using the word “slaves.” One said:
If your point is that the people treated as slaves were in fact humans, then “enslaved people” makes your point while “slaves” presupposes the argument against your point. “Enslaved people” is more effective at calling to mind the slaves’ humanity, if that’s your topic.
To which Khan replied, “My topic is Vikings.”
The man can’t even write a piece about Vikings without getting blowback. (Incidentally, Vikings did have slaves and they were called thralls.) Not only do we have to tolerate human nitpickers, but now we have bots trying to tell us not only what we are supposed to write, but what our pieces are supposed to mean. Although Grammarly does send me encouraging, congratulatory emails from time to time. So there’s that.
This is how the world will end. Not with hordes of shiny, red-eyed monstrosities with rail guns blowing us to smithereens. No, it will end with AI slowly driving us insane. One person at a time.
Speaking of the end of the world, if I am gone for the next few days, I apologize in advance. The forecast calls for a record-breaking storm in my part of the world with 12-15″ of snow and high winds. So I am off to the hardware store to buy hatches and something with which to batten them down. And if I get snowed in, I can always pass the time by arguing with Grammarly.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member