AI just figured out a new way to gross people out but maybe it isn’t its fault. That’s the big crazy on today’s Insanity Wrap — an entire week’s worth of nuttiness wrapped up in one easy-to-swallow medicated news capsule.
Plus:
- How to stop the shoplifting crime wave with this one weird beating.
- Ron Perlman performs the Triple Lindy of backflips.
- The Mitch McConnell/Diane Feinstein meme you’ll never unsee.
Before we get to today’s big story, here’s a short video to make you lose whatever little faith you might still have in humanity.
How Long Can You Stand to Watch?
Board certified physician assistant is upset that some middle schools aren’t teaching kids about the sensations of anal sex pic.twitter.com/l9ai77GEQd
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 30, 2023
In this week’s “How Long Can You Stand to Watch?” challenge, I made it all of four seconds before closing the tab with extreme prejudice. There was just no way I was going to listen to one word coming out of that groomer’s mouth.
How long did you last?
P.S. If people don’t want to get labeled as groomers, they should stop grooming.
The Weird Reality Behind Artificial Intelligence
In the days before cable TV — long before streaming was even a pipedream — I grew up in the ’70s watching old horror and sci-fi movies on our local independent station, Channel 11. By age 12, I’d watched twin supercomputers bully the U.S. and USSR into submission in Colossus: The Forbin Project, commit multiple murders during a voyage to Jupiter in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and even watched a particularly malignant AI named Proteus IV artificially inseminate Julie Christie in The Demon Seed so that it might have a baby human body to inhabit. The big reveal at the end of that one still haunts me, and I bet I haven’t watched it in 40 years.
So I’ve been, pretty much all my life, no stranger to the dangers of artificial intelligence — even the made-up dangers.
But then I read today on our Townhall sister site that there’s an AI generating sexually suggestive photos of children. And that they’re based on user-uploaded photos to an app that uses AI to age (or de-age) those photos. I won’t gross you out with the details, but Townhall’s Mia Cathell has them right here if you insist.
In general, AI is going to lead to explosive productivity growth, and that’s an area in tech where those “backward” commies in China are far ahead of us in deploying. When it comes to generating text, as I’ve written many times before, AI always comes across as a reasonably intelligent, well-informed, and sleep-inducingly earnest 10th-grader.
But AI image generation is where things get weird and, as a hobbyist with it, I can tell you exactly why: AI has access to virtually everything but the moral sense of literally nothing.
I’ve had fun with AI image generators, feeding my forever 12-year-old inner nerd with prompts like “Darth Vader hanging out with David Bowie at an awards show” (see above) or “Chewbacca jamming with Led Zeppelin.”
But no matter how many times I tried to get DALL-E or other generative AIs to produce an image of Darth Vader dancing with Grace Jones (I have issues, I know), all they ever produced were some very disturbing Grace/Darth hybrids like this one. And — sometimes on purpose but mostly on accident — I’ve had AIs generate nightmare images that were disturbing in how inhumanly wrong they were.
Programmers can issue coded prohibitions and eventually put a stop to AI showing users some of the awful things it produces that Cathell reported on — such as putting sexualized erect nipples on fake photos of young children. But how do you teach an AI not to even let such a thing cross its virtual mind? There are places in the imagination that decent people won’t go because we won’t let ourselves. The best we can hope for with AI is that we can make it keep that stuff to itself.
In a sense, the sci-fi writers of the ’60s and ’70s got it right. HAL 9000, Proteus IV, and Colossus did awful things to Dave Bowman and all the others, not because they were evil, but because they could never learn the most basic human (or perhaps godly) notions of right and wrong.
Previously On Insanity Wrap: Joe Biden Cures Cancer — AGAIN!
Before We Continue, Here’s a Short Video to Restore Your Faith in Everything…
The dog is not impressed.. 😂
🎥 IG: franklinthenewf pic.twitter.com/U9YjQaReqV
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) August 2, 2023
That awesomely patient dog shows restraint in exactly the same way my three goofy mutts do not.
Quote(s) of the Week
Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss totally, publicly contradicting and humiliating yourself.
It’s barely more than two weeks since I wrote about how Meta’s Twitter-killer, threads, was failing faster than a coked-up Hunter Biden trying to calculate an 8% tip for a $1,000-an-hour hooker after 94 minutes.
So who had the under on the over/under for Perlman coming back after three weeks?
Your Weekly Dose of Mostly Peaceful Protest
Since NYC doesn't do much, the hard working people have no choice but to take matters in their own hands.
Great job guys 👍 pic.twitter.com/7fEPGXfe0I
— Joel Fischer 🇺🇸 (@realJoelFischer) August 2, 2023
It’s the feel-good video of the summer!
As a right-leaning libertarian (small-l), I firmly believe in law and disorder. But there’s no room for vigilantism in a lawful society.
That said, this New York store owner was stopping a robbery in progress and not being a vigilante. Also, “lawful” isn’t a word I’d use much regarding post-Giuliani/Bloomberg New York City.
But one more thing must be said.
When the British ruled India, they never tried to force the Sikhs to fully submit. Smartly, the Raj co-opted them instead and raised a Sikh Regiment of truly ferocious warriors. To this day, even in post-colonial India, the Sikh Regiment still exists and is the most highly-decorated unit in the Indian Army.
“Don’t mess with the Sikhs” is what I’m trying to say — and what one hurting shoplifter learned the hard way.
Exclusively for our VIPs: John Kerry Wants You Dead (and Several Billion Other People, Too)
A quick little something before we get to the closing meme…
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One More Thing…
That’s a Wrap for this week.
Come back next week for another Insanity Wrap…
…assuming we make it that long.
P.S. Your favorite “Five O’Clock Somewhere” live chat with Stephen Kruiser and Yours Truly is on an abbreviated schedule this month because — congrats! — Townhall’s own Micah Rate is taking paternity leave. He and his lovely bride just welcomed the first little one to their growing family. Nevertheless, Kruiser and I will be on Mondays and Fridays this month, so please join us for the usual good cheer and strong drink.
