ai is a pox on all our houses

I'm not into ai. I don't use siri, I figured out how to  bypass the google search ai overview. I don't use predictive text or autocorrect (my texts be CRAZY sometimes). My only brushes with ai are the endless slog of ai commercials during sports, which remind me a whole bunch of when capital tried to force feed crypto down our throats a couple years ago. You'd think they wouldn't need to do that if ai had a groundswell of support. Makes me wonder...
 

Anyway, here are the reasons I don't fuck with it.

It is bad for the environment. The data centers are making surrounding communities sick, they're basically a Saruman mining orcs in Isengard Two Towers kinda situation. They drain an obscene amount of water, which certainly won't be a problem in western parts of the United States. It drives up our utility bills - which if we're being real, is reason enough for some of these buildings...and I'm trying to do this in passive voice like the new york times talking about cops shooting unarmed black people...these buildings could become irreparably harmed in a fire involved incident.

On a person to person level, its bad for people's brains. It replaces critical thinking skills with a poor simulacrum of smarts and reasoning. Its benjamin buttoning people back into being helpless babies that have no idea how to do anything for themselves. Where are people's pride? You're gonna trade on your value as a person so that you can shirk a little bit of typing or reading? Pitiful.

There is also this whole thing where scumbags and far right incels are happily using grok and other programs to create deepfake child porn. Vaya con dios, y'all. This alone should be enough to deposit the whole ai project into the Pacific.

Whether you like it or not, it's now shoehorned into every product you use on the computer. I don't need gmail's ai to summarize a fifteen word email from a friend. Honestly, an email from a friend is the best kind of email you can get, why the fuck would I want to outsource the pleasure of reading whatever it is someone I know and like sent me?

 

It has killed google search. Those little ai overviews people take as gospel at the top of your search query, well those are wrong, like, a lot. ai just be sayin shit sometimes. As someone who loves bullshitting, I don't appreciate when my computer tries to bullshit with me. We aren't friends, computer, youre a tool. We're aren't doing repartee.

Between ring cameras, which have always been hilariously stupid considering who will eventually have access to the footage (they sell it to law enforcement), and ai facial recognition, we're now in a permanent surveillance state. I, for one, think you should be able to get away with a non-violent caper from time to time. Unfortunately that is no longer an option with ai on the case. And then imagine you weren't involved in said caper and ai hallucinates that you are. I don't like the idea of being on the hook for a crime I didn't commit because of a half-baked police app that wrongfully thinks it maybe recognized my face.

 

The commercials for ai are incredibly condescending to the project of humanity. Especially the one about claude planning out your road trip. Why wouldn't you want to pick your own spots to stop and sightsee. I would prefer to look up and figure out which restaurants look good along the way. Some of us are real eaters that barely trust other humans to make food recommendations, you think I'm gonna listen to some robot tell me what the best mexican restaurant is cause it gleaned some inaccurate info from a deranged yelp reviewer? Also, I want to pick my own fucking music for the ride. Why skip the part of the process that is literally you finding and getting excited about all the details of the impending adventure? Why not just have claude tell you how the trip went instead of doing it.

 

Big tech wants you to think that the all-encompassing prevalence of ai is some inevitable outcome, that it's futile to resist. I refuse to believe that, mostly because these tech titans have been shown time and again to be grifters and hucksters, lyle lanleys selling a new-aged monorail. Elon Musk, Sam Bankman-Fried, the WeWork guy. Were they all on the up and up? Or were they just selling magic beans?

 

Ever wonder why the tech overlords are so gung ho about ai? Outside of all of them wagering a lot of their and other people's money on it and desperately needing it to succeed, its also because the bosses want to use it to weaken an already vulnerable labor force. The idea that ai can take all our jobs is tantalizing to them. They would love to put us all in a more precarious position so that we will accept shittier working conditions and paltry wages and not be able to complain. These motherfuckers' idealized version of the workforce has everyone pissing in company store bought water bottles sitting at their stations. If you can lean you can clean ass outlook on employees.

I would suggest we not go along with an idea that was spun wholecloth by a couple morally bankrupt tech companies as a new buzz word cash cow. Just because ai being is trumpeted by a pot committed media as a fait accompli, doesn't mean you have to believe it. The bubble will burst, and the tech and finance world will move on to their next con. I'm not gonna be holding the bag.

MLK's White Moderate

 

"I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice." - MLK - Letter from Birmingham Jail

This isn't about republicans per se, they're evil pieces of shit, what else is there to talk about with them. They can fuck right off. This is about the side I begrudgingly align with when it comes to representative democracy.

I regret to say it, but national democratic leadership, basically the "white moderates" MLK was talking about 60 years ago, and the same ones that have been in control of the party for my entire lifetime, by and large aren't meeting the moment that our current world demands. Instead of trying by hook or by crook to halt ICE's rabid stance towards our neighbors and communities, they talk about more training, or QR codes to identify agents (LOL GTFOH), or other uniquely piddling shit that is more demoralizing than anything. Instead of inducing impeachment proceedings against the drunk on power, or just drunk, idiots responsible for starting a predatory oil war and kidnapping a head of state, they opine about how it wasn't carried out through the proper channels. Instead of cutting off the money tap to Israel, they have tacitly and bipartisanly approved the genocide of Gaza every step of the way. What they're misguided about with their piecemeal response to these horrifying events is that you can't heal a varmint with rabies, you have to put it down. There are no compromises left.

What's the difference between a democrat in congress or a republican in congress? I can't really tell. Is it all just civility politics now? Undoubtedly Kamala getting elected would have prevented some of these constantly unfolding atrocities, but when she was making her case, did she really offer a compelling vision that was a striking contrast from the virulently anti-immigrant stance that republicans were running on, or was it more of a status quo take it or leave it pawn shop broker knowing you don't really have a choice and you're going to leave pissed off but what can you do about it ass platform. 

It's really disheartening to see Chuck Schumer's only solution to the seemingly infinite problems in the U.S. is to take back the senate and house, and then step two is ??? How about saying what voters will see happen if legislatures get flipped? Put some fucking policies out there that might galvanize people. Like razing and salting the fields that ICE grows in. Promise to send them all to jail, from the fascist bosses having their unhinged fits on teevee, all the way down to each and every one of the roving bands of masked subhuman shitbirds chungling out of their SUV's to terrorize non-white people just trying to live their lives. 

One of the most frustrating things about the democrats is that they refuse to stand up for immigrants. We are a country built on slavery, racism, and theft from the native tribes. Why can't we have some leadership that is determined to turn its back on those poisoned roots and instead embrace all immigrants as the heartbeat that keeps this country alive.

It's easy to forget that politicians work for us, we pay their salary, and we should be able to put them on PIP's if they can't get their shit together or are wrenching things in the wrong direction. They should be out here showing us why they deserve our votes. Unfortunately I've seen very few of them doing the "work" outside of sending a million spam texts a day begging for money and making sure the gears of capitalism keep grinding away ceaselessly until we're all dust. What makes them think they've earned our money if they're not offering any tangible ideas, or really doing any thing, to counteract what's happening out here. Give us something that isn't centrist bullshit to grab onto, like justice for the families broken by hate, or maybe permanent freedom from the tyranny of the small minded bigots currently running our country. 

It is heartening to see what communities are doing to protect their more vulnerable members, sticking their neck out in the face of state urged wanton violence, but they need help from the folks with access to the levers of power. Otherwise I don't think people will have many choices to seek satisfaction other than doing things that are better left unsaid on the internet.