Surrender to the Bots, Elon
And then we’ll all be free
Here’s something for Elon Musk:
Dear Elon,
You’re worried about AI. And you have been for some time. Back in 2014, at an aerospace event at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, while answering audience questions you urged caution, saying, “with artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon.” Last year, you were critical of OpenAI, telling Tucker Carlson on Fox News, “We don’t want this to be sort of a profit-maximizing demon from hell, you know.”1
But I think you should embrace AI with regard to your profit-minimizing demon from hell, Twitter. We’ll pass over why you did that. You were busy making electric cars and reusable rockets and decided running Twitter was a good use of your time. And when you were buying the company, a bone of contention was the number of Tweets and Twitter accounts that were fake robots. You reckoned it was close to 14% and have sought to minimise that number.
Robots Hitting Each Other
Why not go the other way on this? Wouldn’t it be much more convenient if you handed over Twitter to robots and AI entirely? That way, the demonic artificial intelligence could do all the work for us, so that none of us needs to tweet any more, or even look at Twitter at all. It’d be like a text-based version of the Transformers movies which were, as Mark Kermode once remarked, ‘robots hitting each other’.
Let’s outsource all that grandstanding, virtue-signalling, nit-picking, nut-picking2, bad-faith arguing, straw-manning and piling-on. Granted, AI would not be quite as inventively hateful as the human version. Not immediately, anyway. But given advanced machine learning and enough time to trawl through human-generated tweets from the last few years, I really do think the sky is the limit. The demonic bots could crack the supercilious, patronising tone of the elites, as well as the deranged paranoia of the trolls. Of course, there really are demons in there, they’ll probably do all this quite quickly.
Under the 100% AI approach, accounts would still be attacked, suspended and cancelled. It would have to be done randomly using mathematics, but this would closely mimic the arbitrary way it seems to operate now.
Doomscrolling Bots
You could extend this further by getting bots to doomscroll the feed on our behalf, and then tweet accordingly. This would save many people who consider themselves to be busy at least 3-4 hours a day. Many of these people are journalists, politicians and commentators, so that time could be spent talking to actual human beings, and they would get a true sense of how people actually live, and what they actually think.
Then journalists wouldn’t be able to merely lift quotes off Twitter and present them as news stories. They would need to leave their offices and find stories. Imagine that. More proper journalism based on research. Facts rather than opinions, reactions and outrage. You have the power to do this, Elon!
Plus, it would save you a lot of time too, leaving you hours to figure out how to get to Mars and back. This seems eminently more worthwhile than enabling snarky journalists, desperate politicians and publicity-hungry minor celebrities to yell at each other with their thumbs. Sound like a plan?
Best wishes,
James
No Nudes is Good Nudes
Talking of AI, this is how an new feature from our podcast host described the latest episode of Cooper and Cary about nudity. This was entirely generated by a machine listening to our podcast and summarising it:
What happens when we strip away the layers of clothing and discuss the complexities of nudity, nakedness, and modesty? Prepare for an eye-opening conversation as we explore everything from beach attire to Christians at a nudist beach, and even the portrayal of nudity in popular culture like Game of Thrones and Renaissance art.
Join us as we examine the role of nakedness and modesty in Biblical teachings, uncovering the connections between the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, and the shame associated with nudity. We'll also consider the historical and cultural significance of garments, from coronations to glorification, and how they relate to our spiritual experiences.
But it's not just about history - we'll also dive into the various perceptions of nudity and modesty across different cultures, discussing how men and women approach these topics in public settings. As we navigate the world of Christian ethics, we'll explore the implications of categories like 'clean' and 'unclean,' and how they relate to our understanding of modesty. Get ready for a thought-provoking and enlightening journey into the bare essentials of our human experience.
I couldn’t have said it better myself. And I didn’t.
It almost makes us sound thoughtful, engaging and coherent. Where will it end? Listen to the podcast on nudity here.
And there’s more Popcorn Parenting about the traumatic movie that is Toy Story 3:
This refers to the bad-faith culture-war tactic of carefully selecting the nuttiest people on the opposing side and presenting them as typical. A term possibly invented by David French.