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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 4, 2024

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/microsoft-engineer-sounds-alarm-on-ai-image-generator-to-us-officials-and-company-s-board/ar-BB1jrH1c

The government is going to make sure that every AI is exactly like Gemini. The entire US media has, in total lockstep, taken the position that:

Google has temporarily suspended its Gemini chatbot's ability to generate images of people following outrage over how it was depicting race and ethnicity, such as by putting people of color in Nazi-era military uniforms.

I just saw a motte post from JTarrou saying how we have finally seen "peak woke"... two years ago. Things keep getting worse, people here keep coping, nobody seems to remember anything.
Everything happening today would have been considered an impossible joke even two years ago, and yet here we are. What good did any of those discussions do except to ease us into accepting every new Current Thing as it happened?

Things keep getting worse, people here keep coping, nobody seems to remember anything.

I do not believe I am "coping", and while my memory is not infallible, I think it's pretty good.

Everything happening today would have been considered an impossible joke even two years ago, and yet here we are.

I think my predictions from two years ago hold up pretty well, and am expecting them to hold up even better by this time next year.

What good did any of those discussions do except to ease us into accepting every new Current Thing as it happened?

Personally, I think it helped me gain an understanding of what is happening and why.

Personally, I think it helped me gain an understanding of what is happening and why.

To what end? Understanding what is happening and for what reason is only useful if you can actually do something about it. It does no good to understand the "whats and whys" of something unstoppable and unavoidable.

Understanding what is going on, understanding that the experts are not to be trusted, understanding that the elites are not the best and brightest, understanding that the authorities are not there to serve and protect you, can make very real difference in your personal life, even if you are alone or one among very few with such understanding.

Just one random example.

First, the current situation was neither unstoppable nor unavoidable. True, those things didn't happen, but that doesn't mean it was never possible.

Second, I don't think understanding is really ever useless. It can help you formulate a strategy for next time. It can help you to sway others to your point of view. If nothing else, people generally like closure and understanding can help provide that. Understanding has value even if it didn't help you to avoid an outcome you consider bad.

The government is going to make sure that every AI is exactly like Gemini.

How would they do that? The government has limited control over private individuals' local AIs. As for the big corporations, the more they go woke the more it creates both a monetary and an ideological incentive for competitors to offer non-woke AIs. Not only that, but China will probably offer its own AIs that will be politically correct in CCP ways, but not in the US way.

I just saw a motte post from JTarrou saying how we have finally seen "peak woke"... two years ago. Things keep getting worse, people here keep coping, nobody seems to remember anything.

It's possible that we did see peak woke two years ago. Musk owns Twitter now and it's pretty much a Wild West of opinions. 4chan is still chugging along. TheMotte and rDrama got off Reddit. /r/europe is full of open anti-immigrant sentiment. A bunch of highly progressive US city subreddits regularly hate on progressive ideologues for taking things too far when it comes to law enforcement policies. Biden is at least trying to look like he is clamping down on immigration.

Everything happening today would have been considered an impossible joke even two years ago

Two years ago? In 2022? How? Give me an example.

It's possible that we did see peak woke two years ago. Musk owns Twitter now and it's pretty much a Wild West of opinions.

It's a lot better than it was, but it's nowhere near what people are making it out to be. Shadowbanning shenanigans are still afoot over opinions that offensively milquetoast.

Hell, didn't Goody-2 come out less than two weeks before Gemini, and everyone was laughing at the absurdity of an "ethically responsible" chatbot that refused to do arbitrary things? The parody became reality overnight!

Look at the example I edited into the bottom of my OP. A few years ago people were calling that a slippery slope hysteria that would never be a thing, because it was just conservatives exaggerating Some Kids On Tumblr.
In fact, Tracingwoodgrains actually tried to pull the "lol at least we can laugh at conservatives who think Plurals are a thing" gag recently on twitter, and his replies had people going "actually it is and accommodating them is just Basic Human Decency." It happened so fast one end of the leftist tail doesn't even know it's wagging yet!

Canada's bill C-63 is going to criminalize basically all dissent in the country, the UK is... jesus, just look at them. Germany is going to ban its largest party to keep the immigration coming. How are things getting any better?

What are you talking about here? Last time I recall mentioning systems on Twitter it was to marvel at the way some people take the whole thing seriously.

Hell, didn't Goody-2 come out less than two weeks before Gemini, and everyone was laughing at the absurdity of an "ethically responsible" chatbot that refused to do arbitrary things? The parody became reality overnight!

The distance was so close that for a moment I thought it was meant to parody Gemini, and I didn't get the joke. It was surreal.

I think people were laughing at it because it was already kind of true.