Quite a few people are writing about the various dangers of “Artificial Intelligence” or AI. (In our humble opinion, as poorly named as the “Holy Roman Empire” or calling the guy who killed the South “Honest Abe.” (Hints: it wasn’t holy, it definitely was not Roman, and had no resemblance to an empire. And even by cop standards, Honest Abe didn’t stay bought.)

Events in the last week or so bring those warnings about danger to people, jobs, liberty. freedom, and a sound coinage to mind. They also remind us of Douglas Adams’ fantastic radio, television, book, and movie series.

In many ways. The biggest thing that AI has going for it (as compared to Marvin the paranoid android and Deep Think and Earth) is that it can’t come up with just one answer about “life the universe and everything” (spoiler: it’s 42; the problem is, what’s the question?)

First we had Google’s Gemini AI get severely depressed and dispondent. And caught in an apparently endless loop of “logic.” And then we had Elon Musk’s X’s Grok that apparently went off the deep end and started publishing offensive material. Not by Woke standards (like it did a while back by trashing the State of Israel) but by spewing out material “Not Safe For Work.”

Goodness!

What’s next? ChatGPT spewing nonsense and false facts? Or some other AI going off the tracks? Probably. We’ve seen three or four people ask exactly the same question of the same AI app and get totally different and completely contradictory answers!

And don’t ask us about how well AI engines can spell when you ask to create an image!

Meanwhile, the news media and online content is talking about how wonderful AI is going to lead us to the new Millenium, to heaven and peace on earth.

Stupid as AI appears to be, it seems that the media and politicians are all working overtime to demonstrate that AI can’t hold a candle to them.

For what it is worth, we here at TPOL have long defined AI as a program that is able to absorb trillions of bytes of data and as a plagiarist, regurgitate it to the user in what amounts to a spectacular example of brownnosing. We’ve played around with AI, both text and image, and quickly discovered not just does it try to tell you want it “thinks” you want to hear, but it cannot keep facts straight. Nor (in images) write real words. In other words. its a faker. A liar, a cheat, a sycophantic program. Its code writers are, bluntly, incompetent.

But it is still being pushed down our throats. And is being used more and more in a total surveillance mode to find and deal with “enemies of the state.” Like libertarians, classical liberals, and paleo-conservatives. AI apps are already being used to modify and overwrite applications for government permits, operate traffic control (and enforcement) cameras, and supposedly predict tax revenues, wildfire paths, and next week’s ball game scores. All designed to take more and more money from ordinary people – while exercising more and more control over them.

The combination of AI (does that mean “Absolute Insanity”?) and the usual stupidity of government agencies and people in large numbers should be frightening to us. The shortcomings of so-called Artificial Intelligence do not make it any less of a threat to our liberty, to many people’s jobs and careers, and to much else that we mere humans prize.

Handle with care, just like you do that bucket of stuff you scooped out of your cat’s litterbox.