Meet the Meat Avatar!

Yes, that is what we all are, we are meat avatars! Or, we are going to be meat avatars as soon as the AI stuff is advanced enough.

An article on the Vice website about a meat avatar (aka a human named Victor Miller) who is helping an AI person/thing named VIC (Virtual Integrated Citizen) run for mayor in Cheyenne, Wyoming, really made me laugh in an ironic, 'what's next?' kinda way.

Miller, the meat avatar for VIC, is serious about VIC being the mayor. In another article he explains how he is going to let VIC do the voting and make the decisions as mayor. Miller will have a camera pointed at his computer all the time, so anyone can see VIC making the decisions, as Miller the meat avatar feeds the relevant information about whatever issue(s) to VIC.

One can 'meet the candidate' and find out about VIC's positions on some issues in this other article from Cap City News.

AI VIC and Victor Miller, from cowboystatedaily.com.

AI? I'm Not Impressed

Matt Taibbi has recently written a couple of articles about AI which made me pay attention. The first started with talking about how Google's AI tool, Gemini, made images which were wrong, but racially diverse! Like everyone, Taibbi thought something like, 'Yea this is bad, but it won't affect me...' Until it did. Right away. He stopped examining the issues with Gemini's images and asked Gemini a question about himself. And it gave him a list of a few things he supposedly did which he actually never did. It mixed up true statements and writings with things it had, apparently, made up. It credited him with articles he never wrote; articles which no-one ever wrote because they didn't exist. And that is both maddening and scary for everyone.

This make me laugh in a rueful way: from https://chappatte.com/en/images/ai-and-future-work

Taibbi's second article, about AI and the website Naked Capitalism hit me even harder. I realized that I had recently experienced some of the same AI mistakes, although I hadn't understood at the time that those mistakes were the result of AI.

AI - Not so Lovely

Bill McKibben recently wrote a piece about AI called 'Regular Old Intelligence is Sufficient: Even Lovely'. The piece is really good. He said a lot of things in it that I agree with, but haven't the ability to express very well.