Worshipping the Golden Calf of Artificial Intelligence

Have you noticed embedded pro-AI propaganda has infiltrated the entire media spectrum? I see dozens of ads daily for something called "AI training." For a fee, the gullible will be "trained" to use a tool that Big Tech has made impossible to avoid, training or no training. AI will give us "abundance." Yup. All we gotta do is clear the decks to make room for all the data centres required to spin all that abundance. Picture a hundred thousand robotic Rumpelstilkins in a giant warehouse, spinning data into gold! Picture tens of millions of robotic Rumpies in thousands of giant warehouses all across the land. Picture electic bills going through the roof in cities and towns clear across the land as power is prioritized for the data centres. Picture electricity grids collapsing because their mid-20th century specs are no match for data centre power demand in 2025 and beyond. Picture toiling in darkness and cooking over a wood fire while the data centres monopolize the power supply. Abundance my ass!

Top headlines waiting for me at Google News this morning

By golly, that Artificial Intelligence stuff is amazing, isn't it? Google uses AI to personalize the stories the aggregator selects for us, according to our interests. Here's the top five headlines waiting for me when I fired up the laptop this morning.

1. Paul Manafort's lawyers conclude case without calling any witnesses - The Guardian
2. Ex-Trump official admits he "possibly" pocketed money from president's inauguration committee - Global News
3. Defence for Paul Manafort rests without calling witnesses at bank fraud trial - CBC News
4. Manafort defence rests without calling witnesses - CNN
5. Defence rests in Paul Manafort fraud trial without calling any witnesses - Daily Mail

They totally nailed it! I've been totally obsessed with the Manafort trial. 

The insights of Google's AI bots following me around the web are utterly uncanny! Why, just last night I had a dream where Manafort's defence team had Bad Vlad himself squirming in the witness stand...

Or not.

Here's a big ole scoop 'o irony for ya

Clicked on Google News this morning and found these two headlines in close proximity:

From the National Post, Conrad Black: Thirty years of climate hysterics being proven wrong over and over again, and just an inch or so away, we get this from CTV News; Amid extreme heat, 33 die in Quebec.

Which I think proves that artificial intelligence, as manifest in the Google News algorithms that create their home page, has both an appreciation for irony and a mischievous sense of fun!


There you go; artificial intelligence is nothing to be afraid of!

Using the future to explain the past; a reply to Barry Lando

Barry Lando has an essay on view at Counterpunch wherein he lays asunder the claim that American manufacturing jobs have been decimated by free trade agreements.

Nope, it hasn't been free trade at all, Lando assures us. It's been robots!

I don't want to dismiss Lando's argument altogether, because he does grapple with an odious truth. Going forward, many manufacturing jobs will be displaced by robots, AI, and so on.

But that's going forward.

That doesn't explain what happened under the original US-Canada Free Trade Agreement or the subsequent North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Hey, I was there waving bye-bye to the jobs, and it wasn't robots taking them.

Here's a story that claims more than 5 million US manufacturing jobs were lost between '97 and 2014. Now I admit the source is perhaps a little too union-friendly for mainstream tastes, but nevertheless that's a lot of jobs lost.

When jobs from Canada or the US end up in Mexico and China it's not because the Chinese and Mexican robots work cheaper than the Canadian or American ones.