I started reading a column in the Huffington Post that Ethics Alarms commenter Cornelius Gotchberg linked to today, and got almost half-way through it before I realized it wasn’t satire. But, horrifyingly, “It’s Time For The Biden Campaign To Embrace AI” isn’t satire. And now we know what kind of ethical limitations Democrats and progressives place on their tactics as they desperately try to save Joe Biden and their own metaphorical necks.
None. No limits at all. By any means necessary. The ends justify the means. In what this dangerous party has become, it’s Machiavelli and Big Brother all the way down.
To avoid unnecessary suspense (but you should still read his head-exploding essay), Kaivan Shroff, a political strategist who worked for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign with a JD from Harvard Law School, an MPP from the Kennedy School of Government, an MBA from Yale, and a BA in Political Science from Brown University, recommends that the solution to the Democratic Party’s demented and doddering President problem is…I’m not kidding, now…to use artificial intelligence technology to make him look healthy and vigorous and sound strong and articulate. In other words, cheat. Deceive the public. Create and exhibit a phony public image of Biden even beyond what they have tried to do already. He believes this is an acceptable way to win an election. A dedicated agent of the party that claims to be our bulwark against the destruction of democracy advocates a massive conspiracy to dispel any public comprehension of reality in order to win and consolidate power.
“While of course there are reasonable hesitations to break this dam on the use of modern technology in presidential campaigning,” he writes, “the consequences of not taking this approach could be dire.”
In other words, if we don’t cheat, we might lose on the merits of our candidate. Can’t have that!
“Moreover, in the currently under-regulated electoral landscape, refusing to use modern tools like AI is akin to entering the boxing ring with one hand tied behind your back.”
Hey, why not use nerve gas and anthrax while you’re at it?
This sociopathic villain’s rationalizations are breathtaking. Biden’s age, he argues, “has impeded his ability to communicate with mass audiences with consistent success.” (Ya think?) “AI augmentations and video renderings could serve to smooth out these bumps while allowing the Biden campaign to effectively disseminate true information about the state of our democracy and the Biden administration’s accomplishments.”
“True information” via the lie that the President conveying it is capable of carrying on a coherent conversation.
“The president has limited time to campaign as he also focuses on running the country, and AI would be a cost-effective and efficient way to communicate his message personally and directly to voters,” this evil hack explains. Oh. The idea of using technology to falsely represent the President to the public is just to save him time.
“Reasonably, some may challenge the use of AI as dishonest and deceptive,” he says.
Yes, that would be because it is dishonest and deceptive except to ruthless Machiavellians like this creep.
“But the current information ecosystem is arguably no better. It may even be worse…We must ask the question, are augmented AI videos that present Biden in his best form ― while sharing honest and accurate information ― really more socially damaging than our information ecosystem’s current realities? I think not.”
Of course you think not: you have the morals and ethics of a Colombian drug cartel lord.
Here’s the really frightening part of this: Shroff is so certain that none of his fellow Democrat and Axis thugs will react to his scheme with anything less than approval and enthusiasm instead of shouting, “WHAT? Are out of your mind? What’s the matter with you?” that he reveals this plot in public. And the Huffington Post, the cyber equivalent of MSNBC, published this ethics offal without any concern that its readers would be revolted, as any decent American should be. Maybe they are right. Maybe they don’t have any ethical readers.
Shroff’s essay convinced me that I must prepare a retrospective post tracing my position as a Never-Trump, reluctant but committed Hillary Clinton voter in mid 2016 to one certain beyond all doubt that the Democratic Party and its allies have become the existential threat to democracy Biden cynically declared Donald Trump and Republicans to be, and that the only way to begin building back a functioning republic is to crush and humiliate the totalitarian Left mercilessly in November. I reached that absolute point, though I wasn’t far from it earlier, a week ago.
This article locks it in, I think.
One more note: the next time a pundit states that Trump’s claims the the 2020 election was “stolen” are baseless, remember Shroff. A party with prominent members who would even propose a deception like this to win an election will do anything to win.
And probably already have.
Ethics Alarms 
When’s their boy Alvin Bragg going to indict this guy for Conspiracy to Defraud via Electoral Fraud. Or something like that.
The democrats will win the presidential election in November; I’m with you on the comments you’ve made regarding this outcome. They will stop at nothing to keep Trump from being elected in my opinion.
They’re (democrats) like those people that can’t handle rejection when a relationship fails. They will destroy anything to remain in power. Hell, they’ve already essentially destroyed every institution in America already.
I said in a comment some months back that they will do whatever it takes to keep Trump from taking office in January – nothing is off the table for them. As I have also said, I’ll be even more surprised if Trump wins this November than I was when he beat Hillary.
Edward, I’d see Jack’s “unethical” to describe them, and raise him to an “immoral” to describe them. I’m glad to see his deploying “Machiavellian” as well. I thought that earlier today. And we’re supposed to fear a Trump restoration!
On second thought, maybe “amoral” is a better fit.
I don’t think that kind of fatalism is justified. There won’t be a lockdown, and unless the GOP is even stupider than they usually are, the scrutiny will be much tougher than in 2020. And the fact is, Biden was ahead in all the polls, and the results were much closer than expected. Flipping an election when you’re behind in the vote is much harder—remember, at worst, shenanigans cost Trump an electoral college win while losing the popular vote.
In fairness, I’ve only ever seen artificial intelligence coming from the democrats.
HAH!
This goes beyond the Manchurian Candidate. At this point we are looking at a de facto robot candidate. A man who doesn’t exist. Yet the Democratic Party, the same party who regularly slams Ronald Reagan as a senile old fool, would use AI to hide the fact that they are trying to push a presidential candidate that everyone knows is in a worse place than Reagan ever was.
While we’re on the topic, let me also remind everyone here that Ronald Reagan was accused of being senile in office based on one meet and greet where he greeted someone incorrectly and one interview where his focus slipped, but he regained it before the end. Gerald Ford was portrayed by the media as an out-of-touch klutz, when he was really Phi Beta Kappa and a college football all-star, based on one slip, one tennis serve gone wrong, and one golf swing that went bad, any of which could have happened to anyone. George W. Bush was portrayed as an out-of-touch and clueless idiot with an exaggerated Texas twang by so many impersonators it stopped being poking fun and became just poking. As for Trump, I think we got up to Plan R for forcing his removal based on unfitness or conflict of interest, or SOMETHING, but none of those ideas ever gained traction, and the two baseless attempts at impeachment understandably went nowhere. Now they want to put him in jail.
The same party who did all this, now tried to tell us that a man who can’t reliably finish a sentence, who can’t answer relatively simple questions, who stood before this WHOLE DAMN NATION slack-mouthed and goggle-eyed like a fish, is just fine. When too many people, including some of their own, didn’t buy it, they switched to spinning that it was just one bad night, that one night shouldn’t cancel out a great four years of being president, and so on. Now they are split between those who want Biden to step aside while there’s still time and those who want to forge ahead. This is all due to what they want to call one bad night.
I’ve said again and again many ways that the Democratic Party is the party of double standards. Their record speaks for itself, and this fact is evident to anyone who is reasonably objective. Now they want to deliberately deceive the people of this nation by creating an image of someone who does not exist, and who isn’t capable of making good decisions or dealing with that emergency call at 3 a.m. The Constitution says that the executive power of the United States shall be vested in a president, not in an administration, not in a cabal of advisors, not in the president’s wife, and definitely not in a fictional image of a president. The Constitution and this country were created to do what’s best for the people of this country, not to keep one party in power all the time. The Democratic Party deliberately put forth a 77-year-old former vice president and former senator who was never one of the brightest bulbs in DC and successfully convinced enough people that he would bring dignity, gravitas, and moderation back to DC. They did this with full knowledge that this was a lie. They also did this fully knowing that their candidate was barely up to the task and might well deteriorate to the point where he was not up to the task. They also put someone who was not up to the task second in line because she checked two boxes.
Like Ruth Bader Ginsburg took a chance when she decided to remain on the Supreme Court that her body would hold up until another Democrat was elected, the Democratic Party took a chance here that Joe Biden would remain reasonably fit and articulate until after the 2024 election. Well, the notorious RBG lost the race, she was replaced with a conservative, and this contributed to the downfall of Roe v. Wade. The Democrats couldn’t do anything to stop it. The Democratic Party has now lost the race too, and now it’s too late to replace Biden on several state ballots (and more deadlines passing all the time), too late for any other candidate to challenge him in the primaries, and too late for the whole country to unsee what it saw. It’s quite the corner that the Democratic Party has painted itself into, and make no mistake, they alone bear the responsibility for painting themselves there. In all likelihood they are going to have to plow ahead with the candidate that they have, and the results will be what they will be.
Looking at the first few comments (can’t see the rest without an account), few seem to be on board with this brilliant idea. I guess that means the Huffington Post isn’t biased! (kidding)
Oh, it’s a really stupid idea, but still incredibly unethical.
And they complain that Trump lies – which is typically just opinionated sales fluff
When did this “it’s just a stutter” thing start? I have a close family member who stutters and this doesn’t sound anything like stuttering. It sounds like he can’t figure out what to say. So, I guess it is stuttering, but not an involuntary stutter (where you just can’t get the words out), but instead it is a stutter because there are no words ready to come out. The latter is typical of people who are at a loss for words and is not due to a condition.
Yes, if you can do some scutwork on that, I’d appreciate it. I’d love to know if there was anything said about this crippling “stutter” before Joe hit senility.
https://search.brave.com/search?q=biden+stutter&source=web&tf=1972-01-01to2018-01-01&summary=1&summary_og=de330d8cb74dc7d96aeda2&sig=631233ebf27af837a0cfa128f88e18c4012df05b76282aacd206638c12ef6bbe&nonce=1875448651b370aad0b123bee765f3d5
There are 6 results from 1971 to 2017 – from 2008, 2010, 2013, 2015, and 2016.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=biden+stutter&t=ffab&df=1972-12-31..2015-12-31&ia=web
There are more results here. “A keynote speaker at a National Stuttering Association convention in 2004, Biden grew up with a stutter and was teased by his Catholic school teacher,” “Biden’s 1994 letter to an eighth-grade boy inspired the boy to overcome his stutter and become a prosecutor,” and “Biden’s childhood stutter was mentioned during his 1988 presidential bid covered in the book Richard Ben Cramer book “What It Takes: The Way to the White House”.”
This is terrific. Thanks for doing the work.