I just got this proposed comment from an alleged aspiring commenter:
“Thank you for this incisive take on the Groypers controversy and woke indoctrination. Your link between systemic left-leaning school culture and the rise of such groups offers critical context, while calling out Heritage’s failure to act is refreshingly bold. A thought-provoking, unflinching analysis.”
I rejected it. If there ever was a bot-composed comment, that was it. Ethics Alarms doesn’t need commenters who are so illiterate or devoid of imagination that the must rely on technology to communicate.
ChatGPT, sounding, the inquirer notes, like a typical left-biased law professor, said that the arrest was illegal. It also wrongly stated that Maduro had been legitimately elected and adopted the positions of “international experts” as well as the United Nations Charter.
Grok, however, pronounced the arrest legal, citing the Venezuelan dictator’s illegitimate election, his federal indictment, and the power of the President, as Commander in Chief, to execute criminal warrants abroad.
Just now I asked Google’s bot the same question. It refused to answer, saying only that “The legality of the U.S. operation to capture Nicolás Maduro on January 3, 2026, is a subject of intense debate, with most international legal experts considering it a violation of international law, while U.S. authorities defend it as a law enforcement action.”
Such worthies as “The View’s” fake republican Ana Navarro spread a story about how Trump paid liar Karoline Leavitt referred to ancient ex-pop star, ex-actress Cher as “irrelevant” only to be slapped down by Sonny Bono’s muse thusly:
Well, snap! Take that, fascist bitch!
The story went viral on social media, with other celebrities celebrating Cher’s comeback, at least of a verbal nature. But it didn’t happen. Snopes—not that the site is trustworthy either—determined the fake quotes from both Leavitt and Cher originated in an AI-authored article appearing on a website indicating that its owners resided in Vietnam.
So desperate are the Trump Deranged for moral victories that they must stoop to cheering on fake triumphs by antediluvian woke warriors nobody under the age of 45 is likely to remember. For Cher is irrelevant, and has been for more than two decadee. Leavitt wouldn’t bother to call her irrelevant because she is irrelevant, just as the fake exchange would be irrelevant even if it occurred. This means that Snopes declaring the tale false is also irrelevant.
As is this post, come to think of it…
Apparently a washed-up star can be considered relevant if she is believed to be sufficiently opposed to the President and his supporters. Once again, as with Nicki Minaj, I must ask, “Who cares what Cher thinks about Karoline Leavitt?”
I view this episode worthy of an Ethics Alarms Kaufmann. “A Kaufman” is applied to matters of controversy so inconsequential as to be unworthy of attention or indignation. George S. Kaufman, celebrated wit and playwright, was on a TV panel show when singer Eddie Fisher ( father of Carrie) asked advice from the panel because desirable women were refusing to date him because of his youth. Kaufman replied,
“Mr. Fisher, on Mount Wilson there is a telescope that can magnify the most distant stars to twenty-four times the magnification of any previous telescope. This remarkable instrument was unsurpassed in the world of astronomy until the development and construction of the Mount Palomar telescope. The Mount Palomar telescope is an even more remarkable instrument of magnification. Owing to advances and improvements in optical technology, it is capable of magnifying the stars to four times the magnification and resolution of the Mount Wilson telescope. Mr. Fisher, if you could somehow put the Mount Wilson telescope inside the Mount Palomar telescope, you still wouldn’t be able to see my interest in your problem.”
For Eddie Fishers problem, substitute what Cher might say after Karoline Leavitt called her irrelevant. Even in her prime, Cher’s political views should have carried no more weight than the average Starbuck’s barista. Now, they are not even worthy of a Snopes factcheck.
1. Once, a guilty pleasure of surfing the web and social media was seeing amusing videos of dogs and cats, and other animals too, behaving anthropomorphically, spectacularly, or adorably. Now, “thanks” to artificial intelligence, no such video can be trusted. The more remarkable it seems, the less trustworthy it is. Unethical people seeking views on Facebook and elsewhere post these fake videos as real, because viewers knowing they are staged and manufactured robs them of most, if not all, their entertainment value.
Above is a screen shot from one of the suddenly ubiquitous videos showing dogs frightening other dogs with Halloween masks. The link to the video, which WordPress wouldn’t let me embed, is here. It’s fake. Dogs, in my experience, are seldom fooled by masks. No dog would tolerate having a mask like that fastened to its head. No dog would go along with the gag and creep up on a sleeping canine companion. And no American Bully could leap like that all the way to the sofa.
Jon’s excellent comment began by marveling that the commentariate here at Ethics Alarms doesn’t seem to be vary interested in the artificial intelligence issue, which is the focus of TIME’s annual “Person of the Year” issue.See?
I immediately felt it was a Comment of the Day; now we’ll find out if this essay also inspires apathy and shrugs.
It’s interesting that this post has only garnered a couple of comments, and your previous AI post on the 7th didn’t get any. Not to oversell it, but AI may be the most important issue ever. Already entry-level white collar jobs are disappearing. I heard of a recent study that 13% of such jobs were gone, and that was published back in August. AI is being compared to the industrial revolution in terms of workforce displacement, but exponentially more disruptive since it’s taking place in the span of a few years rather than several decades. As if that’s not enough, there’s serious talk that we may be ushering in an extinction event for homo-sapiens. On the plus side, though, my AI heavy stock portfolio is doing quite well, thank you.
My own experience with AI has been less than encouraging. I really hadn’t made much use of it, but last week I was putting together a spreadsheet to project annual returns on some weekly stock market moves I was considering. Creating the spreadsheet and then populating the data for about 20 stocks was going to take me the better part of an hour, and then updating the data in real time would be difficult. It struck me that AI might do it better and more quickly than I could.
My first task was to determining which AI to use. I figured I’d have to subscribe to one of them to get the job done decently and in a timely fashion, so I asked Google which AI was best for real-time data. The answer both from the Google AI and various Reddit forums was that an AI model I hadn’t heard of, Perplexity, was superior when dealing with pulling information from the web in real time. I found I could get a year-long free trial, so that’s what I went with.
In Great Britain, an A.I. generated image that appeared to show major damage to Carlisle Bridge in Lancaster prompted authorities to halt trains following a minor earthquake. The tremor was felt across Lancashire and the southern Lake District. After the image appeared on-line, Network Rail ended rail service across the bridge until safety inspections had been completed. The delay inconvenienced commuters and wasted public funds. Here is the bridge and the bot-built fake version:
As far as we know a human being was behind the hoax, not a mischievous bot. But A.I. is almost certainly going to challenge Robert Heinlein’s famous declaration that “There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men,” in addition to the fact that there are also a lot of dangerous women out there too.
ChatGPT has been accused of encouraging people to commit suicide, for example, and Professor Jonathan Turleywrote that ChatGPT defamed him for reasons yet to be determined.
I hope this doesn’t become a habit, but Willem Reese quized AI bot “Grok,” Ann Althouse’s pal, on the matter at issue. His question: Do immigrants from some cultures, like Somalis, have relatively lower compatibility with American mores? How can large groups, like 80 people, get together to scam hundreds of millions of $?
Because the exchange between one of Ethics Alarms 5 regular commenters and the AI raises several ethical issues, including some regarding artificial intelligence, I feel the answer is worth pondering. Grok replied,
“Coca-Cola’s AI ad just ruined Christmas… again” rages tech blog CB (Creative Bloq) Wow. A Coca-Cola by-the-numbers holiday ad lasting a bit more than 60 seconds ruined Christmas just like the Grinch or Mr. Potter. How is that possible?
It isn’t, but apparently the new tool of artificial intelligence which can create things like the Coke ad faster and cheaper than CGI has some folks losing their jingle bells. What’s going on here?
This: the Marxists and progressives on social media and elsewhere are upset because AI puts actors out of work, or soon will. Of course, except for Santa, there are no humans in the ad to be put out of work, but the critics on X and elsewhere aren’t fooled. Coke used cute animals, see, so people would be fooled into thinking that AI wasn’t taking away human jobs. “Firstly, can you really put aside the issues of AI generated creative displacing artists simply by using animals instead of humans?,” Fergus McCallum, CEO at TBWA\MCR wonders. “Even if you can, there’s no getting away from the lack of joy and authenticity. As audiences start to turn away from the AI slop being served to them on a daily basis, Coca-Cola are in danger of becoming inauthentic too. Whatever happened to ‘I’d like to teach the world to sing’?!”
I wish Ann Althouse would stop publishing her conversations with Grok, Elon Musk’s chatbot. Is she on Elon’s payroll? Yesterday, the quirky retired progressive law prof turned blogger was writing about the Netflix series “Death by Lightning” based on the excellent “Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President,” which EA discussed several years ago. (The books main character, James Garfield, is one of my favorite Presidents, as is the man who succeeded him after he was assassinated, his VP Chester A. Arthur.)
Noting that Garfield was a reluctant Presidential nominee, Ann decided to once again ask Grok’s opinion, as she has been doing almost daily for months now. “I’m interested in the Presidents who have not wanted to be President, who have felt bad about winning. I asked Grok to list them in the order of how much they did not want to have to do it.” Well, I wouldn’t have had to ask that, and Althouse, by publishing Grok’s ill-informed and sloppily reasoned answer, has made her readers less informed than they already are. Here was Grok’s terrible answer:
Ethics Alarms 