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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 26, 2024

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Senator Josh Hawley:

"If conservatives want to rein in Google Gemini, there’s only one way: repeal Section 230 - and allow Americans to sue these AI companies. If we don’t, they’ll soon control everything: news, information, our data, elections …"

Huh? For reference, section 230 is here. In short, section 230 says that companies aren't liable for information posted on their websites by third parties. This means that Google can't be sued for showing ISIS.com on your search results, because ISIS is a third party, and ISIS.com is their content, not Google's. Section 230 doesn't apply to generative AI because generative AI isn't a third party. If Google Gemini replies to your prompt with, "Thank you for joining ISIS. Recommended pipebomb targets in your area are X, Y, and Z," Google can't use section 230 as a defense if Y sues them for being bombed, because Google generated the information.

If I were to steelman Hawley's point, I guess it would be that Google as a company benefits from section 230, and so repealing it would punish them for creating "woke" AI and cut off a source of funds for AI development, but I don't think Hawley's use of the phrase "these AI companies" is easily read as referring to only "AI companies which are bankrolled by social media products."

If you are familiar with simulacrum levels, you may have had a bit of difficulty grokking level 4. I think an intuitive definition of level 4 is, "politician speak that doesn't fit into levels 1, 2, or 3". Which level is the tweet by Hawley on? It's not 1, because it isn't true. It's not really 2, because it's not trying to convince you of a proposition. It's not 3, replace "conservatives" with "liberals" and "Google Gemini" with "𝕏", and it could be from AOC. That leaves 4. It's just word associations. Woke AI is bad. Tech companies make woke AI. Section 230 something something big tech censorship. Put it in a box, shake it up, let the manatees do their thing, post whatever comes out to Twitter.

Conservative attempts to very indirectly deal with problems is not going to work. To actually deal with extremely racist antiwhite and progressive stack A.I. and this kind of ideology they should put huge fines, deprive of goverment funds, or directly restrict, or all of them to different degrees.

That sounds like an obvious 1A violation. And who’s deciding what counts as wrongthink, again?

The American goverment with A.I. safety and its pressure in silicon valley and its agents is already there dictating. Same applies with very powerful totalitarian far left NGOs with influence in mega corporations.

I also don't care for the private/public distinction when it comes to collective agendas of mega corporations like Google/Twitter/etc/etc. Especially since the Democrats especially with some Republican cooperation and outside the USA, the European Union and national bureaucrats are very willing to dictate and influence.

I would buy more into this argument if any of these corporations did not give woke default and you could outside of Gab get right wing alternatives. And if they didn't ban from their stores dissent. The censorship of the millions of users of A.I. that they will be subject to by using a platform that censors non culturally far left content because of the dictates of a) goverment agents of such ideology influencing things b) non goverment people running such organisations is a greater violation of freedom, and besides what is the default matters in its own right.

I am in favor of the default being saner also for reasons that don't have to do with opposition of censorship but the use of art not distorting reality in a culturally genocidal manner. Cultural erasure of this type is an evil in itself also, in addition to the censorship being another evil.

Plus Artificial Intelligence is far from being just a product. It being super far left is a problem because it is going to be used in all sorts of decision making for both private and public institutions. It will be used to discriminate, including in medical decicions. I care also for the end of the art not erasing white people. This also happened with this ideology and vaccines in the pandemic. If the default ideology promoted by A.I. is ridiculously unjust in regards to the justice system, that will result in having a very lopsided jusitce. And if the A.I. becomes more independent, or we get robots, there are is a deadly threat there. Woke drones or Woke AGI are actual possibilities.

It does matter as a value to have a society that doesn't screw over the groups progressive authoritarian hate NGOs that have influence with mega corporations and the goverment alike such as ADL have the targets upon.

And of course what the Nybbler have said.

We live in a world of oversensitivity and overreaction in a progressive direction with a lot of strong reactions towards attempts to correct the overcorection. Not in a world where freedom is maximized as a value, even from the right which tends to respect to a degree or another cultural leftist sensitivities.

Since you have supported the ADL, you do want a group that is a decider of wrongthing. One which is rather authoritarian and biased, even defining at some point that it isn't racism when it is against whites.

Perfection is impossible, and so is not having any deciders, but it is easy to imagine deciders who are less biased than that and I am 100% in favor of things moving in such direction.

One side being impotent while the other side is willing to use power in both private sphere and in public sphere (it is in fact hard to see where the one ends and the other begins between NGOs which have chapter in mega corporations, goverment agents and such mega corporations and even intelligence agencies) is the case of the side choosing impotence being gullible and enabling abuse and the worst decision makers to run riot. It is a vice and not a virtue.

There is no reason to be gullible towards requests to selectively follow certain rules at your own expense that the ones requesting don't apply for themselves.

When the government can no longer require private employers fire me for being a racist, I'll seriously consider complaints about the First Amendment about government moves against anti-white racism. Until then, it's just "your rules applied fairly".

Belisarius is asking the government to pick and choose what products count as acceptable speech. This is central to the 1A in a way that private employment is not.

But fine, throw out the whole 1A because it’s not protecting your edge case. If regulating AI companies this way were perfectly legal, it’d still be a horrendous idea for all the reasons described elsewhere in this thread as an “own goal.”

Belisarius is asking the government to pick and choose what products count as acceptable speech.

The government is already doing this. If only by choosing what the people making the products are allowed to say.

This is central to the 1A in a way that private employment is not.

I would disagree even if they weren't related.

The government is already doing this. If only by choosing what the people making the products are allowed to say.

Gab is a thing that exists and is technologically capable of keeping up with other big tech companies. Its many problems do not stem from the US government.

Gab is a thing that exists and is technologically capable of keeping up with other big tech companies. Its many problems do not stem from the US government.

Are you sure? Maybe the executives of Visa are just woke.... but maybe the regulators said "This Torba guy, he seems to be a bad dude. Be a shame if there were some sort of investigation involving him. A real shame."

The executives at Visa are in fact woke. So are the executives of apple and google and many other companies that have caused problems for Torba.