Tag: Opinion

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Escaping the Jailers

As I write this, four human beings are travelling to the Moon; Artemis II launched from Cape Canaveral on the evening of April 1, carrying Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen on a voyage that will go further from Earth than any human has been in the history of spaceflight. I watched the launch courtesy of coverage by CBC news, and for a moment, I felt awe and wonder at what our species can do when we set aside our differences.

Alas, friends of mine reported that, mere moments after liftoff, there were people claiming the launch was faked using AI. A laughable notion, but one that, in our current dark era of AI slop, we must face, and will continue to face, if and when we proceed to landing humans on the Moon and even establishing a permanent presence there.

Arguments of faked space missions have gone back to the Apollo moon landings, though the details differ (then it was supposed to be actors and movie sets; today, generative AI is the preferred culprit). I will leave the technical arguments against such fakery to the experts in the field and instead focus on why I suspect people would wish to deny the wonder and accomplishment of this moment.

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Monthly Observations: August 2023

It’s been something of a hot minute since I’ve done one of these posts – the downside of having to live with depression is that, sometimes, something you want to be a regular occurrence tends to be not so – but the past month has had a few interesting things in it, and naturally, I have thoughts on them. We’re covering the gamut from the personal to the cosmic so let’s get right into it, shall we?

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Tooth and Social Consequences

Last Monday I had the unpleasant sensation of breaking a tooth. I certainly wasn’t expecting to spit out a quarter of a molar when biting into a rice krispie square, but there was nothing for it. I had to see a dentist.

By good fortune I was able to get the problem resolved quickly. Dr. Patel at the Fredericton Dental Clinic was able to see me the next day, and a slot for the extraction surgery opened up the day after that. By Wednesday afternoon, I was minus a shattered molar, and today I’m well on the way to recovery.

By greater fortune — or more precisely, through the grace of our society — I wasn’t bankrupted by the process. In fact, this emergency wasn’t a financial emergency at all; merely an inconvenience.

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Incompetent Robot Gatekeepers (or, why I’m leaving Tumblr)

So, apparently over the weekend, Tumblr, in a bid to try and make its site safe for all, decided to alter its rules on adult content, and to hand over policing of these rules to an AI.  While the full enforcement of these new rules are slated for mid-December, the AI has already been busy flagging posts as adult content.

Indeed, my twitter feed today has been full of people surprised that their material has been flagged.  Worse, a lot of what’s being flagged isn’t “adult content” – also known as Not Safe For Work (NSFW) – at all.  To name only a few examples, the AI, in its diligence, has been flagging:

  • Cat pictures,
  • Posts about protests,
  • Pictures of the posters’ kids,
  • or, in my case, work-in-progress screenshots.

Yes, I had a picture flagged as “adult content”; a screenshot of an image of a woman, fully clothed, just standing, as provocative as a potted plant.  Granted, the picture is some years old and my word was my art bad then, but… NSFW?  Really?

I think I need to state, before we go further, that I understand and approve of the need to police social media sites in particular and the Internet in general.  The days when we could treat the Internet as an untamed frontier, where everyone can be free to do as they will, are long gone.  In fact, I would argue that if we had some competent policing of the Internet and the social media services that reside there even two years ago, a lot of the western world’s current misery could have been avoided.  

But the current methods of policing being tried – with private companies trying to put bandages on their brands by using AIs and algorithms – is incredibly damaging.  

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