N.B. Facebook took a long time to “approve” this post and I suspect they will dampen its reach, so I’m posting it here. I apologize that this is not about music:

Why am I, and many others, skeptical about AI? This is a prime and extremely disturbing example. I’ve been a listener to the Trashfuture podcast for years and I support them on Patreon for just this reason, plus they make me laugh.

I live on the San Francisco Peninsula and I was born here. I’ve lived in other places but I’ve been here for most of my life. I watched the PC revolution and the invention of the internet from the Arapnet and DARPA era to now. I’ve always been excited about technology even though my father worked in the defense industry, (a job he hated.) I use the AI assistant on my iPhone but I draw the line at Chat Bots. When they cause teenagers to commit suicide and others to hallucinate I’m out.

This episode of Today Explained is but one of many events that are deeply troubling. When they used AI models to war game they went quickly to global thermonuclear war. Every time, even when they instructed the model to not do that. This hack by an Open AI model is roiling the industry and for good reason. As the episode explains, there are dangers to our infrastructure; water, power, networks. All the things we take for granted in places like Silicon Valley. There are many reasons not to trust Open AI in particular. Sam Altman is a douchebag who cannot be trusted with even simple honesty.

There’s something terribly wrong when a handful of white men, especially Elon Musk, are doing the “alignment” for these models. I could go into great depth about the cultural problems. Do we really want these WHITE GUYS to determine the future? As a white guy myself I say no. And even if you want to ignore this I really think you should understand what “alignment” means in this context. I wouldn’t let these guys align the suspension in my Subaru.

When I was a kid the defense industry put clothes on my back and food in my mouth. Today the tech industry does the same and it bothers me. It’s bothered me since I was a kid because I was an informed kid, but we all have to live in the world.

I once quit a lucrative job at a law firm because I didn’t like what they did. I loved the job itself and the people I worked with. If a worker at Pepsi got his hand mangled in a machine they defended Pepsi. One day I was eating lunch in a park on California Street in San Francisco, right across the street from my work. Next to the building was a small church that had a biblical quote on it. “Son. Notice the time and flee from evil.” I said to myself that I work for evil. That’s when I decided to quit. My boss, a really nice guy, offered me more money. They didn’t understand why I was quitting.

That doesn’t make me a better person, it makes me a moral person, the kind of person my parents raised me to be. I quickly got another job at a very nice small law firm. I told them why I quit my previous job. Then I met my husband. I wouldn’t personally work for Open AI but a lot of his clients are tech companies so where am I on this spectrum? I’m not going to abandon everyone I love and go hide in a cabin like Ted Kosinski. Besides, with the current state of technology there’s literally no place to hide. Privacy is so yesterday.

I keep asking you folks if you know about Flock cameras and if your HOA uses them. Crickets. “You can lead a horse to water..” All I can do is share the information.