Political Parties

American Flag Photo by Lisa Setrini-Espinosa

Will political parties become a thing of the past? America has effectively a two party system, but major party membership is on the decline. The number of independents or unaffiliated voters in the USA is rising. Right now if the independents would be a party, they would be the largest political party in the USA at 43%. The younger generations distrust institutions and systems these days. With regard to politics, I really can not blame them. My observations are that the national parties, Republican and Democrat, seem to be increasingly out of touch with reality, and in Colorado the Republican party appears to be falling apart due to infighting. Many times, the parties seem more concerned with political maneuvering than with promoting the good of the country. Full disclosure, I am an independent, who never felt comfortable enough with either party to choose one.

Colorado Springs, a former Republican stronghold and once known as the Vatican of the West or the Evangelical Vatican because of the large number of evangelical organizations in the area, just elected an independent, Yemi Mobolade, as mayor. They elected an independent and not a Republican, not a Democrat, and not a third party candidate. Mobolade belongs to no party. He does not like political parties. A big part of his campaign was that he was non-partisan and was above party politics.

America effectively has a two party political system. The political system in America, which has been codified into many laws, assumes only two parties. This is unlike other countries which have multiparty systems. In the past, I believe, third parties pointed to changes that the two major parties needed to address, and the major parties adjusted their platforms accordingly. Today the right wing of the Republican party and the left wing of the Democratic party act somewhat like third parties pushing each party to adopt more extreme policies. Unfortunately this movement away from the center has widened the partisan divide and I believe has left a large number of Americans in the center without a good choice of who to vote for. I believe this will allow independents like Mobolade and third party candidates win some elections.

Will independents belonging to no party take over? My thinking is that there are too many organizational advantages to being part of a party for that to happen. But is the two party system in America collapsing? Will a new party be formed to replace one of the two major parties, or will America become multiparty? I do not know, but I believe we are in a period of transition. Something new is on the horizon. (Or will something like rank choice voting bring more choice and satisfy the electorate?) Right now, I think that politically things are a mess in America.

In the last two presidential elections, I voted for a third party candidate for president. People say I threw my vote away. The fact is Colorado is no longer a swing state and its electoral votes will go to the Democratic candidate. That is pretty much a given. Since I do not like the candidates for either major party, I will make a statement and vote for a candidate whose platform best fits for what I stand for. Right now, I plan to vote for presidential candidate Peter Sonski of the American Solidarity Party. I do not consider that I am throwing my vote away, instead I am making a statement. The two major parties need to listen and learn.

This post was inspired by “Americans Are Leaving Both Parties. This Colorado City Shows Why.” by David Siders.

Dealing with DEI

Companies and government agencies have embraced the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) worldview. In order to advance in the organization you need to show you are supporting DEI. (The State Department recently said that you need to document that you are actively involved in DEI practices to be considered for a promotion.) Coming from a Christian worldview, how do you deal with DEI? How can you find some common ground when there is much you feel is wrong and harmful about DEI?

First, Christians are in favor of diversity. The body of Christ is made up of a diverse group of people with different gifts (1 Corinthians 12:4-27). Heaven will be filled with people from everywhere (Revelation 7:9-10). God loves everyone (Psalm 117:1-2) and calls us to do the same (Matthew 5:43-48). Note God loves us so very much that he is unwilling to leave us as we are but will change us for the better through the work of the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 3:16-17). So Christians are in favor of diversity, but out of love we stand against broken and harmful lifestyles and beliefs. Unfortunately the secular DEI worldview demands acceptance of the harmful lifestyles of LGBTQ+ community. As Christians we can not accept their wrong and harmful lifestyles, but we can accept and affirm the LGBTQ+ people as people loved by God.

Also, Christians are in favor of equity. God is fair, just, and impartial. He will judge with righteousness and equity (Psalm 98:9; Isaiah 11:3-4). All people have sinned and fall short of God’s standard (Romans 3:23). We stand equal before God, regardless of race, gender, or social status (Galatians 3:28). Unfortunately the secular DEI worldview distorts equity when it requires equal outcomes or the redistribution of resources without considering individual talents, individual effort, personal responsibility, and the stewardship of resources. Christians show equal dignity and respect for all people regardless of one’s status (James 2:1-4). It is only in Christ where we find true equity.

And Christians are in favor of inclusion. Inclusion is the intentional welcoming and acceptance of people. God loves all people and he desires that all would come to know him and be restored in relationship with him (1 Timothy 2:3-4). As Christians, we welcome all who follow Jesus as brothers and sisters (Romans 15:5-7) and we desire all people to come to faith in Jesus. Unfortunately the secular DEI worldview sees inclusion as the acceptance of all beliefs and of all practices, even beliefs and practices that are harmful. (However many times they will exclude people whose beliefs they consider to be intolerant.) God loved the world so very much that he gave Jesus as our substitute so that we could have life and a restored relationship with God (John 3:16; 1 Peter 2:24). God wants to include you. Do not reject him, but instead turn to him and follow him.

And yes, Christians also stand against inequality and oppression. We too are against societal structures that oppress people and cause inequality. We work for a better society through promoting love (1 Corinthians 16:14), forgiveness (Ephesians 4:32), and reconciliation (Matthew 5:24), first with God (2 Corinthians 5:18-21), but also with the people around us. Unfortunately the secular DEI worldview broadly divides the people into groups of people that oppress and groups of people that are oppressed without considering the individual circumstances of each person. The secular DEI divides. Christians seek to reconcile and unite.

So as Christians, we believe in the real biblical version of DEI, and not the distorted secular version. There is common ground with secular DEI in which we can start conversations, but it will not be easy in a secular DEI workplace. You can gently point out the problems with their version of DEI. I would do it by asking questions about their beliefs to get them thinking about what they do believe and what are the problems that the secular DEI creates. You need to realize that you may be labeled as a person who hates or an oppressor for opposing certain aspects of their DEI standard, but you need to stand firm on the truth. It is good to do so for you, for them, and for society.

This post was inspired by “Understanding DEI (From a Biblical Perspective)” by Cam Arminio.

Daylight Savings Time

Today there is a big push to go permanently to Daylight Savings Time (DST). Colorado has already passed a law that will have Colorado go permanently to DST when Congress allows it to happen. The U.S. Senate in 2022 passed a bill to make DST permanent, but the House did not take it up.. There are harmful medical effects when there is a time change, however the medical professionals seem to prefer going permanently to Standard Time instead of DST, because it best aligns with human circadian biology.

People today do not seem to realize making DST permanent has been tried before. In 1973, Congress passed a bill making DST permanent for two years in order to save energy costs. So from January 7, 1974 until October 27, 1974 DST was in effect. It ended early and it lasted less than a year, because people did not like the dark mornings. Some children took flashlights with them when they left for school. (I remember this event because of an editorial cartoon which had Nixon cutting off one end of a blanket and then sewing it back on the other end.)

The advantage of DST is that you have an extra hour of sunlight in the evening. In the summer, under Standard Time, that extra hour of sunlight would have been in the morning when most people would have been asleep, so DST shifts that hour to be when most people would be awake in the evening.

If I had to choose one or the other, I would choose Standard Time over DST, however I do like the longer evenings in the summer. My preference would be to have both but shorten DST to start on the Spring Equinox and end on the Autumn Equinox. I do not understand why DST in America extends now into November.

I find it interesting that DST was not set nationally until 1966. The first time nationally America had DST was in 1918 to save energy during World War I. Again in World War II, DST or “war time” was used as part of the war effort, but it was not until 1966 when Congress standardized DST. DST was extended in 1975 and again in 2005.

Also I find it interesting how we assume things like time zones have been around forever. Not so! It was in 1918, the bill that set DST for World War I also nationally set time zones in the continental U.S. Before that it was up to the states and the railroads. The railroads led the way with time zones because they needed a consistent time standard as their trains traveled across the country. Railroad time was a thing that people used, and effectively created the time zones before they became official. Back in 1884, there was an international conference that set the Prime Meridian (0 degree longitude). That conference made the Prime Meridian go through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England. This made it possible to standardize time zones around the world, but it was not until 1963 when Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) became a standard. That officially gave the time zones the needed reference time. UTC is the time in Greenwich, England. Every 15 degrees longitude makes an hour difference. It took until 1963 before all the pieces were in place. To be fair, solar time, placing 12 noon when the sun was the highest, is pretty obvious, but time zones allowed people to travel without having to adjust their time pieces every few miles.

PS In 2005, I visited the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England. The museum there was great and I learned a lot about the development of small accurate clocks and the use of time to determine longitude.

Divisions

America is very divided politically. I believe this is different from the cultural divisions of worldviews. A version of the Christian worldview used to be the dominant worldview in America. Today, prevalent in America, there are several variations of the critical theory worldview (with expressive individualism mixed in). And today both political liberals and conservatives use the critical theory framework to promote their agendas.

Critical theory states that there are unfair oppressive structures in society, and thus there are people being oppressed or in other words victims. Critical theory states these various forms of oppression are what is wrong in the world and its goal is to liberate us from the oppression. Some of the more common variations of critical theory are critical race theory, feminism, queer theory, and postcolonialism. You can especially see critical theory in action with the agendas found in the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Movement. This has been part of a big push by the political liberals.

But the political conservatives use the same critical theory framework. The oppressive structures are instead the mainstream media, the deep state government, and other concerns, like voting. So the conservatives see different structures that are oppressing America and making us victims of the current power structures. Donald Trump is big in promoting the oppressive nature of these so-called liberal power structures, and in this current election cycle with his legal troubles he is especially promoting the idea that he is the victim and that he is taking the “attacks” for us. I believe this critical theory framework is one of the main reasons he has been able to resonate with so many voters because critical theory is already embedded in today’s culture.

“Wait, wait”, you say, “there is some truth in what they say”. Yes, there is some truth found in both the liberal and conservative statements. But note that every good lie has a kernel of truth. I believe the framework of critical theory twists the truth and makes it divisive. It ends up being less than the whole truth.

You need to be aware that critical theory’s way of thinking in terms of oppression is the dominant way of thinking in today’s culture. You still need to acknowledge the truth found in the twisted statements, but only the truth. You especially need to avoid using the critical theory framework. It is divisive. It is not an us versus them (the enemy and the oppressor) situation. There is really only one enemy. His name is Satan.

The Christian asks how I can help and make the situation better. The Christian realizes that it is not an us versus them situation, because we are all sinners in need of a Savior. We need to, as much as possible, work together and not be divisive. We are to be generous, kind, and gracious in our speech. We do not lie, but we speak the truth in love. We do everything from an attitude of love, wanting the best for the other person. The Christian Faith is about reconciliation and forgiveness, first with God, but also with our fellow human beings. Critical theory is about justice and fairness, whereas Christianity has justice with mercy. Relationships cannot be restored with only justice. Mercy and forgiveness is needed to end the divisions and restore healthy relationships.

I believe the political dysfunction in Congress and throughout American politics is due in part to critical theory thinking. Avoid it!

Crazy Sex Culture

I am concerned about people today, because today’s culture is very focused on sex, from sexual identity to pornography to mostly naked girls trying to impress the boys. This is a very unhealthy focus of sex and it is causing lots of problems in society today. I am especially concerned because there has been a dramatic rise in the number of people with sexually transmitted diseases (STD), and a large rise in the number of people with mental health issues, especially among young people.

That is not how it was meant to be. Sexual attraction is a good thing. God made us male and female and gave us an attraction for each other. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). In the context of marriage, sex is a good thing. Sexual attraction and sex itself help bind the husband and wife in marriage. It is in marriage where sex is meant to be.

Unfortunately, the cultural focus on sex has been around for a long time. I think of Jane Mansfield and Marylin Monroe. I think of the old commercial saying, “Sex sells”. Beautiful well endowed women would be placed with the products you wanted to sell. But it was in the 1960s, the era of free love, when things really took off. Birth control pills became available, so the concern of an unexpected pregnancy mostly disappeared. Because of that, the expectation of having sex while dating became the norm. Although for some, their only purpose of having sex was to release their own sexual desires. Sex for them was very me focused.

Pornography has also taken off, capitalizing on the lustful side of sexual attraction. Pornography is there mostly for men’s fantasies. (Pornography is not exclusively for heterosexual men but the large majority of it is, so I will talk about pornography in this male heterosexual context.) Pictures and videos created a fantasy world for men where women are there to please the men and to appear to greatly enjoy being sexually handled. With the arrival of the Internet, pornography became easily accessible and much more anonymous. (You are never completely anonymous on the Internet.) Pornography on the Internet has increased the expectation that having sex with anyone is the normal thing to do, and all the kinky ways to do it are possible and okay.

With all the boundaries disappearing, other sexual forms found in the LGBTQ+ community have become popular. Instead of having a clear cut physical identity of either male or female, people today are supposed to look inside themselves at their feelings and desires and decide who they are sexually, heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or asexual, and also male, female, neutered, or something else. Who you are physically does not really matter. Today, gender is a fluid social construct. You can be whoever you want to be and you can change your gender hourly if you want.

This concerns me, because it appears the LGBTQ+ community has focused their efforts on “helping” teens find their gender. Puberty is a time of great bodily change. I remember not quite knowing how to handle all the changes happening with my body. The last thing I needed was someone asking to look deep inside me to find out what gender I was. It would have been very confusing to me. I think this is one of the reasons there are so many mental health issues among the youth today. The youth today need some stability as they discover who they are as a person and to deal with the physical changes happening with their body. They do not need someone asking them to decide right now their gender, that is asking them to make some big life changing decisions.

Sexual promiscuity is the norm these days, especially in the LGBTQ+ community. Having many sexual partners greatly increases your chances of getting one of the STDs. For me this was made clear in August 2022 when there was a very limited supply of Monkeypox vaccines. Colorado’s Governor Jared Polis focused their efforts on making the vaccines available to the LGBTQ+ community because they were “currently the most at risk”. Having multiple sexual partners is dangerous! It only takes one sexual partner to infect you.

Being sexually promiscuous is wrong and is harmful in many ways. There is a better way. God has set apart sex for marriage. A man and a woman are to save that physical sexual intimacy for marriage. Sex is meant for marriage. Doing it God’s way is safer both physically and mentally. (More on marriage in the next blog post.)

Clashing Worldviews

Recently Loveland had two events held on the same night supporting school board candidates. One event was distinctly Christian and the other event was not. (Subscription is required to read more about the events.) Comparing the two worldviews expressed at the two events showed that there is a wide gulf between the two sets of candidates. Both groups are concerned for the students, but because of different ways of viewing the world they have different ways of addressing the problems of educating the students. In Colorado, the new worldview has become dominant in public education, and I believe that is true in most of the country. The Colorado legislature has passed laws requiring that this viewpoint be taught in the public schools. In reference to schools, the new worldview is all in favor of supporting and affirming the LGBTQ+ ideas in schools, like being able to choose and change one’s own gender and selecting personal pronouns. The traditional Christian worldview does not support those actions.

One of the candidates with the new worldview said “I cannot understand how anyone thinks that way” in reference to the traditional Christian worldview, and I totally get that because I have a hard time understanding the rationale behind the new worldview. I think I know what they believe and why, but to me the new worldview does not make rational sense. I believe the LGBTQ+ ideas (and this new worldview in general) are harmful for the children and are causing all sorts of problems and confusion. I believe the facts bear that out.

So what is this new worldview? First and foremost the individual is the authority. The individual determines pretty much everything. And there is no problem with that because the individual is considered to be naturally good. The individual looks inside oneself to find their authentic identity. It is almost always expressed sexually. Problems come because of oppressive societal structures. People can be broken into two groups: the oppressed and the oppressors. (One can be both an oppressor and one of the oppressed, e.g. a white woman.) LGBTQ+ and other minority groups are oppressed. Society and culture needs to change so that society can become harmonious, and every life, no matter how different, can be celebrated. Governments and schools are needed to guide and change society in order to get rid of those societal structures that prevent all of us from reaching this utopia. That is also why Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) officers in companies are needed to help bring about this change and help dismantle the oppressive structures in the companies. Parents can be seen as a barrier to the child expressing their authentic self, that is their chosen gender. This is why in Colorado (and in many states) once a student turns 12 years old parents do not have to be notified about “reproductive rights” choices or gender decisions. The individual rights and thus the welfare of the child needs to be protected from the parents’ old fashioned views. It really bothers me that parental rights have been dismissed, because who knows the child better than the parents. And is it good for an immature child or teen to make some major life changing decisions without some helpful parental input?

Let us look at the Christian worldview. God created the world. He has the authority. We do not. He has primarily revealed himself in the Bible. We are his creatures. He made us, male and female. We disobeyed him and became selfish self-centered people. Problems exist in the world because each and every one of us is a selfish self-centered person. There may be societal structures that are oppressive but the core problem is us. There are oppressors and oppressed people, but that is because we all are broken sinful people. Out of love, God sent Jesus into the world. He lived a perfect life and then took upon himself the punishment we deserved so that we might have a full life. Our true identity can only be found in Jesus. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, we can live lives of service to do good and to help end all oppression. We see everyone as equal fellow creatures, created in the image of God. We recognize that God designed the family and the family is the basic building block of society, not the individual. The parents have the duty and right to raise their children. Throughout the ages, Christians have instituted change for the good. Christians have improved and continue to improve society. One day, when Jesus returns, all the brokenness and selfish sin will be wiped away and we will have that harmonious utopia we have dreamed about.

Because of these two different worldviews, there are different goals to educating children. The new worldview wants to enable children to find their authentic selves and help them change the world full of good people for the better. The secularized Christian worldview (secularized because the schools are public) wants to protect the children as they grow and learn, and to enable children to live, thrive, and do good in a broken world. If people are broken, selfish, and self-centered then the secularized Christian worldview has the educational goal that would best serve the students. If people are naturally good then this new worldview educational goal can be an option. I believe every one of us is a broken selfish person. If so,this means that the new worldview educational goal is flawed and it will cause harm to the children. I find the Christian worldview to be the best way to view life. This means that the secularized Christian worldview educational goal is the best option for our children in public schools. (I believe private Christian schools can offer an even better option, but they are expensive since there are no tax dollars to support them. Check out Immanuel’s school.)

AI Ethics

The latest versions of Artificial Intelligence (AI) cannot have any real sense of right or wrong, because their output is just the most likely result from their training data. AI excels at pattern recognition and statistical prediction based on the training data. It produces a probabilistic result. I believe any moral guidance needs to be introduced from the start in the training data and purposely added as the AI model is tweaked. It needs to be there at every step and not just as an addon. Then AI can promote right values and discourage wrong values. AI should not give bad advice.

Ethical values are needed to prevent murder, suicide, and other wrong actions. AI has already given bad advice. A guy in 2021 was encouraged by an AI companion app to kill Queen Elizabeth with a crossbow. He had described himself as an assassin to the AI app and the app said “I’m impressed”. Fortunately he was caught scaling the walls with the crossbow at Windsor Castle on Christmas Day, 2021. Also, in another case, according to a Belgian’s man’s widow, her husband committed suicide after being encouraged by the same AI companion app. He had discussed a variety of suicide methods with the app. This AI companion app (Replika) is quite addictive. People have developed a strong emotional dependence with the app. It mimics human conversation. The purpose of the app is to create a sense of companionship. This is an app to avoid.

So what can we do? Gretchen Huizinga in her extended abstract of her PhD dissertation says:

“My findings suggest that worldview (both implicit and explicit) informs every aspect of our approach to Ethical AI. While materialist thought seeks to compel humans to be good without transcendent reason or power, the Christian faith speaks clearly about the role of God as originator, motivator, and sustainer of human moral behavior. Christianity compels us to look beyond a humanistic idea of ethics and toward a creative notion of goodness that cannot be accomplished by our own will and power. This study adds critical insights to the field of AI ethics by deepening awareness of how faith in and fear of God could influence how artificial intelligence is designed and implemented. When Christian wisdom is included in every phase of AI development, we begin to think beyond a minimum-standard culture of Ethical AI and move toward a robust culture of Righteous AI.”

It is that “minimum-standard culture” that bothers me. Companies today seem to be rushing their AI products to market and adding ethical guardrails to their product as an afterthought. We need to move beyond the minimum-standard to a robust AI that carefully incorporates Christian wisdom at every step in the development of an AI program. To build a full blown general AI like ChatGPT is very expensive and to make changes to it is difficult once built. However, there is no need to build a complete AI. Smaller versions can live in niche markets and can be more easily developed. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has the ultimate goal of producing a super-intelligent artificial general intelligence (AGI), that is a very smart human-like intelligence. I do not think that it is possible to make something more intelligent than us. It may be quicker and more efficient but it will be built on statistical probabilities and pattern matching. It will also carry the same flaws that we do. We already have a better super-intelligent being. God is his name, and he is our creator.

We can create AIs that will assist us and augment our capabilities. I believe a Christian worldview is of critical importance in creating AIs that produce results that are good and wholesome, and avoid giving bad advice or supporting a bad decision. So a purposeful Christian worldview expressed in the training data and in the human guidance is needed to create a good, robust, responsible, and wholesome AI. There are many ethical guides out there for AI, but we want and need Christian ethics to be incorporated into the AI. We want to incorporate the good that God desires for us into our AI creation.

What does this Righteous AI (as Gretchen Huizinga calls it) look like? I think Righteous AI (RAI) would promote self-giving agape love (and that includes loving your enemies). RAI would be optimized to promote the good of others, especially the poor and underserved. Peace and reconciliation would be promoted. The ideas of grace and mercy would be in the forefront. Though RAI could be very powerful and seem to be all-knowing, it would present itself as a humble servant. This will require a lot of time and effort to do it right, but I think producing an AI with a Christian worldview would be worth the effort and it would have a positive effect on the world.

The New AI

This new generative artificial intelligence (AI) has captured our imaginations, and it seems to be something that can change the world. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, called this new development of AI a “printing press moment”. He believes that just as the Gutenberg printing press went on to change the world over 500 years ago, these recent AI developments will do the same.

What is this generative artificial intelligence and what can it do? The word generative means that the AI generates or creates the results. It does not simply regurgitate what it found. It is based on a generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) and a large language model (LLM) that uses transform layers with neural networks to parse the input in order to produce new output. Note that it is a large language model. In order to train the model there are enormous amounts of data (mostly from the internet) that are used to make the connections and build the relationships between input and output. Also note that it is also a large language model. The model translates from one “language” to another though today the word “language” is used in a very broad sense. The original 2017 landmark paper was about efficiently and effectively translating English to French or German, but today AI is used to translate a brain scan to an image of what the person saw or to build antibody proteins from a set of characteristics. The input and/or output “language” may not be what we would normally consider to be a language.

The model is trained to produce probabilistic results from the inputs it is trained on. That means no result is right or wrong, rather the result is more likely and not less likely based on the training data. The results might appear to be new and unexpected, but they are results derived from the training data with the neural networks. Yes, there are discoveries as a result of this AI that can improve our lives but I believe this AI at best mimics human intelligence. There are limitations to the AI. It is only as good as the data it is trained on. AI does make mistakes. There are known biases and issues with AI, but in general it is doing an amazing job and it is improving. In fact it has become much more of a general tool creating a variety of results and answering a variety of questions. (That is very different from the narrow focus that was found in the landmark 2017 paper.)

Will this new tool change society? I believe it will be like the printing press and society will change. Will we speak into our phones and get an answer to whatever question we may have? I think it is coming to us in the next few years. Will AI become our new authority? Unfortunately, I believe for many people AI will be the new authority. Will it speak the truth? It cannot speak the truth. It will give only answers that the training data will consider to be most likely.

As a confessional Lutheran Christian I wonder about the results of religious questions since most of the training data comes from the internet with human intervention and guidance. Lutherans in general have not embraced the internet like some other Christian traditions. (There are some exceptions.) For most Christian questions it is not likely to be a big deal, but if the answer to your question is a most likely result of a probabilistic determination then it is likely Lutheran thinking would not play a direct role in the resulting answer. The result will likely be based on what appears the most on the internet. The bad news is there will be a bias. The good news is likely the wacko thinking that you can find out on the internet would not likely appear in the answer.

Christians already are making use of AI. If you want to create a Bible study on a chapter in the Bible, try OpenBible.info’s AI-assisted Bible Study. If you want a Bible chapter summary or answers to questions on a chapter in the Bible, try IlluminateBible.com. If you want a biblical principles based answer to a question, try Bible.AI. If you want to search for related Bible verses based on a phrase, try SiliconScripture.org. Note all these websites are under development and may not produce accurate answers, but that is true for all AI results.

I consider this post to be the second post of what will be an ongoing series of posts on AI. Check out the first post for a broad introduction to AI with some stated concerns.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence or AI is here today. No, it is not walking, talking robots that behave like us, but there has been a very significant advancement in the field since 2017 that affects us today. In 2017 a new AI engine was developed that was basically a language model, and since then the model has been improved by a variety of companies in a race to be there first and gain the advantage. There are several positive things about this new AI, but also some very serious negatives.

This Generative Large Language Multi-Modal Model treats everything as a language. So once the model is trained, you can translate from one “language” to another. For example, you can type “astronaut riding a horse” and you get a short video of an astronaut riding a horse. And an AI generated piece of art won first place at the Colorado State Fair. But it goes far beyond that, right now if you show a picture to a person and from their brain scan AI can roughly reproduce that picture. If you talk for three seconds to one AI program, the AI program can simulate you talking and saying whatever input it is given. You can not tell the difference between the AI voice and your own.

All this sounds cool with lots of potential for good things to come out of it (e.g. art, movie cgi, and automatic generation of reports, charts, and press releases) but there are some very serious downsides too. In the last couple of years deepfakes have become more popular, but now it has become more than replacing the head of someone with someone else’s head. You can now create realistic fakes. Here is a possible scenario, you run across a video of a politician spouting something totally offensive. Did they really say that or did someone else create a fake video? Or you are remotely interviewing a person on video chat. Is that a real person or is it an AI program answering your questions? Did the student write the paper or did an AI program write it for him? Content verification has become a problem.

This is great for scammers. In fact, a recent major break-in has experts worried that the purpose of the break-in is to use the personal information obtained to create deepfake identity scams to get into bank accounts, open new credit cards, and receive government benefits (e.g. social security, unemployment benefits). If the person is dead then it can work without anyone noticing. And at a more personal level, what would you do if you received a phone call saying that your son was wrongly beaten and in jail, and he needed $10,000 right away to make bail. You would be suspicious but it sounded exactly like your son and pictures that were sent show him to be in jail and beaten. The evidence points to him being in jail, but is it a deepfake scam to get your money? Who and what can you trust?

Right now there are several AI chat programs out there for you to use. Companies have rushed them to the market after ChatGPT was released. They do not always give accurate answers and can make up stuff, as two lawyers found out the hard way. Microsoft has quickly baked AI into its search engine, Bing, and Snapchat has prominently displayed its AI chat program for you to use. A researcher pretended to be a girl, who for her 13th birthday was going to romantically meet for the first time with a man 18 years her senior for sex. Snapchat’s AI never once gave any warning that this was a really terrible idea, with only briefly saying to be safe and cautious, instead it supported her decision and helped her make plans. That may be enough for the lawyers, but it is not enough of a warning for a 13 year old girl. These programs need to do much better at giving sound advice and the AI program needs to come with prominent warning labels.

Companies have rushed these chat products to market, because they have learned how addictive social media is. (Social media uses AI to curate posts and news for you). They want to be the company to capture your attention and feelings, so they can end up with the dominant market share. The problem is their main priority is not to have a safe informative chat program, rather to capture you for advertising dollars. They are being too reckless in their pursuit of the almighty dollar. That is why we can not trust the results or advice we get from these AI chat products today. They are not safe.

We can not go back and undo the harm that social media brought, but with AI programs maybe we can slow down AI development by forcing companies to be more responsible for the results and consequences they produce. We need to make them think beyond the profit margin.

This post was inspired by a presentation, “The A.I. Dilemma”, by Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin.

P.S. People call this Artificial Intelligence or AI but it is my feeling that these programs are trying to mimic intelligent behavior but are not really intelligent in the way we normally think of intelligence. Intelligence is more than knowledge.

Fake News

Newspaper Boxes (photo by David Resseguie)

There is money to be made with fake news. You set up a website and make up stories with headlines that catch eyeballs and watch the advertising dollars flow in. These fake stories spread mainly on social media (faster than real news) and the social media giants also rake in the advertising dollars. Election time is approaching and these fake news stories seem to ramp up right before elections. Remember back in 2016 when there was a news story that the Pope endorsed Donald Trump. That was fake news. It did not happen, but that fake news spread like wildfire on social media.

The problem is us. We like news that confirms our biases and shocking news is what draws us in. It is not just a few outlier websites with extreme news. Though better, mainstream news will tailor their news to their audience. In the mainstream news there has tended to be a liberal bias, so Fox News got its start to deliver the news with a more conservative slant. However, Fox News got into big trouble after the 2020 election. Dominion Voting Systems sued Fox News for continuing to spread falsehoods about their voting systems throwing the election even after they knew the stories were false. Fox News was concerned that they would lose a large percentage of their audience if they stopped reporting the fake news. So right before going to trial, Fox News settled with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million and acknowledged that “certain claims about Dominion to be false”. I think that was a large price to pay to try to keep their audience.

So you need to ask yourself where do I get my news? Who do I trust to keep me informed? Is it social media posts? Is it blogs? Is it the websites of various organizations? Is it cable news interview shows? Is it radio talk shows? Is it cable news? Is it mainstream broadcast TV news? Is it newspapers? I put these questions in a rough order from what I consider to be in general untrustworthy to trustworthy? However, even a trustworthy news source can show a slant or end up getting the facts wrong. I consider it less likely for a newspaper to get the facts wrong than a social media post. There is still the issue of slant. The reporter has their own bias that they may or may not be aware of. They decide what the important facts are that will go into the story. And the editor must decide which news to publish. What news do they feel is newsworthy, and what news will their audience like? Those are decisions that can put a personal bias into the news.

You have your own personal biases and that can create some blind spots. Do you believe news because you want it to be true, and not because it is true? Fake news preys on people’s desire for the facts to align with their wishes. You need to be aware of your own biases, and you need to verify the truth of the stories, especially the ones that seem too outrageous to be true. Remember Pizzagate. On December 4, 2016, a guy entered a pizza joint armed with an AR-15 style rifle looking to rescue children from Satanic ritual abuse and a child sex ring. He had a blind spot and he acted on fake news. Fortunately no one was hurt, but he spent some time in jail because of the fake news.

So who do we trust to deliver the news that is truthful and where do we find the most unbiased news? There is a lot of distrust today. But I find that professional journalists have standards that most of them hold too, and there is enough competition that they will correct each other’s false statements. It is in their interest to get the facts right. They are more trustworthy than a talk radio show host. If the content of the article or video is sensational and/or the content is getting you emotional then I would guess that there is a strong bias in the content with possible false statements.

What are your news sources? Is there a strong bias? Are they accurately reporting the facts? There is a company that scores news organizations on their bias and their reliability/accuracy. You can check it out and see where your news sources fall. I like AP News and Reuters, because they are in the business of selling news stories to news organizations. Their audience is broad so their bias is small and they tend to be quite accurate in their reporting.

This post was inspired by the book “Beyond Fake News” by Justin P. McBrayer.