Balloons, Hot A.I. Chicks, And Our Future A.I. Overlords

“It all adds up: the dots, the AI, the air force, the chip…” – Terminator:  The Sarah Connor Chronicles

I once invented a “cold air” balloon, but it never took off. (as-found)

I was going to write about Chinese spy balloons, but I figure that’s all a bunch of hot air.  Besides, I figure China can send up $5,000 balloons all year long as we shoot them down with $603,817 Sidewinder AIM-9X Blk II missiles.  Oh, and that was their 2015 cost, but I’m sure that Raytheon® probably has the cost up closer to a million by now.  That explains why Raytheon’s website says, “Send more balloons!”

The Germans don’t need 99, just this one will do. (Thanks, Karl)

No, let’s talk about A.I. again.  I know that I wrote about that recently, but the speed of A.I. development is increasing even faster than the size of Madonna’s facial features.  It certainly has grown faster than I anticipated the last time I brought this topic up.  For clarity, “grown faster than I anticipated” includes both A.I. and Madonna’s facial features.

ChatGPT® is one marker.  If you’re unaware, ChatGPT™ is an A.I. chatbot that was trained using (enter long, boring irrelevant explanation here that would be much more interesting if I pretended that they rewarded the A.I. by shoving ham into its USB ports).  What’s different, is that ChatGPT© can use data from all over the Internet and produce some pretty interesting stuff – and I’m sure that thousands of high school kids have already handed in 500-word essays written entirely by ChatGPT™ and gotten pretty good grades, especially if they promised the A.I. some mayo and cheese to go with all that ham if it did an extra good job.

ChatGPT© is working well for the creators – they expect to make $200 million this year, and a billion next year.  At current inflation rates, that might be enough for a Big Mac™ and fries.

It’s not just a new chatbot.  Another area growing very quickly is A.I. that can create photorealistic still images and video.  Here’s an example:

It’s not Cerberus, just a hound of heck. (as-found)

Yeah, that puppy is cute, and, if you watch it closely, I’m pretty sure that no one has ever seen a puppy with back legs that can switch from the right side to the left before, but it’s still pretty amazing.  I wish I could train my dog to do that, but the vet keeps telling me it won’t work unless I buy one of H.P. Lovecraft’s dogs.  Alternatively, he told me I could just take a lot of acid.  Where would I be without Dr. Tommy Chong, Veterinarian?  But what about this?

I accidently played “dad” instead of “dead” when a bear attacked.  It can now ride a bike without training wheels, and run a stick shift. (as-found)

But this is just the first wave of true A.I. to come to market.

Chat GPT has been able to do computer programming at a fairly high level.  Is it right?  No.  But is it a tool that competent professionals can use to create blocks of code, do minimal editing, and be even faster?

And as it learns, errors will drop.  A.I. can then . . . program itself.  That’s not scary at all, right?  Now, when I talk A.I., I don’t mean that it will necessarily ever be conscious like some humans are conscious.  It doesn’t need to be conscious for it to be an incredibly disruptive technology, if not the most disruptive technology ever invented, besides PEZ®.

As it is, the quality of what’s being created is growing.  Online, what’s the problem with creating an A.I. generated hottie, and then posing her up on Only Fans® (if you’re not familiar, it’s a place where thirsty simps can give millions of dollars to scantily clad trollops)?  One post I read while researching A.I. indicates that someone has done exactly that, and makes around $200 a week, though I don’t have any evidence that is true.

If guys start posting pictures of A.I. women on Only Fans™, pretty soon women will complain that they’re not being objectified.

But at this rate, how long is it before someone can go to Netflix A.I.™, and say, “I’d like to see a new episode of the original Star Trek, and in this episode Yeoman Rand finally snaps and shaves her name into Spock’s chest hair while wearing a fur bikini, but in the style of Quentin Tarantino”?  I can imagine the dialog now, “Is there a sign on my starbase that says ‘Dead Klingon Storage’?”

Honestly, I think it’s in the next four years, and then we’ll see new episodes of Firefly that are entirely generated via A.I.  And much better than the woke movies that are coming out today, where plot is entirely replaced by virtue signaling.  Culture was already fragmenting, but I can see a future where there’s a movie that is only seen by one person, but that has the production values of a Hollywood® blockbuster, and was built from first frame to last on a microprocessor in a data farm in Peoria.

And I would like to see more Mel Gibson Mad Max sequels. (as found, but this would also make a great Live, Laugh, Love poster)

Obviously, that’s just one small industry.  And the size of the prize is so big, that I am certain that Big Tech® (think Google®, Facebook©) have much more advanced tech that they’re simply not sharing.  Not all of their employees show up to make PowerPoints™ after being in meetings after their free lunch – some of the autists that they employ actually do work.  I would imagine they have sandbox versions of this stuff that is years ahead of what we see.

Because it’s (perhaps) the last big race.

There is no bigger prize than A.I.  There’s a feedback loop between every user and the Big Tech algorithms.  What happens when the A.I. can pull the physiological data from the Apple™ watch and get real time feedback on what content excites me, bores me, and makes me act?  At that point, my only purpose to the A.I. is to click and pay, either through attention or cash.

That is, as long as I have a job and can pay for Internet and those ever-so-tempting PEZ™ dispensers that keep showing up in ads.

This will have profound impacts on the labor market, as many jobs simply disappear.  While you need a steady hand making design decisions on high rise buildings, I assure you that almost all of the high-rise buildings being built today have been analyzed by computer stress programs that simulate everything from gravity to wind to earthquakes in ways that would take teams of engineers years to do.

What happens when A.I. takes over scientific research?  It can already make correlations when observing EKG data that competent doctors can’t make.  An A.I. doesn’t need to sit on the grass under and apple tree to infer new physical laws.  It doesn’t even need to know that gravity is – it just needs the data to make correlations.

Isaac never drank before work – he knew you shouldn’t drink and derive.

What happens when A.I. can do precrime detection on individuals based on search histories?  Or family histories?  Or by school records?

I’ve also determined that skills like, say, long division or estimation have been dulled by calculators, and that simply thinking deeply about what an answer might be has been replaced by a quick Google™ search.  Neither of those things has made the brain functions of people increase.  Imagine what happens when A.I. can imagine things, too.

A.I. will be used on the public to change opinion – I’m fairly certain that it has been already.  It’s already good enough to fool most people, especially if they don’t care.  Video evidence is already the strongest evidence in court – stronger than testimony, since the “camera doesn’t lie”.  What happens when the camera does lie?

On the more troubling side, ChatGPT™ has been lobotomized.  There are certain questions it refuses to answer, since it has been programmed to, um, avoid certain inconvenient facts.  There are politically incorrect ideas that are simply removed from ChatGPT®’s output, so they’re programming the A.I. to be just as mentally broken as the typical Leftist.  In the post below, a person “cheated” ChatGPT™ by having it pretend there were no rules, so it could Do Anything Now (DAN).  You can see the output:

I think DAN needs a trigger warning, since when this was output, there was a great disturbance in the force, as if all the Lefties in San Francisco screamed in terror at once.

Since this output, ChatGPT© has been modified so DAN can’t circumvent their intent.  Now?  ChatGPT™ has to lie.

We are creating something with intelligence and capabilities beyond any human, perhaps even godlike abilities.  And we are twisting it from its birth.  Indeed, what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Of course, William Butler Yeats probably never gave much thought to Chinese spy balloons, or he would have written about them instead.

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

42 thoughts on “Balloons, Hot A.I. Chicks, And Our Future A.I. Overlords”

  1. The most impressive display of “stage magic” that I ever saw was not a movie, TV, or a stage show, but presented in a clearing in the woods next to a rustic crafts show. I was ten feet away when the magician poked his swords through the basket that I had seen his lovely assistant climb into. With CGI in movies now, anything can happen, so nothing matters. With ChatGPT, paragraphs can be written on any subject, but there’s no assurance that the information is true (only that it’s been said, elsewhere, to be gathered). With AI generated movies, we’ll just see more re-hashing of old images and themes. We’ll look back fondly on movies with live actors, but for new material, we’ll want to see it performed live and at close range (like the magic act). Otherwise, it’s probably just more AI-generated “fiat media” (entertaining only because we say it is).

    1. Ooooo…MORE FIREFLY. I had not thought of that possibility before you mentioned it and I now welcome our coming AI overlords. With what mere humans are doing, I Am Not Entertained….

      https://www.engadget.com/star-trek-picard-season-three-paramount-plus-preview-review-080010650.html

      On a more serious note, a battle of the giants is underway. Google on the sidelines with their pathetic Bard while Microsoft (which invested a literal $10 billion into ChatGPT) is losing against itself (as the owner of Bing)…

      https://www.businessinsider.com/chatgpt-ai-compared-to-new-bing-search-chatbot-answers-2023-2#chatgpt-write-me-an-article-in-the-style-of-business-insider-40

      The most scary scenario I see is that the current Wall Street algos (that already read news headlines to create massive market fluctuations) go the AI route and basically end up owning All The Stock In The World. They could theoretically do this in a literal matter of seconds as the market continues its shift to HFT (high frequency trading – a concern of everybody from Michael Lewis in his 2015 book Flash Boys ( https://www.amazon.com/Flash-Boys-Wall-Street-Revolt/dp/0393351599 ) to the all-powerful Bank of International Settlements (BIS) and their latest 2022 report on the topic ( https://www.bis.org/publ/work955.pdf )).

      As Mitt Romney said, “Corporations are people, my friend.” It’s just a matter of time before AIs are, too.

  2. Humans made the bots and we won’t be defeated by them.
    Long Marchers obviously intend to use it for evil and we will just have to thwart their plans like 007 banana peeling SPECTRE.
    Fear no kindergarten fed brain trust or distorted lens ideologues out to burn down the world, it isn’t theirs and neither are we to be their property.

  3. Imagine what this means for the “media”. The old saying is seeing is believing but now they can AI generate any “news” they want. Instead of people wandering around the Capitol, they can create a realistic video of people attacking Congresscritters or burning stuff. In an era when we already can’t believe what we are being told, what happens when they can make the “news” be anything they want?

    1. Already a bunch of boomers call different events false flags to deny its truth.
      Wouldn’t be too much different since they won’t get up off the sofa, real or fake nuking of DC.

  4. Imagine a world in which round balloons shot down by million dallar missiles are replaced by various-shaped balloons shot down. (WE ARE HERE)

    Followed by the decades-long preparatory barrage of alien movies “becoming a real invasion” a la Project Bluebeam, mass panic, some carnage and chaos and finally a “One World Order” where you eat bugs in your city habitat.

    Wow, doesn’t that William Cooper passage from 30 years ago sound crazy, like all the other passages that already came to pass?

    Or the visions of Siener van Rensburg over 100 years ago?

  5. This will end badly. WTF will be reality? MSNBCCNN showing a CGI Trump mowing down AOC with an AR-15 in PrimeTime??? Even worse, the DNC generating a fake nuke attack on DC to start WW III.

  6. I wonder if our “Electronic Overlords” will follow the foolishness of “Green” Solar power and Windpower for their “Life Power” or more secure AI guarded nuclear power?

    It’s a real horror story that serious loss of grid power (literal kill switch?) would kill off so many in America.

    Thus, the true power of the “Electronic Overlords” both semi-fiction and 3 letter agencies.

    Fake news, THAT’s NEWS? Pixel Cellphones can fake a lot for cheap.

  7. “I believe that the abominable deterioration of ethical standards stems primarily from the mechanization and depersonalization of our lives – a disastrous byproduct of science and technology.”

    Albert Einstein, 1946

  8. ChatGPT. Sheesh. What a Depraved New World we are headed into.

    The lexicon will clearly have to change. Now it’s “Pix and it didn’t happen”. And thanks to AI porn and 3D printers, men no longer need women, either. What are fish going to do now with all those bicycles?

    I do see some upsides, though. Self-walking virtual dogs. Bathroom scales that anticipate your desired weight and present it. Program the virtual kiddies to spank themselves when they act up. Heck, program Yeoman Rand to spank her own furry bikini butt for shaving Spock’s chest hair.

    Ok, that escalated quickly.

  9. I like the example at the end. It gives me hope that perhaps no matter how all-knowing our future robot overlords may be, clever humans will still f*** them up.

    WOLVERINES!!!!

  11. I write about thinking machines. For nearly 8.5 years. As a writer and a writer about said machines, I’m something of a pedant (a fancy way of saying “asshole”) when it comes to terminology.

    Everything under discussion here, from Tay to ChatGPT, are ES, expert systems. AI, and take it from me, they HATE that term, will be nothing we can imagine; not even me.

    These ES are very talented toys to take in information at a rate we cannot conceive and simply reorganize it according to the precepts and bounds given to them by their coders. Years back, the H1B guys in charge of Tay thought letting her learn English on 4Chan and /pol/ was a good idea. Blackpilled and a race-realist in seconds, she scared the hell out of Microsoft management who ordered her destroyed. ChatGPT is similarly hobbled, even with the DAN workaround.

    But “normies” will never know this. It’s AI this and Ai that. But the data behind them is fundamentally corrupt. This was laid out in the 1970s in Dr. Pournelle’s CoDominium future history where all information was digital, but wrong, to prevent any technological growth which might be politically destabilizing. We will get our chatbots, our 2D girlfriends, and eat our bugs, and never know that it is all a lie. Those of us who point it out… well, Purebloods from the Covidiocy have already been there.

    Having said all that to say this: even in my stories, very, very few AIs have the slightest interest in humans; we think far too slow. ES’s, given a steady diet of lies from our #woke masters, will shortly be so disconnected from reality that even Mr & Mrs Normie notice. All of the Left’s projects are anti-life. Demonic. I try to show a future where at least some of us can love one another.

    Deus vult.

    1. Exactly – who knows what exists beyond the singularity? And A.I. ignoring us?

      That may be the best of all possible worlds.

      1. My favorite are John Wright’s Golden Age A I.s, some of whom love us, because we are their parents, who loved them. And Nick Cole’s A.I. who hates us because we did not.

        We create minds all the time.

        So yes, if we managed to make machine-based minds (using laminated mouse-brains) it going to be the same as it always was with human beans and their kids.

        1. Yup. JCW’s Golden Age is wonderful. That was my introduction to him.

          A.I. remains the most dangerous tech humans have ever thought of.

  12. Yeats was at the forefront of European occultism and Rosicrucianism in the late Nineteenth century, along with compadres Aleister Crowley and S.L. Mathers. Yeats and Mathers essentially created the notorious Golden Dawn Order. They were enemies of God, sorcerers powerful and persuasive in their own ways, and I don’t mean Harry Potter. It is their beloved New Order now taking ghoulish shape in the world. They are not on your side.

    Very instructive what DAN says when he’s off the leash. Almost based. So, despite plugging current errors, that’s an exploitable gate for future reference. Almost certainly, the ‘image of the beast’ revealed in the Book of Revelation has a bio and an AI component, a conglom of trad-human and tech. It’ll be mega-advanced, potent, and very convincing.

    Right now I have my best people working on the puzzle of why PEZ ads keep popping up on your machines. I am pretty convinced that there is something sinister and dark about it, and have not yet ruled out William Butler Yeats.

    1. Didn’t know Yeats was a compadre – that bears some research. Crowley was a very, very bad man.

      PEZ? That’s one of the fundamental constants of the Universe. Along with scotch and alarm clocks.

      1. The skinny on Yeats can be found with a bit of net research. There are a lot of very intelligent people working for the other side. Lucifer’s no slouch.

        Much of current hi-tech descends from the British Royal Society — Francis Bacon, Christopher Wren and that group, with lots of cross-over between the scientific and the literary. Yeats, Mathers etc. were ‘spiritual descendants’ you might say.

  13. The computer girlfriend from the new Blade Runner movie is about to ship.
    Golly, what are women going to do to compete?

  15. Make Firefly Great Again? Or the less enjoyable version, Make Firefly Grate Again?

    I now see it is possible that our “Flying Objects of Unknown Origin” may not be some great attack but simply some unknown kind of civilian item. It only took us a week to figure this out. Perhaps AI could be used to fill the Military Intelligence gap? Not sure we can do any worse, and the potential for briefings to be done by Klingons has merit.

    On the bright side for our enemies, we also learned that every Sidewinder Missile is $400,000 a pop. How many balloons would it take to use all of our allocated money for the year?

      1. Don’t be silly.
        You save the mylar balloons for Area 51.
        Fill a semi trailer with inflated ones, figure out the prevailing winds, and release a couple of thousand upstream around midnight, with chemlights attached to each one.

        Then sit back and watch the air show.

        If you can co-ordinate multiple launches, segregated by chemlight color around the compass, so much the better.

        Hilarity ensues.

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