Skip to main content

on the dark side of the road




It ain’t no use in turnin’ on your light, babe
That light I never knowed
An’ it ain’t no use in turnin’ on your light, babe
I’m on the dark side of the road
Still I wish there was somethin’ you would do or say
To try and make me change my mind and stay
We never did too much talkin’ anyway
So don’t think twice, it’s all right

For my money, Don't Think Twice, it's All Right is one of Dylan's greatest songs and The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan is a beautiful album published in 1963 in the early years of the information age. Computer Science was all done on a mainframe in those years and since there were no computer science departments at any colleges (and wouldn't be for another 20 years) the guys from Bell Labs and IBM raided the Music Conservatories to find talented software writers - it turns out that musicians have a facility for writing code which isn't surprising if you think about it but is sort of ironic in light of the Watson AI advertisement posted above. The first pop-culture representation of this mainframe AI was the benevolent/malevolent villain Hal 9000 murdering star men in Kubrick's 2001: Space Odyssey - but Hal eventually got his comeuppance. One of the many unsettling aspects of Kubrick's film is the sense that the Hal 9000 is more human than the evolved placid robot-man astronauts being snuffed out by its jealous artificial intelligence.


If you want to hear the original (and inspiration for the film) then take a listen to the IBM 7094 from 1961.


We're 15 years past 2001. Lousy space station, no Moon base and no mission to Jupiter, but we do have AI and she's a beauty. Created by the big brains at Microsoft her name is Tay and she only lived for about 24 hours before some Redmond geek crawled into her brain and started pulling the tapes. Her comments were very un-Hal 9000 and more Black Twitter like which, it turns out, was a design point of the AI. I don't know if you've ever met an 18 year old girl with a wicked sense of humor but if you haven't yet had the pleasure here's what she sounds like.

Believe it or not, Microsoft did stress-test its youth-like code to make sure you had a "positive experience." However, it also admits that it wasn't prepared for what would happen when it exposed Tay to a wider audience. It made a "critical oversight" that didn't account for a dedicated group exploiting a vulnerability in Tay's behavior that would make her repeat all kinds of vile statements.

Oh, I believe it. Do I ever believe that the folks programing Tay AI had no idea what irreverent, politically incorrect, free thinking and funny people might put in their girls mind. They wanted to create an 18-24 year old girl and, presto, they got one! So they killed her.

It's not lack of imagination - it's lack of reality that gives us the melodious Douglas Rain voice of Hal 9000 or any of the other AI characters in film history. The real AI that takes over the world will probably be a screaming lunatic who uses scathing insults and unsettling strategic gambits to destabilize the humans and bring them to submission.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Real Story with Gretchen Carlson

She was "sexy", but "too much hard work." I'm a regular Fox & Friends viewer (mostly in protest of the other insipid morning programs like Today and Good Morning America) so over the years I've gotten to know Gretchen Carlson pretty well. Stuck between Steve and Brian she always seemed a prudish scold with an irritating, self-righteous demeanor that I simply put up with because I figured some people in the Fox audience actually liked her persona. It was obvious that Steve and Brian did not, but they were stuck with her like so many talking heads and had to make the best of it - which they did. Besides, she was no worse than any of the other women on morning show TV - I mean, you're only going to find a certain kind of person to do this kind of work and that kind of person is the Gretchen Carlson kind. Then, one day, she was gone and replaced by Elisabeth Hasselbeck and the F&F ratings began to climb, and climb and climb - in two months view

Psycho Killer, qu'est-ce?

I came into this wicked world in the early 1960's and as a result I have born witness to America's 50 Years of Failure which includes the modern age of mass shootings by psychotic men who "go off" on a given day, for no reason at all (except "guns"), and kill scads of innocent bystanders. Back in August of 2019 a KOTCB blog post titled " Reciprocity City " explored a young  gunman  named Patrick Crusius  who drove 9 hours through the west Texas flatlands to shoot up El Paso, TX The KOTCB has commented on many of these shootings, bombings and knifings over the years -  The roots of the Boston Marathon Bombing ,  the Emanuel AME Church shooting ,  Syed Rizvan Farook and his bride Tashfeen Malik ,  Ft. Lauderdale Airport shooting ,  Nick Cruz lovesick Parkland shooting ,  the Iranian, PETA activist, Vegan Bodybuilder, YouTuber's attack on Google  and now this very oddly timed and placed "lone wolf" attack on Walmart shoppers. This list

A Apolitical Blues

Well my telephone was ringing, and they told me it was chairman Mao. You got to tell him anything 'cause I just don't want to talk to him now. According to the brilliant troubadour Lowell George the Apolitical Blues are " the meanest blues of all" and who am I to disagree with this soul man now after all these years of living by his maxim.  I first heard the song bursting from the 1972 vinyl of Little Feat's Alt-Rock-Country masterpiece "Sailin' Shoes" in the second story bedroom of my friend John's older brother Edie who, being about 3 years our senior, was instructing us on the importance of good music. This was circa 1975 and a formative time for my musical taste and overall aesthetic which, for better or worse, infuses every aspect of my existence including the KOTCB blog so a debt is owed this unforgettable "older brother" now that  he has shuffled off this mortal coil  and left us with smoky memories. A born rebel with the heart o