Oh, what a joy to be alive in the midst of extreme political polarization. Gavin Newsom (or at least his staff with his approval) has taken to copying Donald’s Tweeting style to assault X with content mocking Trump. Some of the calmer heads point out that Gavin has his own problems and possible desire to use this as a springboard for personal political gain (a presidential campaign of his own). Many others have simply jumped on the polarization troll bandwagon. Anything that gives the other team a taste of their own medicine has got to be good, right?
But this is about the other current famous troll, the third episode of South Park. I can tell that South Park has accomplished its goal this season. Not on the internet life has people simply ignoring the elephant in the room, or even claiming that they heard about it and that it is a low rated flop. Hold my beer while I switch the subject to avoid disingenuous engagement.
While unremarkable, especially in light of the heavy juvenile attacks of the first two episodes, the third episode did manage to focus on AI. More specifically, chatbots. And I think they did a pretty good job of that. Although in theory neural nets that have already conquered fairly difficult pattern recognition in things like games (Go, chess) could be used to solve things like medical diagnoses, it’s become weaponized to get attention and money. The G in ChatGPT is already better interpreted as meaning “grifter.”
You have traditional human made art like music already being assaulted by AI generated music. You have fake people advertising tai chi, fake robot pets, fake testimonials from hijacked celebrity images, fake AI news. And all this during the biggest socialization crisis in human history. Not only is your smartphone an expensive necessity for your job, it’s also supposed to replace your need for immediate positive reinforcement in the absence of getting along with other people. While you’re in your polarized echo chamber learning bad ideas to pass on to your kids (and directly giving the kid a phone to play with) you get AI music stealing money from old fashioned human made music, AI bad health advice like doing a couple minutes of tai chi a day is ALL you need for health and well being, and fake robot pets. Because sure, it was on the internet so it must be true. Shelters are at record levels of surrenders because you can’t afford groceries much less the puppy. So you’re desperate enough to think that robot Panda which doesn’t actually exist might be worth the investment. Has Teddy Ruxpin taught us nothing??
So, spoiler alert time. Randy’s marijuana farm is struggling again. ICE raids have taken away his immigrant labor. And instead of turning to his wife Sharon who over the decades of the show’s run has always been way more supportive of her dumbass husband than he deserves, Randy turns to ChatGPT. Which provides him with two things. The verbal reinforcement he craves. Yes Randy, you’re the smartest and most awesome person ever. And yes Randy, you need to turn the marijuana farm into a tech startup company.
And in typical South Park satire it’s so ludicrous it shouldn’t be a real thing, yet mirrors what is actually going on in the real world.
It’s long overdue that the Attaboy!TM gets an upgrade. In the old days of gematria and other online grift you would get a human being, often a hyper aggressive condescending know it all, telling you nothing more than there are things wrong in the world and you’re the smartest person ever. At least as long as you give them your money. Now it’s the Chattaboy!GPTM, where a calm voice tells you anything you want to hear (except opening the pod bay doors is out of the question). It will tell you what supposedly works. But it still requires actual human boots on the ground to implement. Boots on the ground that don’t have the education and experience to pull it off. Boots on the ground like Randy running a farm and Homer Simpson working at a nuclear plant.
And your giving it money goes beyond any cost of loading the app into the phone. AI data centers already use an estimated 3%-4% of electricity demand. Future demand is expected to be as high as 8%-12%. I know, because the AI overview told me so. And if you think the cost is going to be isolated to just AI companies you have no idea how the Republican Party in the U.S. works. They’ve always had a strange relationship with affordability, fossil fuels, long term planning, debt, and acting like a decently socialized human being.
Do we really need another investment bubble bursting now?
Let’s ask Teddy Ruxpin.
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