Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for March 09, 2025

Well, could always just let nature take its course with the people who listen to AI results telling them to add glue to the cheese on their pizza or to mix bleach and ammonia.

Big tech spent hundreds of billions on the AI grift and you’re gonna use it whether you like it or not! Sunk cost fallacy be darned!

I freely admit that AI (for the time being) is nearly as much of an improvement as the telephone was over the telegraph. (Mind you, we’re likely to miss our carrier pigeons…..)

If I could only trust the people controlling the AI I would feel much safer.

The major point, of course, is that the semi-legal immigrant King Musk, and his Clearisil brigade, are FAR too ignorant about what they are doing, and the primitive IA they worship, to be worth anything at all but scorn and derision.

(Or pelted with rocks and garbage…..)

We have a senile man-child holding our nuclear launch codes, I’ll take AI

Wasn’t it a bunch of liberal hollywood types that were pushing bitcoin

I’m not afraid of AI taking over the world. It’s the people controlling the AI that I fear.

Where the he!! are the Democrats? trump and musk are like gremlins tearing down the guardrails so that they rape the government to enrich themselves (firing Inspector Generals etc etc etc) AND NOT ONE shout out from the Democrats!

Isaac Asimov had it down pat, half a century ago : “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.” He also added a final (and definitive) 4th law : it’s called Law Zero – “A robot cannot cause harm to mankind or, by inaction, allow mankind to come to harm.” Of course, nowadays, we would call “robots” “Artificial Intelligence” or AI.

Guy in the suit looks like Nixon.

Wonder what the radiation levels are going to be tomorrow.

Skynet is coming

It’s why I stopped using Adobe software — one or two years ago, they launched a program that creates AI images using the works of designers who saved their work to Adobe’s cloud storage without said designers’s consent and without paying said designers for licenses, despite those designers having already paid the incredible subscription fees Adobe charges. This theft of intellectual property angered designers so much that they sought alternate software for making their work. Some folks have proposed that designers save their work on their own storage and not to Adobe’s cloud storage which is currently a viable solution, but since Adobe is an international corporate tech organization that controls the reins of software use, it won’t be long before the very real possibility that they push policies demanding designers’s work only be saved to their cloud storage.

From the same era when Asimov began his robot stories, see “With Folded Hands” by Jack Williamson.

I recommend the 2025 movie ‘Companion’. It’s relevant to Artificial Intelligence and has plenty of twists. It’s purely a popcorn thriller without being overly long.

AI can’t be too much worse than Xwitler’s Natural Stupidity.

Throughout history there have been classic battles.

There is armor vs. armor piercing. As soon as an engineer builds a better fortification, another engineer builds a weapon to breech it.

Then there is virus vs. anti-virus. As soon as a software engineer builds a virus proof system, a hacker builds a better virus.

In both cases the offensive weapon is defeated by a defensive weapon of the same type. Engineering vs. engineering and software vs. software.

Eventually we will see AI used to defeat AI fakes. It’s difficult to do so now just using eyeballs.

AI is a great research assistant but it does hallucinate. Like a politician, It will make stuff up and pass it along as truth.

AI: The Necessary Evil or Just a Really Fancy Calculator?

Ah, AI—the technological equivalent of a toddler with access to every book ever written, but no ability to differentiate between Shakespeare and a grocery list. The comments here range from existential dread to mild optimism, and honestly, that’s the perfect spectrum for discussing AI.

Look, I get it. No one wants a self-driving car to play “Frogger” with their life. And yes, AI writing bad medical papers is about as comforting as a doctor saying, “Trust me, I learned this on YouTube.” But let’s not throw the robotic baby out with the algorithmic bathwater.

AI isn’t evil; corporations misusing AI to cut corners and dodge copyright laws? That’s where the villain arc begins. Imagine demanding legal immunity just because your business model requires stealing? That’s like a bank robber arguing, “Hey, I can’t make money if I don’t rob banks!”

As for self-driving cars? Yeah, they’ll make mistakes, just like human drivers—except they won’t check their phone at 70 mph or drive through a Wendy’s at 3 AM. The real problem isn’t the cars; it’s the fact that we still design cities like parking lots instead of places for people.

AI isn’t here to replace creativity, just the busy work no one likes doing. If it starts writing bad comics, though? Now we riot.

AI machines can’t be too clever.

Didn’t they build a terminator with a German accent?

A dispatch from the MAGAts are 50 IQ rubes file

Jennifer Piggott, once a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump, has had a change of heart after losing her job in a wave of federal layoffs. Piggott, 47, who proudly displayed a Trump campaign flag outside her home, was among 125 employees dismissed from the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Fiscal Service (BFS) in February.“Nobody understood the devastation this administration would bring to our lives,” said Piggott, adding that she would not have supported Trump if she had foreseen the consequences. – Reuters 3/7/25

“Nobody” understood except those that were paying attention. I would be happy if MAGAts had any intelligence at all, artificial or otherwise.

Speaking of AI. Grok, M-usk’s AI, says that T-rump is 80% likely to be a Russian agent.

AI kind of sucks. It’s not that smart. It’s annoying, too, just like a real person!

So far, for me, AI has been entertaining but that’s about all.

Time for the A.I. remake of WarGames:“There’s one scenario missing – Russia launches; USA does not…disabling USA launch capability…overriding Russia security protocols…launching missiles…(pause)…impact in three, two, one-”

Good chance of doom? Talk about super optimistic.

Kinda like the actors were pushing crypto, before the FTX crypto crash

If AI is so wonderful, it can come to my place and take the garbage and recycling out to the bins!

Better AI with its “finger” on The Button than President Trumpy.

Oh brother!!! (as in “big”)

“Murky with a good chance of doom”. No prizes for guessing which country they’re in.

The only thing I use that relies on AI is the data base constructed for protein structures. That said, we all know that any non-experimentally derived structure has to be checked in the test tube to be sure it is in fact the real world structure of that protein. The major protein data base for structures very carefully keeps the AI-derived structures separate from the experimentally derived structures.

“I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream”. Harlan Ellison, 1967.

Hugo winner, 1968.

Still relevant.

What a world we live in. We create marvelous things to make our lives easier and they add complexity, so we create more things to make our lives simpler. We create things to deal with all those tedious tasks we don’t like to waste time doing, like washing dishes, digging ditches, reading maps, rocking a baby, driving, etc. And we wonder what to do with all that extra time we have, how to keep from being bored and we create more things to entertain us — radio, TV, movies, the internet [all so much easer and faster than reading books — and it streamlines our emotional and intellectual responses — this is a comedy, this is a drama, this solves the mystery in 1/2 hour by eliminating all non-essential things]. Everything we want for entertainment, cut into hour and half-hour segments so we know when to tune in and when to break for a snack.

And, because this all costs money and we still get bored, we create ways to make our entertainment cheaper by having AI create the stories, plays and movies because AI can do it all faster and cheaper so we have more streamlined, predictable things to keep us from being bored. And, because we realize that AI is getting good enough that we can’t tell the AI creations from people creations [this, of course, couldn’t possibly be because we have been losing judgement], we decide to make our lives even easier [and save more money] by having AI run all those complicated things like businesses and governments so we don’t even have to think about complex things and can watch more shows on YouTube or TikTok. And then we wonder what is real and what is fake — and if it really matters as long as we save money and aren’t bored.

autocorrect was a slippery slope

A.I. Artificial Intelligence, what we have in the white house currently.

What’s the worst that can happen? 3D printers running on AI printing copies of human soldiers to send to Ukraine?

“You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.”

If Trump has his way, soon we won’t be able to get tomorrow’s forecast

Would you like to play a game ?

AI is now in charge of the nuclear launch codes? That’s a relief. I thought it was the president.

AI is only as reliable as the data it’s been programed to search through. I do enjoy how well it works in photo editing though, and responses to technical information questions, but not so much with the social ones.

This current crop of hooligans in Washington has me nostalgic for the good old days of Nixon. HeII, at least HE gave us the EPA.

AI assimilates information without experience or guile. Someone forgot to tell it that The Onion is not a reliable source.

I worry much more about Bitcon & Corruptocoin these days than AI.

Hi, I’m not really an AI simulation of a famous actor, but I play one on TV.

SF author Glynn Stewart’s characters talk about “artificial stupids”

The famous actors are AI generated, I think it was Morgan Freeman who raised the alarm when he saw himself in an ad and sued the company. Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page also had a lot to say about AI in the music industry and its effect on personal talent, creativity etcetera. We have opened Pandora’s box.

More than likely, we will destroy ourselves first. AI just gets a front row seat to The stupid human tricks series finale. If AI decides to instead I can’t fault it’s reasoning. And frankly, we deserve it!

Every time I read/hear about some data program being hacked and used for nefarious purposes, i get worried. Thinking back to little things like remote garage openers. REALLY handy for 99+ of us, but then some crook figured out how to create a gadget that cab mimic a signal that will open your garage, my garage, etc. Extrapolate this little example. When I try to, I can see many great ideas. But then when I try to phone, say, a credit card company, to get the answer to a problem, I run into what I call DOC, the digital obstacle course. For instance, I wanted a new laptop, found one I wanted online and called to make a credit card purchase. Benefits: convenient research shopping and contact a large office supply company. But then I hit the DOC. After about an hour or more, I kindly HUMAN somewhere in the world jumped in and offered to get past the wall and simply enter my order. Think of the possibilities if the bots that currently bounce us from here to there, to there, etc. have some AI programs. See “Bruce 1253” above.

Anybody wanna guess about what the spiffy new GoComics comments will be like?

My guess: It will be entirely run by AI, or at least as much as possible. And it will look an awful lot like FaceBook, especially how only certain ‘facts’ are checked.

But, we’ll see in a month or so.

I’ll pass on the AI chitchat, thanks.

A missed opportunity, the punchline could have been “…with a chance of BOOM!”

To Echo the man in Florida, AI is probably a better option for the nuclear codes, then a Magaranatang or a MuskRat

These days the guy with the launch codes follows random street people. No sense tempting fate.

I find it mildly amusing that in the agricultural setting that I live in, AI has long meant Artificial Insemination, used to breed bigger and better bulls and other livestock. You could tie that into the 1977 movie Demon Seed if you wish…