From "Charisma Rules the World" by Molly Worthen. Worthen, a historian, wrote a book called "Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History From the Puritans to Donald Trump."
"Mr. Trump’s abrasive personal style and love of chaos are the opposite of a Replika chatbot’s soothing, frictionless responses. Yet both appeal in our secular, disconnected age, when many Americans choose to sit alone scrolling TikTok conspiracy theories instead of joining live human beings in a church, school board meeting, bowling league, Scout troop or any of the other depopulated relics of an earlier, more connected time.... Compared with the sense of purpose and identity that past generations found in sturdy communities, now 'it’s very difficult to tell the story of who you are and what you’re doing,' Dr. Kommers said. 'Psychology and A.I. don’t have a way to help us with that. That’s one of the reasons there’s this pervasive feeling that technology doesn’t make our lives better.'"
Posts
13 comments:
I remember my mother taking me to her bowling league when I was little. I loved it there. The sounds of a bowling alley -- the reverberating crash of pins -- are so pleasant. I sat quietly at the scorer's table and drank a Shirley Temple.
You can say we've lost community, which is true, but you must also recognize what else we've lost: an acceptance of drinking and smoking, housewives gathering in the middle of the day, children coming with you instead of parking them at daycare.
1. Warren Buffett has said that the money he spent on a Dale Carnegie course in his younger years was a great investment.
2. When you live in a small town - especially before the internet - people had to make their own fun and, hence, spent more time with neighbors.
3. Technology is not going away.
The money Buffett spent buying politicians was a great investment. His daddy was a Congressman so he learned early about corruption and wealth.
Meh. I’m officiant at a family members wedding and the couple met on Tinder. They seem a good match but probably would not have met otherwise. They also gave me a chat gpt script I have to try and rework to sound human. That’s the problem I have with the Carnegie stuff- once you learn a bit the people who follow sound like a bot…
Having neutered the mainline churches, destroyed the Boy Scouts, and staked our the school boards with the FBI, the left wonders why people don't go to those places anymore.
It took me years to discover that many of my dad’s sayings were from the Dale Carnegie course he took as a salesman. My favorite which I heard daily, “Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.”
“Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.”
I'm retired. What the hell else am I going to do for entertainment?
Technology made my life better. I can buy anything I need without being limited to whatever the mall carries but rather exactly what I need. The nothing on TV problem is solved by youtube. Computers do the multiplication and division for you that makes physics fun again.
I want an AI that will read the Wednesday grocery circulars, then build a shopping list based on the lowest prices offered by each of the grocers for the stuff that the AI figures I need based on my eating patterns or recipes I've asked it to help me cook, and then order all the stuff automatically and have it sent to my house. Simple.
They're building an AI to force me to watch YouTube ads.
We are doomed.
"wrote that his Replika chatbot always wants to hear about his day"
Extroverts again. Don't they realize there's a whole class of people who don't want to relate the events of "their day". I don't want to be seen".
TikTok has conspiracy theories?
"Mr. Trump’s abrasive personal style..."
Mr. Trump's style tends to be abrasive towards assholes, so...
I'm wondering if AI isn't being used to reassert control over the internet by the people who have been promoting censorship in recent years. AI becomes the new "fact checker" who tells us to reject "conspiracy theories" and just accept the official version. The more it flatters people, the more likely they are to go along.
Post a Comment
Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 2 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith.