NOTHING TO HIDE? You never know… This IS what Insta, Google, FB, ChatGPT and every other big data SaaS app out there is doing with your personal information:
“The Third Reich was a diagnosis regime, obsessed with sorting the population into categories, cataloging people by race, religion, politics, sexuality, criminality and purported biological, mental and behavioral defects. Nazi officials created massive population indexes that compiled individuals’ medical, financial, educational, criminal and welfare records — even sports club files. (By 1942, approx. ten million Reich citizens had been indexed — 12% of the total population. These files, then, established the grounds for sterilization, deportation and extermination.” https://lnkd.in/d9txaahS)
Now our data is used to market us into buying, and believing (politics, social views and values) with recommendation systems.
Wait! Before you roll your eyes and click off this post, I don’t have any paranormal powers. It isn’t magic that I can read people. I’m not psychic. I can’t glean people’s “energy,” whatever that means, or any of that mystical crap. I am a devout atheist and use the word “devout” with purpose.
What I can do, is tell you what you’re thinking and feeling, generally before you know.
How?
If I’m in physical proximity to you, your body (posture, eye contact…etc.), and facial expressions give me tons of data about what you are experiencing inside your head. We all have this ability to read physicality, though most people hardly pay attention to one another, except on rare occasions. Ever had a blind date? The first second you see your date in person, you can tell if they like how you look.
In-person, or not — over the phone, or web, I ask a LOT of questions. And I listen to your answers. My brain picks up inconsistencies in what you’re saying, telling me you are lying to yourself, and subsequently… me.
The first time my husband (of 26 yrs now) met my mother, she said to him, “My daughter (me) was born old.”
What she meant was, I was born plugged in outside myself. I don’t know why. A genetic anomaly? My senses feel hypercharged. Touch, taste, sound, even vision (clarity in peripheral sight) seems heightened compared to most (and not just by my reckoning). I live outside my own head in the company of others. Watching. Listening, my brain constructing patterns of behavior. OCD? Bipolar? Maybe. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to process the massive amount of information I get from others, and it’s exhausting. And I wish I could shut it down, live like most everyone else.
Sort of…
I’ve picked up patterns in human behavior along the way. Lots! It’s another reason I can tell what you’re feeling, often before you know. I can now predict likely responses to an enormous array of specific stimuli. It’s a fantastic tool for writing believable characters. And understanding what motivates people is equally beneficial for developing marketing campaigns with great response rates.
Yet, I struggle with living plugged in outside myself. It’s emotionally costly. I lose myself while inside others, acutely feel their sadness, their fears, and hopes. I’ve tried to shut my senses down with drugs, prescription, and not. I had an allergic reaction to Prozac that almost killed me, and no reaction at all to weed over time.
I’ve become a recluse for the most part. I avoid crowds. I limit my intimate friendships to very few. I stay plugged into my two kids, my husband, our bratty, but cute Shepard pound-hound, which serves them well, though at times, probably not me so much. I disappear, absorbed in them, their feelings often muddling my own. (To be fair, the dog’s needs are simple. No hidden agendas, no unconscious complexities. She makes her feelings obvious. Thank you, Elly!)
I am grateful and humbled in the extreme by the immense and intense range of feelings we all get to experience being human. However, I’ve felt consumed with anger, fear, isolated, lonely, left wanting of myself and others. Sometimes dark feelings overshadow all lightness, and it feels like the only way out of seeing so much, feeling so much, is to check out.
I get that living is a choice we make, daily. While I’ll continue to choose living, be here for my friends and family as long as I can, I must admit, there is, and has always been, a beckoning to shut it all down, kill the noise in my head, turn off the input. Unplug, for good. I’ll never check though, regardless of how weighted living feels sometimes. As an empath, and an atheist — knowing I’ll eventually cease to exist — my greatest fear is feeling nothing at all. Forever.
Saw #60Minutes last night with Google’s CEO #SundarPichai on the current state of #AI.
The opening bar, the interviewer, #ScottPelley, asked #SissieHsiao, Google’s VP, what Google’s new chatbot, #Bard, is for.
“It’s really here to help you brainstorm ideas to generate content like a speech or a blog post or an email,” she said with confidence, that made my skin crawl.
So, she’s suggesting that we shut off our brains, and rely on more software to construct our personal content. Let’s all stop exercising our neural connectivity to do tasks like writing an email, or posting a blog, like this one, that requires disciplines in linear thinking, quantitative and qualitative reasoning, real news research, and engagement of my MIND to construct. Ms Hsiao is suggesting that doing these tasks that demand, and PROMOTE brain power are worthless wastes of our time, and that Google’s AI can not only do better, but quicker.
So, Ms. Hsiao, where does that leave human brain power, assuming we aren’t all paid the big bucks by Google to fuck up humanity even more than you already do? A hint, honey: STUPID. Do that research Google, and even your software will find recent data that humanity is getting dumber:
Next, Scott Pelley was “speechless” that Bard made up a story from Hemingway’s six-word flash piece.** Mr. Pelley was so overwhelmed, he said, “Bard appears to possess the sum of human knowledge.”
BULLSHIT.
Bard does not know what it FEELS LIKE to be humiliated, admired, disrespected, loved. It does not know what it FEELS LIKE about anything. It does not know compassion, or empathy, regardless of what words it spits out because these things are ACTIONS! Words, like, “Our hearts and prayers are with the victims,” of the latest mass shooting, are meaningless, like so much of AI.
Beyond Bard having no knowledge of FEELINGS, it also does NOT have the “sum of human knowledge,” because Google scraps the internet, and every email exchange, and text conversation you have.
I gave away all my albums when CDs came out, thinking I’d replace them with disks, except I like obscure alternative music, and most of my record collection never made it to CDs. Just like MOST of human knowledge is NOT on the internet, and in our texts. Sorry Google, even YOU don’t have access to MOST OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE, so your #MachineLearning data sets are woefully inaccurate. Which brings me to the pic for this post…
In the picture attached about the New Testament, Scott Pelley asked Google’s chatbot, Bard, to “summarize the New Testament.” In 5 seconds, Bard came back with “The New Testament is the story of God’s love for humanity, which was revealed through Jesus Christ.”
BULLSHIT.
The actual Bible is filled with a jealous, angry, vengeful god (Corinthians 10:22; 2 Corinthians 11:2), who murders millions of people at his whim. Jesus is hateful to Jews (John 8:44) and others. He tells parables in which beatings, and even killings, of household slaves are affirmed as ‘disciplinary measures’ (Luke 12:45-47). Revelations, the last chapter in the New Testament, tells of God, and Jesus inflicting the “punishment of eternal destruction,” (2 Thessalonians 1:5-10) on anyone who doesn’t agree with, or believe in them. Strip away blind faith, this is called TOTALITARIANISM.
So why did Google’s Bard call the New Testament a “story of God’s love for humanity?” My human interpretation of the New Testament is, “The New Testament is a collection of violent stories that center around two jealous, angry narcissists who inflicted hardships, loss, plagues, and other forms of gruesome violence on humans.”
Google’s AI engine is trained on ALL THE DATA ON THE INTERNET, and your texts, and your emails, and everything you do on your phones, and ‘smart’ devices. This includes digital marketing—all those annoying ads—but also what people are saying, via texts, and posts, and blogs…etc., about any given subject. At least 80+%† of the U.S. identify as religious, or spiritual. Christianity alone touts 64% of the U.S. as believers, and, by far, puts out the most advertising. Christian marketing is close to a trillion-dollar a year industry.
Bard is a combination of Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Deep Learning…etc, algorithms. That’s it. Garbage scraped from the internet and into the AI software, like Christian advertising, and people chatting up their spiritual beliefs, leaders, and groups, led Bard to spew Garbage Out—i.e. its positive, loving spin on the New Testament—even though the book itself, well… isn’t.
Since 99.999%…etc. of all that data Google’s collecting confirms both Bibles are good, righteous, and loving, Bard LEARNS that these books are, in FACT, what most everyone says they are. Google’s AI WEIGHTS the importance of data by consensus, NOT TRUTH, or even FACTS. Truth by majority consensus, like Germans who became Nazis, or religious believers convinced their religion is the only ‘truth.’ If only 30% of data collected on Christianity, for example, were positive, Bart would likely not have come up with the nonsense it did. If Scott Pelley hadn’t been religious himself, and questioned Bard’s translation of the New Testament, or the CEO of Google had pointed out that their AI is a WEIGHTING SYSTEM, where it places more ‘value’ on the masses than the FACTS, perhaps those of you who’ve read this far will get how dangerous these continuing developments in AI really are.
Another question from Scott Pelley: “Is Bard safe for society?”
Sundar Pichai: “I THINK so…”
—
**Human Idiocracy:
How many of you remember (or ever learned) phone numbers, now that you have them on speed dial. (Why does it matter? Try calling your kid in an emergency without your contacts list).
Who remembers, without the help of Google Maps, how to get to a place you’ve only been to once? Or even 20 times? For that matter, which of you even knows how to read a real map?
How many of you even know that the “news,” and information you’re getting through Google (or any) Search is only a fraction of what is on the internet, and worse, it is a reflection of how YOU think, delivered to you via recommendation engines that reinforce your own perspective? Essentially rec engines make you THINK you’re smart, but only make you dumber by serving up no other perspective than your own.
**Bard’s AI story, prompted from the words of Hemingway’s 6-word tale: “For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn,” missed the subtext of Hemmingway’s words entirely. No one buys baby shoes for a child yet to be born, which Google’s AI story suggests. Hemingway’s story, (and the original he stole it from), is about the loss of a baby already born. Infants get booties. Baby’s get shoes. So, it’s likely the baby was a year or more in age. Bard missed all of this completely, and made up a story virtually unrelated to Heminway’s 6-word tale.
† People who identify as nonreligious, but claim to be spiritual, are known as “NONES”.
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Over 500,000 startups launch in the U.S. annually. More than 90% fail from bad to no marketing.
Marketing is NOT advertising!Marketing any product or service BEGINS (or should) in product development of the IDEA. Running ads through Google or on Insta, to print and viral campaigns only happens after your IDEA has been validated—productized—as a marketable offering of value.
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Creative/Art Director Jeri Cafesin, inspired by over two decades marketing seed startups to Fortune 500s, brings practical, doable, lean Marketing PRACTICE to Silicon Valley. A MarCom specialist for over two decades, and founder of IPPglobal.org—Lean Marketing Workshops for Entrepreneurs—her marketing strategies and campaigns have helped build thriving companies that realize sustained business growth.
Likely because your mother taught you to—marketing to you throughout your formative years the benefits of belief:
Community
Solace
Salvation
Your beliefs were marketed to you through holiday celebrations, and maybe Sunday school and prayer. Even if mom, and/or your dad, didn’t directly push their beliefs onto you, they likely sold your religion to you via example: crossing themselves when hopeful; saying (and believing) “thank god,” instead of giving the credit to the person or people who brought about whatever they were thankful for.
Religion is a PRODUCT. Always has been—a way for the few in power to control the masses. Christians, Jews, Muslims, all major religions have become successful, thriving businesses through MARKETING…
jcafesin.com 