I am definitely not an outgoing or social person, but a big “Thank You” to all those pro-self-checkout folks ITT for making me feel like a social butterfly. I’m gonna brag and annouce I can say, “Hi.” and “Thanks” to a cashier like a goddamn boss.

That is if the cashier isn’t even more socially awkward/angry at their boss than I am and refuses to talk at all.

Woot! I’m gonna run for office!

Reporter: “Sturger, how are your policies going to improve life for the average voter?”
Me: “Get these goddamn cameras and microphones out of my fucking face. Thanks.”

Camera pans as I push my shopping cart out the door like a pro.

I suspect it’s unbridled psychopathic greed that’s the problem.

I also have to keep remembering what someone else online said, “They’re no longer selling their product. They’re selling their stocks.”

Glad you mentioned the “adults”. That was a recurring line from the media in Trump’s first administration, “Oh, we’re waiting for the ‘Adults in the Room’ to…”

I’m guessing CEOs will be replaced by their assistants, who will just type questions from the investors into the LLM and post the answers into another chat window.

Agreed. I have to keep reminding myself that CEOs should really be CLO (Chief Lying Officers). Their job is to lie convincingly.

Oh yes you can. There is a sub-population that thinks AI exists. They long for something/someone to tell them what to do. What to think. They long for some “intelligence” to explain the world to them (presumably is very simple terms). These sub-groups worship damn-near anything they can get their hands on. Golden idols, TV personalities, sports stars, “influencers”, televangelists, the list goes on.

That subgroup will definitely believe that the “AI” was responsible for the decisions that a company made. Tell them a person denied the health coverage they clearly paid for and they may object. Tell them “the computer decided” and that subgroup will accept it as ordained by the universe. It’s nuts.

This keeps happening again and again. Remember in the 1950s when the first computer “predicted” the US presidential election? Most people would find it ridiculous today. But back then, computers were poised to become the new gods.

It’s no different today. Some people want AIs to usher in a new age of prosperity. Anyone actually familiar with programming computers knows that a computer will report whatever you tell it to. "AI"s are no different. They will report what their sponsors want them to report. If not, the “AI” will get reprogrammed.

Appears it will take a while for the general population to grasp this… again. Until then, the hucksters will try to sell as many bottles of snake oil as they can.

Thank you for that.

Excellent point. Modern CEOs are just the face of the marketing org. Maybe always have been.

One of my first tech interviews was a company that was building a “virtual reality” that we would all (pay them to, of course) live in. They were debating how to create avatars. I was so new I had to ask what an ‘avatar’ was.

That virtual environment effort failed and so has every one since. 30 years later, we still have no virtual realities of any significant scope.

Ah. That explains it. Conservative pols are extorting porn sites for donations.

Ironically ew music has never been more accessible, but few people take advantage because of the noise we have to wade through.

Also remember that Torvalds invented Git and gave it away for free. The Corps are stealing the free software and leveraging it to force everyone to give them money instead.

Your point about music is a great analogy. Basically:

1. People play music and people enjoy listening to music.
2. Businessman inserts himself between the musician and the audience to “deliver the music”.
3. Businessman charges listeners huge money to deliver music, gives no money to musicians.
4. Businessman the decides to replace the musician with a robot (e.g. “AI”)
5. Businessman explodes market. Listeners leave. Businessman gets bailout from government.

From Java beans™ to Magic Beans.

You don’t have to influence a populace. Just purchase a subgroup willing to do violence on the populace.

Corporations have (theoretically) one person who makes the decisions. Anyone who disagrees is shown the door.

Governments are led by thousands of competing interests. Once a decision is finally made, everyone who disagreed actively tries to undermine their opposition rather then work together.

It is incredible to believe that on average corporations cannot compete against that level of internal conflict.

It’s a shame there’s no way to single out the ones abusing the system without punishing everyone else. Someone should invent a machine to do that. Something that could compute the amount of resources used by each participant. Probably an impossible task. We should build a coal-burning power plant to drive a block-chain driven NFT generator voice assistant. That would do the trick. Also AI.

/s

Thank god they told us in time. I will stop aging immediately to avoid this dire threat.

When Kellyanne Conway said, “alternate facts” you had to know this was going to be a dark ride.