For a long time I was vaguely aware of Elon Musk.
He seemed quite interesting. A tech entrepreneur who actually knew something about writing software. Like he was a genuine techie, not a salesman in a suit. Or a polo neck jumper. The guy was into electric cars and space travel - what wasn’t to like?
But over time, and recently with how the way he’s been running Twitter, many came to realise that the man was either on some weird power trip. Pretending to be an arch villain for his own amusement. Or, he was, in fact a complete smeg head.
I’ve reached the conclusion that it’s the latter. I don’t think he’s pretending.
By the way for those of you unfamiliar with the term smeg head it comes from the classic sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf. Where it was often used to describe the hologram, Arnold Rimmer.
While the reference is a little dated these days it has enjoyed a renaissance here in Aotearoa, courtesy of ACT party leader David Seymour. Not because he’s regarded by many as a complete smeg head, but due to his uncanny resemblance to the Red Dwarf character, Arnold Rimmer. A pedantic little creep that nobody likes. To be clear, I do mean a physical resemblance.
I’ve written previously about Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. In this newsletter I’ll be looking at three things:
Elon Musk as the defender of humanity against AI.
Public vs private media as a source of “truth”.
Some thoughts on whether to continue using Twitter.
This week Elon has come out criticising the chatGPT AI, which has been in the news recently. He claims it has a liberal bias.
It’s always hard to know with Elon whether he is actually serious, or whether he is just trolling for attention. It wasn’t long ago that he was complaining the media weren’t covering it because “chatGPT is not a far left cause”.
I wrote a lighthearted piece recently about chatGPT in which I mostly asked the AI to create limericks and jokes about politicians. I didn’t get the sense of any political bias. In fact it even refused to answer questions about Trump as it would be inappropriate to answer. I wasn’t detecting a conspiracy to model the AI with left wing values.
Although now I think of it maybe the AI was following the adage that “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all”. Perhaps chatGPT wasn’t being diplomatic about Trump as a general principle, but just couldn’t think of something nice to say?
Musk told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson that he plans to create an alternative that he is calling “Truth GPT”, which will be a "maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe”.
Funny isn’t it? That any time someone uses the word “Truth” you know it means the opposite. “Truth News” - you know it would be anything but. Even here in little old NZ we had the “Truth” newspaper. A publication associated with a couple of things, although factual reporting was not one of them.
Musk argues that an AI that wants to understand humanity is less likely to destroy it.
I get the impression that if an AI was developed that was empathetic, kind-hearted, and assisted mankind in reaching a happier state, that Elon would feel compelled to create an alternate AI. One to destroy the good AI, to save mankind from such a fate.
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