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ACCORDING TO LIZ - The era of A.I. propaganda is here — and Trump is not only an enthusiastic participant; he is also hedonistically leading the charge to perdition.
He has posted A.I. fabrications dozens of times on his (un)Truth Social platform:
- the arrest of Barack Obama in the Oval Office and subsequent incarceration in an orange jumpsuit, bizarrely after a clip of Biden saying “no one is above the law”
- dressed up as the Catholic pontiff at a time when people around the globe were mourning the passing of Pope Francis
- standing in a business suit atop the Alps beside the Canadian flag bearing down on his whim of Canada as the 51st state
- wearing a crown in a fighter jet with the tail number “King Trump” dumping sewage on No Kings protesters while Top Gun’s “Danger Zone” theme song blasts
He consistently uses fake imagery to attack political rivals and denigrate those who have popped his ego-bubble in the past.
He uses A.I. to enhance his self-image as lord of the land, celebrating his administration’s purported successes and flinging falsehoods so fast people offers can’t dodge all the deceptions.
His fans revel in his signature no-holds-barred gleeful style while many other Americans (and people around the world) frown on his puerile and ignobly unpresidential behavior.
A child’s crude graffiti, albeit glossied up by technical tools, defacing the public piazza of the internet, and certainly not appropriate for communicating to his subjects despite claims to the contrary by sycophantic flatterers. All lies and ego.
Unfortunately too reminiscent of his 2016 campaign, the more outrageous the image or video – a tacky TikTok dance with Elon Musk, the overtly-over-optimistic acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize, or calling Bloomberg's Catherine Lucey “piggy” – the more likely it is to go viral.
As a Trump extremist and head of a guerrilla messaging group posted on X: “The truth no longer matters, all you have to do is go viral.” Leaving the MAGA-mob ecstatic, and feeding Full-of-Himself’s own ego.
An addiction that has become front and center to his presidency, allowing serious considerations to founder, or be kidnapped by the even more incompetent toadies with whom he has filled his court.
Seemingly indifferent to the fact that most Republican officials only kowtow to ensure the peevish Mar-a-Lago potentate doesn’t run a more sycophantic loyalist against them in the next primaries, while both fuel carve-outs for their personal fiefdoms.
Ron DeSantis argued in the New York Times that if people want to know why the national debt continues to balloon “look no further than politicians singularly focused on spending your tax dollars in ways that bolster their chances of re-election.”
Normalizing political propaganda as info-tainment, driving division, and further aggravating the news media’s conflicting reports is a danger to democracy. Too many Americans are dazed and confused by competing stories and don’t have the acuity mechanisms in place to determine what is real or what is fake and what is something in between.
Whether to accept at face value a position that coincides with their existing beliefs or to reject out of hand one that is not. Or to dig deeper, to question.
So long as putative politicians are successful in entertaining the hoi polloi, they deflect the honest questions that might hold them accountable.
Ones that might resuscitate democracy, equality, and freedom.
But to preserve that democracy, guardrails for responsible A.I. development and use must be established and enforced.
And the American educational system must be radically improved to inculcate real skills of analysis and judgement. To empower people to think for themselves, not to parrot social media influencers’ opinions masquerading as facts, not just to look up answers online, not to plagiarize A.I. to craft a better essay.
To make Americans a nation of learners again, of people who are not just obedient receptors and regurgitators of dumbed-down information but who seek reasons and have a powerful desire to analyze and solve problems, to see patterns and search out causes, and to make connections between different bits of information, to weave what they learn into a worldview giving them and others the opportunity to improve quality of life for everybody.
Today’s A.I.-enhanced memes may appear laughably fake to most and, at only few-seconds, the clips generated can hardly bend the needle of mass opinion… but what about tomorrow?
Today we live and learn in a more visual universe where the power of pictures and emotionally-inspiring soundtracks can communicate more effectively than the spoken or written word.
As the power of A.I. increases and its quality of production exponentially improves, the ability for its illusions to confuse the populace will start to overpower flesh-and-blood politicians, ones who hold human concerns at heart.
What is critical is that all A.I. development and the images it produces be maintained within an ethical and moral framework based on human needs not corporate profits.
A crucial concern was identified as early as September 2023 when a letter issued in by the National Association of Attorneys General called on Congress to fast-track legislation to protect children from technology being developed and disseminated based on quick profits and without adequate oversight or guardrails.
Technology can already identify someone’s location, mimic their voice, and generate deepfakes. Most disturbingly, A.I. is being used to a greater and greater extent to act in locus parentis not only for adult supervisors but also, in an increasingly online life, as friends, confidants and lovers.
The Attorneys General pinpointed that, despite ramping up prosecution of internet exploitation of children, the rapid expansion of A.I. technology was “creating a new frontier for abuse” that was ballooning beneath the radar of deliberative legislation.
So much so that more nimble state legislatures were already implementing a patchwork of protections for young people in their jurisdictions.
Last spring, Toadies in Congress tried to slip a poison pill for state autonomy into the Bastardized Budget Bill that would repay the techie overlords whose multi-millions helped heave Trump into the White House.
The Republican-dominated House tried – and luckily failed – to eviscerate ALL existing and future regulation of the industry for a period of ten years by adding a Section 43201(c) the “Artificial Intelligence and Information Technology Modernization Initiative: Moratorium” to the budget that would have mandated:
“…no State or political subdivision thereof may enforce any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems during the 10-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act.”
Clearly inserted to protect the powerful Big Tech princes who fawned over Trump in the wake of his election, specifying in the proposed language that “the primary purpose and effect of [the moratorium] is to remove legal impediments to, or facilitate the deployment or operation of, an artificial intelligence model, artificial intelligence system, or automated decision system.”
Blocking any and all restrictions on an already out-of-control industry for at least a decade and endangering humanity for the benefit of all who envisaged giddy profits from the explosion of the industry. Preferably with the fewest of restrictions.
Especially the sitting president who with the support of A.I. and crypto czar, David Sacks, and friends is raking in money from his own ignoble fascination with cryptocurrency.
Now, oops, once again His Royal Selfishness is attacking state legislation that protects constituents.
Once more putting rule by fiat above democratic process, report of a proposed draft executive order emerged last week that would direct Handmaiden and Attorney General Pam Bondi to create an A.I. Litigation Task Force to strike down existing laws and bar all levels of government from passing a slew of tech protections.
Everything from safeguarding children from malevolent chatbot companions and banning landlords from using rent-setting algorithms to collude on pushing up prices. Bulldozing state efforts to tackle deep fakes, program-infected biases, continued use of patently faulty algorithms, and the escalation of privacy violations and identity theft.
Even though the manufacturers themselves admit fallibility – Google concedes its newest model makes mistakes 28 percent of the time – why should that stop them from profiting, American lives and health be damned!
Even though the industry is pushing its products as tools designed to summarize information and automate analysis, the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences reports that up to 73 percent of apparently rational answers from chatbots are inaccurate.
Or, as reported in a different study, at a 45 percent error rate for A.I. responses based on news articles, the potential consequences to human understanding of what is happening in the world are frightening.
Further accelerating A.I. abuses, reinforced by media repetition.
Spreading more visual lies.
(Liz Amsden is a former Angeleno now living in Vermont and a regular CityWatch contributor. She writes on issues she’s passionate about, including social justice, government accountability, and community empowerment. Liz brings a sharp, activist voice to her commentary and continues to engage with Los Angeles civic affairs from afar. She can be reached at [email protected].)
