Generative Ai is dangerous, Just look at a Twitter feed.

I mean it. There are lots of Twitter accounts presenting some interesting, and clearly AI manipulated,  photos and movies. These same accounts are presenting these photos and movies as “evidence” of various conspiracy theories. 

There’s one video that “shows” someone cutting what appears to be stone and claiming that the mineral band being cut is fossilized blood of a giant. Thereby proving that giants, (Godzilla sized), existed in the past. I lost interest after that it was a lot of blah, blah, blah, from a monotone computer generated voice.

The shape of the material in the video appeared to be more treelike, the saw being used was similar in appearance to a saw I’ve seen used in logging operations to cut logs to a uniform size prior to loading them onto a transport truck. The saw moved far too fast to be cutting stone. 

There’s another montage of “Ancient” sites that looks like really old black & white photos. The video provocatively claims that governments around the world are hiding “The Truth” from us all. Some of the photos are of buildings or sites that I have seen before with clever additions that look like variations of the “Stargate”, from the movie of the same name. This montage of still photos interestingly has film artifacts, (dust, debris, voids in the emulsion, etc.) Why would a new video montage of “Old” still black & white photos have film artifacts throughout it? Why would the video be jumpy as though it was taken in motion when the subject is a still photo? Why do so many of these photos look as though the scale of the objects shown has been manipulated to make the object appear larger than the “Humans” in frame?

Don’t get me wrong, the image manipulation is very cleaver and quite good. With time, I believe that I have the tools on this computer to learn to manipulate images in a similar fashion. The AI can simply do that kind of manipulation faster and easier.

Therein lies the danger. 

There are a lot of people whose grip on reality is tenuous enough without having their reality disrupted by images that must be looked at critically to determine if they’re real or not.

There are tons of people who look at the incoming flood of data from sites like, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and whatever other social media, as the absolute truth.

These videos are all come ons, they’re supposed to get the gullible to go to a web site to “donate” so the purveyors of these “Hidden Truths” can continue their good work uncovering what’s been hidden from the world. With Twitter and Instagram  subscription models they’re even able to make money just from folks interacting with their wacky videos.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m from the P.T. Barnum school of capitalism. I simply wish I’d thought of it first.

I also want to believe that there are aliens, or unexplained things beyond the mundane scratching and scurrying of the insane apes on this planet.

That’s what these videos and sites capitalize on…

The human need to believe that there is something bigger, better, and more majestic than ourselves.

Religions around the world are based on this need. The Catholic Church in particular has been quite good at monetizing the human need to believe, especially if the rumors about the wealth contained in Vatican City are true.

There have also been a number of “Free Energy” videos recently. These are laughable until you look at the account’s follower numbers. Then you think, “How are that many people, this dumb?” Entropy always wins.

These videos typically show what is clearly the armature from a DC motor. Probably taken from a toy. The windings look like they’ve been done by machine. Anyway the video is often a bit jiggly, (why are a lot of these videos are jiggly? To add / imply excitement at “discovery”?) , but shows the armature mounted such that it can spin freely. There are two wires trailing out of frame, the ends of the wires that are visible, are laid against the contacts of the armature. An LED or LED strip sitting next to the armature, is presumably connected directly.

The scam is that you see two human hands bringing curved magnets (probably from the original casing of the motor) near the armature, and it miraculously begins spinning. But the second miracle is that the LED lights up. Ohhhh Ahhhhh. It’s magic!

No it’s a DC motor. The LED is either being powered by another power source or is in series with whatever is providing power to the armature itself. The coils on the armature create a magnetic field when current is applied. This field is attracted to the fixed magnets the human is holding, causing rotation of the armature. The spacing of the contact pads on the armature causes the coils to be energized and de energized as the armature rotates. So what you have is temporary electromagnetic fields sequentially being attracted to the fixed magnets being held nearby. 

This is not magic. It’s not free energy. It’s science. Worse, it’s simple well known science. 

The account directs you to a ‘free energy” site where you can subscribe, or buy “Plans” for your own free energy generator to experiment with.

Maybe I’m the odd ball. But I was doing shit like this in my bedroom, in a flyover redneck state, at around the time of the Cuban Missile crisis. (Okay perhaps a little later than the actual crisis.) The point is, when my toys broke, I took them apart to see if I could fix them, or to figure out how they worked. I was learning by doing.

Later in school, I was fortunate enough to attend schools with robust science curriculums and since those schools didn’t look or act like prisons, we could bring things from home to augment science classes.

Apparently these days the basics of science are not being taught in school. Which leads to at least one, maybe several generations of gullible rubes, ripe for the P.T. Barnum treatment.

Two of my favorite Barnum quotes are:

“Many people are gullible, and we can expect this to continue.” – P. T. Barnum

“There is a fool born every minute” – P. T. Barnum

The common thread is that there are people making money from other stupid people. That has been true for as long as there’ve been people and money.

My concern is that people are geared to believe what they see.

Videos have become so easy to make, Generative AI has become commonplace and easy to use. When you factor these things together you’re begging for a new techno dark ages.

All the knowledge of humanity will be available on the internet instantly.

But it’s mixed in with absolute garbage. And a lot of people don’t have the reasoning capacity or facts to separate the truth from the fiction or even to resolve conflicting information using simple logic.

I seriously wonder if, no, when the powers that be unleash disease X as the WEF and WHO dubbed the next pandemic, how gullible people might be.

I could see a scenario like this, on so called “Truth” websites generated by AI using compelling images and fear.


[WARNING! DO NOT DO THIS! THE SCENARIO BELOW IS FOR ILLUSTRATIVE PURPOSES ONLY]

A Montage of ambulances and fires in a generic city. Headline in the montage, “Disease X Ravages Country, Film at 11:00″

Then images of sick people on ventilators, skin and bones images from the AIDS crisis being portrayed as happening now,  Headline “They’re hiding the truth, they want you to die. We have the cure. Discovered by German scientists in World War I and used to cure diseases running rampant among soldiers in the trenches, this cure can save your family.”
A web address pops up on the video. “With just two chemicals likely already in your house you can protect your family and be safe.”

The web site asks for a one time payment of $29.95 for instructions on how to be safe.

The “Cure” is this. Duct Tape your doors and windows shut. Put on a surgical mask to protect yourself during the “Home Sterilization process”. Then mix Bleach and Ammonia in every sink and toilet in your house. 

The instructions inform you that any discomfort you feel is the invisible mist seeking out and killing Disease X, if you feel discomfort, it means you’re infected and purchased the cure to the disease just in time. Good Job! That $29.95 is money well spent, you’ve saved your family.


A person from my generation wouldn’t do this. Even if we don’t remember why we were taught not to do this. I was taught this as part of a science class in elementary school. I vaguely recall perhaps some flammability? I’m not even sure what the gas produced is. I want to say Hydrogen Chloride but it’s been too long… I don’t remember clearly. I only remember that the combination produces a poisonous gas. Which in an enclosed space is deadly.

I remember science classes being fun because where practical, the principals were demonstrated. There was always a lit bunsen burner in my classes.

These days, with the generations after mine, I don’t honestly know if they’d have the safety protocols in their heads to say, “Uh Nope! That’s a really bad idea.”.

If a convincing AI video said it was safe and effective, or worse if the generative AI used a trusted human face and voice to provide instructions, then people without grounding in basic science, who are fearful and gullible, could be convinced to do something really dangerous.

The scenario above hits on three points in human decision making.

Fear, desire to believe (hope), and payment (if I purchased it, it must have value.) There’s an optional fourth point. Mistrust. 

People are far more likely to believe that the government, the elites, or the powers that be, are either withholding information OR that everything said by this group is 100% factual. We saw this in COVID. There were two very clear camps and questioning the dogma of one of those camps was heresy of the highest order.

For god sake, there are still loads of people in Seattle and Portland running around wearing masks.

That’s the power of belief.

I think generative AI is really dangerous because of all of the above. Plus this one more thing. Humans seem to need to believe that computers are infallible oracles of truth.

That need to believe our creations are superior to the minds that created them, can so easily be manipulated it terrifies me.

AI has the potential to help, in so many ways. The trouble is, in the wrong hands AI can cause great harm and I think even destroy what we know.

Like all tools AI is neither good or bad. That is up to the user of the tool. History however, suggests that AI, particularly generative AI will be used for harm.

If you thought random wikipedia edits were annoying, you haven’t seen anything yet.

Something I’ve been considering and was recently asked about.

Voting integrity.

It’s been an issue for literally decades. In the past 15 or 20 years it’s become more of an issue. 

There was a time when the only way to screw with an election was to stuff the ballot box with paper.

With the adoption of electronic voting machines, suddenly paper ballots weren’t that big a deal because electronics are really good at duplicating. 

What happens if you select a ballot with desired characteristics and tell and electronic voting machine to triple the count of the desired ballots. In a way, that would be the hardest malfunction to refute if original paper ballots weren’t available. How do investigators separate fiction from reality.

Let’s assume that I wanted to screw the pooch on a free and fair election. I’d create a random number generator, then I’d set that to collapse and regenerate at random intervals.. The random number would be the length of time that the voting machine was going to duplicate ballots for a particular candidate or select group of candidates.

Because the duplication wouldn’t be the same number every time, and the duplication would be happening at random intervals it would require a complete paper audit to get a real count on a single machine.

Now think what it would be like to have thousands of machines randomly duplicating a random number of ballots. From a software test perspective, these kinds of software glitches were maddening to figure out. 

Believe it or not, it’s possible for software to have something like I’ve described built in by accident. People like me, used to be what stood between the software you used and enjoyed, and software that made you crazy.

If someone were to intentionally program something like this into the voting machines, you’d have a suspicion the vote was being monkeyed with, but proving that assertion would be really difficult without a hand count.

Here’s another nasty thought about this kind of cheating. Because there isn’t any consistency it could be interpreted as spurious (and defined as well within the margin of error,)  causing courts to decide the plaintiff / candidate has “No Standing”.

Hmmm. 


So the question is, how do you ensure that there are no shenanigans in voting?

Well, you can bring technology to the rescue. But that is I think an incomplete solution and lends itself to the very shenanigans you’re trying to stop.

You could use a blockchain solution. You could use a simpler encryption. You could probably use just a simple CRC.

The problem as I see it, isn’t so much the encryption mechanism, the problem tracks back to one vote, one person. That implies that every State would have to  implement voter ID.

Once you implement Voter ID then something like a bunch of fields can be used to create a long string of data as a kind of header.

FNAMELNAMESTREETADDRESSAPTCITYSTATEZIPVOTERIDNUMBER 

464E414D454C4E414D45535452454554414444524553534150544349545953544154455A4950564F54455249444E554D424552C2A0 0x85BB9A40

464E414D454C4E414D45535452454554414444524553534150544349545953544154455A4950564F54455249444E554D424552B2A0 0xAA84E3B6

If you covert that data to numeric equivalents you’ve now got a string of numbers that can have a CRC value calculated.

In the example above, the portion of the data that starts 0x is the CRC. You’ll notice that they’re different. That difference is caused by 1 character being changed. The example was created from the text above the hexadecimal numbers.

Next, is the block of data that contains the actual voter selections. Again, convert this data to a kind of packet. The packet could be as long as needed.

For the sake of argument assume that the entire ballot is represented by binary numbers.

Candidate for office 1

Office – 00000001

Candidate

X – 001

Y – 010

Z – 011

Gives you 0000000100000011 assuming a vote for candidate Z.

Office 2

Office – 00000010

Candidate

X – 001

Y – 010

Z – 011

Gives you 0000001000000010 assuming a vote for candidate Y.

All this results in a string of numbers 00000001000000110000001000000010 that can be CRCed and again if one number is changed the CRC value won’t match. Indicating either tampering or a glitch.

Using a system like this you could easily have 255 issues/offices on one ballot. It’s equally possible to have 255 candidates per issue. This is just using 8 bits “0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0”. If necessary, expansion to 16 bits is easily done.

It’s even possible to have one or more selections to a point. It’s possible to build in checks that invalidate multiple selections per office where only one selection is allowed. In the case of a rejected ballot, you needed review the entire ballot, simply the office where a stray pencil mark may happen.

For the sake of consistency it’s probably best to convert the binary to Hex

The result would look like 01030202 0x4786058E again the 0x is the CRC. 

Then finally, encode the date time, and location the vote was cast. To do this use epoch time. Epoch time is a number that computers use to calculate time internally. Since computers don’t think in Feb 27, 2024 there’s a numeric constant that’s being incremented every second. The starting date is Jan 1, 1970. Now you know why your devices will sometimes reset to that date when they lose power. Nothing magical about it, it’s just an arbitrary date that everybody agreed upon. So the number below represents the number of seconds elapsed since Midnight, Jan 1, 1970 followed by the CRC.

1709058569 0x3A404184

What I’m building here is modeled after a network packet. 

The object in the preamble it’s going to be unique. The vote data might be the same across 1000s of people is added as part of a unique yet retrievable voter record and the date/time, voting location ensures that only the first vote is valid.

If all of these fields were just CRCed. Then any variation or alteration of the data would show up. A CRC mismatch would indicate that the data has been tampered with. If more complex encryption or block chain was used, the security would increase. The question is, do we need that level of security?

Under this off the cuff system, each vote would be a singular event. There would be only one valid vote, any copies would be ignored. The data packet would look something like this:

464E414D454C4E414D45535452454554414444524553534150544349545953544154455A4950564F54455249444E554D424552C2A00x85BB9A40010302020x4786058E17090585690x3A404184

And it would be unique per person. 

Much the same process occurs in a computer network. Packets originate from a specific computer and even specific applications. The origination address makes certain that any response is returned to the proper computer and application. The data block is a defined size, and the time increment makes sure that individual packets can be reassembled into coherent data even if the data is received out of sequence.

There are CRC’s run on the data when it’s transmitted and again on the receiving system. If the CRC fails, the data packet is requested to be sent again.

The trouble is, no matter what system is implemented. Without voter ID in all 50 states the system falls down. 

A system like this also requires that no-one can register and vote on the same day. Registering and voting on the same day is INSANE and ripe for abuse. Everyone knows that, yet there are states that allow it.

Let’s be honest here, do we really want people voting who can’t make enough of a plan to register to vote 2 or 3 months in advance of an election? Voting is kind of like gun ownership, maybe we need a 21 day waiting period!

Another problem with a system as I’ve described is making the data unique to an individual. This begs the question of who votes? Do you allow only United States citizens the right to vote, or do you allow everyone in the country the right to vote? I’m a big believer that only United States citizens should be allowed to vote. I might consider flexibility for those people who are several years along the naturalized citizen pathway.

Voting rights could be granted as a milestone during the naturalization process. I’m aware that often a person working toward citizenship is better informed about this country and our laws than a citizen born here. I’m counting on it, and that the reasons a person chose to come to this country, then chose to work to become a citizen are reasons that will inform their voting choices. The idea is that whatever they left behind does not become the law of this land.

What does this have to do with a voting system as I’ve proposed? It’s about adding another data field that helps with making each vote a unique event.

What I’ve described is just a basic thumbnail sketch of a system. Application of encryption adds more security, and perhaps with a public key / private key scheme, tampering or whatever could be stopped. But everyone would have to have a public/private key pair. Using blockchain adds the same level of complexity. Everyone would have to have something like a blockchain account. How do you manage that?

One way would be to use the “smart” functionality of our passports and encode a key pair or blockchain ID into that chip. Then presenting the passport would unlock the voting process for the individual.

I’ve long been a proponent of every single citizen having a passport. I’ve got a passport and a passport card. I wouldn’t be opposed to presenting a passport, and my driver’s license at a polling place. I wouldn’t mind having to use my thumbprint next to my signature on the ballot, or to access the polling place, or activate a voting machine.

My Mother thinks I’m some kind of fascist for thinking any of the above is okay. She parrots that tired old BS the Democrat party has been peddling for years. “Not Everyone can get an ID. They’re poor, they may not have a birth certificate, it’s tough to navigate the complexities of getting an ID.” 

The last time we spoke about this issue, I asked her, “Okay Mom, then how do these people have bank accounts, buy cars, apply for FEMA when a tornado destroys their trailer park, or apply for welfare? They have to have ID for all of those things.”

I suggested that while my Mother was one of the least racist people I know, she was sounding a whole lot like an old racist Dixiecrat waiting on the sheets to dry for the cross burning that night.

That ended the conversation. 

I’d even be totally willing for any U.S. Citizen to be able to obtain taxpayer funded verified ID. If money wasn’t a roadblock to the poor, then implementation of national voter ID should be a breeze. 

Except… the pushback for a national ID system is enormous and it comes from some of the oddest places.

One of the funniest things I’ve ever participated in was a family reunion discussion that found atheist democrats and religious republicans startled because they both were against national voter ID.

The religious group called it the number of the beast and a sign of the end times. The atheists called it a horrific invasion of privacy and the first step toward a Nazi fascist state.

I was sitting there watching the show, enjoying my beer. 

After both sides appeared to have exhausted themselves, I pointed out that unless they’d moved from one state to another, their driver’s license number was already an ID number that hadn’t changed since they were 16 years old. How big a leap is it to have the feds just used that number as a national ID?

Then I pulled another beer from the cooler.

I’m sometimes an evil fucker. The other half glared at me trying to act angry, then he started chuckling and we both enjoyed the rest of the show.

I can see some of my über liberal friends saying, “what about those people who can’t get to a polling place?” Well, if we have national ID then the polling place can be taken to those people. Their ID grants access to a digital polling pad that’s portable and records their biometrics and their ballot. That pad gets physically plugged into a voting tabulator which verifies the records and either tallies the vote or kicks it out because it’s invalid. 

That puts an end to dead people voting. When you die, your ID along with your credit cards, and bank accounts are closed or at least locked and unusable.

As an aside, when you die… the Social Security Administration is informed pretty damn quick. They in turn send out some kind of notice to the banks and credit card folks. So if one of your loved ones dies, don’t fall for the scumbag banks trying to bully payments out of you. Especially if your name isn’t on the card or line of credit.

Don’t fall for the creditors claiming they weren’t notified of the death. They absolutely had access to that information. It’s probably the one time the misuse of our Social Security Account Numbers works in our favor.What those fuckers are counting on is that in your grief you’ll reaffirm on the line of credit by paying or talking to them about it. If you acknowledge the debt they can fuck you.

Note, if the account, card, or line of credit has your name on it, sorry bucko, you’re still on the hook.

Have you ever really thought about this? Someone asking for your social security number is pretty much the same as them asking for your checking account number or debit card number. So why does the medical system, or banking, or insurance provider, or utility company need your social security number? 

You know why? It’s a unique identifier, kind of like a national ID number. Yeah… Think about that for a minute!

How about this? Ask me for my passport number. It’s more secure, has a photograph of me, and with the new chipped versions they’re going to be really hard to duplicate.

Just a thought…

Is It just me? People seem a lot grumpier after the SOTU address.

Honestly, I thought folks would calm down. But it appears the SOTU address didn’t sit well with a lot more people than the die hard Trump folks.

The GOP response speech was not good. I have no doubt that Katie Britt’s heart is in the right place, but her handlers did her a disservice by telling her to be hyper emotional. She should have stuck to just the facts and direct rebuttal of Biden’s non-sequiturs.

Hell, if she’d called him a liar on national television and backed up her assertions, the nation would have rallied around her and the GOP regardless of how ‘green’ she is as a statesman.

It would have been the first time in the Biden administration that someone spoke that particular truth to power.

Joe Biden is a fucking liar! He always has been. That leopard hasn’t changed its spots one iota over the 40 years the jackass from Delaware has been lying, cheating, and stealing, from the American People.

I’m not angry about it, I’ve thought Biden was a crook since 2020. So none of this is new to my thinking. I’m thankful that I may never have to listen to Joe Biden speak again after November.

That would be a very good thing for me personally. I hated listening to Obama speak, and don’t get me started on Bush! But Biden is by far the worst President in my lifetime, hearing him speak sets my teeth on edge.

When I say that, it’s kind of impressive. That rogues gallery includes, Nixon, Carter, Clinton, Bush 1, Bush the 2nd, and Obama.

I’ll say this, Biden is the most divisive President I’ve ever seen. 

A year or two ago, I had passion in my distaste for Biden. Now, not so much. I feel like entropy is winning as it always must.

The quality of presidents has been declining through the years. Each of my top 6 Presidents has been plagued by scandal one way or another. Even Reagan, who is not in my top 6 list, kind of screwed the Gay community during the AIDS epidemic. Eventually he came around, but only when there was nothing left to lose.

My point is, every single one of these Presidents was able to at least lie their way through a State of the Union and end it with the people at home not feeling like they’d just been dragged to the woodshed by grandpa. We didn’t feel emotionally harangued like we’d done something wrong and didn’t deserve the air we breathed.

Yet all of Biden’s speeches feel like if we disagree or are worried about the direction of our country, somehow WE’RE the bad guys. It doesn’t even matter what party you’re from anymore. 

Here we are on Monday, the speech was on Thursday and there are people still raging about it on Twitter, conservative radio shows, or some TV shows, the podcasts are flat out insane. 

Maybe it’s just that the time change has fueled the “grumpy” and that people went into the weekend pissed off, in the first place.

I’m hoping that folks will calm down. In the meantime, I’m not looking at the news.