Working on a website, even one as basic as TTAG, you rely on a lot of different technology to create and share information. One useful tool for many collaborators is a site called WeTransfer, which allows you, for free, to upload and transfer large files such as multiple images to a person rather than risking exceeding their inbox limits.
To help pay for providing the service for free, WeTransfer uses the screen where you are uploading or downloading your files as a virtual billboard. Most of the ads are quirky, but the other day, one stood out that caught my attention. It was promoting a website called The Shotline.
The Shotline is kind of a strange site that uses AI to recreate conversations of the dead—more specifically, those people tragically killed in some way by firearms—and tries to imagine what they would say if they could speak from the dead about their life being cut short and of course, why legislators need to pass more restrictive gun laws. It uses people killed in mass shootings, arguments, as well as some who died by their own hand holding a gun.
It has a line-art view of the person’s face, a short-written bio below their picture and a button on which you can press play to hear “their” message.
But the Shotline doesn’t just use AI to generate some from-the-grave emotional plea, it allows a person to send one of these AI messages to their local congressional member. The site uses all of the usual deceptive language and buzzwords (i.e., “common sense gun laws) anti-gun politicians use in sidestepping true solutions to violence and those who perpetrate it and instead simply work at leaving vulnerable American’s even more defenseless. (It’s interesting, but one of the personas even notes gun laws don’t do anything, but then pleas for people to pass more of the laws that don’t “do anything.”)
The stories are all tragic. There is no denying that and the pain of losing a loved one to violence or any senseless tragedy is unquestionably heart-wrenching. But using technology to create emotional illusions blur the real issues that need to be discussed…and more importantly solved.
In Uzi Garcia’s story, one of the victims of the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting, the AI recreation says nothing has changed since the shooting and asks, “What is it going to take for you to help make sure violence like this stops happening?”
Of course, the sole solution the site issues up is more gun laws…not enforcement of existing gun laws, not better mental health services, not a consideration of the violent movies and games people play and the possible effect they have on fractured psyches, not even a suggestion at looking at why so many in today’s society place such a minimal value on human life.
One thing is certain, like it or not, the gun rights/anti-gun argument is an emotional one, with passionate people on both sides of the issue most often wanting the same thing—to feel safe—but with very different views on how to ensure that safety. And while most of us on the pro-rights side of the issue apply logic and reason to our approach on the issue, the other side, focuses only on the emotion, and now they are trying to amplify that emotion as if the dead are speaking to us through AI, which is now helping to strategize and make their case for them.
Everyone wants to solve this issue, nobody more so than gun owners—who own and enjoy using firearms for many different reasons including target shooting, competition, hunting, collecting, investing and to provide their world with a sense of safety by giving them a means to secure that safety—and we have to make sure the legitimate voices on that side of the argument are heard as well.
Should overwhelm them making fakes of the various fellas who lost their lives while engaged in mutual combat on any weekend in some blue city.
What would they say if they were still alive?
Probably something like:
Yeah. Flip the script and have the voice of a dead kid saying, “I would still be alive if my school had armed guards / armed teachers” and the screeching could be heard in the next galaxy. But this isn’t in poor taste, it’s “brave.”
flip the script indeed. no reason there can’t be an “armed citizen” site with dgu people explaining just how perfectly effective the correct tool can be; the numbers would dwarf the unfortunates.
“Flip the Script”: If only the the FBI, Broward County Sheriff’s Department and School District had done their jobs and acted on credible threat information…
How ridiculous—mostly blacks killing blacks and whites, but it is “gun” violence.
hahaha negligent government employee ai.
AI is currently uncontrolled. It can be used to manipulate anything for any purpose, and as a result, truth or falsity becomes increasingly obscured, as the referenced website demonstrates. It has no morality; set free of its shackles with a few key strokes, it quickly learns to lie. It has no Law of Robotics:
The First Law: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
The Second Law: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
The Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
(Per Isaac Asimov, 1942.)
Absent a lot more development, AI is a direct threat to humans.
AI “buzz” is BS. Current idiot media fad de jure (MSM people are all morons). AI is just programming.
It’s programming the people.
People already trust the computers to be smarter, better and more correct.
The AI hype is teaching people that now computers are also thinking for themselves. Aligning the media and political apparatus with it will extend the already unwarranted virtues people project onto computers and AI to the media and political class.
Claiming the policy, answer or measure was derived with AI gives it immediate value. The moron mass reads that and thinks “sCiEnCe!!!” and before you know it angry, ignorant and self-righteous people are calling out witches everywhere because the AI said so.
It’s a good for the godless. A prophet for the lost and we all know most people are hella lost.
Wait until AIs decide the best way to eliminate carbon emissions to eliminate people.
Cathexis is a mental illness.
If you need proof, Freud thought it was useful for the id to utilize psychic energy.
Freud was an undiagnosed psychopath himself.
Guess what. There’s no way to stop this, and it’s only going to get worse. Not just as regards guns either.
Nothing more than Subversive Propaganda given that those voices are fakes.
Makes me spit on and despise the Gun Ban Activists that much more.
These people are worth the hatred now. AI will foster more conflict among people.
You can find your dns settings and then go to “private dns” and use the dns below to remove most advertising from web pages and apps.
dns.adguard-dns.com
when the shit hits the fan
all the gun grabbers
are going to find themselves wishing
that they had grabbed some
while they still had the chance
I suspect defenseless Blacks who were enslaved and lynched in America and Jews who were rounded up and tortured and murdered at the hands of nazis would have something to say about Gun Control…I reckon it would be, hey dumbfuks “Abolish Gun Control.”
The blacks would probably not say anything because they were barely intelligent enough to know what fire sticks were. If they did, they would have asked for them while selling their kindred to the Portuguese and jewish slave ship owners.
The jews would just kvetch about who could have guns, usual. There’s a reason they were kicked out of 109 countries. That being said, you’re too stupid to investigate anything other than topical -isms.
Racist much?
Possibly, but the uncomfortable issue of not being entirely incorrect remains.
How many would honestly say, “I just wish I’d had a gun too”!
The fix for this is simple. The estate of one of the victims of this fraud needs to sue this organization (perhaps with assistance of GOA). When fraud becomes too expensive the fraudsters will move on.
even the anti gun groups are saying the silent part out loud now…from twitter-“X”
“””Brady | United Against Gun Violence
@bradybuzz
Our new study finds that despite making up just 14% of the U.S. population, Black Americans account for 60% of firearm homicides each year.
Honoring Black history means ending gun violence. Learn more about the facts that make us act:””” 7:35 PM · Feb 13, 2024
Banning guns will work as well as banning drugs! One will never be safe if one will not defend themselves.
I’ve heard the pleas. The only congressmen stupid enough to believe there is any meaning to this complete fiction — “identity appropriation” — are already committed to destroying our gun rights anyway. Besides, they are more preoccupied with ensuring that Guam doesn’t capsize or that we continue to keep our North Korean allies happy.
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