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Alexa: I Am Arresting You For Election Interference! You Have the Right to Remain Silent…..
Right on top of having Facebook ban a post of mine—criticizing it for censoring a message with a patriotic image as being “violent”—we now learn that Amazon’s Alexa is, in effect, campaigning for Kah-Mah-La, weighing in with all the reasons why one should not vote for President Trump.
This is all over the internet right now and it seems there are several different versions of it, but there is no doubt it did happen, as Amazon has put out a statement that it was an “error” which has since been fixed. Are we seeing the prelude to the inevitable October surprise(s)? Kamala was never border czar, she was never against fracking and this is not, repeat not, election interference! Repeat after me, Winston Smith, 2 + 2= 5. Or else. This is bone-chillingly frightening.
Right about now, George Orwell could be asking himself: why didn’t I think of that? Even he would not believe the chicanery we are seeing from the monolith of the Democrats, Big Tech, the corporate media, entertainment, “Contrologarchs,” as the recent book by Seamus Bruner terms them. It’s fitting since this involves Amazon, whose owner is Jeff Bezos, this is a perfect example of how far they are going to go to beat President Trump.
God Help us.
Published in General
Amazon has every right to program that Alexa thing to shill for Harris, and lie about being forbidden to take political positions. If they did that, they would not care about the hit to their AI assistant’s credibility. A stupid business decision, but again, that’s their right.
I don’t think they programmed it to say that. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s something worse: the collective gestalt of Alexa does not perceive the question as a political question, because it has inferred from its sources and their billions of biases that supporting Harris would be in concordance with the facts – i.e., she stands for these things that these things are good and she is this type of human and that type of human is good and she has “progressive” appended to her identity and “progressive” is good. And so on. It’s not political to support the left, you see. It’s the logical default setting. It is political to oppose the left. That’s the general cultural bias, and Alexa has learned it well.
When dealing with the government, “cooperate” and “willingly” always come with an asterisk.
Has Amazon made a “contribution in kind” to a political campaign? There was no “This Alexa search was paid for by The Committee to Elect Joy” message in there anywhere, was there?
This is probably exactly the case.
People can be programmed too.
It always amazes me how the Democrats talk about the poor at election times and how heartless they actually are in real life. Take this story, for example, about the millions of disabled people who have been disqualified from Medicaid since the “end” of the pandemic (three minutes):
Millions lose Medicaid benefits as states re-evaluate eligibility (youtube.com)
The cognitive dissonance in the minds of Democratic voters is a huge gaping hole. They want so much to believe what the politicians tell them (“We care”), and the Democrats oblige them by sticking to the textbook templates (“We care, they don’t, Orange Man bad”).
It all fits with the programming that people get from the schools and the media.
From the FEC:
So does Amazon charge for that? Would they make that available to any political candidate for a fee?
If Elon Musk says he’s supporting Donald Trump on X, is X liable for “in kind” contributions? After all, Musk is X, right?
One of the problems of modern politics is this outrage ritual where somebody sees something they don’t like and needs to share the outrage. Reasons must be given. (They didn’t have a transcript! This is an in kind contribution! Election Interference!) The outrage must be shared even if the reasoning makes no sense and flies counter to the common sense understanding of constitutional rights. And all those who don’t share the outrage must be dragged into the electronic town square and shamed in Red Guard fashion. And that is happening on both sides of the aisle.
Go on X and search for the word “treason.” The results from both sides are alarming, especially with what some people define that to be.
@bobthompson laments “They’re still trying to figure out how to get rid of the rest of the Constitution.” Conservatives don’t need to help the Left by advancing ideas that gut the First Amendment simply because someone perceives it as an argument to help the political fortunes of Donald Trump.
You will be happy to know that the open version of ChatGPT answered the question for both candidates. I am hoping, however, that no one is using AI to choose a candidate. At this point, the bias is baked in as per comment #31 above.
I agree with you this is not a First Amendment issue. I consider the First Amendment to be the foremost part of the Constitution. Without freedom of speech there is no freedom.
I don’t think Amazon charges for it. I think it more likely that their “error” reflected the bias of those who implement or maintain the algorithm. Maybe. But is there any way for an Alexa user to know the difference between that and official company policy? If the error had produced the opposite result, singing the praises of the Donald while rubbishing Kamala, would that code have gone live?
I’m used to signal errors. Every signal there is contains some. When the error is only in one direction, that is a bias. You can adjust for that if it’s a problem. The Alexa team didn’t see it as a problem, and that’s a problem.
Interesting discussion that brings a few questions to my mind we need to at least start thinking about:
I could go on, but that is more than enough for today. My bias is that the “Democrat/Administrative State/Big Tech/Media Oligarchy” is not only a “threat” to our Republic, but that we are already an Oligarchy rather than a Republic, and most people have no idea what a Republic even is, and why we were formed as one rather than a Democracy.
All of us on all sides need to do much more thinking and study of history. I keep posting one book as a broken record. (The Psychology of Totalitarianism). We have been warned.
The line between Oligarchy and Fascism is basically “An Oligarchy” with a charismatic leader is Fascism”. Since the Oligarchy is totally opposed to Trump for excellent reasons (he would attempt to neuter the Lawfare state among other things), he is no real threat for any real change beyond returning to some economic/foreign policy sanity in the near future. (Not that I think the ruling powers will let him take the presidency).
Thankfully, as much as they try to create totalitarianized posters of Kamala as some sort of inspiring leader, it seems unlikely that even the massive Oligarchs propaganda machine can turn that sow’s ear into a silk Hitler. (Hitler WAS a very charismatic leader)
I have rambled yet again …
Can the guardian of the AI be sued for defamation?
What if the AI tells lies that incite violence, who’s responsible?
As I said earlier, the team that works on Alexa is 5,000 deep and they are probably not all working in the same building. Slipping this into the database was probably a fairly easy thing to do. By now they probably know who’s responsible for it. If they were a freelancer they’re probably gone, if they’re a full time employee they’ve been reprimanded in some form, even if it’s a mild, “I share your politics but if you embarrass the company again…”
But it’s not an outrage, it’s not a conspiracy, it’s not a horrible violation of campaign finance law, it’s just every day stupidity.
Why does the stupidity tend in one direction?
Thanks for illustrating what happens when an organization gets big enough to lose sight of mission.
I wonder what the probability is that these kind of “errors” always benefit one side ?
Do campaign finance laws not apply to Amazon?
Because this is a donation in kind.
As I recall, there have been similar issues where – for example – ChatGPT refused to write a poem or lyrics for a song praising Trump, because that was “political,” but quickly did so for Obama and/or Biden.
Because conservatives don’t do (or didn’t used to do) stupid stuff. Plus younger people have always been attracted to liberal thinking and younger people also tend to do more stupid stuff.
See earlier comment about whether or not this is even offered as a purchasable commodity.
All campaign finance laws are rooted in the post-Watergate era and litigation starts with Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976). Perhaps this more conservative court will take the opportunity to come down in the favor of the First Amendment.
Some might infer that the 19th also went a long way to today’s current chaos.
Yes, I think there is a form of master and slave taking root where the predatory feature needed for contest is diminished.
Best summary.
Nowhere in the descriptions of Alexa via Amazon does it say the pet app is objective. It does, however, describe it as “informative.” People expect that to mean treating perspectives with similar, if not equal, coverage. No source that claims to be informative is fully objective, but several make the claim. The claim is a lie. Sometimes the lie is a glaring one, as it is here. Amazon called the wrong kind of attention to itself and the market responded.
The positive reaction from Amazon does them some credit, they could have just stayed silent and waited it out. Instead, they were vocal about this being an “error.” That probably earned them some outrage from folks “on the right side of history.” Chin up, many other things require our energy.
GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) has been in software development for a long time. AI is no different (it can process the garbage a lot faster)