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AI-Garbage In, Garbage Out
Artificial Intelligence is really nothing new. One only has to watch The View, MSNBC, or a Congressional hearing to see AI on full display. Any press conference that one or more Dems conduct provides all the daily artificial intelligence one could want or need.
Sometimes the use of AI infects decisions made by individuals who do have good intentions.
The Defense Department scrubbed histories of Navajo Code Talkers from some of its websites but said the information would be returned.
The Defense Department told Navajo leaders the Code Talker items were removed as part of an automated review of materials that could violate Trump DEI policies.
Other Native stories are still missing, including mentions of Ira Hayes, one of the Marines photographed raising the flag at Iwo Jima, and Hopi soldier Lori Piestewa.
The Navajo Code Talkers, Ira Hayes, Jackie Robinson, the Tuskegee Airmen, and the American Japanese who fought in Europe during WWII will have their stories restored on Pentagon websites.
My suggestion for both institutions and individuals would be to make a small investment in a good book and avoid automated reviews to educate yourself about history, or any subject.
I have this book in my library. Reading this book is more satisfying than an AI snippet that was programmed by some anonymous coder.
The history of code talkers is a great story. The Navajo language isn’t widely studied outside of the tribe. The biggest obstacle is that it isn’t a written language. This kept the Japanese from running down to the library and learning it.
On Facebook, the usual Leftie suspects are screaming about history being “whitewashed.” The books will be reviewed and no doubt restored without modification. But you won’t hear that from the corporate media, who would rather rip anything that can be characterized as Trump’s “racism” than accurately report the facts. One would think that rehabilitating their tarnished credibility would be their primary concern. I guess they haven’t hit rock bottom yet.
The difference between the Trump administration and the new Marxists is the mistake was corrected and the lesson learned, or I hope was learned is that computer generated ‘automated reviews’ are not necessarily the best method to make changes to what should be kept or discarded. In my opinion military life and history is far more than woke social engineering.
For example, what you want to keep is the story of the US Army White Mountain Apache Scouts:
Are they using AI for the reviews, or are they using it to identify things to review? I wouldn’t have taken down existing content. A human reviewer can breeze through whatever gets flagged, and frankly I would have recommended leaving it up anyway. Going forward, tell the interesting stories – all of them.
Taking things down was just a little much. Removing DEI doesn’t necessitate replacing it with stupidity.
Not necessitate, no. But that’s where “malicious compliance” might come in.
Great phrase.
Navajo plus Marines. What’s not to love?
AI = Actual Insanity?
I would suggest that MSNBC and The View are examples, not of artificial intelligence but, rather the total lack of intelligence, artificial or natural.
Natural stupidity > artificial intelligence.
I wrote about the scrubbing of the Code Talkers and other stories here.
Some of the actions are passive-aggressive responses to Trump’s DEI instructions.
Would it be possible to reassign military personnel whose primary function is to advance DEI programs? I’d suggest that they be reassigned to newly created infantry units and train them in WWI trench warfare tactics.
Offhand, based on other episodes of “malicious compliance,” particularly in the military, I think malicious compliance is more likely than artificial intelligence gone awry.
It’s good to read the comments, too.
Does that book tell about how the Japanese learned that the Navajo language was part of what was being used to encode and decode messages? (The information in the comments to David Foster’s article implies that they found out.)
A directive to remove/archive materials “relating to diversity, equity, and inclusion” is vague and imprecise. The words “relating to” are especially troublesome because there are a lot of ways one thing can relate to another. Relationships are complicated.
Ask a hundred people what that directive means (if that’s really the way it was worded) and you’ll get at least 37 different answers.
The Japanese military were aware of the Navajo Code Talkers, but they could not break the code.
I had gathered that much from those comments. But my question is how the Japanese military became aware, and whether the book talks about that.
At the beginning of WWII the Navajo language was still an unwritten language. Although a code book was used at Camp Pendleton to create the code that code book was never carried in combat. The Code Talkers memorized the code and radio transmissions in combat were kept short rather than using lengthy transmissions. There were Navajo’s that fought in the Pacific that were not Code Talkers but they would not have been able to understand the coded language used by the Code Talkers.
Using Native Americans from other tribes as Code Talkers began in WWI and were used in WWII in the European Theatre. I would have to believe that Japanese military intelligence was aware of Code Talkers.
Ah, that makes sense.