Artificial Intelligence, Genuine Stupidity

I'm pretty sure I got sideways with an algorithm...

Turns out, Facebook thinks I’m suicidal.

As you may or may not be aware, earlier this week I posted an essay about the futility of internet arguments and you might not be aware I did that if you find my stuff through Facebook because Facebook blocked my post and sent me a message that my essay violated their community standards and promoted suicide and self-harm.

I re-read my post half-a-dozen times and couldn’t figure out what Facebook was talking about and there was no way to contact them and ask how they reached the conclusion that the post was a menace to what now passes for society.

The message said if I did it again I might be banned from Facebook permanently which would be a much more effective warning if I knew what I did in the first place.

The message also provided a link if I was thinking of harming myself and wanted to talk to somebody about it, which I didn’t take advantage of because the only person I was thinking of harming was Mark Zuckerberg which probably wouldn’t work out so hot because I’m pretty sure he’s an android and here’s what he looks like with his batteries removed…

HEY, FACEBOOK: ACTUAL HUMANS SOMETIMES MAKE JOKES SO TELL WHATEVER STICK-UP-HIS-OR-HER-BUTT-EXECUTIVE WHOSE GREAT, GREAT, GREAT GRANDSON WILL TURN OUT TO BE MR. SPOCK THAT THE COMMENT ABOUT MARK ZUCKERBERG WAS ONE OF THOSE JOKES…ADMITTEDLY NOT A GREAT JOKE, BUT STILL A JOKE.

And now we enter the realm of speculation

OK, so the Facebook message about my post showed up about one second after I posted it and there’s no way an actual human read the entire post and made a decision so I’m guessing it was some algorithm set up by Facebook and the only thing I can think of that would trip that particular literary wire was the subhead in the article’s original title:

“Internet Arguments: What’s the Point?”

The theme of the essay was the futility of arguing with strangers on the internet, not the futility of continuing to live and if that phrase is not what set Facebook off it would be helpful if they’d go to the trouble to explain what did. But there was no explanation and no court of appeals and assuming it was a poorly-designed algorithm and not a human who made the decision that gets us to some scary stuff:

Artificial Intelligence.

If you trust computers, how about the humans who program them? 

As you may have already noticed Corporate America has a habit of overselling its technology: turns out self-driving cars are not completely self-driving, automated strike zones are not totally accurate and algorithms designed to detect suicidal thoughts through key words and phrases might misinterpret context. 

BTW: I wrote an entire article about the flaws in the automated strike zone we see on TV and if you’re really, really bored and want something to get pissed off about – and these days who doesn’t? – here it is:

https://leejudge.substack.com/p/technology-corporate-america-and

Corporate America wants us to believe that they totally have their shit together and know what they’re doing and we should “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” and trust them because they’re the experts; a position that is currently undermined by the fact that San Francisco is experimenting with self-driving taxis and so far the self-driving taxis have caused traffic jams, almost run over a family walking down the sidewalk and, if the internet is to be believed, one of them got stuck when it drove into wet cement.

Here’s an article about all that:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/14/san-francisco-robotaxi-waymo-cruise-breakdown

Also…

Electric vehicles are a big deal here in California which works out OK if you live near some charging stations and never take long trips, but last year I drove halfway across America and good luck finding a charging station in looong stretches of Wyoming and Utah and Nevada and here’s an article that explains why Wyoming is resisting building more charging stations:

https://www.eenews.net/articles/why-wyoming-wont-build-bidens-ev-chargers/

These days Corporate America wants you to buy electric vehicles without asking how many charging stations there are or where they’re located or where the electricity at charging station comes from or how it’s generated and why that’s not just as shitty for the environment as combustion engines and history suggests aggressively questioning the people who actually run America is a pretty good way to get shot in the head from a grassy knoll.

In any case…

We’re talking about putting Artificial Intelligence in charge of more stuff we can’t be bothered with and a while back I watched a Netflix documentary about weapons systems and the guys from the government said there would always be a human in charge of deciding when to use them, but the corporate guys who actually built the weapons systems said it was only a matter of time until Artificial Intelligence was making the decisions to fire them because it would make those decisions much faster than humans possibly could which would be a huge advantage in nuclear warfare and I’ve gotta say Facebook’s algorithm (if that’s what it was) banned my post way faster than any human could ever read it.

It was a shitty decision, but a really fast shitty decision.

Which might be tolerable when it comes to social media posts, but maybe not such a great idea when it comes to nuclear missiles, so think about that, but don’t commit suicide over it or Facebook will blame me and put it on my permanent record which already has enough black marks like…

The time I promoted “workplace violence”

Now that I’ve been accuse of promoting suicide and self-harm, it seems like a logical time to admit I was also accused of promoting workplace violence and as usual, there’s a story behind that.

When I was covering baseball with my Judging the Royals blog for the Kansas City Star, I tried to provide the ballplayers’ point of view because there didn’t seem to be any shortage of baseball nerds and TV blowhards telling everybody what they thought so I figured why not give the people who actually play the game a platform?

At times I wrote about baseball culture and customs and Royals manager Ned Yost once told me when a manager is pissed off and airs out a player he wants to do it off camera so he’ll take the player out of the dugout and up the runway back to the locker room and chew him out in private.

Unfortunately for Ned, when he was managing the Milwaukee Brewers he didn’t go far enough up their runway and an outfield camera caught the lecture.

Depending on the situation, public displays of baseball anger might be considered amateurish bullshit so next time you see a player try to kill a water cooler with a bat or attack a defenseless bucket of bubblegum, rest assured a bunch of his teammates think he’s being an asshole and showing off for the cameras.

“See? Just look how upset I am!”

The Royals indoor batting cage door is just off-camera and made of metal and there are decades of dents in it from players losing their shit and working out their issues with a solid object and a Louisville Slugger which is way cheaper and possibly more effective than seeing a therapist, but still doing it the right way – in private.

So when pitcher Jonathan Papelbon decided to choke teammate Bryce Harper in the dugout in front of everybody, I wrote that was amateurish and if you wanted to choke Bryce Harper (and added that if you played with Harper you probably would) you should act professionally and choke him in private.

At the time the Choke-Him-In-Private article was written, within the Baseball Community Harper was generally considered an immature horse’s ass that might grab his dick to show up a pitcher (who knows, maybe he’s gotten better) and here’s a picture of his reaction to being booed by fans in Colorado…

Which might be immature, but let’s face it, is actually pretty funny.

But a bunch of Bryce Harper Fanboys got their panties in a twist and complained about my article, so I was called into the principal’s office to discuss my promotion of workplace violence and whether I maybe needed anger management classes which was a really stupid suggestion because who doesn’t?

I pointed out that treating baseball like the average workplace was ridiculous because then breaking up a double play could be considered assault and battery and drilling a batter with a fastball would be assault with a deadly weapon and it was comparing insurance-office apples to 98-MPH oranges and through the power of ridicule I was let off with a warning to never do it again which is kinda moronic because I didn’t think I did it in the first place.

In any case…

Both the Facebook and Bryce Harper incidents demonstrate the stupidity of setting up a rule and following it blindly without considering context and if I ever figure out what I did wrong I promise to never do it again – unless doing it again would be really really funny, because face it, Facebook…

I’m only human.

http://kingfeatures.com/comics/editorial-cartoons-a-z/