• finitebanjo@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    2 days ago

    Right, well, AI has been trained on what has been written. And, history has usually been written by intellectuals. Also, historian intellectuals generally frown on acts considered “inhumane” and “evil”. So. Yeah.

    • stabby_cicada@slrpnk.net
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      edit-2
      2 days ago

      Oh, you sweet summer child.

      Throughout history, the so-called intellectuals have generally been the ones rationalizing atrocities and human rights violations.

      After all, being intelligent, they understand not to piss off those in power. They know they’re better off defending the actions of those in power than opposing them.

      The people who stand up for basic human rights, the people who speak truth to power, tend to be the less educated people. Like the abolitionists in the 1800s, when all the colleges were teaching students to pin educated arguments in favor of slavery. Like the men and women who marched for civil rights when all the educated conservatives were telling them it would destroy the country and all the educated liberals were telling them fighting was counterproductive. The people who say “I don’t care about complicated arguments, I don’t care what the intellectuals say, I see injustice and I stand against it”.

      As 1984 puts it:

      The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right.

      If AIs today produce text frowning on inhumane evils, it’s because they were trained on actual human beings posting on social media about what they actually believe, and not on the ramblings of genocide justifying political “intellectuals” like Henry Kissinger and Donald Rumsfeld.

      • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        2 days ago

        Your citation for history is dystopian science fiction?

        And BTW, the Civil Rights Act passed with bipartisan support when the white share of the population was even higher than it is today.