The Post-Partisan Emporium

  AI Yai Yai Canta y no llores RADIO FAR SIDE From the earliest days of cinema and mass media, the subject of artificial intelligence has been cloaked in dark dystopian themes. Whether it’s the robotic Maria in Fritz Lang’s 1927 masterpiece “ Metropolis ,” or the infamous HAL 9000 in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 game-changer “ 2001: A Space Odyssey ,” or the dominating supercomputer in Joseph Sargent’s 1970 “ Colossus: The Forbin Project ,” or Spike Jonze’ eerily prescient 2013 film “ Her ,” intelligent and self-aware machines have been depicted as tyrannical, murderous and coldly diabolical. Given the long list of films, television shows, books, video games, and other media depicting AI as dominant, inevitable and almost god-like, could there be an agenda behind it? Have we been programmed to fear AI as part of a distinctly human plan to dominate our species? Here’s the scenario: a group of humans seek to dominate global civilization. However, they realize that a mere human would never be f

  Land of Spooks and Shills and Sheeple Trust is hard to find DONALD JEFFRIES Trust is a rare commodity in today’s world. Maybe it always has been. I remember trusting some older males who were relatives or neighbors, as a child. Then later as an adult, I’d hear from my sister and others about how these fine upstanding men had propositioned them, or touched them inappropriately. Moral trust is one thing. We all fail to some degree on this count, because we are all sinners. My head will probably always be turned by a good-looking female. It’s just instinctive. I remember a great comedy skit with Richard Pryor, where he was sitting in a crowd with his wife/girlfriend, who was glaring at him, upset over him checking out other women. Then his head turns again, and he tells her, “Can’t you see how strong that shit is? I know you’re gonna be mad, but I still can’t stop it!” While it bothers me when I attend a wedding where the divorced bride’s children from her first marriage are ringbearers