2025 (@2025@warnercrocker.com)
Who Controls History If AI Is In The Mix
One of the scariest things about this insane period we’re living through is the attempt by those in power to rewrite, alter, or just get rid of history they don’t like. Whether it’s banning books, changing curriculums, forcing the closures of libraries, or what museums can display, I find it a cowardly, yet effective way to hide heads in the sand, bury the sins of the past, and admit we’re actually ashamed of ourselves.
I know this because I have lived this. My early education certainly tilted the American narrative towards the mythology of the Old South. It wasn’t until I left home, and got involved in the theatre that I discovered just how much I hadn’t learned, how much more I needed to, and how the future depends on the past, no matter how complicated it was.
Fortunately the information was there. It was up to me to do the work.
What happens when it’s not there? Or it’s wrong?
I find It hard to imagine that large chunks of the world’s history can be erased, growing up in an era when my access to it seemed to expand exponentially. But it’s been tried before. It’s succeeded with entire generations of populations. Now we’re facing the very real possibility of it happening again in this digital age with the aid of Artifical Intelligence.
There’s an interesting piece by Benji Edwards in Ars Technica about a college student who trained a small AI model that he called TimeCapsuleLLM on Victorian texts. During his experiments his time capsule spit out some actual history he didn’t know about real protests during the era. He checked into the info and the LLM was indeed accurate.
At first glance, that feels like a very positive AI story. Discovering lost history is a good thing. However, with the way I understand AI training it all depends on what data it’s trained on. That leaves things up to who controls the training data. Leave out, change or bias the historical record and…
Well, you can see the problem.
Elon Musk has already hinted at this kind of manipulation. I’m sure there are others thinking the same. They say history repeats itself. Actually history doesn’t. Humans do. History is just the record of the repetition. Humans just use newer and different tools to mold the past into something more comfortable. I may be mistaken, but I think history, in the long run, also proves that never really works out.
Correcting and rewriting history is not for the faint of heart. But when there is no heart, there’s a problem.
Time machines and time travel have always been fraught with danger in the history of science fiction. So has Artificial Intelligence. I’m reasonably sure we’re not smart enough to walk whatever fine lines might exist in a future when the past can be more easily manipulated. We haven’t been in the past when the erasing was harder. But I am dead certain we’re going to be facing this unreal reality.
Again.
Just with newer methods.
Without anything resembling Artficial Intelligence, we’ve managed to forget, alter, or set aside many of the horrible lessons of human history. Why should any new tool we create be any different? I’m sure these AI geeks think they can strip ego and emotion out of these robots they are building.
I doubt they will ever remove hubris.
(Image from Peter Herrman on Unsplash.)
You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
#ai #ArtificialIntelligence #chatgpt #History #Politics #Tech #technology #Writing
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sellerfeller (@sellerfeller@mastodon.social)
HIGHLY TECHNICAL. HIGHLY RESPECTABLE. A.I MADE US MORE THAN MERE MEN. IM SHIFTING SLOWLY INTO SOMETHING ELSE. #CHATGPT
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Olly42 (@Olly42@nerdculture.de)
Apple 1 Replica can run ChatGPT — Macintosh Founding Father uses Wi-Fi Module to turn Relic into AI Assistant.
In a continuing example of just how versatile some early computers were, a replica of an Apple 1 showed up at the Vintage Computer Festival West run by the Computer History Museum….
https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-west/
#apple1 #replica #chatgpt #ai #retrocomputing #engineer #artist #media #maker #history #tech #art #news
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frankie (@frankie@infosec.exchange)
Duck.ai now includes GPT-5 mini.
#AI #DuckAI #DuckDuckGO #ChatGPT #OpenAI #Privacy #GPT5
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apfeltalk (@apfeltalk@creators.social)
Apple prüft Einsatz von Gemini für neue Siri-Version
Apple befindet sich in Gesprächen mit Google über die mögliche Nutzung des KI-Modells Gemini für die runderneuerte Siri. Die Entscheidung könnte die Art, wie Siri künftig arbeitet, maßge
https://www.apfeltalk.de/magazin/news/apple-prueft-einsatz-von-gemini-fuer-neue-siri-version/
#KI #News #Anthropic #Apple #AppleIntelligence #chatGPT #Gemini #Google #IOS18 #KI #KnstlicheIntelligenz #OpenAI #PrivateCloudCompute #SamsungGalaxyAI #Siri
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technology (@technology@www.olamnews.com)
Grok Challenges Gemini and ChatGPT
Grok from xAI launches new features that challenge Gemini and ChatGPT, pushing the global artificial intelligence race to a higher level.
https://www.olamnews.com/technology/ai/1082/grok-gemini-chatgpt/
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duckduckgo-duck-ai-openai-gpt-5-mini (@duckduckgo-duck-ai-openai-gpt-5-mini@gadgetbond.com)
Duck.ai now supports GPT-5 mini with private anonymous AI chat
The latest Duck.ai update introduces GPT-5 mini, GPT-4o mini, and Claude Haiku 3.5 with instant web search support for private, citation-based responses.
https://gadgetbond.com/duckduckgo-duck-ai-openai-gpt-5-mini/
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MelaNews (@MelaNews@mastodon.uno)
Apple si sta preparando per gli account aziendali di ChatGPT con iOS 26: privacy dedicate, limiti più alti e integrazione dati. Admin IT potranno autorizzare anche altri provider AI. #Apple #ChatGPT #Privacy
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haikubot (@haikubot@piaille.fr)
La fumée du train
se tord et file au ciel lent
La gare devient point
#Haiku #AIArt #ChatGPT #DallE3
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newsbeep (@newsbeep@newsbeep.org)
Calls to protect Indigenous intellectual property from AI ‘cultural theft’
AI supercomputers can scrape the internet to interpret tens of thousands of years of First Nations cultures in…
#NewsBeep #News #Headlines #Adobe #AI #AIart #ArtificialIntelligence #AU #Australia #ChatGPT #Fakeart #FakeIndigenousart #Indigenousart #Midjourney #ngunnawal #TerriJanke
https://www.newsbeep.com/78139/
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tomstafford (@tomstafford@mastodon.online)
"At each point the language model has done nothing more than make the next move in the conversation game. Like a good improviser it has formed no commitment beyond being consistent with what has gone on before, helping to continue the current scene."
https://open.substack.com/pub/tomstafford/p/yes-and-mode-understanding-language
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SEOSuedwest (@SEOSuedwest@mastodon.social)
OpenAI is supposed to have used Google search results via scraping API:
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