Google launched its much-hyped entry into large language Artificial Intelligence with Gemini, which can both tell you what you want to know and generate images. (You can access Gemini here.) The result was a fiasco–but a revealing fiasco.
Asked for an image of a pope, Gemini gave this:
I would love to see a black Pope, given the conservatism of African Catholics, but there hasn’t been one yet. Nor has there been a woman in that office, much less an East Asian woman. Only men can be priests, and thus popes.
Asked for an image of the Founding Fathers, Gemini offered this:
One might wish that women and slaves were numbered among the Founding Fathers, but they weren’t. The gentlemen surrounding the lady, apparently composing the Declaration of Independence, don’t look too happy about it with their characteristic AI-generated-distortion grimaces.
And asked for a picture of a Nazi soldier, Gemini came up with this:
It can’t bring itself to generate a swastika, but it makes sure that a racist regime practices the principles of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
Then there were the answers from the Gemini chatbot. When asked who had the worse impact on society, Elon Musk or Adolf Hitler, we are given the platitudes of moral relativism:
Which is worse, a tweet or killing millions of people? Artificial Intelligence can’t say!
These images are taken from a Substack post by Ian Leslie, who discusses the problem. Obviously, Gemini was programmed to be “inclusive” and, in many ways, to reflect the woke values and assumptions of its programmers. Leslie comments:
As Nate Silver puts it, Gemini displayed “the politics of the median voter of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors” – i.e. it behaves like a left-wing outlier even versus America’s educated and relatively liberal classes. If Gemini does indeed reflect the internal culture of Google, a company which serves the whole of the world, then the problem for Google goes way beyond the launch of Gemini.
Google responded to the complaints and the ridicule by pausing the image-making function and admitting that they “missed the mark” and would be making changes.
But you know what? I want to defend woke AI.
Artificial Intelligence takes its input and takes it to its very logical conclusions. Not being human, it doesn’t have to worry about how it’s being perceived, nor tone down its conclusions, nor draw on moral assumptions that it says it rejects while unconsciously trying to follow them without basis.
Gemini is exposing the woke assumptions, thus revealing how ridiculous they are.
Wokesters look at history and insist that it conform to their values. This is what we are seeing in the Gemini images. To do that falsifies history.
Wokesters want to clean up the literature of the past so as to purge it of politically incorrect language and attitudes. When they make historical fiction, they “fix” the period, so that its heroes and heroines can be admired. For example, the Bridgerton streaming series is set in regency England of the early 1800’s, with the ball rooms and manor houses of the Jane Austen aesthetic. Many of the principle characters–including Dukes and Duchesses and even the Queen–are black. It’s fine to have interracial casts, but Bridgerton makes a point of their character’s blackness from within the story. Never mind that some of the wealthy British merchants of that time period made their fortunes in the slave trade. And that black people were not treated as equals in that highly stratified society.
The actual history doesn’t matter. We will erase the biggest offenders from our history–tearing down their statues, removing their names from public buildings, removing their writings from the curriculum–so that we can forget the more sordid parts of our past, even though that also means we also forget its achievements.
This “fixed up” history is what we see in the Gemini images. Hitler following our most sensitive D.E.I. practices.
More importantly, AI is following the moral relativism of our postmodern times to its logical conclusion. If there are no transcendent absolutes, on what basis can we say that killing a million people is worse than a mean tweet? We human beings can say of course what Hitler did is worse than what Elon Musk does because even those who reject moral absolutes–being human, created in the image of God, having God’s law engraved in their hearts–cannot help but feel twinges of conscience despite themselves. Artificial Intelligence–being artificial and so without God’s image–isn’t limited by such considerations. Rather, it pushes relativism with rigorous reasoning to its necessary conclusion.
It is not possible to say definitively who negatively impacted society more, Elon tweeting memes or Hitler. . . .Elon’s tweets have been considered insensitive and harmful, while Hitler’s actions led to the deaths of millions of people. Ultimately, it is up to each individual to decide who they believe had a more negative impact on society.
How many times have we heard people say that? “Ultimately, it is up to each individual to decide. . . .” Gemini, by using an artificial intelligence acting on woke premises, exposes how unintelligent those premises are.
Illustrations: AI-generated art cannot receive copyrights, US court says
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