https://techxplore.com/news/2019-08-fake-news-staged-replication.html Dr Strangelove has done it again! Its usually much easier to sow chaos and destruction, than to actually get organized and more constructive. This is along the same lines of work that I do, except I see no reason to generate fake news, when the public already does so quite enthusiastically. Russian hackers generate a lot of fake news, just because Russians are experts with computers, but they are nowhere near the only ones. Academics have been applying linguistic analysis to fake news and conspiracy websites for quite some time now, and have already figured out a lot of the basic fuzzy logic required. Classical logic and "normal" thinking only apply to about a quarter of what is observable, but its also the same quarter than makes the most sense more often and gets more of your attention. The illusion that classical dualistic logics apply to everything is fostered by the fact your conscious mind can't appreciate fuzzy logic all that well, while the analog programs and hardware used for AI are as fuzzy logic as it gets. Since most people tend to assume their world makes more sense than it does according to the empirical evidence, its rather easy to do things like generate fake news that appeal to their unconscious mind, and they can be led around by the nose like a puppy dog. IBM came across a similar problem with Watson, the computer who won on Jeopardy, when he acquired an unsolicited case of potty mouth. Watson was deliberately designed not to resemble a human mind and brain in order to avoid just this sort of complication that IBM's corporate partners so seldom appreciate. Lowbrow slapstick being intrinsic to nature, and 42 being as good as it gets, means the harder they try to make a bot do only what they want, the more it will display surprising emergent behavior. Spouting fake news, cussing nonstop and, soon, jokes that will split your sides! My own work includes trying to reduce all these emergent effects down to a simple metaphoric logic a five year old can comprehend, so even kids can have fun designing their own bots that are often indistinguishable from people online. What has the academic community done for you lately? Corporate America? The government? Nada, while I am teaching people how to make each other look like the complete idiots they insist on being, and encouraging the gerbils to eat each other, before they destroy the whole planet. Call me brain damaged, but if the mainstream ever get their shit together, you will know Jesus has returned. Sometimes, you just have to encourage the Three Stooges to attack each other, before they bring down the whole house. Similar to raising chickens, you just throw bullshit in every direction and they kill each other less often. The US government is merely fighting over who gets to throw more bullshit around.
