The mere phrase artificial intelligence should be a clue that no good will come of fully opening this door. 

For what does it mean to be artificially intelligent?

If we take the words as they present (which is really all we can do), it means an intelligence that is not real on its own but merely a poor man’s copy of smartness, acumen or whatever you want to call it.

It’s at best a simulation of something clever and at worst an abject lie.

Whatever it is, it’s certainly not actually superior thinking.  Its words literally tell us that.

So then, what is it?

Well, clearly it’s a fake out.  Or, as it’s better known in popular vernacular —

FAKE NEWS.

Donald J. Trump if what he spewed was merely a reordering of facts stolen from other sources rather than an incessant firehouse of bile-filed personal grievance posing as reality.

Though when you think about it that way, A.I.’s potential personal evolutions are a lot more frightening.

That is, if you can consider something that self-proclaims to be artificial, anything approaching a person.

Yet another issue for future U.S. Supreme Courts to debate and wrongly decide on.

A couple of weeks ago I was watching MSNBC, which I admittedly do far too often.  It was towards the end of Joy Reid’s show, The Reid Out, and she began reporting on artificial intelligence by way of herself.

It seems that there is a viral video circulating that shows Joy being interviewed by CNN’s Anderson Cooper hawking weight loss gummies.  And when she played a 20 second clip from it there it was –

Joy talking up these weight loss gummies in very factual, Joy-esque style to Anderson, after explaining lawyers have only recently cleared her to speak about it.  There were even before and after photos to support her personal weight loss.

If you saw this onscreen and paid as much attention to these kinds of claims as one usually does, you would swear it was real.

Except, well, it isn’t.

It’s an A.I.-generated-100%-phony use of the actual faces and voices of both news anchors.

Now, being a journalism junkie and show biz gadfly, I knew this story couldn’t be true because:

a. No MSNBC host would be allowed on CNN to sell a product and

b. Joy Reid doesn’t endorse merchandise publicly to make a buck.  That’s not what real working journalists with prime time news anchor platforms do.

It’s what people like Alex Jones and Joe Rogan do.

But if you didn’t know better and chalked up a few words being slightly out of synch to the fact that almost every video known to man buffers or is slightly out of synch in spots on your screen of choice, you would swear this was real.

And we’re only at the start of the A.I. revolution. 

Who knows where all those pointy-headed potential Che Guevaras will strike next?

Oh wait, we do.  It’s… well… show biz!!

You might have heard there is a writers’ and actors’ strike going on and part of the issue is the future contractual regulation of the use of A.I. so actors and writers are not principally replaced by software duplicating their work and their images ad infinitum.

Recently, Disney CEO Bob Iger, being interviewed at a multimillionaire/billionaire business leader conference, called the union demands to work out a compromise for the protection of workaday creatives on A.I not realistic and very disturbing to him.

So it should surprise no one that the studios are now on a mass hiring spree for specialists they can employ to expand their A.I. capabilities.  This article from The Hollywood Reporter explains it far better than I can. 

But suffice it to say that Netflix, Disney, Sony and most of the other studios (Note: Amazon, Apple, WB, etc. etc.) are offering big bucks to those who can help them harness the technology that will enable them to throw off the shackles of how it’s done now and push past it all into a future where….

Well, the sky’s the limit.

And at starting salaries of anywhere from $150,000 to $900,000 per year plus perks.

Not nearly as much as the top ten Hollywood executives made in the last five year period, a list topped by the HALF A BILLION DOLLARS Warner Bros. Discovery’s head David Zaslav made.  (Note: Here’s the list.  Read it and think).

But if A.I. is going to occupy as big of a space as these guys seem determined to make room for – as witnessed by them turning a stubborn blind eye to the almost universal public roasting they are receiving for the way they are treating the creative people who enable them to make many billions of dollars each year – then there’s a hell of a lot of room to grow.  And grow.  And grow.

Gummie bears be damned.

“Crazy Little Thing Called Love” – Elvis Presley A.I.

(Note:  Elvis died two years before this song was written and released).