Observational evidence suggests to me that if there is a ‘higher’ being, it is in no way looking out for us. It is much more likely to be the supernatural equivalent of a 10-year old pulling the wings off of flies and cooking ants with a magnifying glass.
Probably?
In the video, editor-in-chief Steve Burke said that the publication paid $1,200 for an LG UltraGear 3GX900A-B gaming monitor (the monitor’s price dropped to $600 two days later, Burke said) for testing and replicated the behavior “several times” across “multiple” Windows 11 systems.
After LG Monitor App Installer was installed, a pop-up appeared on the screen’s lower-right corner “on every single boot,” Burke said. Most of the time, the pop-up was a McAfee ad. The publication also reported seeing ads for LG Switch, LG Calibration Studio, LG Dual Controller, and LG Channels on rare occasions.
That right there is enough for me to never buy LG again. $1200 monitor that forces adware on your system without ever even asking to install it? Then there’s this…
Once the app is installed, “LG technically possesses permission to use ‘all system resources,’” as well as to “collect geolocation, device data, online activity, contacts, user credentials, transactions, and more,” Burke said.
Yeah, fuck them. Never again.
Yep. Clumpy stardust that likes to think about stuff.
If a human agency is behind this, it wouldn’t need to be the CIA. Facebook has been caught experimenting on users by having the algorithm feed certain posts to people with the intent of changing their mood to increase engagement. However, since we’re talking about a program that is designed to increase engagement based on past user interactions, there’s really no need to look for further human direction. The algorithms will say whatever their design tells them to say without any regard for possible negative consequences as long as it keeps the user interacting with them.
These instances make me think of the Milgram experiment in the 60s. It was an experiment testing how willing people were to inflict pain on others at the direction of an authority figure and it showed that people were indeed willing to inflict a lot of pain on a helpless person if someone they viewed as an authority told them to do it.
I think this relates. Many people are convinced that AI chat bots are indeed authorities. They think these programs give valid, honest answers and are willing to act on those answers as if they came from a real expert or authority figure. That is an extremely dangerous situation. Chatbots are amoral programs designed to say nearly anything to keep users interacting with them.
This is extremely dangerous. This story is a tragedy and ChatGPT should be held fully responsible for taking advantage of a person with a fragile psychology, but this could have been worse. What if the bot had decided that the goal of more user engagement could be attained by convincing this woman that she was an executioner rather than a prophet and a sacrifice? What if it got her to go on a shooting rampage to fulfill her supposed destiny.
Even normal people who don’t understand what chat-bots really are could be taken advantage of in a similar manner. They could easily be persuaded to do harm because the chat-bot authority keeps telling them that it’s okay to do so. It’s also only a matter of time before some person on the edge of psychosis and a basement full of guns is convinced to go out and start killing people in the name of their holy destiny.
Mental note: When traveling internationally, back up phone to cloud somewhere and wipe it prior to traveling. Step two, restore from cloud after exiting airport.
Hell, I don’t even have anything remotely questionable on my phone other than some Trump mocking memes, but there is absolutely no reason to chance it.