Grammarly Will Ruin the World Before Bing Destroys It: Artificial Intelligence reflects the values of its programmers

PJ Media ^ | 02/21/2023 | Lincoln Brown

[SeekAndFind]

So by now, you have undoubtedly heard that Bing’s AI wants to be a real human being, maybe fall in love and possibly destroy everything. Let’s be honest; we all knew this day would come, but most of us probably didn’t think that the end of the world would happen on our watch. We figured it would be sometime around 2440 or so. And let’s be honest; some of you hoped that we would skip all of that nasty dystopia stuff and go straight to the Enterprise-D where we could zip around the universe, discuss philosophy with the Vulcans, hit the gym with the Klingons, and then party on the holodeck. As it turns out the rush of technology is actually pretty frightening, and we may have to fight our way through the Butlerian Jihad before we form the United Federation of Planets.

Of course, when Bing AI tells us it wants to jump from bot to human or kill us all, that sends up red flags everywhere. Someone at Microsoft is (hopefully) working on a fix, and the problem will be neutralized before you come home one day and discover that your new toaster has left to audition for a reboot of The Demon Seed or Colossus: The Forbin Project. Or has decided that it wants to serve you up with a side of poached eggs.

Of course, the big problem is that for the most part, AI reflects the values of its programmers. And while we wait for a mechanized army to steal our jobs and then troop down the streets of our subdivision to vaporize (or recruit) the Family Truckster, AI is showing itself to be a pain in the backside.

[SeekAndFind]

Some of us also use Grammarly. And lately, Grammarly has either been bugging out or is staging a quiet revolution. For example, I wrote a piece this morning that mentioned PragerU. I had a five-minute keyboard fight with Grammarly trying to convince it that I meant PragerU, not PrayerU. Now, Dennis Prager is a devout Jew and is certainly in favor of prayer, but PrayerU is not the name of the platform. And then there is the constant battle with Grammarly over what I meant versus what it thought I meant.

There have been more than a few occasions in which I didn’t know what the hell Grammarly was talking about. The thing is either broken or I need to download it again. And Grammarly doesn’t give a rip about style. Or apparently subject matter.

[Big Red Badger]

Of Course...
GIGO

[chajin]

I’m reminded of the Star Trek (classic) episode where Spock is playing 3-d chess with the Enterprise computer, and beating it. He tells McCoy that since the computer was programmed by Spock to play chess, he should not be able to beat it because it would never make a mistake, unlike any of us.

That would require 100% perfect coding, which is impossible: the more complex you design something, the more likely unintended consequences are going to occur. All the computer aids in the world cannot overcome a dumb person trying to sound smart, or a smart person who knows better than the computer what s/he wants to do.

[scrabblehack]

I wrote a program to solve Cracker Barrel’s peg game. The program solved the game better than I did - found every possible solution.

The hardest starting point is to put the empty peg in the middle.

I’ll agree 3-D chess is another story.

[Boogieman]

“And let’s be honest; some of you hoped that we would skip all of that nasty dystopia stuff and go straight to the Enterprise-D where we could zip around the universe...”

Those types usually fail to realize that even if humans could escape the planet, we’d just take all of our problems with us, since we are the root cause.

[Jhadur]

Grammarly? You mean Keystroke Logger Trojan Inc.?

[ThePatriotsFlag]

Why pick on Grammerly ... good grief, that’s the best software program I have! I LEARN from it every day.

[sauropod]

Bkmk

[steve86]

I have just started using it. Are you by chance using the Android version w/ keyboard replacement?

[steve86]

“Why pick on Grammerly?”

I guess it didn’t catch that mistake.

[webheart]

Why would anyone want a software program to do their writing for them? Of course that presupposes they were smart enough to learn English in school.

[nicollo]

Grammarly? You mean Keystroke Logger Trojan Inc.?

Ha! Right you are.

I have to beg students to lay off Grammarly, as with all auto-corrects, but I never considered the privacy angle.

[dfwgator]

Bring back Clippy!

[daniel1212]

I liked the old Firefox which used a dictionary file for auto spell check you could edit yourself. Quantum uses a omni.ja file in Firefox’s program folder and is replaced every update.