technocrit

We are constantly fed a version of AI that looks, sounds and acts suspiciously like us. It speaks in polished sentences, mimics emotions, expresses curiosity, claims to feel compassion, even dabbles in what it calls creativity.

But what we call AI today is nothing more than a statistical machine: a digital parrot regurgitating patterns mined from oceans of human data (the situation hasn’t changed much since it was discussed here five years ago). When it writes an answer to a question, it literally just guesses which letter and word will come next in a sequence – based on the data it’s been trained on.

This means AI has no understanding. No consciousness. No knowledge in any real, human sense. Just pure probability-driven, engineered brilliance — nothing more, and nothing less.

So why is a real “thinking” AI likely impossible? Because it’s bodiless. It has no senses, no flesh, no nerves, no pain, no pleasure. It doesn’t hunger, desire or fear. And because there is no cognition — not a shred — there’s a fundamental gap between the data it consumes (data born out of human feelings and experience) and what it can do with them.

Philosopher David Chalmers calls the mysterious mechanism underlying the relationship between our physical body and consciousness the “hard problem of consciousness”. Eminent scientists have recently hypothesised that consciousness actually emerges from the integration of internal, mental states with sensory representations (such as changes in heart rate, sweating and much more).

Given the paramount importance of the human senses and emotion for consciousness to “happen”, there is a profound and probably irreconcilable disconnect between general AI, the machine, and consciousness, a human phenomenon.

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PhD programmes need to better prepare students for careers outside universities, researchers warn.

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Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte told reporters at the summit in the Hague that President Donald Trump was like a "daddy" intervening in a schoolyard fight.

Bill Clinton’s last-minute endorsement of Andrew Cuomo in New York City’s mayoral race is all too fitting: both men represent the corporate Democratic establishment, opposed by socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani, that has abandoned the working class.

The alleged officers detaining hundreds if not thousands of people each day in California and across the country are often masked. They sometimes refuse to answer questions, including which agency they represent. They threaten force — and even use it to make arrests of bystanders — when they are challenged.

In the first video I watched, a man in an unmarked car detains another man sitting on a bus bench in Pasadena. The man presumed to be a federal agent has on a vest that simply says “Police” and a cheap black ski mask that covers every bit of his face — the kind that looks like it was purchased on Amazon and that we have previously most associated with criminals such as robbers and rapists. A few of his colleagues are in the background, some also seemingly masked.

If these men approached me or one of my kids dressed like that, I would run. I would fight. I would certainly not take his word that he was “police” and had the right to force me into his car.

In the second video, another presumed federal agent jumps out of his unmarked vehicle and draws his weapon on a civilian attempting to take a photo of the license plate.

Yes — he points his gun at a civilian who is not threatening him or committing a crime. Folks, maybe you consider it a bad idea to try to photograph what may or may not be a legitimate police operation, but it is not illegal. This alleged officer appears to have simply not liked what was happening, and threatened to shoot the person upsetting him. The man taking the photo ran away, but what would have happened had he not?

These actions by alleged authorities are examples of impunity, and it is what happens when accountability is lost.

Warning: Video may cause hearing damage, brain shrinkage.

A spokesperson for Iran's health ministry said Israeli attacks on the country have killed more than 400 Iranians.

Hossein Kermanpour, head of public relations at Iran's health ministry, said most of the recorded deaths have been civilians.

He added that the Israeli strikes have killed at least 54 women and children, and wounded 3,056 others.

"Among the injured, 2,220 have been treated and discharged from the Ministry of Health hospitals, while 232 received outpatient care at the scene of the attacks," said Kermanpour.

"During this period, our dedicated medical teams across the country have performed 457 surgeries on the wounded."

Israel’s war on Iran was one that many have expected, and yet with nuclear talks between the United States and Iran ongoing, few saw it coming. Propaganda from the Netanyahu government and credulous reporting in the Western media have played a major part in how we got here.

In a major ruling late Thursday night, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit unanimously held that President Donald Trump acted within his authority in federalizing and deploying California National Guard troops to Los Angeles, overriding the objections of Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom.

As of this writing, some 4,700 US military personnel—including 4,000 members of the California National Guard—have been federalized by the Trump administration in response to protests against ongoing immigration raids across Southern California. Hundreds of troops are now deployed throughout Los Angeles, as masked and unaccountable immigration Gestapo agents continue to brutally assault, detain and disappear residents, workers and even US citizens on a daily basis.

The most significant fact that emerged from the testimony was the acknowledgment by Bolsonaro and the other defendants that the former president conspired with the armed forces command to prevent the inauguration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers Party (PT), who was democratically elected in 2022.

Despite having been the one to shoot and kill Ah Loo and wound Arturo, the yet unidentified No Kings “peacekeeper” was detained and released without charges after being questioned by police.