If It’s AI, It’s OK
James E. “Trey” Trainor is our MAGA guy in the Federal Election Commission. Appointed by TFG himself in 2020, Trainor has played musical chairs with TFG’s other appointee, Sean Cooksey, as the FEC chairman. Together, they have formed an AI voting bloc.
AI, you see, is merely exercising its God-given right to “Free Speech,” and both Trey and Sean are going to stand up and fight for the constitutional rights of…well…AI.
Because it is far from the purview of the FEC to regulate “Free Speech.” It’s just not in their mandate, even if it is false information generated by AI.
Apparently, someone, let’s call him “Public Citizen,” petitioned the commission to exercise its authority under a federal statute (52 U.S.C. § 30124) that forbids false representation of a candidate or political party as speaking or acting for another candidate or party so as to do damage to that candidate or party.
In other words, “dirty pool is not allowed.”
But as Trey outlines in his statement published in the Washington Examiner today:
“[The Federal Election Campaign Act] does not prohibit broader general untruthfulness in a campaign ad, such as making untrue statements about a candidate’s voting record.”
Besides that, this AI stuff is big and complicated, too big for the FEC.
But how does this impact “Free Speech,” you may ask. Further on, he writes:
“No matter the dangers of AI, an ill-conceived knee-jerk response risks constraining free politica expression. As history has taught, from fear does not often spring good law. And this concern is heightened when those laws regulate the core of political speech in our country.”
In other words, this “free speech” could be wrong on so many levels, but if it’s generated by Artificial Intelligence, well that’s infringement upon the constitutional rights of AI.
It brings to mind “Citizens United,” the controversial SCOTUS opinion that corporations use campaign contributions as “Free speech”.
So, taking this to a test mentioned in a famous Supreme Court criterion, if it is AI that yells “FIRE!” in a theater, that’s OK.
[Everyone thank Alfredo at the Dairy Queen for this one.]
Not much question where trumpf’s secret weapon, john roberts, would secretly put his thumb on the scales of justice by giving AI free reign with misinformation.
1Generally I find conservatives like to cite what our forefathers would do in such a hypothetical situation. In this case they wouldn’t allow freedom for black human beings, but clearly with great foresight would want freedom of speech for future robot overlords?
2Rick, kinda like how Madison and Hamilton were totally cool with having a state religion and fully automatic m16s sold at the grocery store
3OT and going back here a little bit, but I just noticed an absolutely hilarious short video clip in the comments of the DK cartoon post that y’all might like, the cat video one:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/9/16/2269592/-Cartoon-Hot-dog
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I originally posted a ‘pet menu items’ comment here, then the cartoon linked above ran in last Friday’s Toons here.
(I think that the cartoonist LaloA is from the San Antonio area).
Anyway the video clip is perfect (cat watching big screen TV with tRump speaking, cat goes ballistic (literally) and attacks TV..
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9/11, my original comment:
https://juanitajean.com/owned/#comments
Friday Toons, 14th toon down is the one from the DK link above:
4https://juanitajean.com/friday-toons-519/
And here’s another DK article about a most excellent Scientific American article (linked) that perfectly illustrates the huge differences between Kamala Harris and DiJioT
Well worth reading both of them.
(I’ve subscribed to Scientific American magazine (on and off) for more than 55 years, since the mid 1960s):
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/9/16/2270798/-Scientific-American-backs-Harris-slams-Trump-It-s-only-the-second-time-SA-has-endorsed-a-candidate
5Yikes! Clearly my Bachelor of Science was not built for this one!
6Alfredo has more than earned a free DQ Blizzard from me, anytime, and at any Dairy Queen.
The FEC has been toothless even before T**** shoveled some of his “only the best people” onto it. And John Roberts via Citizens United and subsequent rulings has made it nearly worthless.
As for AI generated political content, I’m convinced that progressive and liberals have better capability to create more realistic and believable material than any MAGAt. Among the college educated, it’s a matter of computer science and pyschology majors against business school droids. But there’s two contrary currents here. First, Russia has large numbers of state supported keyboard warriors to bang out the “content”. Second, the typical Republican voter is more easily fooled – hell, they want to believe anything they see on TV or on Facebook/Meta. There’s a recent poll out saying that half of all Republicans now believe the dog-eating Haitian fairy tales.
7And in the news today, a Russia-generated fake story about a young woman “paralyzed in a hit-and-run accident in San Francisco 13 years ago”. Even though it’s been proven false, T**** and his minions will keep repeating it, the media will report his repetitions, and the majority of Republican doofuses will treat it as gospel truth.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-disinformation-foreign-influence-election-microsoft-7f802f9f4a0efe206fdaad29516b1f7f
No AI needed when the target audience is laughably gullible. As for the “tells”, four years from now Russia will be able to conceal those. Just use a real “news” company, with what spies call a legend laid down in advance, and it will be near impossible to counter.
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