MLK Holiday

The MLK holiday was observed on Monday, which always engenders much activity by the Civil Rights Era Re-enactment Societies, often featuring quotes from “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”

Observance of the holiday prompted me to query GPT-4.

“When did Martin Luther King Jr predict the election of a black president?”

GPT-4 produced the following response. 

“There is no definitive record of Martin Luther King Jr specifically predicting the election of a black president.”

A simple Google search revealed the interview in which Martin Luther King Jr says, “…I think we may be able to get a negro president in less than 40 years. I would think that this could come in 25 years.” 

Bobby Kennedy predicted a negro president in forty years, which was close to the election and then the re-election of Barack Obama. So, why is GPT-4 so inaccurate? What is popularly known as AI is the application of data science techniques to web content. Data science is a combination of linear algebra and statistics. As every Nigerian prince seeking to deposit funds into your bank account will attest, there’s a garbage-in-garbage-out problem with Internet content. Applying data science techniques to uncurated web content is just Data Scientology, the good taste of scientific rigor without all the hard work.

In the case of GPT-4, the goal of the curation effort is to produce results that align with a particular worldview. This worldview holds that the current state of inner-city black America is not the result of the unintended consequences of many decades of bad government policies supported by both political parties but rather the evil forces of ‘whiteness.’ Interactions with GPT-4 reveal other facets of this worldview. It is a veritable tensor field of qualities, including citizenship, gender, skin color, formal education, ability, sexuality, neuro-diversity, mental health, body size, housing, wealth, and language. These qualities have associated signs and symbols ranging from pronouns in bios to flags and emojis. Fully specifying one’s place in this worldview requires something akin to the service ribbons that adorn the chests of high-ranking military officers.

For those who didn’t participate in the March on Washington, the Stonewall Riot, or César Chávez’s grape strike, the appeal of this worldview and its attendant symbols is understandable. But as in the case of Data Scientology, real work is required to advance humanity in the twenty-first century. We must each embrace the privileges we have earned and come together in voluntary association to address the concrete problems of the individuals in our towns and cities.

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Kevin’s Random Thoughts and Rants https://kptyson.substack.com/