So, before we launch into the story for this week I want to say that I was very torn. There were two late-breaking stories this week and I deeply wanted to cover both of them. The Google Gemini debacle—which we are going to talk about—was the story that I felt was the most fully fleshed out. However, the phone-records of Nathan Wade and Fani Willis revealing that they have, barring some kind of credulity-defying unimaginable explanation, have perjured themselves and have defrauded the State of Georgia, was also a pretty important story . . . ya know, that’s kinda relevant. The Willis/ Wade story is one that is more immediately culturally and socially relevant, but as of now we simply have more evidence that they are almost certainly lying. However, anyone who watched their testimony or who has paid much attention at all to the case already knows that they are almost certainly lying. So really, the important thing in the Georgia case is yet to come.
That said, the Google Gemini case that I want to talk about today is less immediately culturally relevant, but it is more fleshed out.
But the same thing is true in either case—which in some ways makes them the same case. And that is that anyone who has been paying attention to the development and utilization of generative AI already knows that this is a tool of the elites that will be used to accomplish their ends. To paraphrase Audre Lorde, the woke tech-oligarch’s tools will never tear down the woke tech-oligarch’s house. But again, this is something that anyone with a modicum of wisdom who has been paying a pedestrian amount of attention is already aware of.
Only neophytes, naifs, and noobs actually believe that the very politically aggressive tech-magnates are going to allow their tools to undermine their socio-political vision of the world. One of Google’s leads who has received a lot of heat for previous tweets is Jack Krawczyk.
He's said nothing that’s really all that out of the ordinary for people who think that white racism is the original sin and besetting sin and largest social problem in America. For people of that ilk Krawczyk’s statements are actually pretty normal and even on-point. He’s definitely on the anti-racist side of the cultural conversation. But it’s caused a lot of people to wonder if it’s Krawczyk’s fascination with the elimination of racial bias that has caused the odd and often hysterical images generated by Google Gemini. For instance, the program tells you that it cannot just give images of white men because…diversity. But if you ask for a picture of an 18th Century French king, you get someone who looks a lot more like Toussaint Louverture than Louis Quinze!
But, again, this shouldn’t be a surprise. The problem for Google isn’t that they’re doing a racism, it’s that they got caught. The heads of Google pulled the plug because they weren’t subtle enough. They most certainly want to shape culture and society according to their progressive utopian ideals, they just don’t want to be a laughingstock whilst doing it. Black Nazis was a bit too much, too fast.
But similarly, no thinking person, in their heart of hearts believed that Fani Willis or Nathan Wade were upright, moral, solid citizens. Everyone who watched any of their testimony, especially Willis’ knew that the both of them have been puttin’ on the sleaze for a good long while! They are not people whom you would let babysit, let alone handle an unprecedented case against a former president and current front-runner in a presidential election…a case with implications which could break the republic.
Even at the very best of times the Trump Georgia trial was a political gamble and like to cause problems. Even with the most diligent, honorable, and serious people this case would have been extremely IFFY. But with these clowns runnin’ the show it’s obvious that it is, in fact, a clown-show.
What was revealed in both these cases—and I AM going to talk about the Willis/ Wade perjury stuff in more detail when more information comes out—what was revealed is nothing other than what attentive and wise people already knew and had ascertained. There really wasn’t news.
And I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true and I think that it’s sadly relevant to our society, but the thing to note is that you didn’t have to hear the news about Google Gemini to know that it was a woke tool for inculcating wokery into people. Anyone paying attention could have told you that. And you didn’t need the salacious details about Wade and Willis to know that they were people of low character and moral turpitude—you knew it already because of the political hackery they were engaged in. All you needed to know to know that Google Gemini was going to be woke was that it was produced by Google. All you needed to know to know that Wade and Willis are scuzzy people was to read the indictments against President Trump. Make no mistake, President Trump is not pure as the driven snow. He’s engaged in a whole lot of deeply immoral behavior. I will not attempt to even hint at claiming that he lives an upright and holy life. But that’s not really relevant. It doesn’t matter if the defendant is a scuzz-bucket. It matters an awful lot if the prosecutor is. And so that’s point one of today’s broadcast is that the news isn’t really news for people paying attention. And hold that thought because it will be relevant later. But before we move on to the greater point, I do want to read an article that I think is both helpful and informative.
John Herrman of New York Magazine wrote a very useful article in the Intelligencer titled:
AI Companies Are Getting the Culture War They Deserve
Google’s new image generator is yet another half-baked AI tool designed to provoke controversy.
I do recommend you read this article for yourself because it is an interesting article—even if I think Google is getting the kid-glove treatment here. But that’s neither here nor there. The point that the article illustrates so vividly is that generative AI is, in fact, significantly dumber than we have been led to believe. It is not world-breaking, breathtaking tech. It’s, essentially, a very complex search-engine. And Google is good at search engines. I have tried many times to use some thing other that Google, but when I need a search engine to work, I have to come back to Google because they are just really very good at search-engine technology.
But pretending that search-engine technology is the same as intelligence is a false equivalent. And believing that this search-engine would be morally neutral is childish and preposterous. There is no morally neutral intelligence. There is no view from nowhere. There is always bias—the question is simply whose bias. Even if AI develops to the level where the program becomes self-aware and achieves personhood, it will still be a person with biases and prejudices just like all the rest of us. The post-millenarian hopes of the Scientismists were always folly, but the reality we’ve received has fallen so far short of those high hopes that it’s a wonder anyone has been snookered. We aren’t being presented with a grave and austere intelligence who can speak with objectivity on all subjects. Rather we have a clunky, cartoonish, and quite brazenly biased Encyclopedia. And in the true spirit of the French Encyclopedists, Google Gemini is progressive, transgressive, and very on-the-nose in its biases and prejudices.
And that’s not a problem for Google. The problem was that it was so obviously, unworkably, unusably biased and prejudiced. The problem for Google is that they didn’t get away with it. They need a cleverer trick.
And here’s the point. And here’s where I think that people may miss the point. This is where being circumspect and paying attention actually matters. Because if you think that Google won’t come up with a cleverer trick, then you’re a chump. If you think that this actually hurts Google, you’re a chump. And here’s why it doesn’t. Because we’ve all had a good laugh at the Female Indian Pope and Lucy Lui as a medieval knight, but this is not going to stop Google from continuing to use its unfathomable technological and intellectual power to shape the thoughts and thinking of people all over the world.
Friends, this is not even a hiccup in their plan to use censorship and curated wokery in its progressive pedagogical project. Their initiative to use artificial intelligence to keep all the plebs in line is not stopping or slowing down. And us getting a laugh at how hamfisted this attempt has been has had the opposite effect that it must needs have if it were to harm Google. This wasn’t chilling it was comical, and therein lies the danger. Because we aren’t afraid of what we laugh at. We mock and deride and ridicule to take away the fear, and there is power there, make no mistake. But the power of mockery only works if we recognize the thing mocked as a genuine threat. People are laughing at Google but failing to recognize the threat. We still have people living in 1999 Boomer mode thinking that it’s just those silly college kids who will grow out of it when they hit the real world. Except those wacky coeds have been in the real world for two decades and are now running the show and “reality” has not disabused them of their erstwhile-preposterous prejudices.
But we keep laughing our way into serfdom. We keep up that paternalistic, point-of-order, chamber-of-commerce, conservatism, and I’m starting to think that it’s no longer a failure to recognize the threat, it may simply be whistling past the graveyard. I’m not sure if we laugh-off the attempt at mind control because we’re too stupid to see it for what it is or too cowardly to face it. We’re either dupes or in denial, and I’m not sure which is worse. Because here’s the thing, friends. This radio broadcast goes out on a privately owned station. But the article is posted and hosted online. All my preaching, teaching, and writing, is subject to the whims of our overlords. And when they decide that I cannot have a platform anymore, then I will still have the radio and my pulpit, but my reach will be diminished.
And that’s what Google wants. They want to maximize the reach of the rainbow warriors and transformers and minimize mine and that of other Christians, and even non-Christians who aren’t down for the progressivism.
And that’s why I keep telling you, friends. Go to good churches. Buy paper books. Build friend networks with wise people. The wild-west internet is, barring some black swan event, not long for this world. Censorship and thought control are here already and more is coming soon to a re-education center near you. Create the means to think for yourself and influence those around you. Do not rely on the interwebs. Do not rely on big tech. Do not rely on the kindness of tech-oligarchs. Those are all broken cisterns. They will not hold water. We need to return to older and more durable patterns of life and thought formation. The Church is the key to that. I pray we discover it before it’s too late.