artificial intelligence


Sucky the A.I. Vacuum   Recently updated !

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Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, or whatever you want to call it has practical applications. From sorting the Pentagon’s bloated budget to doing whatever it is middle managers do, it has its place. Creating original art is never going to be one. The whole enterprise involves lifting from the work of others and mushing them all together. And until there’s a chip that creates sentient inspiration, the results will always be derivative.

This won’t stop executives from using it to cut costs. The WGA knew this, and that’s why they held firm and guaranteed that AI works won’t ice out the writers. Most of pop culture is already a boring mix of stuff that already exists, and A.I. would only make it worse, much more quickly.

Anthropomorphizing terrible tech is now a recurring bit that started with this A.I comic and Cruisey the self-aware car. Let’s see if I’m the John Henry of ripping myself off and can beat the machines to running it into the ground.

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Scab Scripts

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The Writers’ Guild of America declared a strike early Tuesday after the executive side of the entertainment business refused to negotiate their modest demands. A lot has changed since the last writers’ strike in 2007, especially how media is consumed and compensated.

Netflix’s red envelopes were the big new thing back then, and now they’re a relic young people think coexisted with BETAMAX. Yet pay, residuals, and benefits are still stuck in that ancient time before we had to manage a dozen or so streaming logins.

All of these studios are making profits, just not enough to satisfy Wall Street’s maw. So they’re screwing writers and nickel-and-diming their subscribers by canceling shows and memory-holing their back catalogs to save a few cents on residuals, all to squeeze out more dividends and stock buybacks.

Joe “Union Guy” Biden broke a rail strike so the economy wouldn’t take a hit. If this writers’ strike goes on long enough to harm the studios’ bottom lines, I’m sure he’ll find a way to intervene.

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A.I. for Government and Business

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I know there was an actual Trump indictment and arraignment this week, but I have to get ahead for some real-life stuff and did an evergreen comic.

AI’s always invoked to replace labor, never management or any job that wields actual power. I’m decades away from the last time I wrote a computer program, but I guarantee you it’s easier to automate the work of the guys who turn spreadsheets into human misery than anyone doing anything useful for society.

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Incredible Global News 2022

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Heading into the final weeks of the year and threw together some unrelated news gags together to get ahead of schedule. AI art is this year’s NFTs. Everywhere at the moment, but its ubiquity will be its undoing. Or so I tell myself.

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