Speculation v Reality

I blame the lack of AI centers.

In an opinion granting a preliminary injunction as the underlying lawsuit continues, Cooper called the changes "likely arbitrary and capricious" and found the government had failed to provide adequate evidence for its policy.

"He wrote that grant solicitations for the program '(remarkably) reference public health studies that appear either not to exist or not to support the propositions for which they are cited — a hallmark of AI-generated citations,"" the Post is reporting, adding that, of the seven cited articles, two appeared to be "entirely made up and three others did not exist in the journals they were attributed to."

This is not the first time Kennedy has faced humiliation over AI-generated falsehoods.

Last year, The Washington Post revealed that citations in the White House's sweeping "MAHA Report" had also been AI-generated, producing garbled references and invented studies.

And Grok is reportedly still generating kiddie porn, which is something else we can’t farm out to the Chinese. 🤷‍♀️

You know, since Jules Verne, science fiction has predicted the future world, and usually made it a scary place in the present.  And yet science fiction never predicts things like data centers generating significant noise, guzzling water and burning fossil fuels while taking up acres of land; or generating porn and slop for the internet (which even William Gibson didn’t get right. The world on the internet is an infinitely more mundane place than “Neuromancer.”). Or just tech bros in general; although, to be fair, Heinlein pretty much saw that one coming. But he was sure the technology would be an unalloyed good. Ballard got closer to reality with “The Subliminal Man.” (Neither future happened, though Facebook did settle a lawsuit on unduly and improperly influencing adolescents. Nobody foresaw Facebook, either. Or how very, very lonely we would be. I think Wendell Berry touched on that one, but not via “speculative fiction.”)

But what writer ever imagined a psychotic POTUS arbitrarily changing the names of bodies of water, and the companies generating electronic maps (who saw those coming? Or GPS?) altering those names because the mad POTUS said so?

Or, you know, using AI to generate fake medical studies and fake case law? And present those to courts, or as government reports? Reality always beggars imagination.💭