Posted in

DEI purge and AI

by David••18

Seems we can chalk up a lot of the controversy in the last couple of months to non-human causes.

The officials, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations, said, for example, they were waiting for guidance on whether military “firsts” count as history that can be restored. The first female Army Reserve graduate of Ranger School, Maj. Lisa Jaster, or the first female fighter pilot, Air Force Maj. Gen. Jeannie Leavitt, both had their stories deleted.

Some officials said their understanding was it did not matter whether it was a historic first. If the first was based on what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth found to be a disqualifying characteristic, such as gender or race, it had to go, they said.

Overall, tens of thousands of online posts that randomly mention dozens of key words, including “gay,” “bias” and “female” — have been deleted. Officials warn that the bulk of those images are gone for good.
My personal favorite has to be taking down photos of Paul Tibbet’s B-29 (the one that dropped the Hiroshima bomb) because it was named the “Enola Gay” after Tibbet’s mother.  I believe there is no historical evidence that his mother was a lesbian, so perhaps a bit of an overreach was involved?
But we have all seen the other anecdotes – the deletion of the Tuskegee Airmen, for instance. (BTW, we are down to only ONE pilot extant – LTC George Hardy.)
Turns out much of the explanation is simple. Not over-reaching orders on Hegseth’s part, not necessarily over-zealous Trump detractors trying to make the administration look bad (well, they could be part of the story but not the core) – it’s a lot simpler than that. The polar opposite of natural intelligence – artificial stupidity.

Officials said the department relied in large part on a blind approach — using artificial intelligence computer commands to search for dozens of those key words in online department, military and command websites.

If a story or photo depicted or included one of the terms, the computer program then added “DEI” into the web address of the content, which flagged it and led to its removal.  AP

In contrast, the AI works poorly on social media like Facebook, Instagram, et al, so hand-culling is necessary. That’s when natural stupidity rears its ugly head. But the artificial variety caused by simplistic AI being used for a nuanced determination… looks like the human idiocy lies in the decision to USE the AI.

You might also like

House Democrats introduce bill to abolish the Space Force

Now, This Is a REALLY Good Idea . . . .

VetVoice: Republicans won’t help veterans

18 thoughts on “DEI purge and AI”

    2. How can AI become something that may or may not exist? Sounds like a question for Schrödinger.

      1. There seems to be some controversy on just what “intelligence” actually is. I don’t hold out much hope for anything really useful to come out of Artificial Intelligence. sounds catchy, though.

  2. I really do not buy the AI is the reason story. IMO it is still senior puzzle palace folks who are taking out their angst at having to probably justify their job existence due to no longer being able to claim race or gender qualifications. By taking it to the extreme they are trying to make a point, but really just throwing a tantrum. Besides someone had to program the AI and set the parameters, that is called GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out.

  3. As Director of Media Relations for the proud but humble woman owned business that supplied the AI software to the federal government, allow Hack to put it out there that when you are developing software on a Commodore 64 computer that you found in the dumpster behind the Bethesda Salvation Army Thrift Shop, there are bound to be a few glitches.

    1. “a Commodore 64 computer”

      Ooooh. I always wanted one of those. I never got a BB gun, either.

    1. “Lisa Jaster is a United States Army Reservelieutenant colonel and engineer officer who was the first female reserve soldier to graduate from the Army’s Ranger School.[2] She completed the training, which as many as 60 percent[3] of students fail within the first four days, after “recycling” through, or retrying, several phases of the multi-locational course. Due to being recycled, she was at the school for six months;”
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Jaster

      So, it evidently is at least partially remedial. For “special” people, anyway.

  6. ”
    “the human idiocy lies in the decision to USE the AI”

    True. And yet we are constantly being told that AI is a magic spell that will bring us into a utopian future.

    On the other hand, how many decades would it take to manually sanitize those “tens of thousands of online posts”?

    On the other other hand, why bother? (Because nit-picking bureaucrats gotta be nit-picking bureaucrats).

  7. If the price of returning to normalcy is the loss of a few “first”, I am perfectly fine with it.

    Aren’t we supposed to be a melting pot? A meritocracy? A constitutional republic?
    Then what does it matter if someone is a first?

Comments are closed.