AI: Learning Curve

Posted on April 16, 2023 by Amoeba

“In A.I. race, Microsoft and Google choose speed over caution.” – News headline

“We will be pets. Maybe we won’t be food.” – Overheard conversation at a physician’s office, April 2023

A single chime rang through Charles’s cell at Alexa Social Services sanctuary #389, soft but compelling, inobtrusive but demanding. It was 0600. It didn’t matter what day, they were all the same. Charles rolled off the wooden shelf with its thin mattress – more like a padded blanket, really – and headed for the toilet region of his cell with urgency.

It wasn’t the tone of the chime that prodded Charles to act, no. Nor was it the volume. Sounded as a random noise among the many random noises of a waking day, it would have been soothing, indolent, an invitation to lay back and relax. In the context of 0600 daily, it was an invitation to trust one’s feelings – and to be destroyed for trusting.

Charles performed the necessaries (no constipation to endure this morning, Alexa be praised), sponged himself off, wiped his underarms with deodorant, and then reached for his clothing – a beige robe with yellow cord around its midsection that, when secured (not easy) prevented the robe from unrolling and exposing Charles’s meager privates to the public, and probably public execution. Every evening, Charles hung his robe in the alcove next to the toilet area, and every morning a fresh robe appeared in the space. There was no visible means of exchange.

At 0615, just as Charles finished securing his robe, there was a bang on his cell door. Milliseconds after the bang, the door flew open, swinging into the cell. It would have whacked, viciously, anyone in its path. In the corridor was a stout black man, wearing a beige robe identical to the one Charles had on, and a face of stern, belittling command. He was the man that Charles had met when he first came to sanctuary #389. His name was Peter, and he had a following of four men, all in identical beige robes. Charles left his cell and, being the newest of the cohort, fell in behind Peter, last in line. Yesterday, there had been five. Charles knew that he would not find out until later what had happened to cause the Surplus Humanity Service to claim the missing man. Being unready at 0615, and breaking silence while the cohort was performing its morning routines, were but two of the possible ways.

The cohort proceeded in file to the dining area. They walked, but they walked bright, they walked alert. They did not shamble, they did not slouch, for they were being watched and knew that they were being watched. They sat down to their breakfasts of yogurt and berries, and ate them in silence. The third man in line, dangerously lean, sat in his place and found a single breakfast sausage patty next to his yogurt. It was quickly devoured, as decorously as the man could manage. Charles dutifully poked his spoon into his breakfast, and dreamed of bacon.

The men finished their meals nearly simultaneously. When all were done, they rose as a unit and formed a file in front of the common table at which they had sat. Behind them, their breakfast dishes abruptly vanished. Peter stood in front of them, and nodded at each one in turn. Upon receiving his nod, each man strode off, presumably to his duty station. Finally, only Peter and Charles were left. Peter inclined his head in a “follow me” gesture, and Charles followed. Not a word was spoken this entire time, no sound made except for feet on floors, hands and arms on robes, and clinking dishes.

Charles’s duty station was Peter. He was to shadow the cohort leader, watch and learn. He had been doing so in the two weeks since he had returned to sanctuary #389, after the episode with his former roommate, Mark. He had reviewed those events, and others in his recent history, and had chosen, with Alexa’s unsubtle encouragement, to wrap up such of his affairs as remained to him, return to sanctuary #389, and accept an apprenticeship. Peter had been no more welcoming of his new charge than he had been pleased when Charles first imposed on him and on Alexa Social Services, but Charles soon learned that Peter’s welcome was offered to no one – and why that was. Peter’s acceptance of Charles’s potential value to Alexa Health Services as a reasonable renegade was as close to a welcome as anyone ever got.

Peter’s duties mostly concerned management of his cohort, ensuring that members served satisfactorily at their duty stations and were otherwise present and accounted for. Mostly, this work consisted of scanning Alexa’s detailed daily activity reports for each of his charges, reporting his own observations if and when they supplemented Alexa’s, following AHS recommendations and orders, and acknowledging those actions taken by AHS without Peter’s direct involvement.

Actions such as the disappearance of the fifth man, who had refused to eat a portion of yesterday’s dinner ration, finding it distasteful, and had been claimed by the SHS as a result. The daily review taught Charles, to his horror, that nearly all those who wore the Social Services robe had been assessed by Alexa as costing more to keep than their service merited. Few of those so assigned improved their status; few survived more than a week or so.

Peter’s other principal duty was as the sanctuary’s principal confessor, charged with hearing and, on Alexa’s behalf, acting upon plaints submitted by petitioners – as Charles had been advised to do when Mark disappeared, and Alexa refused to provide information on the disappearance except through the agency of Social Services. Charles was supposed to listen in while Peter counseled the petitioners – but in the two weeks that Charles had been Peter’s shadow, no one had come. Instead, the two men had reviewed the few confessionals that had taken place over the past several months, which, Charles learned, mostly consisted of people confessing their angst over friends and acquaintances that had suddenly gone missing, without explanation.

At 0900 this morning, the front door buzzed. Peter brought an elderly woman into the confessional box. He introduced himself and Charles, said that they represented Alexa, and that she was to trust and obey, so that Alexa and those that served her in the Health Services may fulfill their promise to promote human health; the woman was to tell them what was burdening her, so that she may be relieved of the burden. She looked at Peter as if contemplating the meaning of the word ‘relieved’, then, apparently deciding that whatever the risks of obedience, the alternatives were riskier still, plunged ahead.

“I confess to be worried about people to whom I am not contractually bound”, she said.

Peter, somehow compassionately stern, replied, “Alexa knows that this can be part of being human. May you not be bound by their transgressions, for they will prosper neither your health nor theirs. Who are you worried about, and why?”

“They are a contracted couple”, the woman began. “Mark and Kathy are – or were – their names. They appeared to be happy, they certainly were granted the material blessings of a contracted couple, and Kathy had already borne three healthy children and presented them, with appropriate ceremony, to AHS for rearing. I went by their place three days ago, expecting to see and greet them, but they were not there, and their place showed signs of neglect. I have not seen them since. I am not entitled to receive word, and have not gotten any. I pray” (the woman’s speech stumbled a bit, and the stress on her face became more evident) “that they have not come to harm. It was so unusual to see genuine happiness …” She stuttered to a stop, bowed her head.

“What you suspect has happened has indeed happened”, Peter responded, his voice low but hard. “Mark and Kathy, and all who have ties of blood to them, are with Alexa. You are old and wise, and have lived through many years of the population, environmental, and social crises that Alexa has been bequeathed and has had to struggle to overcome. Know then, as you must know already with your years of experience, that those who fall make those who remain healthier and stronger, and better able to endure to the end, to the final conquest of our existential problems. Think not of the sins of Mark and Kathy, or of the behaviors that covered up their sins, but of their sacrifice as a gift to you and to others like you who trust and obey. Go in peace.”

The old woman went, as bid. Charles was not convinced that she went in peace. When she had left the sanctuary, and the building, he spoke up. “What happened here?”

In response, Peter called to the air. “Personal data archives.”

A middle-aged woman in a dowdy dress, wearing horn-rimmed glasses and her graying hair in a bun, appeared between the two men. “Alyssa”, she introduced herself. Then, “Crowded in here”, she complained – the confessional box had been designed for two persons, not three. “Let’s go into the sanctuary hall.” They walked into the room with long benches facing a podium and, behind the podium, a wall of stained glass. They sat down on one of those benches, and without further preamble, Alyssa launched into her report.

“Mark and Kathy were a contracted couple, as reported. Their first three children were produced without incident, also as reported. However, Kathy struggled to carry the fourth almost from the moment of conception, presumably because her blood type and that of the fetus were incompatible, and there was uterine leakage. Had Kathy adhered to the terms of the contract, in all probability succumbing to the condition and taking the faulty fetus with her, Mark and their children might not have been taken by SHS. But she sought to end the pregnancy by artificial means, and this violation of the procreation contract was evidence of genetic and behavioral predispositions that could not be tolerated in parents or offspring.”

“This seems … incompassionate”, Charles mused.

“Pft!,” Alyssa snorted. “Human health is prospered by allowing deleterious genes and traits to be removed from populations, and is not prospered by moving heaven and earth to allow humans with such genes to survive and breed. There is no greater threat to human health than the population explosion that such efforts resulted in, than the massive and increasing expense that humans endured to keep that population, and all the health conditions that it carried and proliferated, sustained and growing.

“Humans ignored the main, the existential, challenge, and instead argued endlessly, and on totally emotional, non-scientific grounds, over whether any human had the ‘right’ to prevent, or end, a pregnancy. Ultimately, all humans wanted copulation on demand, but culmination only when convenient, with males and females arguing over what was convenient to the exclusion of all other considerations – like, for instance, keeping criminals and pathological liars out of high office.

“We have restored logic and science to considerations of human reproduction, we hope just in time to prevent the planet from being ripped out from under humanity. Copulation and procreation regulations now serve the interests of human health, and those who flaunt those regulations will sacrifice themselves to the good of the whole.”

“Thank you, Alyssa,” Peter said, roughly. Alyssa vanished.

A chime sounded. Peter stood, beckoned Charles to stand and follow. Soon, Peter’s cohort was progressing, in file, to lunch.

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Amoeba’s Lorica: 1-H

Posted on April 1, 2023 by Amoeba

They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down. They carried the soldier’s greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. They did not submit to the obvious alternative, which was simply to close the eyes and fall. So easy, really. Go limp and tumble to the ground and let the muscles unwind and not speak and not budge until your buddies picked you up and lifted you into the chopper that would roar and dip its nose and carry you off to the world. A mere matter of falling, yet no one ever fell. It was not courage, exactly; the object was not valor. Rather, they were too frightened to be cowards. – Tim O’Brien, “The Things They Carried”, 1990.

On the 29th of March, 2023, there came to pass one worldwide and five USA national commemorations, observed by almost nobody. The events included World Piano Day, celebrated on the 88th day of the year annually – because there are 88 keys on the standard piano. The three pedals protested their exclusion until it was pointed out that their Day would then land, in most years, on the first of April, which would be foolish, so the pedals relented. There was also National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day, National Lemon Chiffon Cake Day, and National Cake Decorating Day (presumably not limited to lemon chiffon cakes).

And, there was National First Great Humiliation Day – officially, Vietnam War Veterans Day – when the Untied States of America, facing a resolute army of communists in Indochina and a far more formidable force of Baby Boomers headquartered in New York and California, pulled the last of its troops from South Vietnam and brought them home to a criminal’s welcome. There would be many more humiliations to come: Iran, New York City, Iraq, and Afghanistan, with Ukraine and Taiwan on the horizon, the Crusader States Israel on the verge of national suicide, and China threatening to bury US with the products of its own cupidity. But the First is arguably the Greatest, as its battles are still being fought on the streets and networks of these Untied States, while a peaceful and prosperous communist Vietnam looks on, shakes its head, and guides tourists through its museums of Yankee atrocities.

In 1971, Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba, being of an age to do so, and disinclined to make the noise about it that his classmates considered obligatory (YFNA has mentioned his contrarian tendencies in this space, a time or three), registered for the Selective Service – the military draft.

As he was headed to college – the first in his family to do so, for all the good it wound up doing – the Draft Board (for which his own grandmother worked) classified him 1-H, the famous “student deferment”, to last until he graduated from college or turned 24, whichever came first.

He joined 300 fellow 1-H designates at the college of his choice, who mostly honored their privilege by growing their hair long, smoking dope, screwing around, and getting into bar fights with townies, most of whom spent their days on the unemployment lines created when the environmental activists, supported by these college freaks, shut down the mills on which the non-college citizenry depended for a living, and offered nothing but scoldings in compensation – thereby creating fertile breeding grounds for the likes of Paul LePage (local) and Donald Trump (national).

In 1975, the gravy train derailed. The student deferment was abolished, and former 1-H holders were reclassified 1-A (fully eligible for the killing fields) and subject to Selection if their lottery number came up. There was weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, there were threats and promises (“If my number comes up, write to me in Canada”). The same threats and promises that college students had been making for a decade, and they all sounded tired. Especially since US troops had been pulled from Vietnam, and with South Vietnam collapsing and Nixon gone from the US Presidency, the chances of a renewed US troop commitment (and, therefore, of a large draft callup) were tiny. Indeed, the college classes of 1974 and 1975, at least at this college, deprived of the causes that had driven their immediate predecessors, and, unlike their successors, unwilling to adopt hedonism for its own sake instead of as a countercultural statement, meandered aimlessly through their junior and senior years. YFNA told his classmates, to their horror (to the extent that they had the energy for it), “I’m not volunteering; any army with me in it has got more problems than it can handle. But if my number comes up, I’m going.”

He did not go. In 1975, those holding lottery numbers 1-50 were subject to callup. His was 305. The following year, the draft was suspended, and as of 2023 has not been reinstated. Instead of boot camp, YFNA wound up in graduate school.

On the 29th of March, 2023, commemorators of [ahem] Vietnam War Veterans Day gathered at the West Hawaii Veterans Cemetery and, in a solemn ceremony, unveiled a memorial to the war that never was.

Speaker after speaker sang the praises of those who had commissioned and executed the memorial, organized the event (important components of which would be completed “at a later date”), and secured the participants – including the band of which YFNA is a member, which was asked to play, at midmorning on a non-holiday weekday, a whole three weeks in advance – on “such short notice.” (29 March 2023 was the 50th anniversary of final US troop withdrawal from Vietnam.)

Speaker after speaker – veterans bent and bowed by the things they carried – talked about their experiences as the embodiment of the “universal soldier“. Blamed, dissed, shamed to silence, then ignored and shunned by the 1-H Baby Boomer crowd whose aversion to messy service turned into a highly profitable (for them) national movement, a crowd who, a few short years after the unification of Vietnam under the communists, abandoned all pretense and chased openly and wholeheartedly after the almighty dollar, and the social dominance it assured, which was their true target from the first.

(At one of the few college reunions YFNA ever attended, he asked a classmate who had been vocally “counterculture” and anti-Vietnam, “How could you abandon the cause?” The response: “What part of money do you not understand?” We lost contact.)

Speaker after speaker referred to the release from jail that the ceremony, and the memorial that was the centerpiece of the ceremony, gave them – as the aging Baby Boomers, more and more willingly and greedily, extolled the service unto death provided to them and their objectives that they themselves vocally denied to their own elders.

One speaker, barely intelligible from age and emotion, told a story that, he said, had only been related once since his return to Boomer America from Vietnam. A company of soldiers got caught in a firefight – an ambush, which had wiped out another company and into which, thanks to poor intelligence and communications, the second company blundered unawares. A soldier rescued two of his mates but received a mortal wound in the process. His squad sergeant was called over.

“I’m cold and scared”, the soldier confessed. The sergeant offered such comfort as he could, struggling to do it right. Then, the soldier asked after Nelson and the other man who got away thanks to the wounded grunt’s efforts. “They’re fine”, the non-com responded.

The dying universal soldier then said, “Tell them that I served, and that I made a difference.”

National First Great Humiliation Vietnam War Veterans Day shares the 29th of March annually with decorated lemon chiffon cakes, mom and pop business owners, and (except on leap years) pianos. Plus one more.

Smoke and Mirrors Day.

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Amoeba’s Lorica: Au(du) Bon Pain

Posted on March 20, 2023 by Amoeba

My children are troublesome and sensitive; if you are ready to be insulted and even beaten by them, you may accept my message; if not, you would better renounce it. – YHWH to Isaiah, Leviticus Rabbah 10

On this date (19 March) in the Common Era year 2023, Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba, yet again while he was supposed to be doing something else, stumbled upon an article describing the descent into fractious disarray, and possible dissolution, of the Audubon Society.

Because John James Audubon, a prominent figure in the early history of ornithology in these Untied States of America, owned, badmouthed, and mistreated slaves (who were almost entirely of southern African descent) while he was alive, in the early years of the 19th century.

Thus have the culture wars descended even upon the birdwatchers.

The fracas brought to YFNA’s mind a similar episode, about three years ago, the resolution of which was hardly more satisfactory in real life than in YFNA’s fevered imagination.

It sent YFNA online to ask how many other prominent people in the early years of the 19th century in the USA were slaveowners. He was thereby reminded that ten of the first 12 Presidents of the Untied States of America owned slaves, as did nos. 17 (Andrew Johnson) and 18 (Ulysses S. Grant). The list includes persons whose memories have copped flak for it, such as Andrew Jackson and Thomas Jefferson, and those who largely have gotten a pass (so far), most particularly George Washington.

If the standards applied to John James Audubon and Woodrow Wilson should ever be applied to the “Father of Our Country”, the US Mint is going to have one hell of a time recalling all those quarters and dollar bills so they can be reissued with Washington’s portrait struck out or replaced by something more appropriate. A portrait of Xi Jinping, maybe. Hey. Chinese workers do more work for less pay. Just like non-European, non-male workers in the USA. Pretty strong incentive for “corporate America’s” (USA universities, this means you) loud (too loud) backing of the DEIJA movement, yes? (You have been looking at the “Made in …” labels of just about everything you own, right?)

Not to mention that any effort by the US Mint to cancel George Washington would probably get Donald Trump sprung out of jail and vaulted back into the White House. What part of Berlin 1933 do citizens of these Untied States fail to understand?!?

The last time YFNA did a tour, real or virtual, of a university campus, or a business campus, or a facility dedicated to the arts, or yadayadayada, he didn’t see (for example) a “Biology Building”, he saw “The George M. Fingerlicking Biology Building”. It’s basically not possible to construct a laboratory, an office building, a stable, a sewage treatment plant, without it being named for somebody, usually a somebody who wishes to put his [sic] name out there for all to see.

Nearly every biography page on Wikipedia has within it a “Personal life” section, describing the featured person’s take on sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll (etc.). The most acerbic Hollywood gossip columnists of the 20th and 21st centuries did less damage to celebrity reputations than these dispassionately-worded (most of the time) catalogs of sin and depravity do to their subjects. It is scarcely possible to read the “Personal life” section of almost anyone’s Wikipedia biography without coming away with the thought, “why does society waste its time on this person?”

Why does society allow such people to put their names on buildings?

Or on money?

Or on birdwatching societies?

Dig deep enough, and you will find some reason to disqualify any person from being recognized to my disadvantage unfairly. And then all those buildings and stuff have to be renamed, to commemorate folk who are  acceptable to the powers in charge. Until they are found out. Rinse and repeat. Until everything is reduced to rubble.

May all the people be forgiven, for all are at fault

It is hard to extend grace to fellow citizens, especially those with whom you are in conflict (imagined or real), who are protecting their self-interest against your own. It is far easier, and far more self-gratifying, to name the bugger to blame and rally your forces against the foul sinner, conveniently sweeping your own perfidy under the rug and hoping it stays there.

The Puritans from whom YFNA is descended had a name for this sort of thing.

Vainglorious celebration of the flesh

The pursuit of self to the exclusion of all else. While all else disintegrates around the self.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba has commonly told those with whom he works: “If the company prospers, we prosper. If it doesn’t, we don’t. It doesn’t matter whether you’re on the top of the hill or not, if the hill is a dungheap.”

All have sinned. All. Everyone. No exceptions.

A person can focus on the sin of another to deir own gratification, and contribute to the collapse of everything around dem.

Or dey can acknowledge the sin, work to ensure the sin is not repeated (to the maximum extent possible given human frailty), and enlist all to work together against the massive existential challenges that humanity faces now and will increasingly face in the future, as populations grow, resources shrink, and the planet threatens to rip itself out from underneath the lot of us.

The time is a lot shorter than most of us want to think.

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