Crossposting this thread from nottheonion@lemmy.world with the fortune article “Elon Musk’s AI turns on him, labels him ‘one of the most significant spreaders of misinformation on X’”. The article itself is nothing much, but it does have this quote:

The smackdown from his own AI system, ironically, came soon after Musk touted the system to his followers in a tweet reading “Use Grok for answers that are based on up-to-date info!”

A little delicious irony is fine as a treat.

Especially given the events of the last week, that doesn’t seem to have worked either, no matter how direct. The ineffectiveness would also explain why Fuentes has now been doxxed.

Yeah, ridicule or insults are generally not very helpful at promoting positive change, unfortunately. If they were useful, we’d tell parents to insult their children as a teaching method. The fact we don’t recommend that might imply that ridicule is not great for personal growth. Insults usually only helpful as catharsis for the person using them. More reason to be considerate in choice, in my opinion.

Actual good actions are necessary to promote other good actions. I hope we both can do more good going forward.

That’s definitely a fair point that it’s quite indirect, which I think raises another question - why not just directly call the actions cruel / contemptuous / arrogant or belligerent / whatever else? Do we need to describe the person at all if it’s really the actions that we’re trying to discourage? Calling someone a slur, while harsh, seems to be perhaps as indirect as the dead hamster metaphor - if the goal is to condemn their choices.

I think it’s great that you’re considering this, and would like to add some food for thought.

Isn’t it strange how many words in English are insults derived from medical descriptions (and sometimes medical descriptions derived from insults)? Cretin, idiot, imbecile, dumb, moron, spastic… even words we don’t consider insults which do describe disabilities are used to describe bad things. Like being “blind/deaf to <something>” or making “short-sighted” decisions. Our language is a reflection of our culture, and the English-language culture really dislikes human variation.

Finding words with the same harshness can be difficult, and it’s also great to consider what makes a word harsh. Sending a message that behavior is not ok is important too, but I think we need to consider who we include in the collateral damage. Even if we don’t intend it, many of our insults are historically created with bound associations which we perpetuate with their use. For example, moron has close ties with the American Eugenics Movement. That’s something I think anyone with a shred of empathy would want to very much not associate with.

For practical advice on what to do, I’m a fan of using absurd metaphors. The Swedish have a good one for Fuentes. “Hjulet snurrar men hamstern är död” - the wheel is spinning but the hamster is dead.

If you describe something which you consider to be a bad choice as “going full retard”, you associate making bad choices with cognitive disabilities. This is immensely harmful to people with cognitive disability who have to work every day to distance themselves from that prejudice. The association is discriminatory, and a bad choice.

Ah, thankyou for bearing with me, I see what you mean.

I just assumed there must be a large military office nearby and they were targeting the procurement personnel who do the actual contract and tender work, plus maybe the manufacturer headquarters is nearby and this is part of one of the more revolting symptoms of a highly militarized capitalist culture. I didn’t get quite as far as drawing the connection to targeting politicians and staffers who likely can’t put a meeting with missile sales reps on their publicly documented calendars, but that makes a lot of sense.

Help me out, the coffee isn’t working today and I still don’t get it. How does bribery fit in?

List of sources quoted in this list of "push back:

• A group called “Republicans against Trump” which seems to just be this twitter account with a buymeacoffee link which posted “Republicans could choose this man to represent them, instead they preferred a corrupt racist buffoon with no morals. The party deserves a humiliating defeat in 2020.” In May 2020, making me suspect they’re not actually Republican or possibly a group at all.
• “A Republican accountability group called American Bridge 21st Century” which is described on Wikipedia as “a liberal American Super PAC that supports Democratic candidates and opposes Republican candidates.”.
• The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations
• A “popular liberal commentator”
• A Democratic Representative
• The White House political director

So if you were hoping for actual consequences from his base or even just someone new and noteworthy criticizing him, this is not the article for you. I’m glad the Trade Unions are going to spread the word though, that will be a good thing.

Some provide screen-reader instructions, but most places barely remember blind people exist. It’s another example of people with disabilities being ignored and marginalised.

And then even if they do remember blind people exist, they probably forget there are people who aren’t blind who can’t do their tests for other reasons, like dyslexia or dexterity impairments.

And then you have hCaptcha who makes disabled people to sign up to their database to use their cookie.