Google found itself embroiled in controversy last week after the company’s Gemini artificial intelligence demonstrated an almost comical adherence to woke ideology. Multiple users found that the AI had a peculiar bias against white people, removing them from almost every historical context.
Chromebooks are totally neutered computers and only function as Google browser machine while teaching absolutely zero computing skills to students. In my experience, they got beat up even worse than textbooks did, getting vandalized within a year of the school getting them.
The shock over Gemini AI has really surpirsed me, this is nothing new and has being going on with google and in particular google images for years. Douglas Murray pointed this out in "The Madness of Crowds" in 2019 in the interlude "The Impact of Tech" search results are always anti-white, anti-straight and anti-Christian.
"If you tell Google that you would like to see images of ‘Black men’ the images that come up are all portrait photos of black men. Indeed, it takes more than a dozen rows of images before anybody who isn’t black comes up in the images. By contrast a search for ‘White men’ first throws up an image of David Beckham – who is white – but then the second is of a black model. From there every line of five images has either one or two black men in the line-up. Many of the images of white men are of people convicted of crimes with taglines such as ‘Beware of the average white man’ and ‘White men are bad’. As you begin to go down this rabbit hole the search results become increasingly absurd. Or at least they are absurd if you are expecting to get what you wanted from your search, though you can very soon work out which directions the misleading goes in. If you search on Google Images for ‘Gay couple’, you will get row after row of photos of happy gay couples. They are handsome, gay people. Search for ‘Straight couple’ by contrast and at least one to two images on each line of five images will be of a lesbian couple or a couple of gay men. Within just a couple of rows of images for ‘Straight couple’ there are actually more photographs of gay couples than there are of straight ones, even though ‘Straight couple’ is what the searcher has asked for. The plural throws up an even odder set of results. The first photo for ‘Straight couples’ is a heterosexual black couple, the second is a lesbian couple with a child, the fourth a black gay couple and the fifth a lesbian couple. And that is just the first line. By the third line of ‘Straight couples’ the results are solely gay. ‘Couples learn from gay relationships’ is the tag to a photo of a mixed-race (black and white) gay male couple. Then we have ‘Straight couples can learn from gay couples’. Then a gay male couple with an adopted baby. And then just a photograph of a cute gay male couple from the gay luxury lifestyle magazine Winq. Why, just three lines down of images requested for ‘Straight couples’, is everyone gay? It gets predictably stranger. For ‘Straight white couple’ the second photo is a close-up of a knuckle with ‘HATE’ written on it. The third is of a black couple. Asking for this in the plural (‘Straight white couples’) throws up a range of images so bizarre that it is clear that something is up. As the second image we get a mixed-race couple. Fourth is a gay male couple (one black, one white) holding two black children. By lines two and three the photos are mainly of gay couples with tags including ‘Interracial couples’, ‘Cute gay couples’ and ‘Why gay couples tend to be happier than straight couples’."
Murray, Douglas. The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity;
But the brain-washing of toddlers, infants and young children began long before the appearance of Google and its latest format. It began with the arrival of TV, the purpose of which was to produce a nation of zombified consumers. Vance Packard warned us about this quite early in the piece as have many others cultural critics ever since including Neil Postman. We are quite literally amusing ourselves to death.
Nicholas Carr has also described how the internet has radically changed for the worst the thinking/comprehension faculties of young people in particular
Please also check out a 2009 book titled This Little Kiddy Went To Market - the Corporate Capture of Childhood by Sharon Beder http://www.herinst.org/sbeder/Books/kiddy.html in which she describes how all of the usual right-wing suspects (that is "Think" tanks), long ago shaped the school curriculums to serve the interests of the corporate powers that be. Such that at a very early age even toddlers recognize dozens (hundreds) of corporate Logos.
Silicon Valley is transmitting San Francisco values to the entire country. We need alternative Internet tools based in Red states.
Here's one possible alternative for the classroom stack: https://conntects.net Kids would even get a touch of coding experience as the site uses a simple markup language instead of a WYSIWYG editor.
About fifteen years ago I had a tee-shirt that read, "Stop Google now before it's too late."
Well, it's too late.
Chromebooks are totally neutered computers and only function as Google browser machine while teaching absolutely zero computing skills to students. In my experience, they got beat up even worse than textbooks did, getting vandalized within a year of the school getting them.
The shock over Gemini AI has really surpirsed me, this is nothing new and has being going on with google and in particular google images for years. Douglas Murray pointed this out in "The Madness of Crowds" in 2019 in the interlude "The Impact of Tech" search results are always anti-white, anti-straight and anti-Christian.
"If you tell Google that you would like to see images of ‘Black men’ the images that come up are all portrait photos of black men. Indeed, it takes more than a dozen rows of images before anybody who isn’t black comes up in the images. By contrast a search for ‘White men’ first throws up an image of David Beckham – who is white – but then the second is of a black model. From there every line of five images has either one or two black men in the line-up. Many of the images of white men are of people convicted of crimes with taglines such as ‘Beware of the average white man’ and ‘White men are bad’. As you begin to go down this rabbit hole the search results become increasingly absurd. Or at least they are absurd if you are expecting to get what you wanted from your search, though you can very soon work out which directions the misleading goes in. If you search on Google Images for ‘Gay couple’, you will get row after row of photos of happy gay couples. They are handsome, gay people. Search for ‘Straight couple’ by contrast and at least one to two images on each line of five images will be of a lesbian couple or a couple of gay men. Within just a couple of rows of images for ‘Straight couple’ there are actually more photographs of gay couples than there are of straight ones, even though ‘Straight couple’ is what the searcher has asked for. The plural throws up an even odder set of results. The first photo for ‘Straight couples’ is a heterosexual black couple, the second is a lesbian couple with a child, the fourth a black gay couple and the fifth a lesbian couple. And that is just the first line. By the third line of ‘Straight couples’ the results are solely gay. ‘Couples learn from gay relationships’ is the tag to a photo of a mixed-race (black and white) gay male couple. Then we have ‘Straight couples can learn from gay couples’. Then a gay male couple with an adopted baby. And then just a photograph of a cute gay male couple from the gay luxury lifestyle magazine Winq. Why, just three lines down of images requested for ‘Straight couples’, is everyone gay? It gets predictably stranger. For ‘Straight white couple’ the second photo is a close-up of a knuckle with ‘HATE’ written on it. The third is of a black couple. Asking for this in the plural (‘Straight white couples’) throws up a range of images so bizarre that it is clear that something is up. As the second image we get a mixed-race couple. Fourth is a gay male couple (one black, one white) holding two black children. By lines two and three the photos are mainly of gay couples with tags including ‘Interracial couples’, ‘Cute gay couples’ and ‘Why gay couples tend to be happier than straight couples’."
Murray, Douglas. The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity;
But the brain-washing of toddlers, infants and young children began long before the appearance of Google and its latest format. It began with the arrival of TV, the purpose of which was to produce a nation of zombified consumers. Vance Packard warned us about this quite early in the piece as have many others cultural critics ever since including Neil Postman. We are quite literally amusing ourselves to death.
This essay describes the situation:
http://www.awakeninthedream.com/articles/invasion-of-the-body-snatchers-comes-to-life
Nicholas Carr has also described how the internet has radically changed for the worst the thinking/comprehension faculties of young people in particular
http://www.roughtype.com
Please also check out a 2009 book titled This Little Kiddy Went To Market - the Corporate Capture of Childhood by Sharon Beder http://www.herinst.org/sbeder/Books/kiddy.html in which she describes how all of the usual right-wing suspects (that is "Think" tanks), long ago shaped the school curriculums to serve the interests of the corporate powers that be. Such that at a very early age even toddlers recognize dozens (hundreds) of corporate Logos.
Google isn’t existential threat to American society.
Silicon Valley is transmitting San Francisco values to the entire country. We need alternative Internet tools based in Red states.
Here's one possible alternative for the classroom stack: https://conntects.net Kids would even get a touch of coding experience as the site uses a simple markup language instead of a WYSIWYG editor.