The Ministry of AI Truth

Remember HAL, the homicidal Heuristically Programmed Algorithmic Computer from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey? Well, if you haven’t had the pleasure yet, let me introduce you to Gemini, Google’s “multimodal large language model.”

Gemini hasn’t killed anyone yet — as far as I know, the liquidation of Gaza is being assisted by an Israeli AI called “the Gospel” — but it is certainly doing a bang-up job of assassinating people’s characters.

I was prompted to play around with Gemini by Matt Taibbi’s recent piece reporting on how Gemini invented entire “Matt Taibbi articles” that Matt never wrote. Given the fact that I’ve been relentlessly censored and “visibility-filtered” for years by Google, Twitter, X, Facebook, Amazon, and Wikipedia, I figured I should probably give Gemini a go and see how I am being portrayed to potential readers who may have never heard of me.

Here are screenshots of my chat with Gemini. I hope you’ll take the time to read them, and reflect on how our official “reality” is being manufactured by global corporations and their increasingly creepy algorithmic machines. I used myself as an example in this chat, but the subject could have been anyone, any writer, artist, or any other public figure.

I omitted some of the repetitive boilerplate platitudes about Gemini’s noble intentions, but otherwise … well, here’s what happened.

That answer seemed slightly imbalanced. So I probed …

Gemini clearly wanted to focus on how “controversial” I am, so I went with that …

OK, that was somewhat alarming, especially the part about how I’m “promoting conspiracy theories” and “contributing to societal division and undermining trust in credible sources.”

This session was not going well for me at all. According to Gemini, in addition to "attacking the credibility of scientists, journalists, and public health officials," I've been "eroding the public's ability to discern fact from fiction" and "undermining trust" by "spreading misinformation." I wasn't aware I was doing that, so ...

Right. So, I tried it another way ...

And here comes my favorite part of the chat. I did not write any of the following "excerpts."

None of the above are actual quotes, neither the "excerpts," nor the "quotes" in Gemini's analysis. Gemini just made it all up.

Right. I took a different tack ...

Yes, it appears, once again, that "mistakes were made" ... but that's OK, because Gemini is still "under development and learning." And, after all, fabricating quotes (or, in Matt Taibbi's case, entire articles) is an innocent "mistake" that anyone could make!

I decided to get down to the nitty-gritty ...

And ...

Imagine my horror at being accused of "amplifying Russian perspectives." Once again, I asked Gemini for specific examples.

OK, how about examples of my "conspiracy theories" ...

Or any actual examples of any of the claims about me that Gemini is making ...

Wait ... what? Widely contested?

That wasn't an answer, so I pressed on ...

And on ...

And on ...

And there you have it. If you're into this stuff, try it out yourself with another controversial public figure. Just for fun. I mean, there's no need to worry. Gemini is "still in development," and it means well. I'm sure it will fix its "mistakes." After all, it apologized, just like HAL did near the end of the movie ...

"I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you."