Tag Archives: gaza

ChatGPT is Dumber Than I Thought

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Artificial Intelligence is biased. This has been true for as long as AI has been around. AI is programmed by biased humans, relies on biased sources, and has no independent, skeptical brain with which to judge the mass of data it accesses.

Lord knows, we want to believe artificial intelligence. It would be so much easier to ask one source that has scoured the web for information than to do the scouring ourselves. But I’ll describe one query I made today and you can judge the credibility of ChatGPT for yourself. 

Over the weekend, there were reports about Israeli soldiers firing into crowds at an aid distribution site and killing 31 civilians who had come to get food. That’s a horrific claim. If you are already anti-Israeli based on pictures of dead children in Gaza, you’ll likely believe this claim. But I find it hard to believe without a LOT of evidence simply because the IDF has no incentive to kill Gazan civilians. Israel’s PR problems could not be worse as it is; an incident such as this could only reinforce the anti-Israel voices around the world. 

So, this morning I began searching for information about this report. I was disappointed to find that ChatGPT considered the Hamas Health Ministry a credible source. (Remember that report that Israel fired on a hospital in Gaza and killed 500 people? Turned out to be a rocket fired by a jihadi group within Gaza that misfired and landed in a hospital parking lot killing no one. That report was from the Gaza Health Ministry.) My AI friend also considered UNRWA a credible source, and the UN in general, both of which are 100% biased against Israel. 

Israeli sources say that the IDF is investigating, and I’m confident that it is. An incident such as this, if it were true, would be a terrible setback for Israel’s efforts to find a way to distribute aid that bypasses Hamas. And bypassing Hamas is critical to finding a way out of this war.

I am worried. We have tools that could be immensely helpful to people who are trying to learn the truth about various reports that appear in the news or on the web. But the simple fact is that these new tools are simply expert at gathering and sharing biased reports that do not lead us to the truth. Where is the judgement that is essential in any search for truth? That judgement resides in us!

Remember the famine that occurred in Ukraine in the 1930s? The New York Times opted to believe a compromised reporter who accepted whatever the Kremlin said and did not report the story. Meanwhile, an independent journalist risked his life to find out the truth about Stalin’s cruelty. Decades later, serious scholars have unearthed the truth. Watch the movie, Mr. Jones, or read books by Anne Applebaum (Red Famine) or Timothy Snyder (Bloodlines) for more information.

We cannot wait decades for people to accept the truth about Hamas. It is not a credible source for information about Gaza. It is a terrorist organization that seeks the destruction of Israel.

But He’s a Jew!

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Are you in a tizzy wondering if Kamala Harris will make the right pick for her VP nomination? You’ve seen the short list: Gretchen Whitmer (no, because we’re just not ready for two women on the ballot), or Andy Beshear … Continue reading →

NYT: Screams Without Words: Sexual Violence on October 7

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There are times when I need to write about something that concerns me, but my fingers won’t move. This has been one of those moments. Can I do this? To put yourself into my shoes for moment, read the article linked to above. Can you even finish it? Can you then compose a blog post about it? Or are you frozen as I am.

It’s not just the horrific descriptions of the violence of October 7. It’s the fact that the violence is being denied, that the NYT felt the need to send reporters to fact check the events. It’s the fact that even now there are people who will deny or excuse the actions of Hamas. So it’s not just the horror of that day, it’s the horror of reactions to it that I cannot comprehend.

The Hamas terrorists who invaded Israel and carried out these unthinkable acts are not martyrs or heroes. They are not even animals. Are they even human in any way? Animals kill for food or to protect their young. They do not commit sexual atrocities. In fact the word atrocities can only be applied to humans behaving outside the bounds of any actions necessary for survival. Perhaps it’s the ability to commit atrocities that sets humans apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. 

People wonder how we’re special. Is it art? Is it language? Is it our problem solving abilities? Yet there are many animals that encroach on our sense of uniqueness in remarkable ways. So perhaps it’s our ability to horrify each other with hideous acts of violence, often, but not only, against women, and then brag about it that really sets us apart. Or our ability to subject people to the sight of family members being raped and tortured and dismembered. Or our ability to deny that these events took place. Or our ability to celebrate the men who commit these hideous acts. 

I should be excited about a new year, but I am in a state of despair. I don’t know how we fix this.