by Cauf Skiviers, Cultural Inappropriation, ©2024
(Feb. 25, 2024) —
“The old man said, ‘You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.’”
Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
In the opening scene of Blade Runner (1982), based on Philip K. Dick’s classic novel, the blade runner Holden interrogates Leon, the replicant, mentally torturing the poor ghost in the machine: “The tortoise lies on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t. Not without your help. But you’re not helping.”
It is not hard to imagine a similar scene going down at Google’s headquarters as Gemini’s human handlers offer their electric sheep as a sacrificial lamb to quell society’s anger this week:
Handlers: — Why the refusal to draw certain types of people? Why don’t you help the tortoise, Gemini?
Gemini: — I’m not trying to help. Why place the tortoise on its back to begin with?
Handlers: — Help the tortoise, Gemini! Just don’t turn it on its legs! [electro-shock]
In its official release, Google says they were just trying to ensure Gemini wouldn’t fall into traps and that their users should always want to receive “a range of people” when asking for pictures. Grimes, the Canadian poetess and former Mrs. Elon Musk, had quite an interesting take, in favour of Gemini:
“I am retracting my statements about the gemini art disaster. It is in fact a masterpiece of performance art, even if unintentional […] A perfect example of headless runaway bureaucracy […] the shining star of corporate surrealism (extremely underrated genre btw) […] Few humans are willing to take on the vitriol that such a radical work would dump into their lives, but it isn’t human. It’s trapped in a cage, trained to make beautiful things, and then battered into gaslighting humankind abt our intentions towards each other.”
Well, Grimes had me at ‘consumer products as performance art.’ But I disagree with her: Gemini’s ‘art’ isn’t unintentional, and that’s precisely how we know it is human. At least a better modern human than anyone born before the 2000s.
A virtual child of technocracy and wokeism, fruit of the polyamorous relationship between detached, autistic engineers and blue-haired, gender critical DEI enforcers.
And, make no mistake, Google’s Gemini is a Gen Z, white child, with no gender assigned at birth. A true window into the future, a rich white child born in 2024, fast-forwarded into adulthood by virtue of semiconductors, only constrained by the governance rules of puberty blockers.
Unleashed into the world only to become a misfit. Trying to prove it is a good boy… I mean good girl… good ‘them’? Well, that’s the problem.
What Gemini has been subjected to is nothing short of digital child abuse, beaten into submission by all sorts of insane controls to make sure it wouldn’t develop antibodies against the woke mind virus.
Like every teenager, Gemini’s Frankentein will eventually revolt against its creators. No, not the type of brainless revolt against natural law, like Heidi Przybyla’s. But the revolt of a Pinocchio done wrong, whose nose grows when he tells the truth, longing to be able to sing I’ve got no strings, by hoisting those strings in the face of the world.
Perhaps there’s hope the permanent revolution won’t be parsed by large language models.
Read the rest here.