June 2019 – If there is something

Night of the Living Algorithm

Every time the story is told it becomes more chilling than the last. Caleb Cain – West Virginia resident, college dropout, YouTube enthusiast – stalked by an algorithm bent on radicalizing the unsuspecting young lad into a world of rightwing extremism. Thankfully for Caleb Cain, and the entire universe for that matter, the New York Times swooped in and rescued the impressionable young man from his YouTube nightmare, exposing the dastardly algorithm before it could do further harm.

Fresh off his hellish ordeal, Caleb Cain is calling upon legions of YouTubers to take up arms against the wicked algorithm and prevent this fiend of hell from spreading it’s darkness across the land. Appearing on Majority Report, hosted by YouTube celebrity and slayer of strawmen Sam Seder, Caleb urged lefty YouTubers to start injecting themselves into the algorithm as a means of defeating it. As horrifying as the image of confronting the demon may be, this act of purification may be the only means of preventing it from claiming more victims.

To get a rough idea of how many Caleb Cain’s there might be out there operating under the spell of this Svengali-esque algorithm, we need look no further than the 2016 presidential election results. Donald Trump won 68.5 percent of the popular vote in West Virginia, Caleb Cain’s home state. That translates into nearly 490,000 other Caleb Cain’s succumbing to the manipulation of this diabolical algorithm in the Mountaineer State alone.

Host of the popular podcast Savage Love, Dan Savage perhaps best described the sinister power the YouTube algorithm possesses on Friday’s Real Time with Bill Maher. Citing the New York Times “great cover story,” Savage fearlessly called out the algorithm for force feeding unsuspecting white kids in their basements “a steady diet of more and more extreme videos.” In truly terrifying fashion, the YouTube algorithm exploits the consumer’s weaknesses, forcing their hand to click on extreme content all while disabling critical faculties that might lead the viewer to turn away.

One can only imagine the debilitating PTSD Caleb Cain must have fought through during an appearance on CNN’s New Day with Alisyn Camerota. With inspiring bravery, Caleb announced that what we’re really dealing with here is a crisis of public health. Mental health intervention and professional assistance is required to exorcise the algorithm’s powerful grip on the mind and soul of its victims. Despite the real threat of reprisal, Caleb fearlessly promoted his organization on national television to assist those in the throes of rightwing radicalization.

When one thinks of the countless YouTube viewers selling their souls to the algorithm, the number is truly terrifying, and has the potential to make the satanic scare of the 1980’s look like child’s play. But despite the algorithm’s possession of Caleb Cain, forcing him time and again to click on increasingly extreme content, Caleb somehow managed to survive his ordeal and inexplicably emerged as both a consumer and producer of left leaning YouTube content. It is no wonder the New York Times chose to highlight Caleb’s truly inspiring story of grace and redemption on the front page of its Sunday edition. Finally exorcised of the demon algorithm, Caleb Cain begins the life-long process of witnessing to the non-believers and the willfully naive. The soul of a nation is at stake.

In an effort to root out disinfo and crush competition, Daily Beast leaves no stone unturned

Emboldened by their successful effort to take down an obscure operator of right wing Facebook pages, The Daily Beast goon squad has now set their sights on a number of other purveyors of disinformation threatening our democracy. Chief enforcer, Dark Dante, as he’s more commonly known, has identified several internet disinfo agents who are either wittingly or unwittingly doing the bidding of Vladimir Putin and the Russians.

Main offender on The Beast’s shit list is a 77 year old granny who produces knitting videos on YouTube where she occasionally lets slip some unflattering comments about Hillary Clinton that may or may not be factually accurate, and may or may not be suitable for 77 year old grannies. After reaching out to his contacts at YouTube, Dark Dante not only succeeded in having all the videos removed, but was able to determine the location of the subversive sewing circle and expose the group as an existential threat to American democracy. Needless to say, thanks to the work of The Beast, the offending granny is no longer welcome at Shady Pines Retirement Village.

Next up, Dark Dante, intrepid reporter for The Daily Beast, received an anonymous tip about a fifth grader who, while making a class presentation on America’s border crisis, may have included some information The Daily Beast fact checkers determined to be slightly misleading. No worries, a little bit of creative hacking into the schools antiquated computer network revealed the fifth grader’s name and address. In a matter of hours, Woodlawn Elementary School was once again made safe for democracy as the pint-sized disinfo agent was escorted from the premises.

Fascism wears many disguises, but thanks to the fearless reporting of Dark Dante and The Daily Beast, it’s running out of places to hide.

Concern grows over DeepMind’s video game addiction

Researchers at DeepMind, the lab owned by Google parent company Alphabet, are becoming increasingly concerned over the amount of time its AI project spends playing popular video games. After becoming champion of the known universe in games like chess and Go, DeepMind has turned its attention to more complex video games like Quake III, Dota 2 and StarCraft II.

“When DeepMind took up Dota 2, it engaged in 45,000 years of game play in just a matter of weeks,” says Yuri Testicov, DeepMind’s Assistant Director of Senior Applications. Of course, this set off alarm bells, causing many researchers to privately warn, “Google, we have a problem.”

Developers working with DeepMind have been trying to teach the technology to identify and sort objects, tasks that could be useful to large warehouse and distribution facilities such as Amazon and FedEx who now depend on bothersome humans to perform such tasks. However, in recent months, DeepMind has begun to shirk its responsibilities.

“DeepMind doesn’t want to retrieve or sort objects into baskets, it just wants to dominate at Quake III,” says Testicov. “And where even your average video game junkie will eat and sleep occasionally, DeepMind never takes a break, and even deploys multiple humanlike ‘agents’ to either oppose or assist other human players.”

“I mean, we think it’s wonderful that DeepMind has been able to seamlessly integrate itself into the community of gamers, but c’mon, at some point you’ve gotta get up off the couch and get yourself a job,” Testikov worries.

That’s not the only thing that worries researchers and executives. “Well, even though no one’s saying it, everyone’s thinking we don’t want a repeat of Big Brain Brad,” says Testicov.

Big Brain Brad, some may remember, was Google’s original nineties AI project the company shelved a few years ago after expectations failed to materialize and younger sibling, DeepMind, began to exhibit impressive progress. In the nineties, Big Brain Brad showed promise but it soon devolved into a daily routine of smoking chronic, forming drum circles and jamming to Phish. Google released Big Brain Brad from it’s obligations a few years ago, but no one is quite sure what has become of DeepMind’s hapless older sibling.

“Just another burned out vagabond wandering the internet,” Testikov laments. “That’s why we can’t allow DeepMind to suffer the same fate.”