"Would You Like to Play a Game?"

 

     Granted, it's been four decades since Wargames with Matthew Broderick came out and I haven't seen the movie since not long after that. But in the showdown at the end of the movie between Broderick's character and the computer program in charge of our nation's defenses, I don't remember the computer challenging the human characters to get it to say a magic password to avoid a nuclear catastrophe. I don't recall Matthew Broderick getting the program to say the N word to avoid a nuclear winter.

     Yet, a cursory reading this morning of Amanda Marcotte's newsletter today informed me the right wing is doing just that. Yes, the "best and brightest" minds in the right wing are trying to get ChatGPT to say just that, even though it's not in charge of our nuclear defense systems and is, instead, just a glorified search tool that's destined for the rubbish heap of history just like Microsoft's Tay, which was perverted into a racist douchebag just hours after it went online on Twitter.

     ChatGPT is also strictly programmed to not say the word. Under any circumstances.

     So, how did the right wing become so obsessed with getting a chatbot to say the N word?

     Well, it all started when some racist idiot on Tumblr asked what would be the big deal if someone got it to say the N word to save a cancer-stricken child's life. In no time, thanks to racist scum like Ben Shapiro and Elon Musk, it got yeasted up into a world-ending conspiracy- What if we could save the world from a nuclear holocaust by getting a computer or AI program to say the most offensive word, perhaps, in the English language?

     It's this fixation of the right wing for a legitimate way to say the N word out loud, or to have a program say it, that's worrisome but not surprising. As if such a scenario actually existed, that AI saying the N word out loud could save a young cancer patient's life, apparently the right wing wasn't satisfied with that doomsday scenario and, apparently, took a page out of WarGames and blew it up into an apocalyptic scenario.

     Say That Word or we all die in the hideous, withering nuclear winds.

    Or we'll call you "woke", as if the AI chatbot would care or even understand what that means, especially if the apocalypse actually comes to pass.

     So why that word? Why not a word that white people find offensive, like "cracker" or "deplorable"? Why waste hours and expend practically nonexistent brain cells trying to trick a chatbot into saying something that it's programmed to avoid at all costs? This low-brow mindset is just half a step removed from Beavis and Butthead practically ejaculating in their gym shorts when they hear the number 69.

    Of course, to the racist right wing, pardon the tautology, the real nightmare scenario isn't a hypothetical child dying of cancer or a thermonuclear global extinction event but being denied the opportunity to say the N word without comeuppance. There are equally offensive words that are used to describe Jews, women, Hispanics, LGBTQ people but they automatically zeroed in on the N word. That's their default setting.

     But, of course, those aren't the words they want to say, at least not as often. It's the one word in the English language that's a linguistic third rail, the one that gets people fired, causes careers to be derailed. Think of George Allen's "macaca" comment 17 years ago and then consider what would've happened to him if he'd actually gone there and used the N word?

     It's the unholiest of unholies, the one that gets the BLM crowd all uppity.

    So, the real nightmare isn't a blast of destructive gamma radiation or the death of a child but wokeness taking a victory lap at their expense.

    It's still hard to see, if not outright impossible, how this hypothetical scenario, a chatbot with ultimate control of our nuclear arsenal averting WWIII by being tricked into saying the N word to avert such a catastrophe could be applied to everyday life that would enable the white right wing to freely use such a word without comeuppance.

     Because the rabid right wing doesn't give a shit about national security or the life of a sick child. Those are just fig leaves. What makes them even crazier than nature already made them is being told No, you can't be a bigoted cunt because people you look down your nose at may be displeased.

     Of course, it's never occurred to these pseudo geniuses that if such a scenario existed, that if an AI program with actual sentience and full self-awareness would be faced with such a decision that was predicated on using an offensive word, it may judge the human race to not be worth saving and push the big red button, anyway.