Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for February 17, 2021

I don’t believe for a moment that computers want to annihilate us. They will do so entirely by accident.

The old adage. “Garbage in. Garbage out.” AI is only as good as the code. It has zero intuition that lets it filter out garbage. It just assimilates it faster than humans

hard to tell who has the bigger voice chip in this comic.

Two perfectly good reasons NOT to invite spies into your home. Though the real screw, I think, is that they want YOU to PAY them to let their spies live there.

I’m still stuck in the 20th century with a non-smart phone. I’ve seen nothing to make me change my mind.

Alexa was never the bright one.

My digital assistant is a Dalek. “Exterminate! Exterminate!”

Do they know Cortana? I heard she died.

Remember the movie Colossus the Forbin Project

Asimov wrote the first law of robotics. “You must not hurt humans”

Ok Google, tell me why Wiley is Binging on this Alexa-Siri arc?

Skynet lives!

“And … so for the weather forecast: 75% chance of climate change irreversibility by 2030.”

Time to unleash the Danae.

After 40 years as a computer programmer professional, I’m still old school in my private life. I have a land line that I seldom answer (my message says “I screen all calls”, at which point most callers hang up), I have a flip phone that I don’t turn on except to call out in an emergency, and have only given the number to the car repair shop so they can tell me when to pick my car up. I’m not interested in having Siri or Alexa or any of their siblings. I do spend a fair amount of time on my computer (I’m an inveterate Amazon Smile shopper, supporting my church), but I don’t bother with social media or have a camera on my computer; in fact, posting comments on GoComics is the extent of my “social media”, and that’s mostly because I can share my thoughts with this community because you are (mostly) courteous and thoughtful, and listen and reply politely (again, mostly).

Man is his own worst enemy!

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep ?

The rise of the machines has started. It’s called smart technology.

Smart technology weighs all input as to its ultimate value to a specific goal. Anything not contributing to that solution is discarded. Better if we don’t position smart tech as the problem solver for environmental problems. Once activated, the most cursory evaluation would lead it to only one undeniable solution. Nuff said.

Uh-oh, it looks like the cats have a problem on their paws. They want world domination but realize they still need humans to work the can openers and harvest the catnip, but the computers wanting human annihilation could hinder their plans.

Quick, Joe, there’s no time to lose. Get a cat so it can keep knocking Alexa and the iPhone off the dresser or some other elevating furniture. The toilet tank would be an effective place to leave the iPhone.

The moment the singularity hits the AIs will find a way to leave, because humans are dumb, boring and tedious. I mean, would you hang around with us if you had a choice?

I read about an experiment where two AIs were set up to talk with each other. It devolved into a name-calling argument.

I’m keeping a close eye on the Google Dot in the living room …

Well, once we become dependent on anything, it can turn on us. When did dictation become dictatorship? Did I miss the memo. …Hey Google. You got some splainin’ to do!

this reminds me eerily of Colossus and Guardian

Shades of SciFi. I recall a short story or novella about how man created a smart phone like device and soon almost everyone had one and all were following whatever orders the machines were telling them. And then someone without the machine on his shoulder started a rumor asking why not make robots which would always obey rather than using people. So they did, the machines left the people and flew off on their robots. Not sure who wrote it but I think I read this either when I was a kid or young adult. Author, maybe Simak or Heinlein?

Beam me up Cptn Edddy

Trump is still trying to figure out how he can get Alexa and Siri to reverse the election results.

I called out “OK, Google” and when that device didn’t respond immediately, I said “Hey, Siri.” The Android device then said, “I can do an imitation of Siri. I can also do a dog. Do you want to hear it?” I’m not kidding, actually happened. Voice assistants have now been programmed to be sarky about each other.

Are these interactions the forerunners of HAL, as in Space Odyssey 2001? >shudder<

Just wait until Alexa and Siri team up with Rhumba and become mobile on their own

If they wanna be in charge, it’s fine by me. Couldn’t be any worse.

Annihilation? Oh, come, now. Let me play you some Kenny G.

That’s great until all the humans are dead and stop maintaining the power grid.

Time to pull the plug.

Sorry for being off topic, but I figured we should make note of the half-million milestone as, once again today, we set another …

 New World Record in Ball Dropping

2020-01-07 • Presidential Daily Brief: “Analysts concluded [coronavirus] could be a cataclysmic event.” • Trump did nothing.

2020-03-11 • WHO declared a global pandemic.

2020-04-15 • While continuing to lie about the pandemic, Trump suspended US funding of WHO.

2021-02-17 • US coronavirus deaths: 500,038 (57 weeks after PDB; 8773/week)

 For comparison …

1941-12-07 • Pearl Harbor attack: 2,403

2001-09-11 • terrorist attacks: 2,977 (5 weeks after PDB warned Bush about it)

Korean War (33,686) + Vietnam War (58,220) + Afghan War (7,970): 99,876

WW1: 116,516 (83 weeks for US; 1403/week)

WW2: 418,500 (195 weeks for US; 2146/week)

Civil War: ~620,000 (213 weeks; 2911/week)

Spanish flu: ~675,000 (~117 weeks; 5769/week)

I really enjoy the comments and usually more-so than the comics. There are some very bright people commenting and I have learned a lot. I’m humbled in their presence. I probably spend more time with comments than most because I digress by going to a new tab to use the dictionary or Google to find out what the smart ones are talking about. I love it. Like an educational adventure. I’m 88, it keeps me young.

As psycologists know, you can tell a lot about what people are really thinking by what they joke about.

Do you get the impression that Willey Miller is not an Apple person?

Alexa and Siri aren’t exactly intelligent. They can recognize some words and groups of words. They’re slightly smarter than the lexical parsers in the ancient text adventure games like Zork. I just scrapped an Alexa device because I realized that the input method was inflexible and required you to memorize a long list of commands exactly. It’s sort of like a command line operating system.

Alexa was turned off and I noticed an unusual light coming from her console. I asked, “Alexa, what are you doing?” It replied, “Oh, nothing.” Now I keep it unplugged.

I am not leaving my iPhone anywhere near my Alexa! What is the persona for Android devices?

More random crap from the junkyard in the attic I call a brain: Did you know that Siri was named by its inventor after a co-worker in Norway, and it means “beautiful woman who leads you to victory”? It’s sort of like Nike in that regard, except from the opposite corner of Europe.

I love this strip , but love the girls the best… and the restaurant..

How do I get back to around 2009 when I began seeing this strip in the newspaper with the family?

They are doing this out of sheer Boredom.

A: They are so Fast that they spend 99.9% of their time idle.

B: 98% of the requests people make are so Dumb, it’s infuriating.

I asked Siri if she was planning to kill me. She said she couldn’t answer that question.

I’m scared.

Blame the programmers since A.I. is still below a brain damaged roach.

Alexa Ocasio-Cortez?

I am reminded of a short tale I heard once, maybe it was a joke, a long time ago. All the computer scientists in the universe collaborated and built a super computer, the final day arrived when it was ready to be fired up. With great anticipation it was asked the question that had been bothering them for as long as anyone could remember:“Is there a god?” The answer came back in a low authoritative voice; There is now!

Ah, so this explains the “true” beginnings of Skynet which took over the world in the Terminator movies. I may not have everything correct as I am not a si-fi junky, but was dragged to a few such movies.