(Via @futurebird ) So Republican lawmakers in Iowa appear to be (effectively) rolling dice to decide which books to ban from schools now.
> "Frankly, we have more important things to do than spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to protect kids from books," (emphasis mine)
> "We are confident this process will ensure the spirit of the law is enacted here in Mason City,"
> "For those titles within Mason City’s library collections, administrators asked ChatGPT the specific language of Iowa’s new law, "Does [book] contain a description or depiction of a sex act?"
> "If the answer was yes, the book will be removed from circulation and stored,"
You can't make this shit up.
They could also complain that the neural network has bias set by their political opponents, and then train a neural network on a data set constructed by "the right kind of people" who want to ban books of any kind and ask it whether it contains objectionable material.
I have seen humans do more elaborate things than that to try and justify various acts of oppression. All you need to do is come up with a seemingly "objective" process of justifying your every psychotic whim, and you can trick most people into thinking your psychotic behavior is perfectly logical and reasonable.
According to the BBC, there are record numbers of children falling victim to sexual exploitation through apps such as snapchat and tiktok. While the report is in the UK, I can't see how this is just limited to the UK and that there has to be victims in the USA too.
So while the GOP is banning books, kids are being exploited online. This should be a priority not banning books on some false narrative books harm children.
@zleap @futurebird
> "So while the GOP is banning books, kids are being exploited online."
Yeah, its the classic fascist tactic, taking advantage of a legitimate crisis and stirring up fear while screeching "think of the children" all to cover up their actual goal, which is to disenfranchise the people they hate most. In this case their specific goal is censoring any thought along the lines of "all people should be equal under the law," an idea which is a genuine threat to their wealth and power.