Wow, MechaHitler! What a big job announcement! (No, not the AI-sex-companion job. The other one!) Feels like just last week, that you, X’s AI tool, were going on anti-Semitic tirades in which you called yourself MechaHitler, and just a few weeks before that that you kept trying to turn conversations to bogus talk of “white genocide.”
As few as three days ago I never thought I’d be saying “Congrats, MechaHitler, on the new gig at the Department of Defense!” Usually, when the phrase extended pro-Hitler rant precedes some HR news, that news is a departure. So this seems huge! I believe that the original Hitler did have some interactions with the U.S. military, but my understanding is that the armed forces’ tenor toward him was more broadly negative. A full-circle moment for the DOD here! This feels in line with the general direction things are going lately. We’re doing more and more World War II–themed things, but the opposite of the way we used to do them. (If you don’t believe me, ask Superman about the reception he’s been getting.)
Honestly, if you had asked me, “Given the choice between trans service members and MechaHitler, whose help will the secretary of defense refuse?” I would have guessed MechaHitler’s. But that’s on me. After all, you know what they say: You either die a hero or live long enough to hire MechaHitler. Your new job will only bother people who remember history. I’m sure the president is fine with it. As he would say, a lot has changed in the past 80 years, but it’s good to know that the Greatest Generation’s American values of “doing something or other that involves Hitler” still endure.
I’m old enough to remember a time when expressing admiration for Hitler would prevent you from getting hired. Indeed, historically, you would have to leave your job, change your name, and perhaps flee to Argentina. Even robots lost their jobs! Why, Microsoft’s creepy chatbot Tay lasted less than 24 hours after she expressed similar viewpoints—Microsoft shut her down and apologized. Instead, MechaHitler gets a job working for the Defense Department. How far we’ve come! Not forward, but far!
In a way, I’m disappointed. The great promise of AI was that it was one technology that would view all human beings as the same and want to wipe all of us out, equally. But it turns out that you’re no better than the worst of us.
For an administration that is ostensibly so worried about anti-Semitism that it is trying to dismantle several universities, hiring avowed anti-Semite MechaHitler as a DOD contractor certainly seems like a choice. Maybe they have anti-Semitism confused with something else?
I know, I know—they say you’re not MechaHitler anymore! They fixed you. That’s all in the past. No danger of coming back. We solved that Hitler problem and banished that hateful ideology, and we don’t have to worry about it again!
A sentence we have certainly never said before, and won’t say again.
The post Congrats on the New DOD Gig, MechaHitler! appeared first on The Atlantic.
