Many fear that our increasingly digital society is eroding our sense of humanity. Artificial intelligence has perhaps amplified this apprehension more than any other type of technology, as it simulates human cognition, communication, and behavior.
These fears are increasingly legitimized as AI continues to advance at rapid speeds.
For example, former chief White House correspondent for CNN Jim Acosta just “interviewed” an AI-generated digital avatar of Joaquin Oliver, a victim of the 2018 Parkland school shooting.
“It may seem like nothing to a lot of people, but if we don’t pay attention to [this story] right now, I don’t think we recognize what it means to be human in a generation from now, if that long,” Glenn Beck warns.
Acosta, who Glenn says has shown himself to be a “publicity hound” rather than a journalist, just conducted not an interview but a “grotesque pantomime” using a soulless “AI ghost.”
He plays a clip of the bizarre interaction, in which Acosta asks Oliver’s avatar “what [his] solution would be for gun violence.”
The digital re-creation, which was dead-eyed and moved unnaturally, responded in a robotic voice with the following left-wing drivel: “I believe in a mix of stronger gun control laws, mental health support, and community engagement. We need to create safe spaces for conversations and connections, making sure everyone feels seen and heard. It’s about building a culture of kindness and understanding.”
“I think that’s a great idea, Joaquin,” Acosta responded.
Glenn’s co-host, Stu Burguiere, responds in hysterical laughter: “That is the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life!”
“It’s so bad, it’s funny at this point,” Glenn agrees.
Underneath the camp, however, is a sinister reality that Acosta facilitated “a digital ventriloquist act” using “the image of a dead kid, long buried, animated like a puppet for the politics of those who are still living.”
It raises a harrowing question everyone ought to consider: “What does it truly mean to be alive if in death you’re more useful?”
And further, “What does it mean when your image, your voice, your soul as captured by a memory or photograph can be summoned back again — not by God, but by algorithms and agenda?”
“I hate to go all religious on you, but I have to tell you, if this isn’t the making of a graven image, I don’t know what is,” Glenn says, citing the second of the Ten Commandments.
“This is taking your image, bringing you back to life without a soul. When man starts creating a likeness to wield power or emotion, we stop serving God, and we start serving ourselves.”
Although Oliver’s parents approved and facilitated the interview with Acosta as part of their gun reform activism, Glenn doesn’t blame them.
“I don’t question their grief in any way, shape, or form, but this is no longer theirs. This is not their son. This is a political puppet,” he says. “The minute Joaquin’s AI avatar spoke political opinions into a camera, it stopped being about grief and became propaganda.”
“And this, my friend, is only the beginning,” he warns. “What happens when governments use AI-resurrected faces for propaganda? What happens when terrorists use deepfake hostages — hostages who are already dead — pleading for help?”
“What happens when we begin to trust synthetic testimony over actual human experience?”
“This isn’t just immoral; this is very, very dangerous. This is soul-erasing. You are entering a world now that is post-human. This is the dystopian world, and we’re just beginning to step into it,” he cautions.
“We’re entering an age where the dead can be programmed to speak the words of the living, where grief is nothing more than a marketing tool, where death is not your end but just a data set now to be parsed and projected and used politically.”
“And here’s the real sick part of this: The more meaningful your death, the more valuable your ghost. If that doesn’t shake you to your core, nothing’s going to.”
To see the eerie footage of Acosta’s dystopian “interview” and hear more of Glenn’s prescient warning, watch the video above.
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The post ‘Soul-erasing’: Jim Acosta’s AI ‘interview’ with murdered victim proves we’re slipping into post-human dystopia appeared first on TheBlaze.
