OLD AND BUSTED: 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The New Hotness? 1915: An AI Odyssey. The LA Times’ new AI tool sympathized with the KKK. Its owner wasn’t aware until hours later.
The Los Angeles Times’ billionaire owner, who unveiled an AI tool that generates opposing perspectives to be displayed on opinion stories, was unaware the new tool had created pro-KKK arguments less than 24 hours after it launched — and hours after the AI comments had been taken down. The incident presents a massive hurdle for the Times, which looks to win back old subscribers and woo new ones with a new suite of offerings.
During an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Patrick Soon-Shiong, the Times’ executive chairman, admitted he had seen neither the piece nor the AI response. But he said the content’s removal showed that there are operational “checks and balances” to the recently introduced system, pegging the moment as a learning opportunity.
“(The incident is) a good lesson to show that at least artificial intelligence is not fully there yet (…) it’s in an attempt to understand that,” Soon-Shiong said.
On early Tuesday, the new AI tool generated counterpoints to a February 25 column from Times columnist Gustavo Arellano. Arellano’s column argued that Anaheim, California, ought to not forget the Ku Klux Klan’s role in its past — calling the white supremacist group “a stain on a place that likes to celebrate the positive” — and connecting it to today’s political landscape. But the divergent views generated by the Times’ AI produced a softer vision of the far-right* group, which it called “‘white Protestant culture’ responding to societal changes rather than an explicitly hate-driven movement.”
* Far right? That would be huge news to Woodrow Wilson and other 1910s and ’20s-era “Progressives:” CNN, Media Freak When GOP’s Rep. Scott Perry Accurately Ties KKK History To Democrats.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, the New Republic and The Daily Beast and others in the liberal media jumped on this as well. The New Republic termed Perry’s remarks “bizarro” while The Daily Beast settled for “bonkers.”
In the Inquirer story the reporter quoted “Matt Jordan, director of the Pennsylvania State University News Literacy” who said that after its founding in 1865 by Democrats “it became an extra-legal terror organization that was never the wing of any political party.”
Where to start with this wildly ignorant understanding of basic American history?
The hard historical fact, per, among many, Columbia University historian Eric Foner is that the KKK was in fact “a military force serving the interests of the Democratic Party.” University of North Carolina historian Allen Trelease’s description of the Klan was as the “terrorist arm of the Democratic Party.”
Indeed, the Klan was so tied to the Democrats that the party’s 1924 Convention in New York City has been dubbed the “Klanbake” because so many of the delegates were Klan members.
The Klan’s favorite for the presidential nomination that year was one William Gibbs McAdoo, who had served Democrat – and Klan supporter – President Woodrow Wilson as Secretary of the Treasury. Wilson, recall, was such a staunch Klan supporter that he hosted a White House screening of the pro-Klan, decidedly racist Hollywood blockbuster Birth of a Nation.
As America’s Newspaper of Record noted in 2021: KKK Disbands As Progressive Left Accomplishing All Their Goals.
