“Anthropic’s ‘Uncanny Valley’: A Humorous Exploration of DOD Lawsuits, Wartime Memes, and the Impending AI Takeover of VC Positions”
“‘Uncanny Valley’: Anthropic’s DOD Lawsuit, War Memes, and AI Coming for VC Jobs”
“In my two years of touring the Silicon Valley tech scene for WIRED’s fiction podcast, Uncanny Valley, I’ve seen a lot: pop-up colonics in an Uber, the AI version of a drunk dial, an app-controlled ‘personal massager’ in a VC meeting. But my recent visit backstage at the Department of Defense was, without doubt, the weirdest.”
Is there anything more “Uncanny Valley” than discussing lawsuits, Iran war memes, artificial intelligence, and venture capital whilst on a grand tour of the Silicon Valley tech scene? After all, nothing screams decadence like getting a pop-up colonic in an Uber or experiencing the AI equivalent of a drunk dial. And can you really claim to have lived till you’ve seen an app-controlled ‘personal massager’ make its debut in a venture capital meeting?
Visiting the Department of Defense, however, takes the cake. Nestled within those soldiered walls, the topic of anthropic biases in AI was casually thrown around like an office football. Oh yes, anthropics, the act of assigning consciousness to inanimate objects, more commonly known as “making the internet think like a human.” However, the lawsuit filed against the department giving off a mild “I told you so” vibe is just the icing.
One lawsuit alleges that the Department of Defense failed to evaluate the anthropic bias in the AI it uses. The phrase “It’s like you designed this thing while you were half asleep” might come to mind, but then again, this is just another day in the Silicon Valley.
Fact is, in the land of tech, anthropic bias is not some obscure, ivory-tower concept. It’s the name of the game in artificial intelligence. Tech companies everywhere are racing feverishly to breed bots with the uncanny ability to mimic human reasoning, emotions, and bias. They want progress, but boy do they love their drama too.
The saga continues with the revelation of Iran Circumvention Project, descriptively nicknamed as “war memes”. The silver lining? Battle plans are not what they used to be. Deploying memes and gifs to fight wars is just the epitome of 21st-century warfare. Here’s to hoping that humor does more than just make the enemy LOL.
In parting, venture into the land of venture capitalist meetings. They’re not just about money. It’s a hotbed of innovation, punctuated with personal massagers and blunders that’d give your Sunday comic strips a run for their money. No joke.
There you have it – a glimpse into the wacky world of Silicon Valley, where the truth is often weirder than fiction. And we thought sci-fi novels were odd.