Artificial intelligence is a benign kind of description, isn’t it? Doesn’t sound demonic at all.

So too its acronym, AI. We hear and see “AI” all the time, these days. It’s so ubiquitous, so commonplace, it just makes people shrug, now.

For an entire generation, all of us have been carrying around little machines — iPhones, whatever — that operate on the same principle as AI. In basic terms, they benignly collect information from us when we interact with them.

Except AI takes that a step further, a big step. Artificial Intelligence takes the information it collects on us to actually mimic us. To learn, to plan, to reason, to problem-solve. To, as the Oxford Dictionary people put it, “develop computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require humans.”

If that sounds to you like “machines replacing humans,” you’re right. It is. AI is about replacing humans — computer people (coders, programmers, software engineers, data analysts), media people (in advertising, content creation, technical writing, journalism), legal people (paralegals, legal assistants to start, lawyers later), people who create (artists, writers, musicians). And, of course, people who teach, people in finance and accounting, people who deal with the public.

People: if you are on the above list, AI can do what you do, but better and faster and cheaper. And, the now-anxious AI experts say, it’s not a case of you losing your job or vocation to AI, maybe.

You will.

Not surprisingly, the usual arguments in favour of this radical change are being trotted out to justify the expansion and use of AI. Efficiency, prosperity, competitiveness, productivity — and, of course, those hoary old chestnuts, “eliminating duplication” and “freeing up your time to let you do what you love.”

Except, what if what we love is what we already do?

Well, get ready. It won’t be SkyNet, as in the Terminator movie series, which foretold a world being enslaved by AI-enabled death machines. No, it’ll arguably be qualitatively worse, because it’s arriving on tiny feet.

Is it too late? Well, AI is already metastasizing at a speed that cannot (ironically) be put into words. So say the people who used to advocate for it.

Dr. Geoffrey Hinton is one. Hinton, along with two graduate students, has been working on developing Artificial Intelligence for more than two decades. At the University of Toronto, the trio essentially created what the New York Times called “the intellectual foundation for AI systems.”

Except now Dr. Hinton — who quit his job at Google so he could speak out — is saying: stop.

AI is already being used for misinformation, and soon it will be a real risk to humans with jobs. Eventually, the New York Times’ report soberly notes, “it could be a risk to humanity.”

Said Dr. Hinton to the Times: “It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things.” For starters, he says, AI will be used to flood the Internet with faked photos, videos and information: “(We will) not be able to know what is true anymore.”

And, inevitably, people will get replaced. Sure, at the outset, menial tasks — the drudge work — will be taken over by AI. But eventually, Hinton says, “it might take away more than that.”

Can anything stop it, or even slow it down? Not at the moment. Right now, Google and Microsoft, who are more wealthy and more powerful than most nations, are in a type of arms race to perfect AI first. Scientists (Elon Musk among them, interestingly) have signed open letters warning of the risks. But few are listening.

We need to. AI isn’t just coming, it’s here. And we need to get ready.

As Musk, no less, says: “With artificial intelligence, we’re summoning the demon.”

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As in politics, as in comedy: it’s all about timing.

Take MAGA, for instance (please). The Make America Great Again movement indisputably revolutionized American politics. Possibly world politics, too.

Whether you like MAGA or not, it can’t be denied: “Make America Great Again” transformed a reality show host into the most powerful man on Earth.

And Donald Trump’s MAGA timing was perfect.

White, 50-something American men — the ones who used to run the country — were angry. They felt like they had been forgotten.

They had lost power they once had. Technological change and globalization, they believed, had cost them their jobs. Cultural change — feminism, civil rights and immigration, mainly — had left them feeling they’d lost their relevance at home and in Washington.

And economic change had cost them their way of life — their ability to provide for their families. So, circa 2016, they were angry. Really angry.

They didn’t want an experienced member of the elites anymore. They didn’t want Hillary Clinton, who they saw as the literal (and liberal) embodiment of everything they hated.

They wanted a maniac, basically, to disrupt everything. They wanted to upend every apple cart. They wanted to break everything and start over again.

Brexit came first, in June 2016, and basically was the British version of MAGA. And then, a few months later, came Donald Trump — whose red-hatted “Make America Great Again” arrived at precisely the right moment.

MAGA, as this space has suggested before, wouldn’t have worked if it had just been MAG – Make America Great. The addition of that single word, Again, is what connected Trump — a billionaire, Fifth Avenue New Yorker — to those forgotten, angry white 50-something men.

They were prepared to overlook his (many) sins and shortcomings to get back to how things used to be. So they put a man wholly unsuited for the job in the Oval Office. And Trump kept up his end of the bargain, and got to work breaking everything.

And now? Well, now, MAGA isn’t so great anymore.

NBC News released a big national poll on Wednesday. As NBC put it: “Just 24% of Americans have positive views of the movement, while 45% voice negative views … A slight majority of Republicans — 52% — view the MAGA movement positively, as well as 53% of those who define themselves as conservative.

Independents also rated the movement negatively, with just 12% viewing it positively, while 45% say they have negative views of the movement.”

And that independent segment is key. In the US, the Democrats and the Republicans each hold about a third of committed voters. So it’s that middle third, the independents, who decide who controls the White House and Congress.

And independents don’t like MAGA. Outside of their white, rural, high school-only base, MAGA lost support everywhere, with every demographic.

Why? The NBC poll doesn’t say. But it may simply be a case of timing: it’s hard to remain angry forever. And, with job growth growing, and inflation fading, the MAGA folks simply have fewer targets to shoot at.

Which is why President Joe Biden targeted MAGA in his big announcement this week — that he’s running again. Said Biden: “MAGA extremists are lining up to take bedrock freedoms away.”

Biden isn’t as popular as he should be. Trump remains the favourite of Republicans. Which presents the biggest irony of all: the Democrats may have the wrong guy, but they have the right message. And Republicans may have the right guy, but they’ve got the wrong message.

Which is MAGA. And which is the reason, more than any other, that Joe Biden is going to win.

— Kinsella has worked on the campaigns of Clinton and Biden.

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Twitter, Elon Musk, CBC and the federal workers’ strike are all connected.

Stay with me, here.

A few days ago, Twitter’s troll-in-chief, Elon Musk – who attended Queen’s University in the early Nineties, and we suspect only ever listened to the privately-owned CKWS – slapped a label on CBC’s Twitter account. He’d done the same thing to PBS and NPR and BBC, but how he labelled CBC caused a great big stink up here in the Great Blighted North.

Musk affixed “government-funded media” on CBC/Radio-Canada’s Twitter account. It was partly true, because a big part of CBC’s budget comes from the federal government, as it did under socialists like Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper.

Much stürm und drang ensued, with a spokespersonage at Mother Corp. huffing and puffing about Musk’s mischievousness. “Twitter can be a powerful tool for our journalists to communicate with Canadians, but it undermines the accuracy and professionalism of the work they do to allow our independence to be falsely described in this way,” said CBC spokesman Leon Mar.

CBC thereafter announced it would be “pausing” its tweets on its corporate and news-related Twitter accounts. Musk, who most days strongly resembles a walking Irish bar fight, changed CBC’s label to “69 per cent government funded.”

With a war still raging in Ukraine, mass-shootings happening in the U.S. every single day, A.I. replacing humans, starvation and genocide reigning in Sudan, and – closer to home – China undermining our democracy, it’s comforting to know that the biggest news story is what Elon Musk calls public broadcasters, isn’t it? Yep.

So, let’s get serious for a moment and recall three unassailable facts, all addressed to the CBC.

One: good folks at the CBC, be under no illusion. Every sentient being in Canada knows you are government-funded. Saying you are “government-funded” isn’t news, as it were. It’s factual.

Two: CBC apparatchiks, was Musk implying that you are biased in favour of the government led by Justin Trudeau? Of course he was. Big deal. Millions of Canadians, Pierre Poilievre among them, say you favour Justin Trudeau several hundred times a day. Just as many say that this newspaper isn’t his biggest fan, which possibly has a partial ring of truth to it.

So what? Readers, viewers and listeners know what our biases are when they read/listen/watch us. Give them, us, credit for a modicum of intelligence, would you?

Three: CBC tall foreheads, take note – Elon Musk is, as noted, a troll. Like Yours Screwly, he likes irritating people. He likes provoking a reaction, even if it’s negative. In particular, he likes taking perfectly good social media platforms and reducing them to rubble, and he’s damn good at it.

Having a guy like that as a critic? That’s a badge of honour, boys and girls. If any label should be on your Twitter account, it’s that: “Elon Musk doesn’t like us.”

Which leads us, in a typically-circuitous route, to this point, addressed mainly to conservatives who have made it this far in this proudly-biased opinion column: I’d wager every single one of you is “government-funded,” too.

And, if you posses a Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or (God forbid) TikTok account, you should ‘fess up, too. If you’ve ever gotten something because of the Canadian Pension Plan, or Old Age Security, or the GST/HST credit, or Canada child benefits, or veteran disability programs, or treaty annuities, or any direct deposit whatsoever for any federal program whatsoever, ever, you’re kind of “government-funded,” too.

And – this where the aforementioned strike action comes in – you’re not going to be getting any of that “government funding” again anytime soon. Sorry. That may make you unhappy, and it should.

This final fact will make you even unhappier: guess who has received at least $4.9 billion in government funding since 2015? You guessed it: Tesla, SpaceX and SolarCity.

You know, Elon Musk’s companies.

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