LA TIMES AI TOOL DEEMS KKK “JUST SOME GUYS WITH BEDSHEET FASHION SENSE”
NEURAL NETWORK DECIDES WHITE SUPREMACIST HATE GROUP “SIMPLY RESPONDING TO CHANGING TIMES” LIKE YOUR GRANDPA LEARNING TIKTOK
LOS ANGELES – In what experts are calling “the most predictable tech f@#k-up since Elon Musk’s brain implants caused people to involuntarily tweet racial slurs,” the Los Angeles Times has hastily removed its new AI “Insights” feature after it suggested the Ku Klux Klan was merely “responding to societal changes” rather than, you know, being America’s premier terrorist organization for over a century.
THE ALGORITHM HAS THOUGHTS, AND THEY’RE SOMEHOW DUMBER THAN FACEBOOK COMMENTS
The newspaper’s groundbreaking technology, designed to provide “balanced perspective” on opinion pieces, apparently decided that burning crosses and lynching people should be considered just one valid viewpoint in the marketplace of ideas.
“We wanted to show multiple perspectives on complex issues,” explained LA Times technology editor Chip Silicone. “Turns out we accidentally programmed our AI to have the moral compass of a 4chan thread.”
SURPRISING ABSOLUTELY NO ONE WITH A FUNCTIONING BRAIN
The AI tool, launched with great fanfare approximately 24 hours before being yeeted into the digital trash can, was supposed to identify bias in opinion articles. Instead, it demonstrated all the nuanced understanding of racial issues as your drunk uncle at Thanksgiving dinner.
Dr. Obvi Ouslee, professor of Stuff Everyone Already Knows at Common Sense University, told our reporters, “When you train an AI on the internet, which contains every horrible thought humans have ever had, you shouldn’t be shocked when it starts sounding like the comments section on a YouTube video about immigration.”
TECH BROS SHOCKED THAT MATH CAN BE RACIST
According to inside sources, the LA Times’ technology team expressed genuine surprise that their algorithm, trained on the collective wisdom of internet discourse, somehow developed problematic views on race.
“We just don’t understand it,” said Chad Datafart, lead engineer on the project. “We fed it millions of web pages, including Reddit, Twitter, and newspaper comments sections. How could this possibly have gone wrong?”
ALTERNATIVE HEADLINES THE AI REPORTEDLY GENERATED
Sources within the Times leaked other problematic “insights” the AI generated before being shut down:
– “Slavery had some economic benefits, according to 14% of historians who still get invited to Thanksgiving at Elon Musk’s house”
– “Women’s rights movement possibly too hasty, suggests algorithm trained on Joe Rogan podcasts”
– “Climate change concerns may be exaggerated, says neural network that still thinks coal is just Santa’s punishment system”
LA Times management has issued a statement saying they are “reevaluating their approach” to AI tools, which industry insiders translate as “holy sh!t we almost got canceled on day one.”
According to Dr. Algo Rithmic, who holds the distinguished chair of Obvious Technological Dystopia at the Institute for Telling You So, “Approximately 99.7% of people who aren’t tech bros could have predicted this outcome. The remaining 0.3% were too busy mining cryptocurrency to notice.”
In related news, the LA Times has announced they will be reverting to their previous method of gauging public opinion: reading angry letters from subscribers who still own fax machines.
