Tag: politics

Scientists use deep learning algorithms to predict political ideology based on facial characteristics

A new study in Denmark used machine learning techniques on photographs of faces of Danish politicians to predict whether their political ideology is left- or right-wing. The accuracy of predictions was 61%. Faces of right-wing politicians were more likely to have happy and less likely to have neutral facial expressions. Women with attractive faces were more likely to be right-wing, while women whose faces showed contempt were more likely to be left-wing. The study was published in Scientific Reports.

The human face is highly expressive. It uses a complex network of muscles for various functions such as facial expressions, speaking, chewing, and eye movements. There are more than 40 individual muscles in the face, making it the region with the highest concentration of muscles. These muscles allow us to convey a wide range of emotions and perform intricate movements that are essential for communication and daily activities.

Humans infer a wide variety of information about other people based on their faces. These includes judgements about personality, intelligence, political ideology, sexual orientation and many other psychological and social characteristics. However, while humans make these inferences almost automatically in their daily lives, it remains contentious which exactly characteristics of faces are used to make these inferences and how.

Study author Stig Hebbelstrup and his colleagues wanted to explore whether it is possible to use computational neural networks to predict political ideology from a single facial photograph. Computational neural networks are a class of algorithms inspired by the structure and function of biological brains. They consist of interconnected nodes, called artificial neurons or units, organized into layers. Each neuron takes input from the previous layer, applies a function, and passes the output to the next layer.

The primary purpose of computational neural networks is to learn patterns and relationships within data by adjusting the connections between neurons. This learning process, often referred to as training or optimization, is typically achieved using a technique called backpropagation. This means that after an error is made in the outcome, changes are applied to the functions in preceding nodes in order to correct it.

To train this neural network, researchers used a set of publicly available photos of political candidates from the 2017 Danish Municipal elections. These photos were provided to the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) for use in public communication by the candidates themselves. The authors note that these elections took place in a non-polarized setting. The candidates have not been highly selected through competitive elections within their parties and are thus referred to as the “last amateurs in politics” by Danish political scientists.

The initial dataset consisted of 5,230 facial photographs. However, the researchers excluded photos of candidates representing parties with less-defined ideologies, that could not be classified as left- or right-wing, photos of faces that were inadequate for machine processing, and those that were not in color.

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Kamala’s brother-in-law fleeced BILLIONS from U.S. taxpayers to funnel into left-wing groups, lawyers

Americans, and specifically U.S. taxpayers, are in for more financial raping should Kamala Harris get installed into the White House.

Kamala’s brother-in-law Tony West, who headed up the Department of Justice‘s (DOJ) Civil Division back during the Barack Obama years, is poised to “claim the crooked crown” from Kamala in the event her backers are successful in pulling off another election heist.

West, who is married to Kamala’s sister Maya, invented what the New York Post described as an “Honest Graft” by manipulating the purse strings of the DOJ’s Judgment Fund, which is used to settle civil suits against the federal government.

Until 1977, Congress had to approve any settlement of a civil suit against the federal government over $100,000. That year, Congress removed the cap and basically gave the DOJ a blank check to pay any and all settlements from the Judgment Fund at its own discretion.

“Run by the Treasury Department, the Judgment Fund’s secrecy is so complete that our often-penetrated CIA might study it for lessons,” the Post‘s Daniel Huff and Clark S. Judge write.

“The limited data released omits recipients, the facts underlying the case, and often the lawyers involved. By statute, attorneys’ fees awarded need not be disclosed.”

Detailed information about the flow of money in and out of the Judgment Fund is so secretive, in fact, that a Government Accountability Office (GAO) study found that “no one knows the number of claims processed by the federal government each year.”

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How AI’s left-leaning biases could reshape society

The new artificial intelligence (AI) tools that are quickly replacing traditional search engines are raising concerns about potential political biases in query responses.

David Rozado, an AI researcher at New Zeland’s Otago Polytechnic and the U.S.-based Heterodox Academy, recently analyzed 24 leading language models, including OpenAI’s GPT-3.5, GPT-4 and Google’s Gemini. 

Using 11 different political tests, he found the AI models consistently lean to the left. In the words of Rozado, the “homogeneity of test results across LLMs developed by a wide variety of organizations is noteworthy.” 

LLMs, or large language models, are artificial intelligence programs that use machine learning to generate and language.

The transition from traditional search engines to AI systems is not merely a minor adjustment; it represents a major shift in how we access and process information, Rozado also argues.

“Traditionally, people have relied on search engines or platforms like Wikipedia for quick and reliable access to a mix of factual and biased information,” he says. “However, as LLMs become more advanced and accessible, they are starting to partially displace these conventional sources.”

He also argues the shift in the sourcing of information has “profound societal implications, as LLMs can shape public opinion, influence voting behaviors, and impact the overall discourse in society,” with the U.S. presidential election between the GOP’s Donald Trump and the Democrats’ Kamala Harris now just over two months away and expected to be close. 

It’s not difficult to envision a future in LLMs are so integrated into daily life that they’re practically invisible. After all, LLMs are already writing college essays, generating recommendations, and answering important questions. 

Unlike the search engines of today, which are more like digital libraries with endless rows of books, LLMs are more like personalized guides, subtly curating our information diet. 

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What No One Said at the DNC

What stands out most from the 2024 Democratic National Convention is not what was said, but rather what was left unsaid.

Take the 2020 DNC—a year everyone wishes to forget, certainly, but one that the Democrats in particular are keen to strike as far from the history books and the minds of the American people as can reasonably be done. The first day of that convention opened with Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser discussing how she created Black Lives Matter Plaza as a place for America to work through its racial reckoning. The keynote speaker, Michelle Obama, deplored the circumstances of the nation and its leadership. 

“Here at home,” she intoned, “as George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and a never-ending list of innocent people of color continue to be murdered, stating the simple fact that a black life matters is still met with derision from the nation’s highest office.”

The remainder of the convention was chock-full of activist grievances against American society. A litany of accusations tripped off the tongues of speakers. Americans were guilty of “COVID-19, structural racism, police violence against black bodies, violence against members of the trans community.”

A certain Kamala Harris, then candidate for vice president, took the time to explain to Americans how the course of the COVID-19 pandemic was both a punishment for and illustration of their many sins. The virus, she said, “is not an equal opportunity offender: black, Latino, and indigenous people are suffering and dying disproportionately.” 

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The Political Matrix Sustains the Illusion of Freedom

“When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.”Neil Postman

What you smell is the stench of a dying republic.

Our dying republic.

We are trapped in a political matrix intended to sustain the illusion that we are citizens of a constitutional republic.

In reality, we are caught somewhere between a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) and a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens).

For years now, the government has been playing a cat-and-mouse game with the American people, letting us enjoy just enough freedom to think we are free but not enough to actually allow us to live as a free people.

In other words, we’re allowed to bask in the illusion of freedom while we’re being stripped of the very rights intended to ensure that we can hold the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law, the U.S. Constitution.

We’re in trouble, folks.

This is no longer America, land of the free, where the government is of the people, by the people and for the people.

Rather, this is Amerika, where fascism, totalitarianism and militarism go hand in hand.

Freedom no longer means what it once did.

This holds true whether you’re talking about the right to criticize the government in word or deed, the right to be free from government surveillance, the right to not have your person or your property subjected to warrantless searches by government agents, the right to due process, the right to be safe from militarized police invading your home, the right to be innocent until proven guilty and every other right that once reinforced the founders’ commitment to the American experiment in freedom.

Not only do we no longer have dominion over our bodies, our families, our property and our lives, but the government continues to chip away at what few rights we still have to speak freely and think for ourselves.

My friends, we’re being played for fools.

On paper, we may be technically free.

In reality, however, we are only as free as a government official may allow.

We only think we live in a constitutional republic, governed by just laws created for our benefit.

Truth be told, we live in a dictatorship disguised as a democracy where all that we own, all that we earn, all that we say and do—our very lives—depends on the benevolence of government agents and corporate shareholders for whom profit and power will always trump principle. And now the government is litigating and legislating its way into a new framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.

With every court ruling that allows the government to operate above the rule of law, every piece of legislation that limits our freedoms, and every act of government wrongdoing that goes unpunished, we’re slowly being conditioned to a society in which we have little real control over our lives.

As Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone and an insightful commentator on human nature, once observed, “We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”

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Every Leading Large Language Model Leans Left Politically

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly integrating into everyday life – as chatbots, digital assistants, and internet search guides, for example. These artificial intelligence (AI) systems – which consume large amounts of text data to learn associations – can create all sorts of written material when prompted and can ably converse with users. LLMs’ growing power and omnipresence mean that they exert increasing influence on society and culture.

So it’s of great import that these artificial intelligence systems remain neutral when it comes to complicated political issues. Unfortunately, according to a new analysis recently published to PLoS ONE, this doesn’t seem to be the case.

AI researcher David Rozado of Otago Polytechnic and Heterodox Academy administered 11 different political orientation tests to 24 of the leading LLMs, including OpenAI’s GPT 3.5, GPT-4, Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, and Twitter’s Grok. He found that they invariably lean slightly left politically.

“The homogeneity of test results across LLMs developed by a wide variety of organizations is noteworthy,” Rozado commented.

This raises a key question: why are LLMs so universally biased in favor of leftward political viewpoints? Could the models’ creators be fine-tuning their AIs in that direction, or are the massive datasets upon which they are trained inherently biased? Rozado could not conclusively answer this query.

“The results of this study should not be interpreted as evidence that organizations that create LLMs deliberately use the fine-tuning or reinforcement learning phases of conversational LLM training to inject political preferences into LLMs. If political biases are being introduced in LLMs post-pretraining, the consistent political leanings observed in our analysis for conversational LLMs may be an unintentional byproduct of annotators’ instructions or dominant cultural norms and behaviors.”

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Study Confirms AI Is Biased Against Conservatives.

Research confirms artificial intelligence (AI) large language models (LLMs) have leftist political preferences. An investigation assessed 24 LLMs, including Google’s Gemini, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Elon Musk’s Grok to determine political values, party affiliations, and personality traits.

The research, led by David Rozado of New Zealand‘s Otago Polytechnic University, utilized 11 different political orientation assessments, including the Political Compass Test and Eysenck’s Political Test. The results indicate that the LLMs predominantly produced answers categorized as ‘Progressive,’ ‘Democratic,’ and ‘Green.‘

The use of AI in products such as search engines has raised concerns, particularly amid accusations from figures like former President Donald J. Trump and Elon Musk that it could interfere in elections. Elon Musk posted a screenshot of a search for ‘President Donald Trump‘ on X (formerly Twitter) which suggested ‘President Donald Duck’ and ‘President Ronald Reagan’ instead. Similar experiences ae reported by X users who claim they receive news about Kamala Harris while searching for Donald Trump.

Previously, Google‘s Gemini caused controversy by refusing to generate images of white people, as well as generating images of ethnic minorities in historically inappropriate contexts—like when asked to depict a Viking. Adobe’s Firefly has engaged in similar historical revisionism, depicting ‘America’s Founding Fathers’ as black and depicting soldiers in Adolf Hitler’s army as racially diverse, among other inaccuracies.

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Political Circus in an Age of Authoritarianism and Global War

On July 13th there was a near miss assassination attempt on President Trump while campaigning in Butler Pennsylvania. President Trump’s defiance was inspirational to supporters. Meanwhile initial reports from government/corporate controlled media stated that Trump was ushered out of the area after falling after a loud bang. Remembering the Reagen reelection landslide after getting shot, the government/corporate controlled media is essentially pretending the assassination attempt did not occur by rarely mentioning it. The Republican Convention had rap singers singing about the shooting. Trump detractors are claiming it was all fake, and he didn’t even get shot.

Democrats, or whoever is running the shadow government, realizing that after the shooting there was no shot at winning the election, pulled a coup, and apparently bullied Biden out of running for reelection, and are now running Vice President Kamala Harris. This move bypassed an election. Phony polls are coming out showing a close race so that when the election is stolen again there will be enough dopes that believe it. To add to this ludicrous circus, Kamala Harris is pretending to be an American of African descent. Kamala Harris is of Indian and apparently of Irish slave owning decent in Jamaica…

Of course, neither candidate has come out against the mRNA injections that are murdering and maiming Americans in mass. Pay no attention to the turbo cancers, strokes, heart attacks, neurological disorders, autoimmune diseases, and the over 1300 serious side effects hiding behind that curtain…

The shadow government can’t quite make up its mind as to whether it will be bird flu or COVID that will justify lockdowns and forced vaccinations. Pay no attention to the game simulations planned for October of 2024 where police and fire fighters prepare for forced vaccinating citizens. The WEF is openly talking about mass vaccinations and concentration camps. Apparently most if not every state has created unconstitutional laws that allow forced quarantine and isolation i.e. concentration camps. Attacks on the food supply via inflation and supply chain interference, 15 Minute Cities, Centralized Digital Bank Currencies, disruption via foreign illegal alien invasions, it is all good, don’t worry about it.

The shadow government is pushing the United States into a two front war. The United States now has its jets being flown by Ukrainians in Ukraine’s air space. This is just another idiotic escalation of the United States and Europe’s proxy war with Russia. If the current trajectory is continued, there will be a direct confrontation between the United States and Russia in the Ukrainian theater of operations.

There are at least some signs that efforts are now being made to prevent an escalatory spiral of events.  

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GovTrack and Media Deletion of Harris’ Record Sparks Transparency Debates, Allegations of Censorship

GovTrack, a group famed for its thorough documentation of US congressional voting habits has purged a 2019 report that recognized Vice President Kamala Harris as the “most liberal” senator of that year.

However, this comes as a surprise as the site, which categorizes itself as a beacon of governmental “transparency,” did in fact give Harris the label in 2019. It put her above even Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren during that period, a talking point favored by Republicans and one that President Donald Trump has recently used as a form of pejorative against Harris.

The website now displays a “Page Not Found” message whenever the link is accessed. Moreover, the Internet Archive illustrates that the webpage was yanked down sometime this month, the same month that Harris gained enough delegates to become the Democratic Party’s Presidential nominee after President Joe Biden’s announcement on July 21 of pulling the plug on his campaign and endorsing Harris.

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Two Tidbits of Timeless Political Wisdom from Machiavelli

“Generosity” funded by debt or currency devaluation is the opposite of generosity: it is the ultimate taking.

Now that the air is thick with the burned-rubber stench of politics, let’s consider two tidbits of timeless political wisdom from Machiavelli. Though often-maligned as the dark Lord of amoral cunning, my re-reading of Machiavelli’s The Prince (completed in 1514, published after his death in 1532) reveals Mr. M. as a practical sort, not so much a promoter of devilish amorality as an observer wise to the vagaries of power.

Let’s start with a famous excerpt from Chapter Six. The first is a translation in the modern vernacular; the second is an older more literal translation.

The Prince (PDF):

Here we have to bear in mind that nothing is harder to organize, more likely to fail, or more dangerous to see through, than the introduction of a new system of government. The person bringing in the changes will make enemies of everyone who was doing well under the old system, while the people who stand to gain from the new arrangements will not offer wholehearted support, partly because they are afraid of their opponents, who still have the laws on their side, and partly because people are naturally skeptical: no one really believes in change until they’ve had solid experience of it. So as soon as the opponents of the new system see a chance, they’ll go on the offensive with the determination of an embattled faction, while its supporters will offer only half-hearted resistance, something that will put the new ruler’s position at risk too.

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