Comments by "" (@VesnaVK) on "TERRIFYING: Woke DEI is Unleashing a 1984 Apocalypse! - Nina Schick (4K) | heretics. 48" video.
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[UPDATE two days after originally posting this comment: see end of this comment for the update.]
Nina Schick's website triggered a malware warning when I tried to visit to learn more about her. So much for her tech savvy.
I call BS on this guest. I couldn't find anything about her that indicates that she has any qualifications in this area.
No education: She has a master's degree in philosophy, but the focus was history and politics -- not, for example, philosophy of mind, language, or technology. Not epistemology, logic, ethics, or metaphysics. Her undergrad degree is in history and European languages.
No experience: All her roles appear to have been as "advisor," "public speaker" (starting at $50K/appearance!), and "commentator." She even founded a company that advises on this topic. But where did the knowledge to "advise" come from? Beats me.
You may be wondering, who named her one of the top 20 public speakers in AI? Why, the AI Speakers Bureau -- on their promotional web page listing their speakers for hire!
Nina Schick calls herself a "global authority in AI." But listen carefully, and all she seems to know about is how to alternate between scary and reassuring commentary about the potential effect of AI on society. If you were wondering why she seemed to be so vague about actual AI and computing concepts, now you know why.
[UPDATE: The first time I heard of Nina Schick was in 2020 when she went on Sam Harris's podcast, Making Sense. It was an amazing episode! One of my favorites, and one that I thought of often over the years. I was stunned to realize this person that I've been dismissing here was the same person I've admired for the past four years.
So I re-listened to it. Once again, I thought the 2020 appearance was fantastic and thought provoking. So many fascinating details and background on the entire geopolitical scene, with fascinating insights into the history of propaganda and disinformation, chilling stories about information technology and its impact on society, and her thoughts about where all this is leading.
She was on Making Sense again in 2023, but I had missed that one, so now I listened to that for the first time. It wasn't quite as good. Her conversational subject matter had shrunk to just AI. She was developing verbal tics like saying "Right?" more often than really makes sense in context. Worst of all, sometimes Sam would push back or question some assertion, and she would launch into long, elaborate word salad that didn't answer his question, or didn't address his remark.
Finally I started listening to this episode of Heretics again. The contrast was startk. This is as if someone replaced the Nina Shick I loved listening to with a Nina Schick simulation, except they erased most of the data that has to do with anything besides AI and how wonderful and inevitable it is.
I swear, when she started praising the CEO of Microsoft, I felt like I was watching the original The Manchurian Candidate.
They threw in a bunch of computer terminology, but weren't careful about fact checking, leaving her to say silly things like "GIBO is a slogan from AI research" (It's "GIGO," it's general computer science (not AI), and it doesn't apply to the thing she was describing.) And they told her to describe herself as a "global authority" and a "thought leader" regarding AI.
WHAT HAPPENED?!]
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OK, I did some digging and wrote an extensive comment in the main Comments section about what I learned about this person. I think our Spidey-sense tingled because we were sensing that she's a big phony, in my opinion.
Basically she doesn't know anything about AI (or computer science and technology in general). What she does is talk about things AI might or might not be able to do. She also talks about how that may or may not affect society. She seems to be "talking about AI," but actually she's just speculating about downstream effects that may or may not occur as a result of its use. (Or describing incidents that have already occurred.)
She seems to have created a persona of being a "global authority on AI," based on this skill of spinning long monologues filled with words and phrases related to tech, business, and marketing.
Notice what happened when she was asked about something she didn't have a canned set of talking points about: "Who's a heretic you admire?" She practically fell apart, and said she was drawing a complete blank.
That's a first on Andrew's show! A "complete blank"!? Some people have paused before answering. Some have said, "Well, I don't know if this counts, but...." and then gone on to mention someone they admire. So far, though, EVERYONE thought of a person they admire! Who cannot think of a person they admire?
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@reezlaw if you know of any evidence of her expertise, please do tell me, and I'll humbly eat my words.
I posted a longer comment in the main Comments section about this. It seems she has neither experience nor education in AI, nor any other tech field, except as an "advisor." It looks like she just started "advising" about AI professionally a few years ago and now styles herself a "global authority" and a "thought leader." I mean, she wrote a book and founded a company, but both those things happened shortly after her first job as an AI advisor, and nothing she did before that seems to have provided a foundation for that, either.
If I'm missing something important, please tell me.
I tried to learn more on her website, but got malware warnings when I tried to visit it.
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"Who's a heretic you admire?"
"Um, um, um, I'm drawing a complete blank."
(That makes so much sense to me now. She got SO FLUSTERED when she was moved outside her talking points.)
"ChatGPT says Alan Turing."
"Oh, that is really good, actually!"
Such a weird response. Like "That response would have played well." Rather than hearing the name of a person she admires.
BTW she doesn't seem to know the actual significance of Alan Turing to the development of computers and programming -- his fundamental mathematical insights that led to the computer revolution in the 20th century. In fact, I got the impression that Nina Schick thinks Alan Turing's huge contribution was coming up with the idea of the Turing Test -- though any science fiction writer could have done that, given the new reality of computer technology. No -- it was his unique brilliance as a mathematician that changed the course of our world.
Alan Turing isn't famous because he came up with the idea of the Turing Test. The Turing Test is famous because it was Alan Turing who described it.
And oh, yeah, he cracked the Enigma code! And gosh, his life was really sad! Here I felt like she was grasping at straws, scraping up everything she could think of that she knew about Alan Turing, probably whatever she could remember from the movie "The Imitation Game" (which got SO MUCH wrong about Alan Turing). And, wow, that's why they called the movie "The Imitation Game"! (Thanks for that last bit, Sherlock.)
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