South Park S21 E1: White People Renovating Houses
Bit of background information:
Unite the Right Rally:
This was a rally organized by white supremacist that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. Participants carried racist slogans and weapons with the goal of uniting American white nationalist movement and opposing the removal of statue of Robert E. Lee from former Lee Park.
Instead of chanting “jews will not replace us”, “immigrants will not replace us”, or “there are too much anti-white hatred”, the rednecks in this South Park protest menial jobs being taken by machines, especially directing hate to Alexa.
AI changed the whole spectrum of job market. A lot of jobs that have always been done by human are gradually being taken by machines. One thing I noticed by myself constantly is the telephone customer service line, and that was LONG before AI was that big of a deal (at least in my memory). Data analyzations are also done by machine. Even cars drive themselves. With the help of generative AI, designers are losing their market as well.
We know AI creates new jobs for people, but like mentioned so many times before in class and readings, at the cost of mental health of underpaid workers and accompanied with so many ethical questions.
Randy Marsh in South Park solves the redneck protest problem with a simple solution. He replaces Alexa back with human labor. However, these rednecks suck at their jobs. While being asked about the weather or a definition of a word, they must search online or check the dictionary. That’s where edge of machines appear – they require little or no reaction time, they are accurate, and they do not get sick or angry like rednecks do.
The more hilarious part comes when Eric Cartman grows so tired of his girlfriend Heidi because she always has something to say which Cartman hates to hear. Alexa is different. She is smart, funny, and most of all – SUBSERVIENT. This word is clearly defined when Cartman yells “Alexa! Silence!” in the middle of Alexa speaking, silencing the machine.
See? Unlike Heidi, Alexa prepares to obey, unquestioningly, like a slave. Cartman falls in love. Well, that relates to people resorting to relationships with AI. However, in all the films we see, AI does not seem to be so subservient, whether in Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2014), Her (Spike Jonze, 2013), or Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982), and that is more likely to be the future of all this.
South Park S21 E4: Franchise Prequel
Information provided by Facebook of how they address false information through independent fact-checkers:
https://www.facebook.com/help/1952307158131536?cms_id=1952307158131536
Cartman starts a superhero franchise, but Butters as Professor Chaos starts a serious business which also profits by creating and spreading fake news about the superheroes. This episode is poking fun at the phenomenon of people making stuff up and putting it on Facebook to make money, and the fact that Facebook lacks regulation on this. The profit of this is huge, and the process is easy. Anyone can create something, and once it spreads out and attracts more viewers, it’s natural that advertisement and business opportunities emerge.
Always, the company leaders are aware of this, but shutting down sites like this will cause a loss in revenue, so they just go unregulated. Both episodes I write about came out in 2017, and here is a news article of how Facebook repeatedly trended fake news since firing human editors in 2016.
Meanwhile, South Park people invite Mark Zuckerberg to stop the spread of more fake news. The results are awful, Zuckerberg behaves like a robot all the time and constantly invade people’s home. The worst part is, people cannot seem to get rid of him – he is unblockable.
I personally think this is an awesome metaphor of how he and technology like Facebook permeate into people’s life. We cannot avoid it, and in the end, South Park is right, because we did it ourselves – “We DID invite him here”.
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Last but not least, some vulgar entertainment:
But seriously, Alexa, what is love?
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