The Motives of Our Attending Spirit

Well, here's some more concrete evidence AI isn't perfect. I was watching Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull again this week and I felt sure the John Milton quote used in the movie was from Comus, a masque Milton wrote in 1634. I decided to double check and googled "Milton Quote in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" and the AI gave me this response:

The AI incorrectly states that the quote comes from Paradise Lost. It does not, it comes from Comus, from a soliloquy by the "Attending Spirit", a mysterious omniscient being whose benevolence and identity are fodder for stimulating debate. As when I pointed out the interpretation Google's AI gave to Ian McShane's accent in Pirates of the Caribbean, I find this a strange mistake for an AI to make. I mean, it seems much more like something I'd expect from human error. Paradise Lost is Milton's most famous work so I can see your average human assuming that's where the quote came from. Why should an AI have such a prejudice? I can find the quote in Comus by going to Project Gutenberg and hitting "control F". Surely AI should be able to go through such a process even faster. Wouldn't it be more difficult for it to amalgamate the common assumptions about Milton, digest them, and regurgitate them to provide something that simulates a human error? I guess there is such a thing as trying too hard.

So it seems the AI is basically a pool of internet content with weak discernment for the relative integrity of its sources. Perhaps it's no more sinister than that, though that's plenty sinister.

One of the things that keep me coming back to Kingdom of the Crystal Skull despite its flaws is the interrogation scene where Cate Blanchett's Soviet character talks about her ambition to harness psychic power from the crystal skulls for mind control, "A mind weapon. A new frontier of psychic warfare. That was Stalin's dream." Apparently Stalin really was interested in psychic ability. Blanchett's lines about forcing Americans to believe the Soviet version of history reminds me of Putin's long history lecture in his infamous interview with Tucker Carlsen. With AI spreading misinformation, maybe it'll wind up to be a real crystal skull. If it hasn't already.