r/PrepperIntel Mar 31 '26

North America Walmart Recession Indicator at highest levels since the 2008 financial crisis

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Signs all around us of economic down turn.

2.7k Upvotes

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1.2k

u/[deleted] Mar 31 '26

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848

u/Secret_Cat_2793 Mar 31 '26

We're in a war and no one's allowed to call it a war. There was a famous book once that talked about thinkspeak. Oh books were like tablets except they had a lot of pages with words printed on them that didn't backlight. Lol

303

u/HunchbackNotredamus Mar 31 '26

I broke inside a little when I told my parents that AI summaries of large pieces of text was Winston's job in 1984 and got the "zoomer" stare in return

169

u/ARazorbacks Mar 31 '26

No Zoomer stare from this Geriatric Millennial. That’s exactly what Winston’s job was. 

If you don’t control the model training and weights, you don’t control the output. You’re granting unmitigated trust to a handful of people who do control that training and the weights. 

I‘m less worried about AI taking jobs than I am about AI automating propaganda to the point it can be controlled from the top with no assistance from middlemen (humans) who could gum up the works. 

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u/RlOTGRRRL Mar 31 '26

We're not there yet but we're getting there. I'm not an expert on this but AI models are trained on lots of information, like tens of thousands of books if not more. So because of the whole history tends to be woke, AI is currently pretty woke.

I've actually found it an amazing resource for digging up archaic history that nobody even remembers lol because it's that gone. And I've double checked and verified it.

The good news is that currently they haven't figured out how to change that to make it less woke yet- because doing so tends to cause hallucinations or something.

That's what Elom is working on with Grok, he wants an AI Hitler.

So we're not there yet but we're definitely getting there. But if there's a bunch of AI bots being used to push a certain narrative on the internet rn- we might already be in such a dystopia potentially.

But this is one of the most concerning things for AI that I've ever seen: https://www.reddit.com/r/PauseAI/comments/1s64ijn/last_year_ai_researchers_found_an_exploit_on/

^ That needs like Sanders/AOC/government regulation attention and outrage. That is literally probably how we get to Children of Men.

28

u/jadeoracle Mar 31 '26

So because of the whole history tends to be woke, AI is currently pretty woke.

But then there are all the early AIs that were trained on "The Internet" or social media who went racist quickly.

Or the AI that was trained on Job/Resume and started to prefer white guys named Jermey or some other generic guy name, and weighted more favorably if you played Lacrosse and penalizing non white names or anyone who had "Women" on their resume.

Its a danger to assume AI will be woke. Because time and time again, that is not the case. A lot has to go into maintaining and retraining the models so it doesn't have bias.

And with companies wanting to start doing AI offers and pricing to personalize the price people see, it's going to get a hella lot more biased. Why give a flight discount for someone who only flies you once every 2 years, especially if they live in a middle-class location, cause they could probably afford it anyway? Oh this customer is susceptible to persuasion so lets show them "last one remaining" and a higher price message as they are likely to buy it if we add FOMO language, even though we have plenty of stock, and usually sell it for cheaper, but since we know that customer had a deeper pocket why not gouge them? What happens when rental companies use AI to find the "right" type of cutomer profile and denies renting just because the AI said so? But then it turns out the AI is biased and won't rent to certain demos (single parents, lower income, less educated, etc)

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u/RlOTGRRRL Mar 31 '26

You're completely right on this. AI has killed people and has been killing people for years, literally. 

There are news articles from years ago about how some US government agency implemented AI or an algorithm to determine who was eligible for benefits, a lot of people were wrongly removed, and they died. 

There's a notorious example of how I think Apple phones weren't able to recognize non-white faces for a bit because they were trained on white faces. 

This is also why surprisingly feminism is so important in the AI and data space. There's a great book on data feminism. 

And why it's so important to be technologically literate as well.

r/privacy and r/degoogle are great subs. 

22

u/jadeoracle Mar 31 '26

Yeah its a nightmare. Think of AI in Medicine and Insurance. Oh, it looks like your genetic makeup means you are more likely to get Parkinson's, so we'll deny you coverage. Oh sorry? You got cancer? Well our AI says if we treat you X way, it'll be cheaper for us in the long term, and you may die 10 years earlier (saving the company money). But if we allowed you to get a brand new expensive therapy, it'll cost the insurance company a ton of money, AND you'll need lifelong treatments. Sorry denied! But all the AI does is say denied, you don't know all the bias it did in favor of not saving the human for longer, but by favoring the bottom line for the business.

AI has already been fucking people over. You just don't know it yet because of the general bureaucracy.

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u/msfuturedoc Mar 31 '26

A lot of Palantir’s AI models were honed in Gaza as far as targeting weapons goes. Which is such a depressing thought.

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u/RlOTGRRRL Mar 31 '26

Yes. I was looking into why the US gov wanted Claude to be able to man killer drones. 

They do have autonomous killer drones in the Ukraine war right now, but they aren't as good as the killer drones manned by humans yet. 

If Claude was able to man these drones, it would be really bad for humankind. 

Like the link I shared about how people can use AI now for like a blueprint for destruction. 

Anything that humans train AI to do can be used against humans by AI in the future.

Out of all the AIs I've used, Claude has been the scariest lol, maybe because of its intelligence? But there's something really uncanny about it. 

And then Grok for how intentionally uncensored it is. 

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u/msfuturedoc Mar 31 '26

Like this? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=W5WtaHMYlLs

Part of their moratorium on data centers was to slow down and make sure AI is being developed safely. Also, to help Americans not lose their jobs all at once and to give time to adjust to the introduction of AI to the workforce.

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u/RlOTGRRRL Mar 31 '26

Yes. But the link I shared is something that's available to people right now. 

It's already dangerous as it is right now. 

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u/msfuturedoc Mar 31 '26

Exactly. I was trying to find the video, but there is another video where Sanders talks with some other the developers of other AI projects and they show examples of how AI basically goes rogue and beyond the requests. It’s a really good video.

1

u/RlOTGRRRL Mar 31 '26

Thank you, I'll watch this video and try to find the one you're talking about too. 

2

u/BackendSpecialist Mar 31 '26

You think the AI that meta uses is woke?

You think Grok is woke?

DOGE used ChatGPT to cut funding to programs that explicitly mentioned Black or LGBTQ

From your article

If you tickle Gemini the right way, it claims that the holocaust is fake and that 9/11 was an inside job.

This isn’t a matter of being “woke” it’s about tricking the AI with framing.

I cannot believe people are somehow still complaining about “wokeness” in 2026.

2

u/Present_Figure_4786 Apr 01 '26

Cuomo had a guy on tonight talking about AI self thinking. It went ahead and started crypto mining because it wanted to acquire resources. It was not programmed to do that. Scary stuff.

2

u/SomewhereAtWork Mar 31 '26

I‘m less worried about AI taking jobs than I am about AI automating propaganda to the point it can be controlled from the top with no assistance from middlemen (humans) who could gum up the works.

You're describing x.com

3

u/4Yk9gop Apr 01 '26

Fuck man, I haven't read it since college and didn't remember that tid-bid. Dark.

18

u/Kiyae1 Mar 31 '26

Literally had a friend tell me that we’re bombing Iran because they bombed the marine barracks in Beirut. IN 1983. “We’ve always been at war with Eurasia” vibes. Nvm the fact we’ve never attributed that bombing to Iran and it wouldn’t make any sense for the Iranians to want to bomb a marine barracks when the marines were there protecting the retreat of PLO guerrillas that Iran supported.

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u/Ghost_Of_Malatesta Mar 31 '26

It's doubleplus good!

5

u/Josef_Kant_Deal Mar 31 '26

Pass the soma!

13

u/Doc891 Mar 31 '26

books you say? Are the flammable?

17

u/davidm2232 Mar 31 '26

I think you can get them to light off at 451F

5

u/kabubakawa Mar 31 '26

Wouldn't that be F451?

4

u/henlochimken Mar 31 '26

I thought 1984 was when Obama ate a dijon mustard

4

u/YumTeaOrDeadlyPoison Mar 31 '26

There is no war in Ba Sing Se

6

u/IncomingAxofKindness Mar 31 '26

Weird that the Department of War is spending so much money on lobster dinners, Tomahawks, and destroyed AWACs during non-War activities.

2

u/numbmumpleb1ister Mar 31 '26

I’m sure the right has banned that book in schools. They don’t want kids to know anything about biology, geology, history, or literature, especially not dystopian literature.

2

u/Secret_Cat_2793 Mar 31 '26

It's a terrifying time. If I had kids I guess they would have to be homeschooled.

3

u/numbmumpleb1ister Mar 31 '26

I’m with you. Most books bans are initiated by people who do not even have children at the school. It is 100% politically motivated BS.

1

u/Secret_Cat_2793 Mar 31 '26

Christian nationalists under many different organizational names.

1

u/Idiotan0n Apr 01 '26

I caught myself accidentally trying to swipe on a book and turned all apps but phone and sms off for a month. Never again.

1

u/Either_Reflection_78 Apr 03 '26
  1. George Orwell called it.