AI Tariffs Show the Real Use of Imitative AI: Buck Passing

Apparently, the Trump Administration used an imitative AI system to generate the tariffs. The formula, and I hesitate to grant that pile of bad assumptions and motivated thinking such a lofty title, appears to be the one you can generate from imitative AI, particularly Grok. They are getting roasted for this, but I suspect that we are going to be seeing a lot more of this in the future.

A brief pause to point out that, yes, the formula is entirely bat shit stupid. Frankly, if they had left it to reading the patterns of bat shit on the nearest floor cave, they may have actually produced something more reasonable. I will let an economist explain one of the many issues, but you should read their whole post for the gory details:

There’s so much wrong with this approach that it’s hard to know where to start. But one easy thing to point out is that the Trump calculation only considers trade in goods, while ignoring trade in services. This is a big omission. Notably, the European Union runs a substantial surplus with us if you only look at trade in goods — but this is largely offset by an EU deficit in services trade:

Now, one reading of the situation is that they are frankly too dumb to understand the mistakes that the imitative AI system produced. And while that is likely true, I suspect that the real reason they went with this obviously wrong formulation is that they do not care. In their minds, and in the minds of a lot of journalists and politicians, imitative AI is a magic machine. You ask it for stuff and lo! it will write you a sonnet or answer all your questions. It is the modern-day oracle of Delphi. But like the Oracle of Delphi, it is very often full of shit. But that is not, in the parlance of my profession, a bug to these people. It is a feature.

The Trump admin wants punitive tariffs. To the extent that this is not being driven merely by Trump’s sundowning brain latching onto a bit of revenge, it seems to be driven by two goals: onshoring manufacturing and replacing the income tax with the revenue from import taxes, i.e. tariffs. Now, both of those goals cannot be achieved via large tariffs alone (I will talk about this some more tomorrow), but no one in the Trump Administration wants to hear that. No one competent would sign off on something as flawed as this report, but only something as flawed as this report could generate numbers justifying what they want to do. Hence imitative AI.

Imitative AI, like all algorithms, give people cover to do what they want. Can’t blame me, the computer said this is the way it has to be. Never mind that someone programmed the computer so that it would say that this is the way it has to be. A computer spit it out, so it must be true. Imitative AI is even better for that argument, since the programming is obscured by the training and even the people who create these systems aren’t always entirely sure why the training leads to certain outcomes. As for the bullshit problem these systems all have, why, haven’t you heard? They are the first step on the road to true artificial intelligence! And the mistakes are a minor percentage of the results! And it is going to make teachers redundant in five years! Teachers! It must be smart!

Those may sound like stupid arguments, because they are, but they do get a lot of airing in the press and a lot of politicians do worry about “falling behind” in imitative AI. The imitative AI pushers really do spend a lot of time and energy trying to convince people that a word calculator can solve all their problems. Some percentage of people, given who poorly the press covers these systems and hucksters, are going to believe them. And thus, imitative AI will provide cover for these kinds of stupid and deceitful decisions. It will provide a way to mangle the truth at a remove.

Fascism in many ways is the rejection of truth and morals. To the extent that imitative AI confidently lies, it is a tool of fascism. And that is why, I suspect, we see this drive to force government agencies to use imitative AI. It is partly paying off Musk, but it is just as likely to be driven by trying to hide the lies behind the output of a word calculator. I hope the reaction to the tariff formula demonstrates that we are not so far gone yet.