I don't want this

Getting past "Just Say No" to unhinged chatbots and ICE raids.

Please brace yourself for a Way Too Online introductory paragraph.

This week, in addition to declaring that he’s formed a new political party and running multiple multi-billion-dollar companies, Elon Musk decided to un-woke grok, his AI chatbot¹. Grok has been trained on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) posts, so the results were predictably (yet still shockingly) vile.

Unhinged grok accelerated a disturbing phenomenon that already existed: people addressing grok as though it’s a person. Post after post begins “hey, grok,” followed by a question or request². I see this on Substack, too, except with the practiced earnestness that characterizes a lot of Substack notes³. Picture Carrie Bradshaw typing “Dear Substack algorithm, please show me writers who…”

It’s not better offline. I drove a minivan full of teenagers to camp on Monday and listened to them “talking” “to” Instagram’s chatbot and giggling about its responses.

Every time I find myself⁴ or someone else interacting with a large language model as though it’s human, something deep within me screams I don’t want this.

I’m overwhelmed with I don’t want this energy lately. I don’t want ICE at church, school, Home Depot, parks. I don’t want cuts to Medicaid or food assistance programs or scientific research. Closer to home, I don’t want to download new apps for the school year or to move my kids to a new doctor because their lifelong pediatrician won’t take our new health insurance or to spend an hour trying to figure out if I actually have an unpaid speeding ticket in Ohio or if this message that looks very legit is a scam. I don’t want a lot of things.

Please brace yourself for a profane and extremely unsatisfying truth.

I don’t want this is a shitty, draining, unattractive, unproductive headspace.

It’s also a shitty, draining, unattractive, unproductive political strategy. Lauren Egan explains that Democrats are realizing this: the One Big Beautiful Bill might not be the electoral gift that swings the midterms their way.

They worry that it’s not enough for Democrats to say, ‘We’re not Trump’—or, in this case, ‘We will undo the damage Trump did’—and expect that voters will instinctively reward them for that. In their greatest moments of despair, they wonder if the party may fumble the midterms because of a misreading of this moment.

Learning this lesson again? I don’t want this.

What do I want?

I want ideas--not just mine, but all of ours. We started a fruitful conversation about this in connection with Project 2025 (I don’t want Project 2025, so what do I want from the executive branch?). I’m ready for a fruitful conversation about a legislative agenda, so I’m taking my list of I don’t wants to a blank page.

Please brace yourself for pure brainstorming. This is all extremely complicated. Some of it won’t work. Some of it won’t sell to voters. You won’t like some or maybe most of it. That’s ok. I just don’t want to be paralyzed by the problems anymore. I want to contribute to figuring shit out.

I don’t want this…

• Unhinged AI chatbots permeating every online space and taking jobs and conditioning us to think, talk, and write like an ever-diminishing-average “user” online and offline

…so what about this?

People-centered legislation that:

• Protects privacy

• Requires AI use to be disclosed and labeled

• Prohibits student AI use in K-12 education

• Requires age verification by AI companies to interact with any chatbot

• Makes using AI chatbots and agents more expensive than hiring people (this could mean a tax deduction for human workers or a tax penalty for replacing people with machines--whatever it takes to reverse the math on this, I’m for)

I don’t want this…

• Immigration enforcement that is divorced from due process, spending a literal fortune on inhumane detention centers, masked people snatching others out of civil society, mistakes about who is and is not legally here, etc.

…so what about this?

A quit-the-chaos approach to immigration:

• A strategic resource shift from law enforcement in the US to centers in Mexico and other countries with high rates of immigration to the US that hear asylum claims, consider visa requests, etc., before a person makes the journey here.

• Those centers would be responsible for ensuring that a person coming to the US has the documents they need, a place to go, and a way to get there safely. Let’s get people here safely to cut off the potential for human trafficking and drug smuggling and all of the things that we keep putting on law enforcement’s plate. Upstream is the vibe.

• For people already here, a one-year “get your documents” period that allows people to meet certain conditions for legal residence (temporary or otherwise depending on the circumstances). After that period, humane, expedient deportation for people who do not take advantage of the opportunity.

• A simplification of the immigration system so that people (at the individual, I-don’t-have-a-lawyer-or-social-worker level) can understand the law enough to comply with it

I don’t want this…

• Health insurance that is out of reach for many and too complicated for nearly everyone and that inhibits access to care as often as it facilitates it

…so what about this?

• I think Mark Cuban’s thinking on this is better than almost anyone else’s

I don’t want this…

• Cutting funding for research that could lead to discoveries that reduce human suffering and contribute to human flourishing

…so what about this?

• The President wants to establish a sovereign wealth fund. Fine. I would like to use the investment income on a sovereign innovation fund that steadily supports research and development throughout the country. We already know that when government invests in something, the private sector follows. Let’s do more of that for things that we really want (and less of it for the aforementioned chatbots).

I don’t want this…

• Drowning in bureaucratic bullshit and scams at every turn

…so what about this?

• I think the people-centered legislation would help with some of this, but we also need a concerted effort to crack down on scams in both a push and pull way.

• I’d like to use our technology to help us instead of endlessly hurt us here.

  • I want a government ID system that is my key to authenticating myself for them and them for me.

  • I don’t want to get a text message about unpaid speeding tickets and wonder whether I’m about to lose my license. I want to be able to use something like the chip in my credit cards or my fingerprint or my eyeballs (whatever!) to figure out if its legit.

  • I don’t want 9 million passwords. I want that key for the federal and state authorities I interact with. We have to be able to do this and secure it. It would be well worth our focus and investment.

Please brace yourself for an abrupt conclusion that doesn’t solve anything.

What don’t you want, and what do you? If there’s a lesson of the past seven months (and/or ten years), it’s that MAGA has some ideas. I don’t want them, and that’s inadequate as a response.

I’m ready to get cracking on a better one.

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I read this week that people are really craving Good News, but they don’t know where to find it. So, in case you missed it, Sarah does a Good News Brief every Thursday⁵. This week was particularly good. -Maggie

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What We’re Reading and Listening To This Week

• Beth: 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America by Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf

  • If you’d like to read her notes and commentary, you can follow along here

• Alise: Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

• Maggie: The Liberal Misinformation Bubble About Youth Gender Medicine (The Atlantic)

  • Note: I know the title is pretty explosive, but I am really interested in information bubbles based on your political bias because *waves hands around at all this* reasons

Copyright (C) 2024 Pantsuit Politics. All rights reserved.

1. X bills grok as “your cosmic guide,” which does, in fact, make me want to leave this planet.

2. Usually, the question or request is a passive-aggressive way to dunk on someone the poster doesn’t like, because that + porn is apparently X’s raison d’être.

3. I won’t link these kinds of notes because a) that’s rude, and b) it’s no one’s fault. We are conditioned to do these things that are objectively bizarre. See, e.g., my Facebook memories, which include lots of “Beth Silvers is _____” posts that make me want to relocate to a cave and never show my face again.

4. How many times have I thanked Alexa or Claude or Siri? TOO MANY TIMES, reader.

5. Regular reminder that we make a LOT of extra episodes for Pantsuit Politics Premium, but it’s not cheating if you’re just here for the Spicy Bonus Episode and Good News Brief