artificial intelligence

What's the point of 'smart' and 'connected' objects? Are they supposed to help us get through menial tasks more efficiently, or have the capitalists figured out a clever way to perpetually profit off the objects we use on a daily basis? Sometimes it feels like the latter. When your printer holds your ink cartridge hostage because you haven't paid your monthly printer subscription, I think it's safe to say you've been swindled by the 'Internet of Things.' And technology itself isn't necessarily to blame. We'll never get to that fabled techno-utopia as long as 'innovation' prioritizes profit rather than usefulness. Until then, we get to clumsily navigate this boring dystopia of connected crap, eternally updating the firmware on our smart trashcans. 

Ever look around and get the sense that we're living in some sort of techno-dystopia? We get it—sometimes it's cool to have lights that you can dim from your phone or a watch that tells you how many calories you burned, but maybe the 'Internet of Things' has gone too damn far. Once you start connecting every single object in your home to the internet, you become pretty vulnerable when, say, Google is suddenly down, or your WiFi router malfunctions. Sometimes a doorbell should just be a doorbell and a toothbrush certainly shouldn't require regular firmware updates. And who the hell actually wants an Amazon surveillance robot literally flying around their house 24/7?

Anyway, we've got a bunch of examples of bad 'smart devices' from Twitter that might make you reconsider that bluetooth coffee mug purchase. 

If you've ever felt disconcerted by the way technology/AI have interfered in our lives, you're not alone. Twitter account @internetofshit is basically dedicated to waking people up to the fact that tech is ruining our lives in the most capitalistic ways possible. Let's all find new ways to do necessary life things and charge people a premium for it. What the heck is the world coming to?

We've just found our new favorite thing on the internet: This Meme Does Not Exist, a feature on the site Imgflip that generates memes using artificial intelligence. The results are completely ridiculous, but they certainly had us laughing.

Try it out for yourself, and please share the results with us.

Keaton Patti, the mastermind behind the "bot-written Olive Garden ad" is back with a mockery of indulgently bougie perfume commercials. The imagery is perfect, and honestly, perfectly hilarious. We can't wait to see what this genius brings us next - by way of bot, of course. 

We recently learned about This Person Does Not Exist - a website that uses AI to generate human faces that, well, don't exist. Many of the faces appear impressively real. The same is not true for the cat version of the website, This Cat Does Not Exist. In fact, we'd say a huge majority of the cats that appear when the site is refreshed are actually completely terrifying. We see our furry friends contorted into strange, surreal, and cursed forms. Some of them are reminiscent of those hideous Medieval cat paintings. Other images look a bit more...abstract. We've rounded up some of our weirdest results, but please check out the actual site. It will provide you with hours of creepy entertainment.

Back in September, the Daily Mirror reported on a new sex doll with a "brain" that can tell jokes. Apparently, Twitter thinks that science has finally come too far. While horny internet users can appreciate some seriously thicc sex dolls, the expansion into artificial intelligence makes the possibility of relationship conversations a little too real. The jokes that have come of these terrifying technological developments definitely (and hilariously) reflect these fears.