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Does Trump Use AI?

If, at his age, Trump figured out AI to the point where he can actually use it for work, that’s a phenomenal sign of extraordinary mental acuity and intellectual prowess.

Have you tried explaining AI to anybody over the age of 70? At my university, professors 20 years younger than Trump are still at the stage of “How many people were hired to type up all of the responses that AI gives you?” and “I’ve never had a student use AI in my courses.” Even people my age and younger here on campus don’t remotely understand what AI is and what its existence means. When I tell them that we have to change our teaching dramatically because about 80% of what we’re doing no longer makes any sense because of AI, their eyes glaze over.

My aunts are 68-year-old twins. One was a high school math teacher, and the other was an accountant at a bank. I tried explaining just the most basic things about AI to them, and it was completely useless. When I tell them what my AI agent does for me, they look at me like I’m telling them fairy tales about magical creatures.

You can’t simultaneously advance a narrative that Trump is senile and that he enhances his productivity with AI. As we used to joke in the USSR, “Comrade Rabinovitz, either take off your cross or pull up your pants.” If you don’t understand the joke, ask AI.

8 responses to “Does Trump Use AI?”

  1. tatosotele Avatar
    tatosotele

    81. Virtually all of my colleagues/friends have no difficulty either understanding LLMs or using AI. Certainly our inquiries are not nearly as sophisticated as folks who were younger than 55 when they got their first Windows 95 desktop at work, but your peer group may not be representative of the larger culture.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar

      I’m not in the least surprised that you are exceptional and brilliant. However, I asked AI ☺️, and it says that the percentage of people in their 80s who use AI regularly is in single digits.

      You have a great circle of friends. I only wish I had one like that. Mine is refusing to believe that the fact that our union betrayed us so egregiously is not our own fault.

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  2. Ed Frey Avatar
    Ed Frey

    I’m 83 and only wish I had a phenomenal sign of extraordinary mental acuity and intellectual prowess.

    I have used ChatGPT and Claude to help me learn how to write some SVG code. I’m sure that someone that knew how to formulate the AI questions better would have accomplished what I have much faster but I have managed to get what I was looking for. For what I was trying to do IMO Claude was the better choice although for other questions I like ChatGPT better.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar

      It is not surprising that only very intelligent, inquisitive people read my blog, because the unintelligent ones get bored very quickly and confused by all the long words.

      Liked by 1 person

  3. Col. Potter Avatar
    Col. Potter

    “Comrade Rabinovitz, either take off your cross or pull up your pants.”

    You have definitely used that joke on me before, although I can’t quite remember the context.

    And yes, AI does get at the gist of the joke quite well.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar

      Well, if the circumcision fits, my friend. . .

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      1. Col. Potter Avatar
        Col. Potter

        No further comment.

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  4. Occasional Reader Avatar
    Occasional Reader

    Well, if somebody Googles, no matter how young or old, they are using AI whether they know it or not. The sad thing is that people who use AI in this way have no idea where the info is coming from. I *hate* that Google destroyed its own search engine like this.

    But, with the exception of coding, basic AI usage isn’t particularly sophisticated or advanced? The older people I know who are using it are mostly using it as a writing tool (which is sad to me.) I know several older people who aren’t perhaps the strongest writers. AI composes emails and business letters for them. Older people who don’t use it mostly think it’s nonsense and not particularly useful; other older people have legitimate privacy concerns; still others, wonder why they would use AI to complete relatively easy tasks like booking a flight, getting a recipe etc.

    In the case of Trump, I don’t think anyone believes that he’s using AI in a particularly canny or sophisticated way. According to most reports, he is spending hours a day spinning out over bad polling. Maybe the polling is accurate; maybe it’s not. But, the negative polling is clearly causing his already fragile ego to crumble. So he’s using AI to self soothe and to compliment his own “brilliance.”

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A conservative literary critic and college professor