Jerry Seinfeld Hates A.I. 'Seinfeld'
A.I. bots have been creating an infinite episode of Seinfeld on Twitch, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Well, wait —there is something wrong with that, according to Jerry Seinfeld. And Twitch isn’t that thrilled either.
Seinfeld, you’re up first. At a recent stand-up show, the comic reserved some time for an audience Q&A, where for apparently the first time, a fan clued him in on the virtual show’s existence. Sounds like it took a minute for Seinfeld to grasp what was happening with the “A.I. crap” before dismissing it. “It’s a series, right? Well, that’s great, because 180 episodes is not nearly enough, let’s make it 180 million! So, what does it do, does it write new things? So, do new things happen? Oh wow, do they make sense? No, it’s A.I. crap. I’m not worried about A.I., because it’ll make it smarter and smarter, but to do this, you have to be dumber.”
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Turns out, A.I. Seinfeld is dumber than actual Seinfeld thinks. Nothing, Forever, the infinite Seinfeld episode, has been banned from Twitch for at least two weeks, thanks to a transphobic stand-up routine performed by Jerry’s doppelganger Larry Feinberg.
“There’s like 50 people here and no one is laughing. Anyone have any suggestions?” alternate-universe Seinfeld asked last night. “I’m thinking about doing a bit about how being transgender is actually a mental illness. Or how all liberals are secretly gay and want to impose their will on everyone. Or something about how transgender people are ruining the fabric of society. But no one is laughing, so I’m going to stop. Thanks for coming out tonight. See you next time. Where’d everybody go?”
Seriously, what the hell? Say what you will about Seinfeld’s sometimes formulaic material, but he’s primarily guilty of repeating familiar comic tropes, not this kind (or any kind) of outrage-baiting. Even weirder? The creators of Nothing, Forever seem to think Twitch was a little hasty when it restricted Larry Feinberg’s meanderings about gay liberals imposing their homosexual agenda on the world at large. “We've appealed the ban,” says Xander, one of the show’s architects, “and we'll let you know as we know more on what Twitch decides.”
In the meantime, Xander and friends say they’re tweaking the A.I. to “ensure to the best of our abilities that nothing like that happens again.” Excuse me? To the best of your abilities? You might not be able to control whether your algorithm decides to throw around gay slurs again? Look, Nothing, Forever masterminds — if you’re incapable of being the master of your virtual domain, maybe you shouldn’t have one at all.
