A lot of times, when we call someone a “puppet,” we’re talking about someone powerful simply directing their actions, but they still have free will. They’re just using it to act on someone else’s behest.
But Joaquim Oliver can’t act of his own free will on this plane of existence. Not anymore.
He was killed in the Parkland massacre, a terrible event that never should have happened, but did. Since his death, his father has seemingly become more and more unhinged and decided to have Jim Acosta interview an AI version of his son.
That went over about as poorly as you might think.
Yet Oliver is defending the move, unsurprisingly.
Manuel Oliver hit back after critics slammed podcaster and ex-CNN anchor Jim Acosta for interviewing an AI model of his late son Joaquin “Guac” Oliver, who was slain by a mass shooter in 2018.
Joaquin was among the 17 students killed in the mass shooting carried out by Nikolas Cruz on Feb. 14, 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
Manuel Oliver says he is using Artificial Intelligence to keep his son’s memory alive, as other families of murder victims have done. “I like to remember my son not as the victim from Parkland, but as the 17-year-old kid that is becoming an icon,” Oliver said at a memorial Monday night.
Of course, the “families of other murder victims” used AI avatars of their dead loved ones for things like victim impact statements.
What happened with Acosta is that Oliver approached the “journalist” about an interview of the AI puppet–and this is really a puppet since Joaquim can’t speak for himself–and Acosta agreed to treat this abomination as if it’s a real person.
Oliver isn’t well, mind you.
This is a guy who got kicked out of a White House event celebrating the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act because of his behavior. He was also kicked out of a House Oversight Committee meeting for making another outburst.
This isn’t even Oliver’s first foray into using AI to advance gun control; previously using the voices of victims to leave taunting voicemail messages for lawmakers.
This is also the “mind” that is trying to create a gun control video game where you’re the victim of a mass shooting.
So yeah, the dude isn’t well. The loss of his son probably broke him inside, which I can get on some level, but he should probably be in therapy, not activism, because his son isn’t “becoming an icon.” Not by using his image and his father’s words to try and advance gun control and pretending it’s somehow relevant.
As bad as Oliver is, though, he’s not the one who should be trusted to make these decisions.
Acosta is the more dispassionate one. He’s the so-called professional. He’s the one who should have said, “No, this is too ghoulish and it’s not news.”
Instead, he did it, and while it’s news now, it’s not because of anything “Joaquim” or “Guac” said. It’s because it’s ghoulish to use a dead kid as a spokesperson for a cause that he can’t actually consent to be a part of.
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