shes so mean *cries
I believe a lot of the reason people hate LLM chatbots is that we are being actively, knowingly misled by corporations into believing that they, like Data, have the capacity to reason and learn and to understand what they know and what they do not know, when they are just word salad bots. These tools are being pushed on us even though we largely do not want to use them and they produce shoddy lower-quality work while putting actual people out of work, in order to justify the capital expense, because it makes more profit for them, while all friction and risk of using these tools is assumed by the user.
Pulaski’s prejudice against Data doesn’t make sense in the show because Data is decidedly not a clanker, but it is forgiveable if we believe that she has had past run-ins with fraudulent LLM-like AIs that do a good job of looking like Data but lack these capacities, and perhaps were pushed by similarly unethical entities.
But on the other hand, a lot of the issues with AI in 2026 would not apply in the Federation of the 24th century, because there is no capitalism or scarcity-based economy that would justify compelling people to use such a flawed tool. Also, the ship’s computer in the Enterprise is already far more capable and useful than an LLM chatbot, and no one ever marvels at its capabilities in-universe. So given these things, her hostility towards Data is still puzzling.
There’s still scarcity in the Federation, just not for the basic necessities of life (food, shelter, clothing, entertainment).
Not everyone gets their own Château Picard! Not everyone gets to be a starship captain!
Starfleet examinations are brutally hard. There is plenty of incentive for people to cheat to get ahead.
Doesn’t she eventually come around to him? I really think she’s just a moral lesson in character form. Even in trek people aren’t perfect when expressed to new things but have the opportunity to grow. If everyone behaved perfectly at the introduction of every new stimulus then there would be no growth and that is not good storytelling.
Oh I agree 100% with this being good writing with this very intent, was strictly trying to justify her prejudice purely in-universe.
Maybe she’s just robophobe. Can’t fix that shit
Building her entire personality around being a biological entity… echoes of TERFdom.
And actually she is a closeted robosexual.
Honestly, refusing to call a person the name (and pronouns) that they wish to be called by is very much a big thing in society today.
Dr. Pulaski thinks Data is a lesser being who is not worthy of the same consideration she would give to her human colleagues, and I think that about sums up why everybody hates her.
It lasted all of this episode, which seems to be the only one people remember.
Her criticism of Data in Elementary was that he was effectively playing a game with the whole script memorised, and needed something actually new to be challenged by.
And then in Peak Performance, she’s the one encouraging him to take a shot at challenging Kolrami in his game.
Like Bones, she’s the negative reinforcement, except people seem to forgive him for constantly hurling racial remarks at Spock. When again, the disdain Pulaski had for Data lasts all of one episode.
I was legit happy when she got that contagious progeria disease. >.>
I love she’s still using a Vic 20.
This series was released in, what, 1988? So that would be an Amiga, the superior computing platform of the last century.
Frakin’ toaster
It really bothers me that we’ve landed on the phrase clanker when toaster was already available.
Listen here you little shit…
Truly, the progenitor Karen.
What we have today, what we despise, is not AI. It’s not people or anything close to it, no matter what the marketing BS says. Data is people. Pulaski is just being a bigot.
Data is people.
Just like Soylent Green!
Data is people
How many people?
At this point in canon? At least three.
i am not sure multiple androidality disorder counts, but i’ll still give you point for clever answer 😆
