Sunday, February 18, 2024

Bill Crawford: Microsoft Copilot Offers Solutions to Mississippi Poverty

 Saw Microsoft Copilot ad during the Super Bowl. Decided to give its GPT-4 AI a try.

“Ask me anything,” it said.

Okay, genius, I thought. Try this. “How can Mississippi get more people out of poverty?”

“That is a complex and important question,” Copilot answered quickly. “Poverty is a multifaceted problem that affects many aspects of people’s lives, such as health, education, employment, and well-being. There is no simple solution to poverty, but rather a combination of policies and programs that address the root causes and the consequences of poverty.”

Next came Copilot’s suggestions of possible ways to reduce Mississippi poverty:

1. Expand Medicaid for more than 200,000 low-income adults to “improve their access to health care services and preventive care.”

2. Increase the minimum wage “to reduce the gap between the cost of living and the earnings of the poor.”

3. Invest in education and training to improve workforce skills and qualifications and “increase their opportunities for better-paying jobs.”

4. Provide more support for families with children with child care subsidies, tax credits and nutrition assistance to help them “meet their basic needs and invest in their future.”

5. Promote financial literacy and inclusion, “which would help low-income households manage their money, save for emergencies, and access affordable and responsible financial services.”

Copilot concluded with this: “Reducing poverty is not only a moral duty, but also a smart investment for the economic and social development of Mississippi.”

Among Copilot’s five sources were two from Mississippi IHL scholars: A still highly relevant 2008 paper entitled Solving the Poverty Problem in Mississippi by Dr. Marianne Hill, former Senior Economist at the Mississippi Center for Policy Research at IHL; and a 2023 paper entitled Mississippi Economic and Financial Well-Being: Patterns and Trends published by the Mississippi State University Extension Service with authors including Drs. Ayoung Kim, Rebecca Smith, and Alan Barefield.

Both papers are available at IHL web sites: www.mississippi.edu/urd/downloads/solvingpovery_program.pdf and https://extension.msstate.edu/publications/mississippi-economic-and-financial-well-being-patterns-and-trends?ssp=1&setlang=en&cc=US&safesearch=moderate

Hmmm. 

Maybe the Legislature could hurry up and add Copilot to the pending diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) legislation to ban its use in schools and colleges. 

“Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life,” Proverbs 4:23.

Crawford is a syndicated columnist from Jackson.


24 comments:

Anonymous said...



Right Bill, throwing money at it always works. Ask LBJ.

Anonymous said...

And yet it doesn’t mention the most obvious way out of poverty. That is get a job, and go work that job every day. Do a good job and make yourself valuable. Make yourself important. Your boss will reward you financially. If not, someone else gladly will. Employers are begging for good employees.

Anonymous said...

Quick! Someone tell Bill that Copilot is a fart-sniffing chat bot that scrapes leftist media and regurgitates Marxist bile back to the user. It is why the AI bubble has basically popped. It was fascinating when it was uncensored and would give objective results. Now it is a lobotomized propaganda and marketing tool.

Anonymous said...

This artificial 'intelligence' proposal is a complete waste of time.

No way the legislature goes for any of this, there isn't a single way the Mississippi Friends and Family Government Plan participants benefit from any of these ideas.

If they aren't getting theirs, then nobody else gets anything.

NEXT!

Anonymous said...

GIGO.

Which is basically every Crawford column.

Anonymous said...

I typed in the same sentence, "How can Mississippi get more people out of poverty?", into the same tool and received a different response.

1. Investing in Education
2. Cash Payments and Safety Nets.
3. Paid Leave Policies.
4. Strategic Use of TANF Funds.

Expanding Medicaid and increasing the minimum wage wasn't mentioned anywhere

Anonymous said...

The authors of subject papers may very well be "scholars" but would our state not be better served having these people teaching our students? It's very clear that Bill is a fan of the IHL. Maybe Bill could name a few things that the IHL has be successful . University President searches? Bringing down the cost of higher education? I am sure there are other victories that IHL can claim. (Seems as though I remember Bill was an IHL board member)

Anonymous said...

Obvious Bull. Mississippi has done none of these things and does less of them than any other state and look how successful we have been at eliminating poverty. Where do we rank? Stay the course. Results speak for themselves.

Anonymous said...

Not one mention of workforce participation….

Hal said...

The original AI (Hal). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR_e9y-bka0

Anonymous said...

GPT-4 AI left out a lot of facts including:
14.96% of Mississippians depend on food stamps.
10% of all food stamps funding goes to SODA (the US government actually pays unhealthy fat poor people to drink soda).
More than 10 billion dollars per year goes from the U S treasury to soda companies.
The NAACP says its racist to take the right to buy soda away from food stamps recipients.

GPT-4 AI also left out Robert L. “Bob” Woodson’s 2020 factual quote that “In the past 50 years, 22 trillion dollars has been spent on poverty programs. 70% goes not to the poor, but those who (so-called) serve the poor.”

GPT-4 AI leaving facts like these out sounds just like rich white Democrats with their “serve the poor” profit motive scam of keeping poor people poor, fat and unhealthy (and of living in course crime ridden leftist Democrat controlled areas).


The definition of artificial: made or produced by HUMAN BEINGS rather than occurring naturally.

Anonymous said...

I typed in the same question and the answer was ‘Make those sorry freeloaders go to work’

Anonymous said...

I know several alcoholics who made a conscious effort to change paths and are well into decades of sobriety, attending meetings and whatever else they do as members of that brother/sisterhood.

Each of them has told me that realization, admission, decision, will, desire and determination are not only key, but are the ONLY things that will lead to sobriety.

The same applies to so-called 'poverty'.

You can whup a mule, beg him, shock him, kick him, quit feedin' him, reward him and ignore him....but if he lays down and refuses to budge, he ain't never gonna plow.

Anonymous said...



Mississippi currently ranks 8 th in country for Medicaid enrollment at 24.1 % of population. This is without expansion. So if Bill adds another 200,000 to the enrollment we are screwed, literally screwed. Cannot be done. The government only makes money off taxpayers and this would put us under. Don’t tell me about government coverage of 75-80% because damn federal government at least 34 trillion in debt and that cannot continue so most or entire bill will go to states soon. Wake up people!

anonymous said...

I usually defend journalists due to that pesky First Amendment. I do not know Mr. Crawford and only read his columns because they are posted on JJ.
But, I see why so many are critical of him. He looked at AI and saw pablum about money solving deep-rooted problems. Instead of contextualizing Gates's purported solution, he adopted it and made a snarky comment about the effort to ban DEI.
Mr. Crawford, I know good journalism. I respect, extol, share, and defend it.
And your piece is not good journalism.
RMQ

Anonymous said...

Embarrassing excuse for a column. Co-pilot needs to learn a lot more Thomas Sowell and forget LBJ's policies that have done so much to wreck poor people's lives. So does Bill.

Anonymous said...

If it's on the internet, it absolutely has to be true. That's the law.

Anonymous said...

🤣 I could use the right prompts to get Copilot to say the solution to poverty is something Robert Mugabe or Adolph Hitler would say. You can get whatever results you want with creative prompts.

Anonymous said...

I think 9:46 is on to something!

I've never used AI before today, but I decided to perform a quick test that seemed to me would provide a fair assessment of the sources these sites might use. To wit: I went to several of the free AI sites (Google Gemini (formerly Bard), Perplexity, Microsoft Bing, etc.) and I wrote, copied, and pasted the exact same benign question about a racial topic. I already knew and could prove the answer to my question, so I just wanted to see how these sites would reply. Believing that these sites would all be directed toward and/or monitored by folks who might not be quite as conservative as me, let me say that I wasn't shocked they ALL responded with the expected far left responses 9:46 predicted above.

The responses were clearly politically-motivated, and one of them wouldn't even answer my question. How's THAT for intelligence, artificial or human? Just like the news on any given "station," everything has a slant to it (or is just an outright lie....which is more often the case these days). Why is it virtually impossible to find a source that actually reports the TRUTH....and then lets the reader / listener / viewer decide what they think about it? Well, we know the answer: the purveyors of "news" know there's much more power in propaganda!

Anonymous said...

1:34 - Crawford is no journalist, even considering how low the bar is for that job. That's obvious with every column he writes.

Anonymous said...

6:14 PM, monopolist Bill Gates and likely everyone in upper management at Microsoft, Google, Meta & Apple epitomizes the rich white leftist Democrat, so what else should be expected from AI other than leftist Democrat propaganda? Garbage in, garbage out.

Anonymous said...

Biden uses AI to make all of his statements and executive orders.

Anonymous said...

Just stopped in at 6:48 pm on the 19th to see if there were any half-way sensible rebuttal comments. Having seen none, I'll take my leave.

Anonymous said...

It's not AI... it's straight up propaganda, like has been said. This younger generation doesn't want to think for themselves and will believe anything techie is cool and "real".


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