Using Bing A.I. to find San Diego's South Bay political machine
A journal of political discovery - part 1
Recently, I decided to test the abilities of Bing’s artificial intelligence app (Bing A.I.) by using it to help me write about political machines and to find one in San Diego County.
Most important, I was looking for proof of the existence of a political machine operating San Diego County’s South Bay area.
To begin my test, I asked Bing A.I. to write a short essay defining a political machine.
Here’s the “essay” that Bing A.I. wrote for me:
A political machine is a party organization that is headed by a single boss or small autocratic group. It commands enough votes to maintain political and administrative control of a city, county, or state. The machine recruits its members by the use of tangible incentives such as money or political jobs and is characterized by a high degree of leadership control over member activity. The term ‘machine’ is usually used by its reform-minded enemies in a pejorative sense.
Students and other diligent researchers may be shocked to learn that Bing A.I.’s entire response was plagiarized — the first two sentences from Encyclopedia Britannica and the next two from Wikipedia — instead of providing the original essay I requested.
Despite Bing’s shameless plagiarism, I have properly cited some useful bits of information about the history of political machines from those otherwise solid sources, below:
Analysts cite the “positive contributions” of political machines as well as their corruption and abuse of power;
Ethnic and immigrant balkanization helps political machines thrive;
Control of the political machine is sometimes from “behind the scenes;”
A strong political machine is an efficient vote-getting machine with predictable results;
“The primary goal of a political machine is keeping itself in power;”
The heyday, but by no means end, of machine politics was in the 19th century.
Examples of political machines and machine bosses in American history: Tammany Hall and “Boss” Tweed, New York City; Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago.
Then, I asked Bing A.I., “Are there any political machines in San Diego County?”
And I was told:
I couldn’t find any specific information about political machines in San Diego County from my web search. However, I did find information about the politics of San Diego County. San Diego County has seen a political shift in voter registration data between 2004 and 2020. The shift has transformed San Diego from a reliably red county to a light blue county.
Bing A.I.’s response missed the boat.
There is lots of information in the local news news media about South Bay’s alleged political machine, despite the lack of explicit reference to a “political machine.”
But when I moved to the South Bay at the start of 2021, I knew little about its politics beyond the Democratic control of the Chula Vista City Council and Sweetwater Authority Board of Directors.
I wanted to get involved in a local issue unrelated to water politics, my reporter’s beat for the past 10 years. I reached out to a local group opposed to a police surveillance program and through it encountered Andrea Cardenas, the newly elected city council person representing my district.
Informed sources later described her as an arm of South Bay’s political machine and a confidant of its alleged boss, her older brother, Jesus Cardenas.
I will describe that brief but telling encounter in an upcoming entry of this new and more-or-less weekly journal.
I welcome any public comments or confidential contributions from readers.
Kind of scary how good AI is. There is even one for creating "art".