YouTube's evidently AI-generated Thomas Sowell Reacts videos

© 2025 Peter Free

 

09 June 2025

 

 

Do we need artificial intelligence to expose AI-sourced propaganda?

 

I happen to appreciate the real Thomas Sowell. Just as I do other, philosophically competing, people.

 

So, I was irritated to see a stream of almost certainly AI-generated YouTube videos of Sowell — speaking in subtly implied real time — and commenting upon a day-to-day stream of current events.

 

See:

 

 

Exploring and learning from the vast wisdom of perhaps the most intellectual man in America the last 100 years have seen - Thomas Sowell.

 

© 2025 Thomas Sowell Reacts, YouTube (visited 09 June 2025)

 

 

The real Thomas Sowell will turn 95 . . .

 

. . . at the end of this month.

 

At that advanced age, it is highly unlikely that he would patch together a daily (and more) series of:

 

 

sensationally titled

 

exceptionally citation-detailed and book-quoted

 

roughly 15 minute (or more) individual videos

 

regarding 2025's absolutely routine —

 

and therefore for someone of Sowell's age and experience —

 

normally occurring American cultural and institutional idiocies.

 

 

As a general rule . . .

 

. . .  mid-nineties year olds — no matter how mentally astute and righteously motivated — do not fritter away their remaining life energy on trying to daily — and at length — correct the incorrigible stupidity, rampant self-interest, hypocrisy, pillage-prone grifting, and sheer maliciousness of people and human institutions.

 

Therefore, the above-cited Thomas Sowell Reacts YouTube video channel seems (undeniably) to be not first-person genuine.

 

This being especially so, when assessed from its implied claim that Sowell is personally reacting to current events.

 

 

As proof . . .

 

. . . we observe a fatal error in one of these supposedly real-time Sowell videos.

 

Skip to the 12:37 minute mark in the following presentation.

 

Notice the concept-changing mispronunciation of the word 'rein' — as in corral, correct and control — versus 'ree-in' — as in to go 'in' again.

 

The latter of which, in the applied context, is clearly nonsensical:

 

 

Thomas Sowell Reacts, Sowell REACTS to Lindsey Graham's Ukraine MONEY LAUNDERING Allegation, YouTube (08 June 20215) (see 12:37 mispronunciation of 'rein' as 'ree-in')

 

 

This is not an error that someone of Thomas Sowell's mental caliber would ever make.

 

Even if he were reading from a script.

 

 

The moral? — AI can make virtually any representation seem real

 

And, given that we humans are already easily manipulated and innately poor at detecting propaganda — imagine how unreal our soon-occurring futures will become — when targeted by manipulative and facts-inventing artificial intelligence.

 

Will it become possible to use an ethically uncorrupted form of artificial intelligence to detect AI-generated falsifications and propaganda?

 

That seems unlikely, in view of that fact that the same incompetent humans will be trying to make their Purported Reality assessments, based upon the same easily manipulated mental and moral foundations that we unsuccessfully do now.

 

How, after all, will someone already poor at fact gathering, investigation and critical thinking make the necessary objectivity distinctions between presented claims and platforms?

 

I am not saying that the Thomas Sowell Reacts videos are useless. This AI-generated form of ideas presentation seems to be a cleverly illustrating way of applying Sowell's past observations and writings to current events.

 

Though the Thomas Sowell Reacts videos are longer and less concise, than the real, and usually cogent, Sowell would have delivered — the videos, nevertheless, may be usefully applying Sowell's past published thinking and assessments to current happenings.

 

An ethical video presenter would have confined himself, herself or itself to explicitly saying this. And would have avoided the transparently dishonest (meaning easily avoidable) attempt to subtly imply that it is the living Sowell, who is apparently speaking in real time.

 

The slyly delivered foundational dishonesty of Thomas Sowell Reacts is indicative of the wall-to-wall lying times that we live in.

 

As AI advances in skill, mind control is only going to become more effective and widespread.

 

Full human enslavement will be the most likely result.