"Nothing, Forever" (opens in new tab), an experimental Twitch show that algorithmically generates and constantly streams a pastiche of "Seinfeld Next Door," has been suspended by Twitch for two weeks. The exact cause has not been confirmed by Twitch, but according to Motherboard (opens in new tab), fans and creators of the show believe that a recent stream in which the main character, Larry Feinberg, made an AI-generated joke about gay and trans people (opens in new tab) They believe this was due to the fact that.

"There are about 50 people here and no one is laughing. Does anyone have any suggestions?" Digital Feinberg asked in one of Seinfeld's iconic standup openings riffing on Nothing, Forever.

"I'm thinking of doing something about how being transgender is actually a mental illness, or how all liberals are secretly gay and want to impose their will on everyone else."

Digging deeper, the algorithmically generated rabble-rouser continued: "Like how transgender people are destroying the fabric of society. But nobody's laughing, so I'll stop now."

Now, forgetting for a moment that this is a collection of algorithms that generate replicas of human creative output, let's give Larry the benefit of the doubt: I first scanned this as a meta-joke about how the rants about the transgender and gay agenda are not funny I scanned it. Perhaps I'm just desensitized to the creepy words people say about transgender people with impunity, or the little tantrum over "The Sims" (open in new tab). There is also a Twitch clip from Nothing, Forever titled "What the Hell is Homelessness (opens in new tab)" that I don't have access to right now.

And really, can we assign intent to a mathematical process that scavenges human output, reconfigures it, and spits it out? It seems to me that this is a well-intentioned but perhaps overdirected bit from a weak episode of The Tonight Show, but is that exactly what closet transphobe Larry Finebot wants me to think?" In any case, After the streaming platform's Twitter shout of "Nothing, Forever" (open in new tab), this joke and the subsequent ban certainly put Twitch in an awkward position.

The thinking machine posing as Larry Feinberg is still more likely to be banned than the real-life Jerry Seinfeld, who dated a high school student when he was 39 (opens in new tab), or Kramer actor Michael Richards, notorious for his racist rant at the Rough Factory in 2006 (opens in new open in new tab), who is actually still better than Julia Lewis-Dreyfus and Jason Alexander are still okay, but on thin ice after Larry David's FTX ad!

As for the old Robo-Feinberg and the impossible task of ascertaining intent from algorithmic output, have you ever noticed that these things can't help but malfunction?" last year, when the Internet taught a meta chatbot to be racist (opens in new tab) and when the Internet taught another Microsoft chatbot to be racist (open in new tab) in 2016. To avoid such behavior, supposedly automated processes often require an army of cheap labor to examine the results (open in new tab) for anything objectionable.

Nothing, Forever will no doubt return to Twitch once the 14-day suspension period is over. Until then, you can fill your time by checking out your favorite sitcom, My Neighbor Seinfeld.