Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. You Won’t Win the Revolution (September 8) "'Sure,' they seem to think 'the violent breakdown of social order might be bad for some. But I’m built different.'"

I agree with this! Violence is bad!

2. AI Is Already In Dangerous Hands (September 14) "The AI industry wants to frame this as if Anthropic, OpenAI, and Meta discovered some new lifeform rather than having run a volatile kind of machine learning evaluation with poor cybersecurity practices."

The reason I don't take the "super-intelligent AI is going to kill us all" panic seriously is that AI is already being used in ways that make humanity worse off, but they're not talking about that. Spammers are using it to make crap, apparently facebook is flooded with low-quality AI images that your grandma thinks are real, big companies are saying "let's use AI" for decisions that need a higher accuracy rate than what you get from AI (health care, etc)... Big tech companies are using AI recklessly, when it's known that its behavior can be unpredictable- this isn't about "oh what if it someday becomes so intelligent we can't control it"- they are already letting their AI models have access to sensitive data and systems that have effects in the real world, when we all know that AIs are not reliable enough to be trusted with that. Not because "it will become super-intelligent" but because sometimes the AIs screw up in unexpected ways.

And also, the worry that a super-intelligent AI might do things that aren't in the best interests of humanity- powerful people and corporations are already doing things that aren't in the best interests of humanity. To pick one random example, why aren't these people concerned about the "landlord alignment problem"- ie, big companies buying up rental properties and not doing enough maintenance to make them livable, and their renters have no good options? The AI-doom people talk as if "the good of humanity" is a well-defined thing we have all agreed on, and it's just a matter of making sure our AIs are trained to have the exact same beliefs on that.

I use Copilot (an AI tool) to write code at my job, and it's usually very good! It's a useful tool. But obviously as a human you need to look at the code it writes and making sure it's actually what you want, because sometimes it gets it wrong. There have been times when I didn't catch problems in the code that it wrote, and then I discovered those problems weeks later- I wish my job gave us better training about best practices to ensure that the code that it writes is what we actually want. But instead they give us hype about how great it is to make a bunch of different agents or whatever.

3. Pension Paradox: China’s Delivery Riders on a Rocky Road to Retirement (September 17) "'Most of these guys have to eat on credit. How realistic is it to talk to them about paying into a pension fund?' he asks."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Lawsuit challenges intimidation of DHS observers across the country (September 10) "The lawsuit describes disturbing encounters seven Common Cause members had with federal officers in Maryland, Minnesota and New Jersey after trying to observe immigration enforcement. They include being photographed, followed, reported to police, pepper-sprayed or threatened with a visit to their home by federal officers. Federal officers did show up at one Common Cause member's Minnesota home."

2. Ballot seizures seemed impossible. But judges and officials are prepping for them now (September 9) "In elections, this is known as breaking the chain of custody. 'They could do so much damage if they did that,' the official said."

3. Cubans are pushed to the breaking point as crises take their toll (September 9, via) "The psychological toll of daily life in Cuba is pushing many to their breaking point on this island of nearly 10 million people, with no relief in sight as a U.S. energy embargo persists and longtime economic and financial troubles deepen."

4. Justice for ICE’s victims requires truth and reconciliation (September 4) "There’s a temptation to try to forget what cannot be forgiven. But preserving the truth of what actually happened, the villainy and the heroism, the hatreds and the kindnesses, is the only way to move forward."

5. Trump asks convention crowd to pledge to him they will vote, ‘cheat like hell’ (September 11)

6. Contractor who worked on Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool takes responsibility for damage (September 14) "The contractor responsible for renovating the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool now blames its own repairs, not vandalism, for the issues that were seen there."

7. The first deportation of the constitutionally suspect Alien Terrorist Removal Court happened weeks ago, following a secret plea deal (September 12) Okay, so in this case, this person was planning a shooting, so if all that is true then it's right that she got deported, *but* why can't they just use the regular court system for this? Why are they using this shady court that doesn't give people their rights? Seems like this could be bad.

8. The Supreme Court rejects Trump's mail voting restrictions for this year's midterms (September 15) "Under the still-blocked USPS plan, which followed an executive order by Trump, states would have had to turn over lists of voters' names and addresses and have certain specific barcodes on ballot envelopes in order to have them delivered by the mailing agency."