Despite considerable evidence that artificial intelligence is far from ready for prime time, just about every technology you can think of is being outfitted with the feature. From search engines to automobiles, we’re putting our lives into the “hands” of A.I. that advises us, literally, to eat rocks.
The Ten Commandments are back in the news now that Louisiana has ordered them posted in public school classrooms. It may violate the separation of church of state, but sometimes it’s interesting to see just how little Americans, who claim to be mostly Christian, uphold these basic tenets.
Adhering to the Silicon Alley principle of “move fast and break things,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman embodies the rudeness, recklessness and apparent lack of concern for dangerous societal consequences that prompt many Americans to dislike tech titans. Last week alone, Altman made public apologies for a “breakdown in communication” with Scarlett Johansson over the use of her voice for ChatGPT and for equity clawback clauses in OpenAI employees’ exit agreements.
What does it say about America that our two major presidential nominees have to, respectively, avoid acting like a total nut or merely need to convince us that he’s fairly alive?
Long before the age of lawfare embodied by trials like those of Hunter Biden and Donald Trump, politicians were supposed to at least pretend to address the concerns of the voters.
Both major-party candidates are unpalatable to the vast majority of voters. Yet most of those very same voters respond to the suggestion that they cast votes for a third-party candidate as though it were outlandish.
An elite team of opposition researchers scour their political targets’ backgrounds for evidence of prosecutable crimes.
Donald Trump committed countless crimes without being held accountable. So it’s a weird reflection of our societal priorities that the one offense for which he is being held accountable is a relatively trivial paperwork charge.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a former actor, has quite the knack for strange theater of the absurd. Now he’s hosting a “peace summit” which doesn’t invite his adversary, Russia, and which his main supporter, President Joe Biden, is refusing to attend. That, plus the fact that Ukraine says it doesn’t want peace.
President Biden’s reelection campaign is being hampered by stubbornly high prices and frozen wages, the ultimate economic phenomenon that makes consumers feel that the economy isn’t doing well.
