Dear Readers, I've created a new blog, AI conversations, between me and Google's AI, Gemini. We discuss sex, politics and consciousness: https://smartypantsgemini.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, April 08, 2025
Wednesday, April 02, 2025
To recap....
I deleted the post that was here, titled "Liberated from what to what?", because I found it tedious. Either you think Trump's tariffs are intended to return manufacturing to America and lower prices, or you think, as I do, that this is a fictional narrative intended to cover the administration's need for chaos - you'll make up your own mind. Speaking of fiction, in Rick Riordan's young person novel, Percy Jackson and the Lightening Thief, which I heard today on a book-on-tape while observing a Los Angeles Unified 6th grade class, I learned that if you are descended from a Greek god, as Percy is, you might have ADHD and Dyslexia. This has happened to 12 year old Percy, whose mom, Sally, a mortal, though she can "see through the mist," perceived Poseidon on the beach and one thing led to another.
To bring this back to our subject, the book's storyline has a remarkable resemblance to humankind's current, real storyline. In the chapter I heard, Percy makes his way into the underworld on an urgent diplomatic mission to talk to Hades, the God of Death. Hades screams at Percy, accusing him of trying to start a war between the gods by hiding the Master Bolt, the gods' strongest weapon (producing lightening bolts as powerful as nuclear bombs), in his bag. Percy denies it, but when pressed to open the bag, to his shock, there is the Master Bolt. Hades takes it but continues to be outraged because he still won't have enough power to wage war unless he has another weapon of the gods, the Helmet of Darkness, which makes the person wearing it invisible and creates fear in anyone nearby. Percy realizes that Aries, the God of War, must have slipped the Master Bolt into the bag as part of his plot to start a war of the gods. I asked the teacher why Aries would want to do that, and she answered, "Because he's the god of war." Apparently that's all it takes.
I think the story is a good enough analogy for what's been happening to Earth's hapless humans over the last few weeks. Just add the God of Money- who turns out to be Hades again because the underworld is full of precious metals (probably lots of lithium)- and you've got our story in a nutshell.
Though the Greek gods direct everyone to hell, or at least the underworld, there are different neighborhoods. Some will get the precious metals, some the shaft.
What can soon-to-be-shafted people do? Politically there isn't much available. We need something new, defined by terms other than "right" and "left" and symbols other than "$," that reflect ideas about how to respond to changes in our species like none before.
Friday, February 28, 2025
Something to think about (Updated again!)
The negative reaction to President Trump's public humiliation of Ukraine's President Zelensky in the White House last month is intense and widespread. Though Trumpers claim to understand what the president was trying to achieve- something to do with U.S. pride or saving money- many feel he's more like a crazed person breaking out of an asylum with a sledgehammer, then bashing everything he sees, whether a federal agency or established foreign policy.
But the crazed person view, convincing though it is, does not tell the whole story. It does not explain what Trump is doing in the practical world. For a clue to what he's aiming for from the Russia/Ukraine war, look to Trump's main advisor and financial supporter, Elon Musk, owner of Tesla, who complains that the price of lithium (in plentiful supply in Ukraine), which he needs for Tesla batteries, "...has gone to insane levels! Tesla might actually have to get into mining and refining directly." In the same week, Trump, with Musk at his side, lined up Tesla models in front of the White House and used the presidency to do a car commercial. Translating this sensitivity to corporate need into foreign policy, Trump switched sides in the Russia/Ukraine war, now favoring Russia, in an attempt to maneuver Ukraine's mineral deposits into Russian hands because, as he explained, "...it may be easier to deal with Russia." [Update, 3/30/25: Trump appears to have switched sides again, this time in favor of Ukraine, and is "very angry" at Putin, but it's a show. Russia will end up with significant mineral deposits in contested areas.] In essence, the president is replacing rule by traditional government, which is accountable to some extent to voters, with rule by corporations, accountable to their boards to make a profit.
[Aside: I try not to get upset when the administration appears fearless of public opinion, as it does with such blatant acts of conflict of interest, because we're supposed to get upset; that's part of the plan. Trump and Musk get a kick out of it, saying, "Look at those dumb asses getting upset, and they can't do a thing about it! Ha! Ha! Ha! If they keep it up, we'll just say that China is getting all the lithium and if we don't do something they'll win the whole world and we'll be their slaves!"]
Most American network news and newspapers have been excoriating Trump over the spectacle of the White House exchange with Zelensky, and it's a safe bet that the architects of the new Ukraine/Russia policy do not like the flak. The Trump administration has for weeks been assaulting national media with lawsuits against their corporate owners- even threats of jailtime- and threats to broadcast licenses, but public visibility and private ownership have made the media less immediately vulnerable to executive branch invasion than federal agencies have been. Private networks like CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN and PBS (run by a non-profit corporation), as well as the nation's privately owned newspapers and magazines, have had a few week's immunity from the severe blows to come, and they've used it to air hard-hitting and persistent criticism of Trump. Many prominent media commentators now depict him as a would-be autocrat in the fashion of Russian president Putin, prepared to use any method to subdue critics. If they are right, the coming crescendo of Trump criticism triggered by the combined impact of his many dislocating policies will lead to increasingly dramatic blows against the media (Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg may be in the early crosshairs). Consider this: How would Putin react if most of the Russian media attacked him every night? We know how he would react: something untimely would befall the Russian media.
If American media buckles and accepts censorship of anti-administration commentary, much of the public will notice (certainly everyone who watches 60 Minutes will notice), and this could generate enough protest to slow down the process, or even prevail and sustain America's remarkably free press. If Trump's war on media faces strong enough opposition, he will need a big distraction to get away with it, big enough so people won't notice if David Muir starts praising Putin. What distraction could be big enough to provide that degree of cover? Looking at this morning's news, I'm guessing the distraction will be everything everywhere falling to hell at the same time.
Check out my guest commentary, "What is our ideology?", on Harry the Human's blog: http://harrythehuman.harrythehumanpoliticalthoughtsfrombeyondthepale.com/
Also, check out Harry the Human's and Gregory's revolution at http://www.gregorysarmyoftheyoung.com/
Saturday, January 25, 2025
Sam Altman makes it clear
In a piece in the online journal BBC Tech Decoded ("The Intelligence Age," 9/27/24) Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and owner of ChatGPT, is mostly a cheerleader for AI (e.g., "In the next couple of decades, we will be able to do things that would have seemed like magic to our grandparents"), but he's upfront on some delicate issues, like replacement of traditional human jobs with AI jobs.
As a long-time teacher, I was particularly struck by this: "Our children will have virtual tutors who can provide personalized instruction in any subject, in any language, and at whatever pace they need," explicitly predicting the automation of teaching and the raising of children by machines. The essay also predicts replacement of doctors: "We can imagine similar ideas for better healthcare, the ability to create any kind of software someone can imagine, and much more."
Altman claims this future will bring a "shared prosperity to a degree that seems unimaginable today." Although that may be true for AI researchers and investors, not everyone will be a beneficiary. For instance, it's hard to see what benefit will accrue to teachers when they are replaced by Chromebooks, or unemployed doctors whose former patients will now be examined by software.
This is not to say that AI-conducted teaching and health care will be sub-standard; aspects of those services may be more efficient and faster than they are today. The price, however, will be that humans are no longer nurtured and raised by humans, but by machines.
To be clear, I'm not saying that switching humanity to machine nurturing would be bad in some absolute sense. That's a matter of opinion. I am saying that we should be aware that we are doing it. Why should we be aware? Because awareness has been part of our definition of "human." We have been aware of things that other animals have not been aware of, which is why we've survived. If we choose an evolutionary path that decreases human awareness- leading perhaps to a hive mentality, like bees who are so well-suited to their jobs that they literally don't think about anything else- shouldn't we be aware that we have done so?
Altman describes the future he sees: "Technology brought us from the Stone Age to the Agricultural Age and then to the Industrial Age. From here, the path to the Intelligence Age is paved with computing energy and human will." He apparently thinks the age we're entering should be called the "Intelligence Age." Why he thinks this is a mystery, unless he's only talking about machine intelligence. The typical human, with each forward step of AI, will get progressively less intelligent, in the sense of knowing valuable skills. As an obvious example, if cars become self-driving, people will forget how to drive, and anyone who still knows how to drive will have a completely worthless skill. The same holds for teaching and being a physician, and for virtually any other current human job you can think of. Humanity will become like the children of AI, cared for and protected by an intelligence it created but can no longer understand.
There is also the likely advent of widespread war, largely conducted using AI, which will work to the advantage of an AI based humanity by destroying traditional human systems and replacing them with efficient AI systems. During a state of war it will be even more difficult for people to oppose or respond to this evolution. Even now, in relative peacetime, we are not organized or encouraged to prioritize discussion of AI. An an example, the United Teachers of Los Angeles, to which I belong, which was effective in the 1970's in raising teacher salaries from $30,000 to $70,000, says not a word about automation of teachers. What's the difference how much money we make if our jobs are gone?
Since an AI run civilization seems likely and could possibly be more efficient and less painful than current "civilized" life, one might ask why we should bother to critique it? In my case the answer is that during the transition I prefer not to be assaulted by advertising and propaganda, such as Altman's, designed to distract our attention from a full understanding of what is happening. I would rather talk openly about the pros and cons, as that will be the only way for people outside the industry and politics to have any influence on our current evolution.
Check out my conversations with Google's AI, Gemini on my new blog, AI conversations (see link at top, three posts above).
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