Currently in the news:
Politics
- The Republican National Convention begins in a couple of days. Donald Trump still hasn’t announced who his running mate will be, although the buzz that I’m seeing is focusing on J. D. Vance. Vance is a Senator from Ohio. I don’t know why people think Vance is the best option here, and I certainly don’t have any opinions about him. But his name certainly seems to get bandied about a lot these days.
- The Democratic National Convention isn’t until August 22. The question here is who will actually be the presidential nominee after Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance in which he made it crystal clear, once and for all, to the overwhelming majority of Americans that he is not mentally and physically capable of discharging the duties of President of the United States. Frankly, this whole thing has taken on a Game of Thrones quality. Given the Democratic’s world class ability to lie to themselves, it’s really hard to predict what’s going to happen.
- In France, a left wing coalition, the New Popular Front (NPF), won an upset victory in their national elections. Word is that wealthy people are now fleeing France out of fear for their bank accounts, while the French parliament now appears hung among leftist parties in-fighting.
AI
ChatGPT 4 is currently the best LLM available on the open market, but insiders are making a whole bunch of noise about ChatGPT 5. Meanwhile, there continues to be murmurs, rumors, and trembling about something at OpenAI called Q*. Because the reporting is all rumors and fear-mongering I can’t say exactly what all this means. Suffice to say, I’m not believing half of what I hear.
None of this is going to lead to silicon dominating carbon until AI is capable of autonomous, self-directing operations and so far I haven’t heard anyone claiming we have that. On the other hand, people like to throw around the idea that AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) is here already. But on yet another hand, I can’t find a definition that requires AGI to be autonomous and self-directing.
So I remain skeptical. Without autonomous, self-directing operations, an AI is just a force multiplier that will be exactly as good or as evil as the data and prompting that’s given to it by human beings.
Legal
- To my very great surprise, Alec Baldwin has won his criminal case in the shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. The case was dismissed with prejudice, apparently because the prosecution hid evidence that favors Baldwin’s defense. At a minimum I think this guy is guilty of criminal negligence. But this trail was for manslaughter so maybe they can still go after him on a lesser charge. I can only hope. The last thing we need is yet another privileged, elite Hollywood royal getting away, literally, with murder.
- Boeing has pled guilty to charges that it defrauded the FAA when it hid critical information about a design flaw in its 737 Max. Observers call the $487 million fine a slap on the wrist. I think this is why corporations should never have been given personhood — you can’t put them in jail. You can’t even fine them enough. They are evil sociopaths that are literally beyond the law.