Useful ways of thinking about AI in the world: “AI as a Normal Technology”, Arvind Narayanan & Sayash Kapoor, https://knightcolumbia.org/content/ai-as-normal-technology.

AI risks and appropriate mitigation should follow well-understood patterns developed for existing technology.  The hyperbolic risks invoked by critics around imminent arrival of “super intelligence” misunderstand the nature of AI, because they discount the slow adoption and diffusion by individuals and companies and only consider the rate at which the invention phase is proceeding.  Analogies with electricity, which took 40 years to diffuse into industry and replace boilers in the basement of the factories. Also cf Doctorow’s notion that AI isn’t good enough to do your job yet, but it is good enough for your boss to think that it can and he will fire you anyway.

In proposing appropriate regulation when considering safety of, eg, social media publishers, the authors make an Interesting analogy with car development; a reference to Nader’s paper “Unsafe at any Speed”, that points out that safety was not considered the responsibility of the car’s manufacturer but of the driver for much of the early development of cars, and the resulting market failure to improve safety was successfully addressed by regulatory intervention.

The paper mentions many existing forms of risk mitigation that may be adopted from existing technology.  Notably, like Brin, the authors propose that more AI models are better than trying to limit them using a non proliferation model: no single point of failure, usefulness of many AI in mitigating other AI’s mistakes.

David Brin posits that the way to safety with generative AI is competition between AI engines.  I’ve noticed that the amount of AI-generated spam in my Inbox has increased geometrically in the last month, and spam filters aren’t keeping up.  Is anyone using AI for spam filters?  Are they just being outmatched?

Update: well, of course they are, just (maybe) not with my email provider. Tempted to run a filter locally.

To the developers at the New York Times: your app has become completely unusable on my iPad. Slow, then stops completely as I move through the news.  Your website, otoh, is still workable but slow.  FYI, the Guardian site works great.

I went to your support pages to see if I could report this but theres only a chat bot there, and some FAQs. So posting here in the event your AI sweep tools harvests my complaint 🙂

https://www.meditationsinanemergency.com/auspicious-omens-and-excellent-insubordination/

When we turn off the TV, remember where we were (the app, the program being watched).  When we turn it back on, go there, not the Home screen.  In other words, pick up where we left off.

There is talk of a general strike this Friday. This seems to me the wrong approach. A general strike is a good idea, but it shouldn't be done in haste. It should be dangled as a threat for at least a month, which in itself will change the behavior of the opposition by, for example, strengthening the hand of moderates in the Congress. That month should be spent organizing the infrastructure required to support the strike. There is a danger that the strike will be called, it will prove to be a bust, and future threats of strike will not look credible. Someone should speak to the Boeing employees Union. Find out how to do this properly.

Is the next step for private concentration camp operators to start renting slave labor to business (agriculture, abbatoirs, …) for profit?  Convert a cost to a revenue source.  This solves the government's problem with farmers, etc, who have lost their cheap labor source and are pushing back on the migrant round up. There's plenty of precedent: for-profit prisons currently do this to a limited extent, and of course we have the Nazis as examples.

Watched two YouTube videos of government press conferences from today: the first by the Prime Minister in Ottawa, the second by my state's Governor and attorney general. Canada announced a program of food aid for low-income residents being hurt by inflation, effective immediately. Washington State announced preparation for worst case scenarios for responding to a surge in ICE and CBP thugs in our state.

Our two countries are in very different places.

For the record: my vision for fixing asylum applications in the US is to fix the actual problem, which is delays that extend for years. To fix this, the federal government should deputize as many immigration lawyers as needed to become temporary immigration judges to clear the backlog of applications. Lawyers should be nominated by the the American immigration law association.

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-are-federal-agents-gunning-down Noah Smith writes about the Minnesota ICE killing soon after the event, where he makes the point that 

‘“When a federal officer gives you instructions, you abide by them and then you get to keep your life” is a perfect description of an authoritarian police state.’

In the course of the argument he includes a (still frankly shocking) list of documented assaults by ICE against civilians, gathered over the course of “a couple of days” from X.  The rhetorical impact of the length of the list was what stuck with me from reading the article.