…look…I want to be able to say things like “there’s a limit”

EU agrees tough limits on police use of AI biometric surveillance [Guardian]

…without making me want to roll my own eyes

‘Magical’ tech innovations a distraction from real solutions, climate experts warn [Guardian]

…but…something something, symptoms

‘Megayachts’ are environmentally indefensible. The world must ban them [Guardian]

…something something, symptomatic

‘Don’t get sick. It’s too expensive’: medical debt is putting more Americans in financial crisis [Guardian]

…I know…even saying it’s hard to tell this shit apart from a good onion headline is becoming uncomfortably close to a cliché these days

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1733203005556572305.html

…but…here we are…greeting a new day

CEO of Twitter Posts Brain-Meltingly Idiotic Message About Elon’s Foulmouthed AI [Futurism]

…& whatever ails you

Local elections officials inundated with records requests by rightwing activists [Guardian]

…a little bit of sugar really does help the medicine go down

Sickly sweet: how our sugar-coated cells helped humanity turn illness into evolution [Guardian]

…breakfast being the most important meal of the day implies meals, plural…you know…for a start

Reforming the world’s food systems will be a key step in limiting global temperature rises, the UN has said, as it set out the first instalment of a roadmap for providing food and farming while staying within 1.5C.

Food production is highly vulnerable to the effects of the climate crisis, with research suggesting that as much as a third of global food could be at risk from global heating.

Agriculture and livestock farming are also major sources of greenhouse gas emissions, contributing roughly a 10th of global carbon output directly, and more than double that if the conversion of natural habitat to farming is included.

Until now, however, the UN has held back from setting out in detail how the world can both meet the nutritional needs of a growing population, which is forecast to reach 10 billion by 2050, and reduce global greenhouse gases to net zero by the same date. The latter is required to limit global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

Maximo Torero, the chief economist for the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), told the Guardian: “We need to act to reduce hunger, and to stay within 1.5C. This is about rebalancing global food systems.”
[…]
The roadmap will be laid out over the next two to three years, starting with a document published at Cop28 in Dubai that contains 20 key targets to be met between 2025 and 2050, but little detail on how they can be met. Further detail on how the aspirations can be achieved will be set out in future instalments at the next two Cop summits.

The targets include: reducing methane emissions from livestock by 25% by 2030; ensuring all the world’s fisheries are sustainably managed by 2030; safe and affordable drinking water for all by 2030; halving food waste by 2030; eliminating the use of traditional biomass for cooking by 2030.

Torero said the plan would not include calls for a meat tax, which some experts have advocated, but would examine measures to tax sugar, salt and super-processed foods, and better food labelling.

More climate finance should be devoted to agriculture, he added, which accounts for only about 4% of climate finance today. He also called for much more efficient use of agricultural land and resources.

…easier said than done?

Emile Frison, an expert at IPES-Food (the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems), said: “The FAO should be applauded for this first step in laying out a plan to eliminate extreme hunger and the third of greenhouse gases that come from food systems, and particularly for its emphasis on a just transition – it is not easy.”

But he said the plan did not go far enough. “This current draft puts a huge emphasis on incremental changes to the current industrial food system. But this is a flawed system that is wrecking nature, polluting the environment, and starving millions of people,” he said. “These efficiency-first proposals are unlikely to be enough to get us off the high-pollution, high-fossil-fuel, high-hunger track we are on.”

He called for more radical proposals in the coming instalments. “The next rounds of this process will need to go much further in proposing a real transformation of the status quo, by putting much more emphasis on diversification, shorter supply chains and agroecology, and on tackling the massive power inequalities imposed by a handful of companies that define what we grow and eat.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/10/un-sets-out-roadmap-to-combat-global-hunger-amid-climate-crisis

…sure would be nice if that seemed like the sort of thing that might have a shot at coming top of the urgent list…but…even in a let bygones be bystanders sense…we can’t even triage the information any more reliably than we can rely on getting the bits we need out of that

‘Magical’ tech innovations a distraction from real solutions, climate experts warn [Guardian]

…I know, I know…broken record

Brian Ray has spent the last three decades as one of the nation’s top evangelists for home schooling. As a researcher, he has published studies purporting to show that these students soar high above their peers in what he calls “institutional schools.” At home, he and his wife educated their eight children on their Oregon farm.

His influence is beyond doubt. He has testified before state legislators looking to roll back regulations. Judges cite his work in child custody cases where parents disagree about home schooling. His voice resounds frequently in the press, from niche Christian newsletters to NPR and the New York Times. As president of the National Home Education Research Institute, he is the go-to expert for home-school advocates looking to influence public opinion and public policy, presenting himself as a dispassionate academic seeking the truth.

But Ray’s research is nowhere near as definitive as his evangelism makes it sound. His samples are not randomly selected. Much of his research has been funded by a powerful home-schooling lobby group. When talking to legislators, reporters and the general public, he typically dispenses with essential cautions and overstates the success of the instruction he champions. Critics say his work is driven more by dogma than scholarly detachment.

“You see this in a lot of areas,” said Jim Dwyer, a professor at William & Mary Law School who wrote a book about home schooling. “Someone with an ideological agenda can concoct bad social science and convince naive researchers and naive audiences to accept some position. It’s clearly true of Ray. … The research he relies on is not scientifically valid.”

How a true believer’s flawed research helped legitimize home schooling [WaPo]

…not to single out one pupil in the whole class

We need to talk about the United States’ mental health crisis – and its larger causes [Guardian]

…upstream is hard to get to against the flow

Quarter of world’s freshwater fish at risk of extinction, according to assessment [Guardian]

…but…we gotta learn

‘If this was about money, we’d still be teaching’: inside the longest adjunct strike in US history [Guardian]

…& one way or another…it would appear we shall

Cop28 draft climate deal criticised as ‘grossly insufficient’ and ‘incoherent’ [Guardian]

…ours not to reason why

California children sue EPA over ‘intentional’ role in climate crisis [Guardian]

…ours but to…checks notes…uh…I don’t remember agreeing to a lot of this, now you mention it

Corporate Accountability, a transparency watchdog, has found that UN organizers greenlighted access to groups that have obstructed fossil fuel regulations and other climate action, giving them the same or greater access to the international negotiations as Indigenous communities, human rights groups and climate justice organizations.

Organizations and individuals invited by country-delegations also have access to closed-room negotiations from which civil society and grassroots groups are locked out.

The new data, derived from official UN delegate lists, found at least 166 climate deniers and fossil fuel public relations professionals are at Cop28. The true number is probably significantly higher as only the most prominent bodies were included in the analysis. Some of the groups have been coming to the UN climate talks for years.

Cop28 is taking place at the end of the hottest year on record, as climate scientists warn that time is running out to phase out fossil fuels and avoid total climate catastrophe. The irreversible loss and damage in developing countries is estimated by some studies to be greater than $400bn annually – and expected to rise – so time is of the essence.

Revealed: more than 160 representatives with climate-denying track records got Cop28 access [Guardian]

…time…& what might be the essence of our times?

Go off, Ruth [Marcus]: “We can disagree, fiercely, about whether women should be able to decide for themselves whether to continue unwanted pregnancies,” she writes. “But can we not agree that women with fetuses that are not viable, or women who are destined to lose the babies they so desperately want, should not be forced to risk their lives and health in service of … what? A disputed theological conviction about when life begins that elevates that theoretical life over the actual life of a woman suffering from sepsis?”

…this theology business…any chance we could maybe dial back the sublime ratcheting up lethal hypocrisy any time soon?

The Theological Truth We Must Press During War [NYT]

…because we’re at risk of several kinds of critical mass

There’s a Limit to How Much Weaseling Around You Can Do [NYT – bidding strong for highest irony:word ratio in a headline I’ve encountered today]

Jen Rubin, agreeing with Ruth, takes a look at the political implications of the GOP embracing such a black-and-white approach: “Seeing the political wreckage in the wake of Dobbs, they are unable to step away from a policy that is wildly out of step with a large majority of Americans.”

…I don’t want to dive down another rabbit hole when I already dug a warren today…but…black & white approach…disparity of outcome…yadda yadda

The racial homeownership gap is widening. New rules might make it worse. [WaPo]

…& it ain’t a coincidence that the one lady at the crux of the one case is a case of IC#1…so people will be paying all kinds of attention to who pursues who for what with what to gain now that she’s…look…I saw someone describe it as “cut bait” & it pissed me the hell off…but…that’s actually on the mild side for how the situation makes me feel so…apologies & all…but…I think I get what they were trying to say…& I don’t know that I can say it ain’t so

And Alexandra Petri provides a blackly satirical approach to the (imagined) perspective of a Ken whose job is, unfortunately, not beach but making the Barbies’ medical decisions for them: “What I don’t know about women’s health could fill a book! A book that I would refuse to read, on principle.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/12/11/texas-abortion-paxton-gaza-home-mezuzah/

…there’s micro/macro shit everyplace you look to be honest

The current move is partly guided by Maduro’s domestic travails, as elections loom next year and the oft-divided Venezuelan opposition is, against the odds, rallying around a strong, newly minted opposition leader. “The government’s only options are to try to rile up nationalist sentiments with Guyana and gradually escalate the situation and to increase political repression and persecution,” Enderson Sequera, strategic director for the Venezuela-based political analysis firm Politiks, told my colleagues.

…& some big ticket items on that “micro” list

Oil is part of the equation, too. Since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits in Guyana’s territorial waters in 2015, Maduro’s regime has stepped up Venezuela’s historic claims — a time during which the regime in Caracas has presided over an epochal economic crisis that forced millions of Venezuelans to flee the country.

Last week, “Maduro presented a map that showed Guyana’s 61,000-square-mile Esequibo region as part of Venezuela,” my colleagues reported. “The authoritarian socialist told a crowd of government officials and supporters that he would create the Venezuelan state Guyana Esequiba, grant Venezuelan citizenship to its Guyanese residents, license the state oil company PDVSA and state metal conglomerate CVG to search it for oil and order energy companies currently there, including Houston-based ExxonMobil, to leave in three months.”

The threats perked up ears in Washington. It led to the United States announcing joint military flight drills with its Guyanese counterparts on Thursday. A statement from the U.S. Embassy in Guyana cast the maneuvers as “routine engagement and operations to enhance security partnership” between the United States and Guyana, “and to strengthen regional cooperation.”

But, as Brazilian troops massed along the border with Venezuela in their own bid to keep the peace, the subtext was clear.

…I dunno about clear…but it sure looks ugly…not to mention

Into the 19th century, there was no clear boundary here between the Spanish empire and that of the British, which assumed control of what was to be called British Guiana after a treaty agreement with the Netherlands in 1814. By 1841, independent Venezuela bridled against the territorial boundary drawn by German surveyor and naturalist Robert Hermann Schomburgk in the service of the British government, which they claimed violated the understood delineation of the territory at the time of Venezuela’s 1811 independence from Spain.
[…]
Cleveland’s secretary of state, Richard Olney, sent a stern letter to his British counterpart, reviving the ethos of the Monroe Doctrine, which, invoked in the early part of the century, warned against European colonial projects in the Western Hemisphere. Olney, who was pressing the British to accept outside arbitration to settle the border with Venezuela, extended the principle, declaring the United States “practically sovereign on this continent.”

The bemused British scoffed at this and told the Cleveland administration that it didn’t believe the Monroe Doctrine was compatible with international law. That triggered howls of outrage in Washington and led to Cleveland delivering a special address to Congress, where he asked for the authority to appoint a boundary commission to settle the matter, and warned Britain its rulings would be enforced “by every means” at the United States’ disposal.

This implicit threat of military action inflamed the U.S. public, with periodicals printing cartoons of Cleveland yanking the imperial tail of the British lion and Olney suggesting the “American heart” had not been so stirred since the Civil War. The British envoy in Washington lamented to his superiors that, in the aftermath of Cleveland’s “note of war,” “nothing was heard” in the country but “the voice of the Jingo bellowing out defiance.”
[…]
For Cleveland’s legacy, the outcome of the dispute mattered less than his reassertion of U.S. primacy in the affairs of the hemisphere, a prelude to decades of American colonial endeavors across the Caribbean. Britain’s acquiescence underscored a new reality.

“In 1826, British trade, British capital, British diplomacy and British naval power had won for Great Britain a preeminent position in Latin America,” wrote historian R.A. Humphreys. “In 1896, American diplomacy, American trade, and American capital were beginning to win that preeminence for the United States.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/11/venezuela-guyana-oil-borders-history-us-british-war/

…kind of an embarrassment of riches sort of a scenario

Last week, the wealthiest Americans had their day in court. The case before the Supreme Court, Moore v. United States, is a challenge to an obscure and narrow provision of the tax code, in Donald Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, that taxes certain assets held abroad.

An activist lower court judge, most likely inspired by right-wing constitutional scholars and think tanks, cleverly framed Moore as a grand occasion to rule against some future wealth tax, and the high court took it up.

Supporters of the Moore litigation probably hope to persuade conservatives on the court to issue a broad ruling that would declare unconstitutional any attempt to enact a tax on wealth (like proposals that Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and others have floated).

The argument for why a tax on wealth would be unconstitutional is both premature and exceptionally weak. And indeed, the consensus after oral arguments last week was that a majority of justices — but certainly not all — were skeptical of a sweeping ruling.
[…]
Still, something like this argument prevailed with a similarly conservative Supreme Court once before, long ago — only to be repudiated decisively by the American people through a constitutional amendment.

The question now is whether the conservative justices will practice the originalism they preach and listen to the framers and ratifiers of the 16th Amendment or whether instead, like the Supreme Court over a century ago, they will be moved by political sympathy for the wealthy to reach out and rule in their favor.

The Moore case should not be hard to decide. The court can easily uphold the tax, making no new law, by holding that Congress has the power today to tax shareholders for certain kinds of gains held in offshore corporations. This sort of thing is common in the tax code; to hold otherwise would be highly disruptive.

But this court has not shied from rulings with sweeping impact, as evidenced by the fact that it took up this unlikely case in the first place. At oral argument, Justice Samuel Alito, the court’s most reliable ally of billionaires, asked the solicitor general: “So let’s say that somebody graduates from school and starts up a little business in his garage, and 20 years later, 30 years later, the person is a billionaire. Under your argument can Congress tax all of that?”

It would not be a shock if some justices are tempted to go big and declare Congress powerless under the Constitution to tax the wealthiest Americans. If so, it would not be the first time.

…let’s not be fooling ourselves about how that’s been working out

At the founding of the Republic, the Constitution gave Congress a broad power to “lay and collect taxes” of all kinds. The Constitution required only that taxes be “uniform” and that “direct taxes” — taxes like a head tax that it makes sense to apportion to the states by population — be apportioned by population, accounting for enslaved people according to the infamous three-fifths clause.

There was no forbidden category of taxes, no rule that said “no taxes on income” or “no taxes on wealth.” What to tax and how much were questions for Congress. Direct taxes were those that could be apportioned by population without defeating their purpose — not an income tax or a wealth tax, because numbers of people “do not afford a just estimate or rule of wealth,” as the Supreme Court ruled in a 1796 case. The Supreme Court reaffirmed this original understanding, repeatedly and forcefully, for 100 years.

In 1895 a single case upended this history and tradition. In Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan and Trust Company, a 5-to-4 majority struck down the income tax. The ostensible rationale was that an income tax was a direct tax — a tax that would have to be apportioned by population, which it could not be, since some states have more per capita income than others.

Therefore, the income tax fell into a newly invented, Supreme Court-devised loophole, a tax that Congress cannot constitutionally enact at all.

The backlash against the court was sustained and furious. Public outrage was fueled by the outrage of the court’s own dissenters. The Pollock majority had complained that the income tax unfairly singled out the rich, but the dissenters pointed out that it was the majority that was creating a special privileged class of rich people who were now constitutionally protected from tax. The court’s reckless new doctrine, declared Justice John Marshall Harlan, not only betrayed the original understanding of the tax power and a century of precedent; it also granted the wealthiest Americans “power and influence” that would leave ordinary citizens “subjected to the dominion of aggregated wealth.”

…plus ça change in the ol’ changing times, n’est-ce pas?

Populists, Democrats and ultimately even Republicans argued that the dissenters were right. The Pollock majority was helping to cement a kind of oligarchy — an economic elite with such outsize economic and political power that it was ultimately incompatible with republican government.

This anti-oligarchy argument drew on a long tradition in American constitutional thought. In it, the primary responsibility for preventing oligarchy lies with the political branches; the court’s job is to get out of the way. In this case, it took a massive cross-party political movement to overturn Pollock and restore Congress’ broad power to tax.
[…]
It is thus strange that the anti-tax lawyers arguing last week at the Supreme Court purport to rely on the 16th Amendment for their new claim that Congress can’t tax wealth. Their claim is that somehow, the logic of Pollock was right: There are kinds of tax that the Constitution secretly forbids, by demanding that they be apportioned when apportionment is not possible.

And once again it just so happens that those secretly forbidden kinds of tax are ones that fall on the rich. The anti-taxers in Moore are asking the court to follow in the Pollock majority’s footsteps and invent a doctrine to protect the super-wealthy from tax — this time, from a wealth tax that hasn’t yet even been enacted.

Often in its history, the Supreme Court has been more sympathetic than the executive and legislative branches to the interests of the wealthy. The court that handed down Pollock in the 1890s also aggressively repressed union organizing — a project the current court has resumed with gusto, in our new era of right–wing judicial activism. [N.B. …that’s more links than it looks like]
[…]
Unlike in 1895, this time the court would have to disregard not only the 1789 Constitution but also the 16th Amendment, which squarely repudiated the court’s last attempt to undermine Congress’s taxing power in order to protect the rich. Even if the court chooses to resolve Moore on narrow grounds, it may still use the occasion to signal, in the spirit of Pollock, that a future wealth tax would be struck down.

Instead, this would be a good time for the court to back off. If it does not, then it would be a good time for the other branches of government to take more seriously their responsibilities to act as a check on a runaway court.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/opinion/supreme-court-wealthy-taxes.html

…runaway court, you say

The question of Donald Trump’s criminal jeopardy could be headed to the Supreme Court sooner rather than later. That’s after special counsel Jack Smith on Monday requested that the court conduct an expedited review of Trump’s claims to “absolute” immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct in office. The court quickly signaled it will consider the petition and asked Trump’s team to respond by next week.
[…]
A[…] reading is that Smith is confident of the outcome and is seeking to call Trump’s bluff — in the process, potentially dealing him a significant early setback in his criminal cases courtesy of the nation’s highest court, which is stocked with Trump-appointed justices.

If it’s the […] case, Smith might have reason to be optimistic.

After all, the Supreme Court has ruled against Trump on multiple occasions and has even rejected a Trump claim to absolute immunity — unanimously.
[…]
The Supreme Court in the current case would be tasked with deciding a separate question — not whether a sitting president is immune from state subpoenas, but whether a former president is immune from criminal prosecution for acts while in office.

The question at issue takes things to another level. The subpoena case dealt with a matter in which Trump was plainly wrapped up in a criminal investigation. Now the question is whether such an investigation can result in charges and a conviction.

The 2020 case demonstrates how tough an argument it could be for Trump’s lawyers to make at the Supreme Court. Indeed, while arguing for absolute immunity from a state subpoena, his attorney actually indicated it was quite clear that Trump could be prosecuted after leaving office. He suggested it was something of a fallback, showing that a president wasn’t above the law.

“Of course, Congress retains the impeachment power,” Consovoy said. “And on the other side of impeachment, as the text of the Constitution makes clear, the president like all other citizens is subject to the laws and jurisdiction of states and the federal government alike.”

To emphasize: “As the text of the Constitution makes clear.”

At another point, Consovoy said, “This is not a permanent immunity.”

Trump’s lawyers are now in effect arguing that it is a permanent immunity. That puts them in the position of arguing to a Supreme Court that has rejected a Trump claim of absolute immunity that a president can do literally whatever he wants in office and never face criminal consequences.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/12/11/history-behind-jack-smiths-trump-supreme-court-gambit/

…running from

Trump camp escalates attempt to limit second-term talk from outside allies [WaPo]

…or to?

George David Banks, who traveled to Dubai with a group of Republican lawmakers, predicted in an interview that Trump would use a second term to again withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord.

“My guess is that pulling out of the Paris agreement will be considered in the first few weeks,” Banks said. “My guess is that they’ll have an executive order already written. I think that’s a real scenario that people need to consider.”

Banks’s presence illustrates the long shadow that Trump casts over this year’s global climate talks. With an election just months away, and Trump gaining momentum on Biden in the polls, some diplomats here worry that future international efforts to slow the Earth’s warming won’t include the U.S. government. They fear U.S. officials won’t back up any promises they give today, and that Trump will derail progress toward reducing emissions at a crucial juncture for the planet.

Trump’s initial exit from the Paris accord drew condemnation from world leaders who had expected America to lead on global warming. At the climate summit in 2017, Trump officials garnered further international criticism for touting the importance of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel.

At home, Trump weakened or wiped out more than 125 environmental rules and policies, many of them designed to reduce planet-warming pollution from fossil fuels. President Biden, by contrast, has rejoined the Paris accord and enacted dozens of measures aimed at moving the nation away from oil, gas and coal.
[…]
Yet Trump has campaigned on a promise to repeal Biden’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, which has spurred the private sector to invest billions of dollars in clean-energy projects. He has railed against the law’s tax credits for electric vehicles, saying at a recent rally in Detroit that the Biden administration is “loyal to the environmental lunatics.”

…takes one to know one?

A plan for the first 180 days of an incoming Republican president drafted by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, calls for the “rescinding of all funds not already spent” by programs created by the Inflation Reduction Act. (The 920-page plan, whose authors include former Trump administration officials, also recommends slashing funding for the Environmental Protection Agency and shuttering the Energy Department’s renewable energy offices.)

Specter of second Trump term looms over global climate talks [WaPo]

…either way…the lunacy seems like it’s beyond doubt

But for autocracy scholars and constitutional law experts, Trump’s statements raised alarms that he had thought carefully about how to consolidate the levers of power should he return to office in ways that eluded him in his first four years in the White House.

The comments — which he reiterated at a dinner in New York City on Saturday night — are part of a pattern for Trump, who has made several statements suggesting that he could use extraconstitutional powers to enact his agenda. Late last year, Trump, who is the leading contender for the Republican nomination, called on his social network Truth Social for terminating “all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” in a post on his social network Truth Social.
[…]
Trump and his aides have already started planning for retribution should he win in 2024, privately telling advisers and friends in recent months that he wants the Justice Department to investigate onetime officials and allies who have become critical of his time in office. In public, Trump has vowed to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” President Biden and his family. Outside groups, such as the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, have started to put in place a plan for how to execute an aggressive agenda in a potential second Trump administration.
[…]
Trump has often expressed admiration for Putin and other autocratic or authoritarian leaders. The U.S. constitutional system has institutional protections and checks on power that other countries lack, making it difficult for a U.S. leader to follow playbooks from other nations for consolidating authority.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/12/11/donald-trump-dictatorship-president-election-retribution/

…uh huh

Covert Indian operation seeks to discredit Modi’s critics in the U.S. [WaPo]

…sure

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/12/11/china-hacking-hawaii-pacific-taiwan-conflict/

…that sure is making me feel oh, so much better

As a professor of both A.I. and A.I. ethics, I think this framing of the problem omits the critical question of the kind of A.I. that we accelerate or decelerate.

In my 40 years of A.I. research in natural language processing and computational creativity, I pioneered a series of machine learning advances that let me build the world’s first large-scale online language translator, which quickly spawned the likes of Google Translate and Microsoft’s Bing Translator. You’d be hard pressed to find any arguments against developing translation A.I.s. Reducing misunderstanding between cultures is probably one of the most important things humanity can do to survive the escalating geopolitical polarization.

But A.I. also has a dark side. I saw many of the very same techniques, invented for beneficial purposes by our natural language processing and machine learning community, instead being used in social media, search and recommendation engines to amplify polarization, bias and misinformation in ways that increasingly pose existential threats to democracy. More recently, as A.I. has grown more powerful, we have seen the technology take phishing to a new level by using deepfake voices of your colleagues or loved ones to scam you out of money.

A.I.s are manipulating humanity. And they’re about to wield even more unimaginably vast power to manipulate our unconscious, which large language models like ChatGPT have barely hinted at. The Oppenheimer moment is real.

…& we haven’t even got to nazis or nukes…both of which are moving on up from the subtext towards the headlines above the fold…but…let’s not start down that road or we’ll have multiple DOTs & I’ll be on the lamb from butcher trying to hunt me down & beat me to death with a wrist-brace on account of the scrolling-induced RSI…assuming he can roll his eyes back around to point forwards

But in A.I. alignment, yet again, there’s an elephant in the room.

Alignment … to what kind of human objectives?

Philosophers, politicians and populations have long wrestled with all the thorny trade-offs between different goals. Short-term instant gratification? Long-term happiness? Avoidance of extinction? Individual liberties? Collective good? Bounds on inequality? Equal opportunity? Degree of governance? Free speech? Safety from harmful speech? Allowable degree of manipulation? Tolerance of diversity? Permissible recklessness? Rights versus responsibilities?

There’s no universal consensus on such goals, let alone on even more triggering issues like gun rights, reproductive rights or geopolitical conflicts.
[…]
If this problem seems obvious, why does A.I. alignment hold such sway in the A.I. community? It’s probably because the dominant modeling paradigm in A.I. is to define some mathematical function that serves as an “objective function” — some quantitative goal or north star for the A.I. to aim for. At every moment, an A.I.’s artificial brain is making thousands or millions or even billions of little choices to maximize how well it’s achieving this goal. For example, a recent study showed how a medical A.I. that aims to automate a fraction of the chest X-ray workload detected 99 percent of all abnormal chest X-rays, which was higher than the rate for human radiologists.

We A.I. researchers are thus strongly tempted to frame everything in terms of maximizing an objective function; we’re the proverbial man with a hammer. To get safe A.I., we just need to maximize the alignment between A.I. and humanity’s goals! Now if only we could define a neat objective function that measures the degree of alignment with all of humanity’s goals.

What we in the A.I. research community too often overlook are the existential risks that arise from the way A.I. interacts with the complex dynamics of humanity’s messy psychological, social, cultural, political and emotional factors. Which are not cleanly packaged into some simple mathematical function.

A.I. companies, researchers and regulators need to urgently accelerate tackling how A.I.s should be operating in the face of unresolved age-old trade-offs between conflicting goals, and accelerate developing new kinds of A.I.s that can help solve for this. For example, one of my research projects involves A.I. that not only fact-checks information but also automatically rephrases it in a way that helps reduce readers’ implicit biases. Accelerating this work is pressing precisely because of the exponential advancement of today’s A.I. technology.

Meanwhile, we need to decelerate deployment of A.I.s that are exacerbating sociopolitical instability, like algorithms that line up one conspiracy theory post after the other. Instead, we need to accelerate development of A.I.s that help to de-escalate those dangerous levels of polarization.

And all of us — A.I. experts, Silicon Valley influencers and big media driving our everyday conversations — need to stop sweeping these real challenges under the rug through oversimplistically misframed narratives of AI accelerationism versus decelerationism. We need to acknowledge that our work affects human beings, and that human beings are messy and complex in ways that cannot necessarily be captured by an elegant equation.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/opinion/openai-silicon-valley-superalignment.html

…not all big problems can be seen from space

A new NASA program is helping researchers more accurately calculate how much planet-warming carbon protected areas are storing. It’s a lot. [NYT]

Fossil fuel phase-out will ‘not avert climate breakdown without protections for nature’ [Guardian]

…it might be stating the obvious

Humans have ‘large, negative impact on wildlife,’ researchers find [WaPo]

…because

Tucker Carlson to launch his own $72-a-year subscription streaming service [Guardian]

…of fucking course some assholes just can’t help themselves

How Tucker Carlson helped persuade Elon Musk to reinstate Alex Jones on X [WaPo]

…tell me again how the moral highground doesn’t stay that way if you use it to hurl a motherfucker to their bottom line…because…if there is a god…or gods…or really anything much in the way of a set of powers higher than that highground…they know I’m sorely goddamn tempted…probably why they threw this bone

There’s a better way to grind coffee, according to science [WaPo]

[…spoiler…it does not involve hooking it to my veins]