Politics – Page 3 – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

AI May Make Mistakes But Court Finds AI Makers Are Still Responsible

You can’t take humans out of the chain of responsibility

By now everyone is familiar with the caveats every AI company trots out like Surgeon General’s warnings on tobacco products. AI can make mistakes, so you need to double check. Great sales pitch. Better liability protection. Some lawyers obviously dreamed that up, but it appears there’s a chance they might need to dream again.

Googles Gemini AI Is Reading Your Emails_AdobeStock_1766730889_FT.

According to an article in Ars Technica, a German court has ruled that Google is liable for false statements in AI Overviews. Given how Google is reinventing Search and itself this might turn into a problem, and not just for Google.

I love the title of the Ars Technica article describing the case by Ashley Belanger that says simply: Nobody Needs AI To Search The Internet, Court Says in Ruling Against Google. Google recently would beg to differ. Here’s an excerpt for the Ars Technica article:

Google tried the usual arguments to shield itself from liability for false statements in AI Overviews, such as arguing that most users understand that AI outputs aren’t always accurate and must be verified.

But the court found that, unlike traditional search engines that merely present lists of links to third-party statements, Google’s tool made “independent, new, and substantive statements” based on its own misinterpretation of links on the Internet.

That’s a problem, the court said, because while publishers may have been able to sue to stop third parties from publishing defamatory statements appearing in Google search results, only Google can correct the underlying algorithm and outputs displayed in AI Overviews.

The bottom line it seems to me is if an AI Overview or other result summary hallucinates something false and perhaps defamatory, someone somewhere, meaning a human someone(s), can held responsible.

I’m sure appeals are already being worked on for this preliminary ruling. So the story will continue to unfold.

As far as U.S. users might be concerned we’re already seeing other countries treating technology issues very differently in the European Union and elsewhere than on our own shores. Things are very different here in the land where bribery no longer masquerades as politics. Nevertheless, it’s a pretty strong statement that bears some attention regardless of where you live and where you search the Internet from.

Thanks for reading. You can subscribe to this blog if you care to. You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links.

The Old Man

Life cycles we pretend we can conquer

The title of this post does not refer to the title of a streaming TV series that is one of the best examples out there of a show having a winning first season and then completely deteriorating in its second. But perhaps that show’s failure the second time around could be a metaphor.

an elderly person wearing a dark jacket and a light-colored baseball cap sits alone on a long wooden park bench with metal support brackets. The bench faces a vast, calm body of water under a hazy, overcast sky. In the far distance, a large cargo ship is faintly visible on the horizon. Low green grass lines the foreground.

The title actually refers to what is happening before our eyes with Donald Trump. He’s physically breaking down fast in this, his second term. I don’t need to know his medical condition to see it. Neither do most. He and his enablers he’s assembled around him are lying to us and themselves about whatever is ailing him. For some reason they think they can pull that off. They can’t.

Here’s why.

Too many people in their lives have been faced with an aging or sick relative and had to watch the deterioration first hand. It’s a saga of life that everyone but only the very young knows. In these cases, the parent eventually becomes the child again, to be cared for by the child they raised.

Difficult moments present themselves all along the journey. Drivers license and car keys are taken away. Financial and medical decisions are assigned to others. Houses get rearranged. Sadly at some point for some they get moved into some form of long term care, which is nothing more than a way station warehouse before the end eventually arrives.

And those are the lucky ones who have family willing to do the work and bear the burden.

I’ve lived through these situations more times than I would have liked. It’s challenging and changes everything for everyone it touches.

There are always moments of denial and deflection before rationality sets in and necessary steps are taken. That pushback comes from those suffering and those supporting them. The conversations and confrontations are never easy. Someone once told me that you don’t really grow up until you face these challenges with an elderly loved one. I think they might be right.

It’s so familiar that it’s one of those oft repeated situations in life that when the loved one and/or their families finally admit what they’re dealing with to everyone around them, everyone around them breathes a sigh of relief and delivers those painful looks that say they’ve known all along.

In and of itself, those moments are a part of life’s cycles we can’t seem to break.

That so many have experienced something similar in their families shows just how irrational and afraid those enabling Trump must be to pretend that what most can see with their own eyes isn’t real. Being politically astute and thinking you’re smart enough to survive are two completely different skill sets.

Perhaps if their pardons were already signed things might be different.

Set aside just how awful this old man has been for the world. I don’t mean to extend any pity or sympathy towards him by saying that. He deserves none. But as we watch him continue to whither away, dragging the country approaching it’s 250th anniversary down with him, it’s a damn shame no one had the courage to tell the old man his time was up, instead of letting him, and us, linger in a farce of fog.

Putting this on a political stage, we’ve seen ailing and dying leaders propped up before. So, that’s nothing new. I would just offer that the propping up is more about those doing the propping than the old man they keep lying to protect.

(Image from Apostolos Vamvouras on Unsplash)

The Kennedy Center Saga Continues

A glimpse of hope for the future

With so many things fundamentally broken during this second Trump administration there’s a momentary sigh of relief when it appears that something, anything might be put back together again.

This week U.S.District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that Trump’s appointed Kennedy Center board exceeded its authority when they decided to slap Trump’s name on the building and remake the building in his imagined image. Taking a look at any photo of the remade Oval Office and the plans for his ballroom, his gigantic arch, and the wrestling ring he’s built for his birthday beat down, which he somehow likens to the Eiffel Tower, is enough to make anyone with any semblance of taste in their mouth spit in disgust.

The ruling essentially says stop and take the offensive name off of the building. The Kennedy Center administration has already ordered employees to remove the sign and also strip all references from other signage, brochures, the website and to remove email signatures and letterhead by June 12th. The move is being hailed as a victory.

Cathartic and symbolic as removing the name may be, it can’t possibly make up for the damage done to the revered national center for the arts. It’s a start, and it certainly kindles hopes and dreams of doing the same to much of the defacing and defecating this one man wrecking crew has visited on Washington DC and the rest of the country.

Take for example the story of the National Symphony Orchestra. After many acts and organizations cut ties with the Kennedy Center rather than being associated with the madness, Trump closed the Kennedy Center for a two-year period of renovations, leaving the NSO without a home. Ben Folds, previous artistic advisor, (previous only because he stepped down when Trump took over), has released a letter calling for an “outpouring of public support.” Saying without such a push the NSO may not survive. You can read the full letter at this Instagram link. That will be a hard task and I wish them success.

I’ve said ever since Donald Trump came on the political scene that given the grifter and sexual predator’s previous life as a real estate developer we needed to understand that in order to construct something new a developer in his/her heart needed to also love demolishing something first. He’s certainly more than demonstrated a penchant for demolition and desecrating.

Here’s hoping one day we all get a chance to enjoying demolishing the things he’s touched in this horrible age.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links.

Scott Pelley Fired. Time To Move On

Good night, and good luck.

Scott Pelley was fired by CBS. By most accounts, except those from CBS management, he was fired for daring to speak the truth about what is happening under their new ownership that’s far too fond of kissing the ass of the president.

A picture of fired CBS 60 Minutes Correspondent Scott Pelley

I have a couple of thoughts.

First, Pelley shouldn’t have been fired I don’t care how belligerent he may have gotten with his bosses. The world needs a little more righteous belligerence instead of the babble we get for show.

Second, the current management of CBS are idiots, which is easily proven by how ineptly they handled this entire episode. There’s not enough eggs to cover the faces of the feckless.

Third, while it’s right to be momentarily outraged at the numbskulls from CBS and those who play them like puppets, it’s time to move on.

For Pelley.

For most of us.

I’m not pointing specific fingers at Pelley when I say this, but he was part of a media establishment that largely has failed us since before the dawn of the Trump era and continues to do so daily. The 1st amendment put the press on a cherished and protected pedestal. The cringing cowardice and capitulation of those atop that pedestal these days has aided the current regime in knocking itself off it. The Fourth Estate is essentially a cliché that lost its meaning.

New horizons await. Hopefully with new voices and new approaches headed towards them. Time to open the floodgates and let the waters wash away a multitude of sins that helped bring us this ultimate sinner without par.

All around us venues like podcasts, YouTube, and TikTok are where many are getting their news and their entertainment. Given that there’s been so little courage and competence in the establishment media for so long, it’s no wonder kids on TikTok get higher ratings for reviewing school lunches in the cafeteria. Hell, YouTube is kicking the media’s butt from Hollywood to New York in ways that it’s almost hard to fathom, but increasingly easy to acknowledge. For anyone but the media.

Would I like to see some of the big names who’ve gotten the axe in this regime’s purges get second chances on different platforms? Sure. But only if they seek out these new approaches and find a little courage. Those new approaches might still come under fire from the cowardly bullies that cower and lash out at any criticism. But at least they won’t come under fire from capitulating corporate chieftains who bow and scrape to the bloviating bullshit artists, hoping they can survive until the chaos we’re surrounded by ends someday.

Like it or not, traditional media as an institution, revered as it is, and as holy as its acolytes hold themselves, shares a big part of the blame and is no different than anything else that’s been touched, tainted, and torched in this tumultuous decade plus. It took a while for what passes as journalism to dig its way out of the robber baron era of previous generations. You can argue that CBS was in the forefront of the leaders that helped wash off the tinge of yellow journalism. Those days are over.

What was is gone. Self-immolation. There’s no use pretending it can be rebuilt from any of the remaining ashes.

Kudos to Scott Pelley for standing up for what’s right. We need more like him. We’ve needed more like him for too long. I’m sorry what happened to him and so many others in the media, throughout government, and in other fields of endeavor. No one deserved what’s happening. But I have to ask each of them, what took you so long? Even the visually impaired among us clearly saw most of this coming. Certainly this second time around.

Mourn the losses.

Curse the bad guys.

Then move on and build something in the future that might have a hope of preventing these cascading catastrophes from happening to anyone else in the future.

Good night, and good luck.

The Smartest Thing I’ve Read In A Long Time

We Are Living In Pinocchio’s World

I read a lot. It’s so ingrained in me it’s become part of my DNA. Good writers and writing are like magnets. I’m drawn to it. I live to read something that strikes me upside the head, or cuts deep in the heart. Om Malik’s piece, We Are Living In Pinocchio’s World, struck hard and cut deep. Go read it.

Jametlene reskp Q79XFGuTFfM unsplash. Om is a writer I’ve paid attention to for quite a while. What he thinks and writes is alway informative. Typically his topics are tech related. But in this piece he’s done what I often attempt to do, (not nearly as well as he), weaving together the common threads about tech and politics, or more importantly the people behind them both, that bind one to another into a whole with the precision of a finely tuned instrument. In this case, a pen. You have to read it.

Here’s an excerpt:

Most people remember Pinocchio as a story about lying. The nose grows. You get caught. Lesson learned. But that reading misses almost everything Collodi was actually doing. The book is a close study of a society where deception has gone ambient, woven into every institution, every transaction. Courts punish victims. Authority figures perform competence without exercising it. Experts are decorative. Society holds together through spectacle and habit rather than accountability. Into this environment, a naive creature is released, constitutionally unable to resist a good story about easy reward.

The nose is the least interesting lie in the book. The interesting lies are the ones that work.

You need to read Om’s piece to discover which are the lies that work. If you’re a fan of the story you can probably guess or recollect, but the writing here takes you there in wonderful ways. Either way, you’ll come away thinking that they are as plainly visible as the nose on your face. Yet somehow our gaze always seems focused to look past that.

Pinocchio is a favorite story of mine. I’ve directed a play version in the past. Perhaps Malik’s piece hit me so squarely because I spent time with the book during my preparation for that gig. It was a production for young audiences. The kids always loved it. Their parents or accompanying adults always seemed a little agitated after the performances. Thought of as the children’s story it was originally written as, it contains truth we adults conveniently forget or choose to ignore. Even in the much reduced stage version for young audiences the theme reveals its mark as squarely as it hits it.

As Malik puts it “Pinocchio is a story about a society organized around deception.”

He’s dissected the story, originally published in serial form, and reassembled and animated the core of its humanity in ways that not only meet our moment, but distill the chaos into a sublime simplicity. Much the way any skilled wood carver and maker of puppets would be envious of.

I won’t say any more. I’ll just say again, go read it.

(image from Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash)

Sunday Morning Reading

Biker heroes, cheese thieves, and stupidity checklists

Sunday Morning Reading time with stories and good writing about crime, incompetence, technology, shifts and changes, and cheese. There’s also hope in and amongst the chaos. Add a slice of cheese to your morning repast and give a read.

A rustic indoor display features a wide variety of artisanal cheese wheels and blocks stacked tightly on wooden shelving. On the left, smooth, rectangular orange-brown blocks are piled horizontally. On the right and center, large round wheels of varying sizes are stacked vertically, displaying diverse rinds—ranging from textured dark brown and dusty gray to smooth ochre and patterned beige. Photo by Azzedine rouichi YW_5rJvAdKw unsplash.

Starting this week’s edition with a surprising feel good story that reminds us we shouldn’t judge books by covers. Marlon G. Baxter tells the tale of young hearing impaired child who was saved from being trafficked in a Walmart by what appeared to most as an unlikely hero. You need to read “Heroes Wear Leather Too”: How A Deaf Child And A Biker Stopped A Trafficking Plot.

UPDATE: This pisses me off. Apparently the feel good story linked above is fake. I and several others have looked into it and it’s not holding up. Pardon my swearing, but this is so goddamned frustrating. I’m leaving the link and my description in for two reasons. Pointing out that we can’t trust a damn thing on the Internet anymore. Secondly, that really sucks given we’re all in a posture of looking for hope whenever we can find it.

In the wake of what’s happening at the ICE Delaney Hall ~~detention center~~ internment camp in New Jersey, Josh Kovensky recounts the story of what happened in the courts after similar battles over humanity happened earlier in Chicago. Check out How The Broadview Six Fought The Trump DOJ—And Found Massive Wrongdoing In The Process. Tough to see hope in these horrible moments as they occur, and it’s hard to believe we have to rely on the incompetence of evil doers after the fact, but here we are.

Speaking of incompetence, there are stories and there are stories. Andrew Kersley’s The Body In The Wheelchair: How Did A Troubled Family Get Lost By the State? This a tough read to digest on a Sunday or any day, but definitely worth your time.

On the arts and politics front, a court has ruled Trump has to take his name off of the Kennedy Center and not close it down for renovations. Sounds like a victory. In the long term it may be, but Janay Kingsbury tells us that in the immediate future the damage may already have been done in Trump Hasn’t Left Much Kennedy Center To Stay Open. So much of what’s happening these days hurts my heart, but this misadventure hits me where I live.

Everything is changing, like it or not. Sonny Bunch thinks Hollywood is standing on the doorstep of yet another pivotal moment. Check out Hollywood’s About To Change (Again).

As far as pivotal moments go, there are quite a few happening all around us. Especially regarding searching the Internet. Google is reinventing itself and the Internet, leaving an opening for companies like DuckDuckGo and Kagi. Doc Searls writes How DuckDuckGo Can Be A Hero. Let’s hope these search companies seize the moment that’s before them.

And while we’re on the topic of tech, John Siracusa has published The EV Stupidity Checklist, suggesting ways the EV industry might get back on track. John could and should publish one of these for so many things in the tech sector. Perhaps also for so many other sectors of our lives.

I’m a cheese fan, and I’ve been known to nick a slice or two off of the hors d’oeuvres tray before the guests arrive. Olivia Potts tells us how organized crime fell in love with cheese in The Grate Cheese Robbery. Who knew cheese was the most stolen food in the world?

(Image from Azzedine Rouichi on Unsplash)

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. This site does not use affilate links.

Tilting

Hoping gravity does its job

Several of my areas of interest seem to be tilting, leaning closer of late to the point when gravity might take over and bring the bad guys down. If you read anything at all here, you know I’m talking about AI and what passes for politics as practiced here in the U.S.

Leaning Tower of Pisa ommy fogelberg Xf_dj8e2 s unsplash.

I wish I was in a position to help things along with a stronger push, but alas that’s not the case. If things do ever fall over it would certainly be destructive, but in my opinion, no more so than the destruction currently being visited upon us.

I mean the bad guys have tilted the pinball machine so far that it’s mostly beyond repair and I’m amazed you can still send the balls down the chute.

(Photo from Tommy Fogelberg on Unsplash)

The Emperor’s New Car Wreck

A recycled, decaying spectacle

Once upon a time there was a guy named Hans Christian Anderson who wrote a story about an emperor who was exposed (literally) by his own vanity. We’re living that now here in the U.S. I’m actually amazed that this administration hasn’t banned every copy of The Emperor’s New Clothes, but it’s possible it’s above most of their reading levels.

The emperors new clothes.BltLFigK_Z2aBtTL.

Nothing ever really changes, it just gets recycled. Anderson’s story was actually based on others from Aesop to Persian folktales. So even within the frame we used to think of as American exceptionalism, we can’t claim this farce as our own. It’s like a virus or a comet that comes along every now and then. Or watching a car wreck. Or a train. Perhaps a space ship explode on a launch platform.

Regardless, I do think we’ll probably be able to claim the worst version of the story when this one does come to an end.

It’s more than obvious that Trump and his sloppy lickspittle sycophants can’t run a country, a war, an economy, or apparently not even a big 250th celebration of America’s founding without making a fool of themselves while they dig deeper holes for the rest of us. Small hint: you just need lots of fireworks and a military band. As long as the members meet the height and weight requirements.

They’re good at grifting and making money. For themselves. Apparently there are still enough suckers out there willing to pony up. That’s the only surprising part of our version. Although some who’ve seen enough are looking for new digs in Argentina. I’m guessing the real estate market there will see boom times as others follow. As long as the data centers don’t get there first.

The sinking spectacle is so obvious that it feels like most have started to ignore the water rising around their ankles, hoping they develop webbing between their toes. Those still shocked seem to be adopting a wait it out attitude. That makes some sense. There’s nothing really to be done until he’s no longer on the planet. Although I do have my doubts that his courtiers will even announce that he’s gone once he passes, out of fear for their own lives. We might even get a new definition of what death is. We’ll all be living through a Death of Stalin moment. Which is a shame because that movie was actually a good one. And funny. Watch it and see that part of our future.

Or just read The Emperor’s New Clothes. Not for anything new. There’s no insight to be gleaned with your eyes shut or turned away from what we’re seeing. But it’s better than watching the literal decay displayed daily on some screen or the other.

One day there’s going to be a large cleanup on aisle six. It will probably be as messy as it is glorious.

Two Weeks and Pinky Promises

Promises, promises

Two weeks. We’re all more familiar than we’d like to be with Donald Trump’s announcing anything and telling us it will manifest in two weeks. It’s become a joke worth laughing at, but without a punch line. It’s become mundane.

Two hands joined in a pinky promised. Photo by Olivia anne snyder wT_BwKOeEik unsplash.

We’ve also become accustomed to hearing promises from tech companies, that a safer and perhaps smarter course of action is to look askance with a skeptical eye, or perhaps turn a deaf ear. Autonomous driving is one of those, (as is anything Elon Musk promotes) and so too are most of the promises about achieving some sort of Generative Artificial Intelligence that might lead us all into some future where we all don’t have to work, money becomes no object, and all of our problems are solved. Let’s not forget curing cancer.

If we’re standing in the “foothills of the singularity,” I’m guessing those enjoying that view drove there instead of climbed.

It’s one thing for politicians and anyone trying to sell a product to make promises. It’s quite another when the world’s economy turns on the hype, yet never seems to suffer ill effects when deadlines are missed, ignored, or just punted down the road again and again.

Apple caught much deserved grief over its Apple Intelligence promises in 2024, as of yet still unrealized. But that seems to be one of the rare occasions when failure actually left a mark. Even so, that gigantic mistake seems to be have been quickly forgotten. It certainly doesn’t seem to have affected Apple’s bottom line. Even a class action settlement between Apple and those who bought into the promise when they bought a new iPhone doesn’t seem to have caused much of a ripple.

Even when software products are released, it feels like we’re too often in a perpetual beta, always waiting for the next update. When it comes to AI, there are so many bets being made on it being our future, even with all of the products today warning us that they are imperfect and capable of mistakes. When will someone pushing that hype tells us that those warnings will one day be gone? I’m guessing never. At least if the lawyers have a say.

I guess I’m showing my age when I say I grew up in a time when if you announced a product you were judged on whether or not you delivered. If you didn’t, how you handled the broken promise mattered.

They say all good things come to those who wait. These days there are times when I wonder if any of it is worth any of the wait. The promises sure aren’t.

(Image from Olivia Anne Synder on Unsplash)

Sunday Morning Reading

Wandering through the Internet, disregarding along the way

We live in interesting times. I’m spending a lot of my time being interested in watching my grandkids develop, and watching everything around how I thought they might grow up change. In my opinion, change not necessarily for the better. They won’t know what things changed from necessarily, unless they choose to look into it. That assumes they’ll be able to do so the way we can now. I have my doubts about that. Regardless, that’s tomorrow. Here are some links to share in this edition of Sunday Morning Reading.

A close-up photograph captures a bronze statue of a young boy sitting on a stone bench outdoors, absorbed in reading a book.

Terry Godier says the Internet is dying. I’m not sure if it’s dying, morphing, collapsing in on itself, or just in the midst of growing pains, but I take the point. Check out The Boring Internet. (That’s a link to the text version. There’s also an animated version here. Quite nicely done.

JA Westenberg believes Nobody Is Destined For Greatness. I happen to agree. Shakespeare gave his greatest comic villain, Malvolio, lines about being born great. I wish I could label our current day villains as comic. Perhaps one day.

Derek Sivers reminds us that Geography Is Four-Dimensional. How true. There’s a reason Shakespeare more often than not capitalized the word “Time.”

Stories about religion occasionally get shared here. Mostly they are stories about how it’s really not religion, but a cover for grift and abuse. This is one of those. He Remade The Southern Baptist Convention In His Image. Then Came The Abuse Allegations by Robert Downen chronicles yet another of those tales we seem to hear far too frequently these days.

For another take involving religion, check out Neil Steinberg’s Being Formed By Christians Does Not A Christian Make. He quotes Thomas Jefferson’s “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” I’m not sure we can say either of those things any more.

There was a bit of a funny fracas after Google’s all in on AI announcements this week at its annual I/O conference. Apparently for a short time after Google announced big changes to Search, you could not Google the word “disregard” and expect the usual quick definition. Google quickly fixed that. The root of the problem? “Disregard” is an AI command that you have to put in a prompt to keep the AI demons from you know, making a mistake. Check out Russell Brandom’s quick story, You Can No Longer Google the Word ‘Disregard.’

Speaking of Artificial Intelligence, the talk is all about agents. (Actually that’s been the talk for a while, the volume is just increasing.) Hayden Field thinks If Google Can’t Make AI Agents Useful, Maybe No One Can. FWIW, I think Hayden is spot on.

In an article The Economist credits as anonymous, someone thinks Vladimir Putin Is Losing His Grip On Russia. Perhaps that’s true. I don’t know about you, but I’m as tired of hearing about autocratic oligarchs losing their grip as I am about hearing all of the promises about generative AI and autonomous driving being just around the corner.