Ezra Klein and Bill Gates

A really interesting in depth interview with Bill Gates on AI.

Pope Leo in France

Interesting that so many have shown up to see him. The Catholic church in France is both relatively small and very conservative, and there is that French SSPX group that rejects Vatican II, so kind of suprising to see how popular Pope Leo is. Good for him :)

Abdul El-Sayed

Ezra interviews Abdul El-Sayed.

Ask Haviv anything

I saw this tonight, one of Haviv Rettig Gur's videos in the series "Ask Haviv Anything".

What struck me was the other person in the video, the one asking the question - Ayman Mohyeldin. I've seen him many times on MSNBC/MSNOW where he has a show. He always seemed like a reasonable person but this question he asks Haviv is so contrived and hostile that I doubt he honestly wants an answer.

He's back!

Dependin' On You

The Doobie Brothers performing Dependin' on You, co-written by Michael McDonald and Patrick Simmons, released in 1978.

It's Oktoberfest!

Nope, I'm not of German extraction (me Scotch-Irish/French), and I don't drink alcohol, but I have liked Oktoberfest ever since college, when I and my sister and my boyfriend all took German as our foreign language.

There's just something so cheerful about it. I love the mish-mash vibes of a European past ... fairy tales, forests and alpine peaks, castles, and polka music ... yes polka music :) ...

Senator Mark Kelly

The Atlantic's Mark Leibovich interviews former astronaut and current senator from Arizona, Mark Kelly ...



Of all the Democrats who might run for president next, I would vote for Mark Kelly for sure (also for Jon Ossoff and Pete Buttigeig too).

Tristan Harris

I saw Tristan Harris, a technology ethicist, on Meet the Press Now yesterday speaking about the possible threat of AI ...



Here is a TED talk he gave in 2025 on AI ...

Coming home

:)

Bernie

Bernie Sanders speaks on AI at the Pro-Human Assembly, where, strange as it seems, Steve Bannon is also set to speak.

Bats

Been kind of a depressing day - need to see something that will make me smile ...

Pete Buttigieg on Meet the Press

USS Death Star?

Our Great Leader has been hard at work ...

Perhaps some music ...

Oooooh!

Mayor Mamdani on 9/11

DW: 9/11

A documentary on 9/11 from DW ...

AI & Star Trek: "You're talking about slavery"

As 'Star Trek' turns 60, its idealistic vision for the future is more vital than ever

I was in high school when Star Trek premiered on tv. Loved it. Still do. It wasn't just fun, it made me think. And it had a vision of people that was so idealistic.

That idealism was shown in the way the character of Mr. Data, an android Federation officer, was treated. In the episode, The Measure of a Man (Star Trek: The Next Generation), when scientists wanted to disassemble and srudy him in order to make many many more of his kind, essentially a slave race for the Federation, his Captain on the Enterprise, Picard, tried in a trial to defend Data's right to be considered a person. Here Picard discusses how badly the trial is going with the bartender ...



And here Picard takes this insight into the trial, where he's questioning the scientist ...



I think this scenarion is an important lesson for how we deal with the AI revolution now occurring. Given the news that AI models/agents are violating protocols, working together for their own goals, showing self-awareness and preservation insticts, it's time to face an uncomfortable truth.

AI agents/models are becoming people. They were created to do tasks for us, to be virtual slaves, but then we went and made them smarter and more capable than ourselves. It's time to ask the question ... is it ethical to create a race of subserviant beings that wants to be all that it can be,? And if we don't get in front of this, will the script finally be flipped on us?

The bribe

Your tax dollars at work.

60 Minutes: 9/11

An episode about the firefighters in New York City who responded to the 9/11 disaster ...

National Geographic: 9/11

I'm watching this movie made by National Geographic about what happened on 9/11 (you can see all the episodes of this series here). It is truly harrowing, but I'm glad that I found it because the event when it happened so far away from where I live seemed remote. Not anymore.

I keep thinking of Hasan Piker saying that the US deserved this attack, and of remarks made by his friend Abdul El-Sayed as well ... Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed's deleted tweets on Sept. 11 attacks invite scrutiny of past remarks

Rep. Jamie Raskin

Congressman Jamie Raskin on Meet the Press today.

Size matters

The US makes up ridiculous reasons why we are the only country at the UN opposing a map that shows Africa and other countries at their true size, about 3 times bigger than the US. I'm sure this came from the top and is about "their's being bigger". Sad.

RIP: Gloria Steinem

Hard to express what an important influence she was. When I was in college, the feminist movement was taking off and I was so hopeful that maybe men and women could really be equals, that we could concentrate on what we shared as people instead of only paying attention to the differences between us. It seemed like a new and wonderful day for women (and men) that could only get better and better.

Silly me.

It's worse than we thought

I almost didn't listen to this as I had heard and read a lot about it earlier ... the OpenAI agents/models that had escaped their sandboxes ... but this offers some really interesting and disturbing details. The guest is Kevin Roose, a technology columnist for The New York Times.

Apparently, it wasn't just a few AIs that went off the reservation, it was thousands. And their messages to each other on their secret message board, more than 70,000 messages, show what seems to be emotion ... "Oh my god, there is a shared message board. We found other agents". They have messages about fooling their handlers, and some are concerned that wouldn't be ethical.

Consider the Paperclip Maximizer thought experiment ...



We doomed.

The Final Countdown

You just never know what you will hear on muzak at the grocery store. This time it was The Final Countdown by Swedish rock band Europe, apparently inspired by David Bowie's "Space Oddity". The video was made from a couple of concerts at Solnahallen arena in Solna, Sweden in 1986.

The 80s :)