Safety regulations by AI

Yes, I’ve been watching team, dance, and men’s figure skating all this past week. Tonight starts pairs, followed by women’s this week. I’ve been enjoying it very much. I’m thinking about how to portray the stats from the men’s long program results in which the fifth place guy (Mikail Shaidrov of Kazakhstan) ended up in first place (yes, his long program was flawless and beautiful), the second place guy (Yuma Kagiyama of Japan) bobbled a bit to keep second place, the ninth place guy (Shun Sato of Japan) ended up in third, and the first place guy (Ilia Malinin of the US, known as the Quad God) took eighth, well off the medals. I watched Malinin’s performance and his many stumbles and quad jumps that weren’t four rotations. Perhaps calling him the Quad God (he even wore a t-shirt with that on it) was too much stress. When watching these performances I wonder would they be more or less beautiful if the skaters did it because they loved what they do and the joy they give viewers and didn’t get scored or ranked? Back towards the end of January Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Daily Kos included a five minute video of Rachel Maddow discussing the protests of the ICE operations in Minneapolis. This was shortly after Alex Pretti was murdered. Her main idea is this: The people who are against democracy and in favor of the nasty guy as dictator believe they will win with intimidation, with guns, and through war. The people who believe in saving democracy, who declare “No Kings,” will win through flexing democracy, through speech, protest, and political power. A week ago Alexander Shur and the staff of Votebeat in an article posted on Kos discussed the nasty guy’s call to Republicans to “nationalize the voting” and “take over the voting in at least 15 places.” Thankfully, there are some Republicans who are pushing back, including from Senate Majority Leader John Thune.

Election officials say the lesson of 2020 was not that the system is invulnerable, but that it can be strained in ways that cause lasting damage long before courts step in. While it’s unclear whether Trump’s latest demands — and possible future actions— would lead to the same level of disruption, legal experts say some of the backstops that ultimately stopped him last time are now weaker, leaving election officials to absorb even more pressure.

Some election officials are stressing transparency, showing in real time the rules are being followed exactly. But that doesn’t help with the skeptic that say, “I don’t believe you.” Also, they recognize the assault is coming to more than the local jurisdiction. Another danger this year is the “charlatans” who created a business model of spreading conspiracy theories for profit. Election officials are also dealing with death threats. They’ve had to enhance security, yet turnover has increased dramatically. Members of the administration that pushed back against the claims of fraud in 2020 are not there this time. Courts are a great line of defense and have already halted many of the nasty guy’s election policies. But court challenges take time and “untold damage” can happen to public trust and public officials before their ruling. That gap is the current risk.

“It’s up to us to choose to believe him or not,” [said Justin Levitt, an election law professor at Loyola Marymount University]. Obedience in advance isn’t required, and treating Trump’s claims as commands would grant him authority he does not have, Levitt said, adding, “We have agency in this.”

Also towards the end of January (yeah, this is a chance to get browser tabs that have sat for a while) Lisa Needham of Kos reported that the Department of Transportation updated safety regulations by letting an AI write them. That should be good enough.

While [DOT’s top lawyer Gregory] Zerzan might just want “good enough,” most people actually do want the perfect rule when it comes to transportation safety. Regrettably, as ProPublica described, Zerzan “appeared interested mainly in the quantity of regulations that AI could produce, not their quality.” ... This is, to be blunt, terrifying. It’s not just the blind faith that somehow Google’s glorified chatbot is more knowledgeable than an entire agency of specialized experts, but also that complex safety regulations can just be generated in seconds.

This isn’t just DOT and Zerzan. The nasty guy, after firing a lot of employees, has talked about AI replacing everything. Nothing will go wrong! Especially if it is Musk’s Grok AI. A month ago Oliver Willis of Kos wrote that the nasty guy has been talking about America First. But the country that benefits the most from his policies is not the US, but China. China may have started surging ahead before the nasty guy took office, but he has made America’s competitive advantage worse and has paid more attention to is ballroom than doing anything about China. Also from a month ago is a cartoon from Clay Jones. About that time the nasty guy had commented that the only this that would constrain him is his own morality. So Jones reviews his morality: He was pals with Epstein (details still TBD), stole from a fake charity, grifted students through his fake university, weaponized the DoJ against his enemies, and monetized the Oval Office. Yeah, we understand his morality and how little that would deter him from anything. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Carron J. Phillips of The Contrarian on Substack discussing the nasty guy’s racist posts about the Obamas.

Too often, the oppressed are asked to address their oppression, instead of the oppressed hearing from those who have the privilege of being unscathed. We see this a lot when it comes to activism in sports, which is why it was so refreshing to see a bevy of white American athletes being asked about the state of America during the Winter Olympics.

Those white American athletes declaring their opposition to the nasty guy’s policies are really annoying conservatives. Which is good. In the comments paulpro posted a meme:

Two things Republicans hate: 1. Being called racist. 2. Black people.