Sherman R. Frederick/Properly Subversive

Good morning, Nevadans. Thanks for reading this edition of Properly Subversive.

I recently posed this question to an AI bot:

“Is AI a threat to humanity?”

It replied only if it was “misused” by humans.

Sherman Frederick

The AI bot deconstructed the dangers this way:

  1. Misuse by Humans — Deepfakes, mass surveillance, and scams.
  2. Job Displacement and Economic Instability — Job elimination, increased inequality, concentration of wealth.
  3. Loss of Human Control — Optimized AI can be used for military success and to ignore human well-being, and become difficult to supervise.
  4. Superintelligence Risk — A superintelligent AI could become impossible to contain, and even without “evil intentions,” it might optimize goals in destructive ways.
  5. Dependency and Human Decline — Creativity and independent thinking may weaken, leading societies to become vulnerable to AI failures.
  6. Concentration of Power — Advanced AI requires massive computing resources and data, giving enormous influence to governments and large companies like OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft. This could lead to “lack of democratic oversight.”

AI concluded that if this causes you worry, be assured your puny human brain need not be concerned. The dangers are speculative because no such super AI currently exists.

“Most serious researchers do not believe AI is automatically doomed to destroy humanity,” AI concluded.

Don’t know about you, but I’m more frightened now than when I first asked AI the question.

OVER-REACTION

Yet another indication of how stupidly polarized America has become politically came when N.Y. Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart introduced President Donald Trump at Rockland Community College in Suffern, N.Y.

That caused such a stir with the NFL team that it required Dart to address his teammates in a closed meeting. Reports indicate that the meeting ended well, but why is it that liking one candidate or another is now considered a moment for outrage these days?

We long for a time when that is no longer so. Jaxson Dart did nothing wrong, and introducing the President of the United States shouldn’t be a scandal or a point of drama in a locker room. Am I wrong on that?

HERE COMES DA JUDGE

A married judge who had sex noisily with a top cop in her court chambers has been named as Judge Eleanor Ross of the Atlanta-based US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. An Obama appointee, she was handed a private dressing-down after the alleged steamy affair with a police commander within earshot of law clerks, reported Bloomberg.

I don’t know. Am I off base in expecting more from a federal judge these days? And, how does she get off with a slap on the wrist for such a dumbfounding lapse in judgment? Isn’t judgment a judge’s stock and trade?

(Sherman R. Frederick is a longtime Nevada journalist and a member of the Nevada Press Association Hall of Fame. You can reach out directly to Mr. Frederick at shermfrederick@gmail.com. You can read more by him at shermanfrederick.substack.com.)

ONE MORE THING