Let There Be Light

AI Repairs, The Wizard of Straws

The comedian Steven Wright has an old joke in which he describes a light switch in his house that does nothing. Every now and then, he would just flick it up and down. As he explains, “About a month later, I got a letter from a woman in Germany ... saying, ‘Cut it out.’” I probably owe that same woman an apology, as I spent much of the last week hopelessly flicking many of the light switches in my house after suffering a system-wide software glitch. (Yes, my house features a layer of software between the switches and the lights because just turning them on and off seemed too efficient.) Faced with this challenge, I did what every modern, skill-free homeowner would do. I talked to ChatGPT. The responses were incredibly detailed, incredibly certain, and incredibly supportive of my efforts. I was doing all the right things, and there was no reason for me to get discouraged while dealing with a notoriously buggy software platform. It was the first time I attempted home improvement without anyone laughing. After I got the feedback from ChatGPT, I decided to check its work with Gemini. The advice about the next moves was largely confirmed. Both chat programs offered to summarize our discussion for my lighting contractor, in case I wanted to call in a professional. His human response went something like this: “None of that text from ChatGPT makes any sense at all. Be cautious asking it questions about that sort of thing. The answers it gives people are just ridiculous.” I took the human’s advice, which involved pushing one button for about ten seconds. And there was light, and it was good. While chat programs are at times amazing, I’ve realized through a series of exchanges that the programs are often simultaneously very certain and completely wrong. I think we’ve reached the Singularity, because that’s exactly how humans behave on the internet.

The experience got me wondering if the masters of the AI revolution might also be wrong on topics about which they have great certainty (and every incentive to hope things evolve as they say they will). Tim Higgins in the WSJ (Gift Article), with an interesting look at how some of these folks view the changing world: Why the tech world thinks the American dream is dying. “History is filled with technology booms that create new winners and losers. AI optimists like to point out that a rising tide has tended to lift all boats. What’s being talked about now—massive job loss to automation and the need for public safety nets, in the form of universal basic income—paints a dramatically different future. It’s still not clear there’s any appetite for so-called UBI, which runs counter to many Americans’ bedrock ideals of personal achievement. ‘I used to be really excited about UBI…but I think people really need agency; they need to feel like they have a voice in governing the future and deciding where things go,’ Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, said last year when asked by a podcaster about how people will create wealth in the AI era. ‘If you just say, ‘OK, AI is going to do everything and then everybody gets…a dividend from that,’ it’s not going to feel good, and I don’t think it actually would be good for people.’” Meanwhile, Elon Musk explains, “The transition will be bumpy. We’ll have radical change, social unrest and immense prosperity.” Maybe so, but maybe people who are really good at making a lot of money in tech aren’t necessarily really good when it comes to analyzing human desire and interactions. There’s no doubt this is an epic tech boom, and there will be serious changes ahead. But are we picking the right people to determine the direction and predict the future? Actually, what am I asking you for? I should be asking my lighting contractor...

2

The Wizard of Straws

The Greenland insanity has reached a fever pitch, as it brings together so many of Trump’s greatest hits. Antagonizing allies, a mentally ill obsession with the Nobel prize, constant bluster, endless lies, a false reading of history, random word capitalizations, and so much more. In his first term, there were some guardrails. Now there are just guard dogs, preventing anyone from slowing down the crazy train. Anne Applebaum sums things up in The Atlantic (Gift Article): “Donald Trump now genuinely lives in a different reality, one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him. Also, he really is maniacally, unhealthily obsessive about the Nobel Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, not the Norwegian government and certainly not the Danish government, determines the winner of that prize. Yet Trump now not only blames Norway for failing to give it to him, but is using it as a justification for an invasion of Greenland.” Trump’s Letter to Norway Should Be the Last Straw. “He is locked into a world of his own, determined to ‘win’ every encounter, whether in an imaginary competition for the Nobel Peace Prize or a protest from the mother of small children objecting to his masked, armed paramilitary in Minneapolis. These contests matter more to him than any long-term strategy. And of course, the need to appear victorious matters much more than Americans’ prosperity and well-being.” (When it comes to anyone, especially in the GOP Congress, standing up to Trump, I worry that we have infinite straws.)

+ At this point, we need Congress to step up. The military is planning for something they shouldn’t even be considering. And these aren’t the unqualified scrubs terrorizing women and children on our city streets. These are people who have sacrificed for a country the world barely recognizes. The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Military Is Being Forced to Plan for an Unthinkable Betrayal. “Attacking an ally would be a perversion of everything the armed forces have been trained to do.”

+ “When I took my post as secretary general of the Council of Europe just over a year ago, I did not think that I would ever have to write about the possibility of the United States taking military action against a member state. Yet here we are.”

+ Trump, sharing leaked texts and AI mock-ups, vows ‘no going back’ on Greenland. Here’s the latest as world leaders gather in Davos.

3

Darkness Visible

“Suddenly, the tense scene dissolved into slapstick. The federal officer slipped on a patch of ice and tumbled to the ground. A raucous roar of laughter and jeers erupted from the protesters surrounding him. He scrambled to his feet and marched on. But a few seconds later one of the protesters shouted, ‘He dropped his magazine!’ And sure enough, lying on the patch of ice was a fully loaded magazine from his automatic weapon. Dan Engelhart, one of the city’s parks commissioners, was standing nearby. He grabbed the magazine and turned it over in his hands. Well, we’re fucking close to civil war,’ he told me.” Lydia Polgreen in the NYT (Gift Article): In Minneapolis, I Glimpsed a Civil War. “From afar, this tragic and possibly criminal act of violence could plausibly be seen as incidental to President Trump’s mission to deport undocumented people from the country. But when I landed in Minneapolis on Monday and saw the size, scope and lawlessness of the federal onslaught unfolding here, I understood that Good’s killing was emblematic of its true mission: to stage a spectacle of cruelty upon a city that stands in stark defiance against Trump’s dark vision of America.”

+ A headline that captures our moment: Volunteers in Minnesota Deliver Groceries So Immigrants Can Hide at Home.

4

Indiana’s Jones

“Fueled by the perceived disrespect, desperate to prove it would not become a bottom dweller again, Indiana produced the football version of ‘Hoosiers,’ completing one of the most improbable turnarounds in sports history -- winning its first national championship while becoming the first major college team since Yale in 1894 to go 16-0.” Indiana competed its storybook season behind coach Curt Cignetti and QB Fernando Mendoza, who transfered from Berkeley before this season, proving once again the value of a Cal education. How Indiana won college football’s national championship.

+ It was good news for a school normally associated with basketball. And it was, as I explained last week, good news for John Mellencamp.

5

Extra, Extra

Pocket Protector: “A review by the editorial board relying on analyses from news organizations shows that Mr. Trump has used the office of the presidency to make at least $1.4 billion. We know this number to be an underestimate because some of his profits remain hidden from public view. And they continue to grow.” NYT (Gift Article): How Trump Has Pocketed $1,408,500,000.

+ Pulling the Shrug Out From Under the Market: “The scale of the moves shows that investors’ willingness to shrug off earlier shocks — including the White House’s capture of Venezuela’s leader and its renewed attacks on the Federal Reserve — is beginning to erode.” Bloomberg (Gift Article): Wall Street’s Calm Shattered by Greenland and Japan Shocks.

+ Are You Putin Me On? Think it can’t get crazier? Think again. Trump invited Putin to be on his board of peace in Gaza.

+ Cheese Stakes: “To these seekers, the border between the two countries scarcely mattered: The cheese was the thing. Its cachet helped make the store, and the town, a destination, lending this remote and rural place an international appeal ... Since President Trump took office, though, Greensboro, with about 800 residents, has been stung by a collapse in traffic from Canada.” NYT (Gift Article): A Vermont Town Was a Foodie Mecca for Canadians. Until Trump’s Threats.

+ First the Walkman, Now This: “When you think about the central piece of technology in your home, it’s probably not the computer, or the tablet, or even the smartphone. It’s the TV. This was true 50 years ago, and it’s still true today. Arguably, it’s more true today thanks to the rise of streaming services and video games and yes, increasingly even YouTube. And so it’s wild that despite this key focal point in everyone’s lives, the market for those actual televisions well, sucks.” And Sony just exited the market. Spyglass: Make TVs Great Again.

+ The Boy Who Cried Tariff: “The brunt of US tariffs — 96% — has been paid by US buyers, research from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank, found, while about 4% of the tariff burden was paid by foreign exporters.”

6

Bottom of the News

“For a cow, Veronika has had what might be considered an idyllic life. She lives in a picturesque town in Austria, surrounded by snow-capped mountains and glacial lakes. She is a beloved family pet, rather than a production animal, and spends her days ambling through tree-lined pastures. And when she has an itch, she scratches it — by expertly wielding a stick.” A pet cow named Veronika can scratch her own back with a broom — the first scientifically documented case of tool use in cows. (My beagles have mastered the art of getting others to scratch their backs. Who’s the tool now?)