AI, particularly this new round of large language models, scares me on behalf of society and the future. I don’t just say that because it’s transformative. I don’t say that as a generic warning that we haven’t considered the consequences (as in this XKCD comic). No, I have specific consequences in mind, consequences that I have considered, and I am rather worried about them! They are not so much problems about the technology itself, but about how we use it, and specifically how we use it on a societal, economy-wide scale.

I was Googling for sources about nuclear power for my new political views garden, and I came across the following statement in reference to nuclear waste: I know that burning fossil fuels is bad, but we can’t just start another problem just because we can’t fix the first one. I’m not trying to single out the person who wrote this (and therefore no link, and the quote has been edited for spelling and grammar which I hope has rendered it un-Googleable), but I do want to respond, generally, to the sentiment, which I think is unfortunately common.

US politics continue to be interesting. As many of you know, the Colorado Supreme Court has recently ruled that Donald Trump should be struck from the ballot in Colorado. Under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, if you’ve sworn to support the Constitution, and then engaged in (or “given aid or comfort to”) an insurrection, you are no longer eligible to serve in office. The Colorado Supreme Court applied this law to Trump, citing the Capitol attack of January 6, 2021.

So you might or might not be aware about the debt ceiling argument currently taking place in the US. I’ve already written about this, but President Biden for some reason didn’t listen to me (perhaps because he doesn’t read my blog – which is disappointing). Other, more famous people have written about it too,, but the President insists on pretending he has to make a deal with the Republicans. So, to catch everyone up, here’s how this all works.

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. US Constitution, 14th Amendment, Section 4 The debt ceiling is unconstitutional. We’ve let the Republicans play their games for long enough, in the interest of “stability of the economy” and a general fear of rocking the boat, but that time is over now.

Even early last week, before restaurants were closed, before we were banned from unnecessary gatherings, when many people still had to go into their office jobs, the bars were empty on my street. I walked into one, ordered a cocktail, asked the bartender why it was so slow. It was usually slow on Tuesdays, of course, but normally there was at least one other customer. But the pandemic had already scared everyone else away, and if it continued, the bar would surely have to close.

A common trope within left-leaning American circles is to claim that the US is the only “developed” or “industrial” or “major” or “first world” country to not have X, where X is usually something like “publicly funded health care” or “government-guaranteed paid family leave” or similar. Recently this came up with Bernie Sanders and his common refrain that the US was the only “major” country to not guarantee health care as a human right.