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Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of September 14
This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.
This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.
The Supreme Court rejects Trump's mail voting restrictions for this year's midterms
I think I speak for a lot of us here when I say:
THANK FUCK
USPS attempts to reject an entire county's ballots because of a .35mm difference in spacing
"Leon County, Florida’s mail ballot envelope design placed the words “return service requested” 0.236 inches away from its election office’s return address, when it was supposed to be a quarter-inch, leading the USPS to reject it." Leon County, FL also happens to be over 30% African American, over 40% non-white and has historically voted Democrat.
I guess we're fucked, then...
Mike Johnson's 'Aww shucks, we can't keep up with these kids. We'd all be better off with them regulating themselves,' response really puts a fine point on the governing side of conservative politics in the 21st century. A stark contrast from the alternative views expressed by Lina Khan this weekend.
I can't wait for us to go full-blown Don't Look Up and address the issue by sending Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jesse Ventura, and a couple of sawed-off shotguns to a random data center in rural Indiana.
I think we need some kind of organization to regulate the AI industry and it looks like it's going to be the AI industry itself by default. That is, assuming they're allowed to form an organization.
I wouldn't trust an AI industry organization very far, but they're still less likely to screw it up than the Trump administration. It would be better than nothing.
The sad part is, who would represent ordinary people's interests in such an organization, if not governments?
To quote Andy Weir, "I'm pretty much fucked. That's my considered opinion. Fucked."
This amazing headline is the top news article everywhere.
I find China's take more curious...
China’s Top Spy Chief Warns A.I. Is a Threat to Party Rule
Even as Beijing urges the United States not to hype the dangers of A.I., its own spy chief is framing the technology as a threat to the Communist Party’s security.
I'd fully expect it to be in line for China to call a lot of things "threat[s] to the Communist Party's security," truth be told.
While I wouldn't mind frontier AI regulation, I don't see how to do it without giving China an edge, which could national interests or security, at least enough to bother other political insiders. We'd have to negotiate with them, and right now neither side's leaders seem interested (at least those I'm aware of).
It's an interesting open question how much of China's AI progress is their own innovation, and how much is distillation of the latest western models. If it's mostly distillation, slowing down American companies would also slow down Chinese ones. Kind of high stakes to be taking a guess at, but if our intelligence agencies were led better maybe we wouldn't have to be guessing.
In some sense, yeah, but it depends in what way you figure we're fucked.
If you're worried about AI being "too dangerous" as Musk, Altman and Amodei have claimed, you shouldn't. LLMs are not going to become smart as humans/sentient/hack everything/whatever drivel they claim — they just want to make their tech look powerful so they look powerful by extension. We'll be fine.
If you're worried about AI causing upheavals in the economy, or a huge dot-com-like bubble pop, or widespread job loss, you've got much firmer ground for your concerns. I'm of the opinion that AI is a tech that (if not for the harms) would be filed under "very cool but not very useful," and I still believe this'll happen. Much of that has already occurred, simply because people in power believe in the tech.
Either way, regulation is necessary. It's just a question of what kind, and that's not much of a question to bother asking when the current admin is run by a despot who only cares to back up his cronies.
It was a response to the original headline (which they probably changed because everyone else was using the same general headline) where he said that all it takes is a smart (HIGH IQ) president.
Ah, gotcha. Honestly, that part is one I found kinda hilarious, in a "confidence would be quiet" way.