State of the Discussion

First up: What alternative platforms are there? What are their strengths and weaknesses? FYI, both obsidianwings.org and obsidianwings.com appear to be available. So, if we get some blogging software, we can create our own website and run it there. Just a thought.
Second: how do we migrate to whatever new platform we (probably meaning lj) decide on? I believe Michael Cain has already worked out how to back up our past posts and comments. Perhaps he has some insights and advice on the transition.
Third: Is there anything we can do to alert long time but infrequent users as to what is happening and where we are going? Maybe a way to strip email addresses from a couple of decades of comments? Granted, it's a "nice to have" but it would be nice.
If whatever new platform we end up on charges, who pays for it? If we create our own site, the annual registration isn't that much. But if we go again with a commercial platform it might be.
Just a few thoughts off the top of my head.

CharlesWT - It usually provides links to its sources. I'll have to add a source links requirement to the prompt.
Links to sources would be helpful, but the deeper issue of transparency involves the selection criteria that results in those sources being included. It's one of the questions I routinely ask my lower division undergraduate students when it comes to their own papers: "what purpose does this citation serve in developing an understanding of the critical perspective from which you are writing?"
Newfield addresses this deeper sense of transparency in the article intro where he writes: "At the same time, critics have identified a set of operational flaws in the ML and deep learning systems now discussed under the “AI” banner. Four of the most discussed are social biases, particularly racism, that become part of both the model and its use; opacity, such that users cannot assess how results were generated; coercion, in that architectures, datasets, algorithms, and the like are controlled by designers and platforms rather than users; and privacy violations, which result from combinations of bias, opacity, and coercion focused on the surveillance, accumulation, and monetization of data. What I'm pointing to here falls under the second and third operational flaws. We don't know why the LLM chose these particular points to amplify. They are as opaque to us as the proprietary systems by which search results get ordered on search engines.
The lack of epistemological and methodological awareness are a deep problem, and these are the reasons why I scoff at Altman's comparison of the latest iteration of ChatGPT as being like interacting with an expert with a Ph.D.. The lack of these deeper levels of awareness are more a marker of someone much earlier in their intellectual development.

ij - sounds like you are thinking through some of the issues that Christopher Newfield discusses in his Critical AI article "How to Make 'AI' Intelligent; or, The Question of Epistemic Equality." [https://doi.org/10.1215/2834703X-10734076] I don't see that the article is open access, so I'll excerpt a chunk of the intro here to give y'all a sense of what Newfield is arguing...
In this article I will not provide a historical account of how AI research in its various iterations has alleged rather than specified the intelligence it aims to simulate. Instead, I will first suggest why it is so hard for most technologists and the officials they influence to care about rigorous definitions of intelligence before they attribute it to software. I will then analyze one philosopher's rigorous definition for its implications for current debates about AI.
Some of the problem is the size and wealth of the corporate platforms that have dominated the internet and its opportunities for data accumulation and that now want to dominate “AI.” But there is also a deeper and more difficult cultural problem, and that is the highly restricted role of culture itself, or the role of cultural analysis of technology. There have been frequent periods when technologists are able, intentionally or not, to keep cultural analysis from having coauthorship of the meaning, operations, and effects of the technology or of narratives of its future. “The Age of AI” is one of those periods when practitioners who bring culturally grounded skepticism to technological development are less likely to be treated as equal partners than to find themselves unemployed, as did computer scientist Timnit Gebru in 2020 (Simonite 2020a, 2020b).
This is happening in spite of the fact that the long history of asking “What is intelligence?” also belongs to historical and cultural disciplines—philosophy obviously, but also to feminist studies, which radicalized the context dependence of knowledge in standpoint theory, and ethnic studies, which demonstrated the role of ascribed race in structuring epistemological frameworks, just to name two of the many domains of philosophically informed cultural research. Of course major contributions to this question have been made by scientists and technologists, but these have been boundary crossers, traveling back and forth between cultural and technological disciplines and bringing their procedures and findings together. There is much discourse from practitioners affiliated with AI-labeled technology about the technology's power to benefit all humanity. This is not the same as a full discussion among epistemic equals about whether this assertion is actually true, whether our diverse societies want it to be, and what would make it true in ways that diverse societies might want.
This is a deep, complicated, and massively multilateral conversation that will take years or decades. It requires much better public education processes than what we see today in the mainstream media.1 It means continuous travel of informed people among multiple disciplines and synthesis of disparate methods and their results. This is not happening. AI discourse is largely a question of when, not if, and it assumes that technologies will be pushed out to the consuming masses by large corporations and the start-ups they fund on a schedule that they determine. A (problematic) call for a pause in AI research presumed that the revolution of superior machine intelligence is here and that proper management ensures an unspecified flourishing future (Future of Life Institute 2023).2 AI discourse often functions as a manifest destiny about which great minds are said to agree.
At the same time, critics have identified a set of operational flaws in the ML and deep learning systems now discussed under the “AI” banner. Four of the most discussed are social biases, particularly racism, that become part of both the model and its use; opacity, such that users cannot assess how results were generated; coercion, in that architectures, datasets, algorithms, and the like are controlled by designers and platforms rather than users; and privacy violations, which result from combinations of bias, opacity, and coercion focused on the surveillance, accumulation, and monetization of data.
Readers of Critical AI are among those increasingly focused on a fifth operational flaw: much ML research takes place in companies like Google, in which managers have authority over the publication of research results. Famous cases like the one I mentioned above, the firing of Google ethics researcher Timnit Gebru (and her co-lead Margaret Mitchell), suggest that much or most AI research is happening in the absence of academic freedom, which puts researchers at risk while also distorting research results by allowing the suppression of findings that don't fit a rollout narrative or corporate image. Corporate manipulation of research results is a known issue thanks to the automotive, tobacco, chemicals, and fossil fuel industries, among others.
Then there is a sixth issue that I'm considering here—the question of whether “AI” is intelligent in the first place. And there is the related question of why this sixth question is not central to public AI debates.
Reflecting on the work of two authors can help us address these underexamined questions. The first is C. P. Snow and his famous meditations on the divide between “Two Cultures” (which Snow described as scientific vs. literary outlooks but which I will discuss in terms of technological vs. cultural knowledge). The second is programmer and philosopher Brian Cantwell Smith's recent analysis in The Promise of Artificial Intelligence (2019) of two kinds of intelligence: reckoning and judgment. Smith sheds light on the mentality that the editors of this special issue identify as data positivism, but which Smith's notion of “reckoning” helps me talk about more explicitly as computational intelligence of a certain kind. Snow helps explain why culture-based understandings of intelligence are not part of the current debate, and Smith shows what can happen when they are. Although Snow did not intend to, he helped take humanities disciplines out of the future-defining process for several generations. Smith offers us ways of putting them back in.
In the body of the article Newfield fleshes out these points a lot and settles into a discussion of intelligence as not just a matter of number crunching and pattern recognition ('reckoning') but also of what Smith (mentioned above) calls 'registration' (a situated perception of the world and the reckoner's place in that system) and also of judgment (which I will gloss as a commitment to reconciling reckoning and registration in order to test and negotiate a shared understanding that fits both the data and the human relationships that are entangled/implicated in that data, or as Newman interprets Smith: "'The system (knower) must be committed to the known, for starters. That is part of the deference' in which one defers to the object in order to know it. But there's a further matter, in which the knower must be 'committed to tracking things down, going to bat for what is right,' and feeling in some deep way existentially 'bound by the objects' (93). Intelligence, Smith is saying, depends on an underlying awareness of existence, both one's own existence and the existence of the world. For Smith, epistemology is prior to ontology, and we can add that a feeling of existence is prior to them both—and a fundamental precondition of intelligence.)."
In terms of Charles' Veronica Mars example, Grok has "reckoned" what others have communicated about the show, but in assembling its commentary it cannot exercise judgment because it does not understand the cultural systems in which those communications gain or lose their significance, nor situate itself in relation to the various parties involved in the communication.
It has grokked nothing, it has only parsed and systematized according to its own training algorithms.
The Veronica Mars output is a "good" summary in that it assembles together a lot of information and represents it in a way that appears faithful, but it doesn't rise to the level of any critical insight, and it does not provide any transparency for the sources of its information or the reasoning behind its selection. It feels like an intellectual cul-de-sac to me.

It's amazing that the expenditures on AI may be propping up the economy in the face of Trump's policies on trade and the cratering of tourism to the US.
It somewhat depends on where you are. I've been seeing stories of people using local electric grids being overwhelmed because someone set up an AI (LLM) data center in the area. They are incredible users of electricity. Can be a real issue if your power goes out as a result of the extra load.

That is equivalent to supporting former RAF members to overthrow the German government (ok, the German government isn't as bad as the Iranian but the MEK/RAF comparison is apt).

Besides being a general warmonger, he was a primary cheerleader for the Iraq War. About a year before the US entered Iraq, he wanted to go to war with Cuba for WMDs they didn't have. He stood for about everything bad in Bush's foreign policy.

It's hard to have much sympathy for John Bolton. After his role in the Bush administration...
Charles, you've piqued my curiosity. What things did Bolton do under Bush that you disapprove of? I've got my own list, but just wondering what he's done that you disagree with.

To me, what is more interesting is Charles' 'who is this Vance person of which you speak' and at the same time eagerly searching for Youtube videos of UK citizens complaining about Muslims taking over the country. Call it the Texas two-step...

Vance exists to elevate himself and to service the billionaires that have enabled his political career in the hopes of getting their political desires fulfilled. Vance would be less distractible and more motivated in his pursuit of a Project 2025 agenda, cutting deals with the Techno-Oligarch wannabes to make sure that they were rich enough and isolated enough from government interference to not be affected by the restrictions brought in the name of Christian Nationalism.
On the bright side, Vance is a negative-charisma asshat with none of Trump's instincts for the grift. I don't think he'd get the same sort of laughing support that Cheetolini gets, and Newsom would mock him incessantly.

He can't be wrong about everything all the time... :)
Yes, based on his public utterances, he is demonstrably able to do so.
I don't think Vance is wrong in the sense of being mistaken or misinformed. He's an intelligent person, he understands the reality, and he understands what he is saying.
He's lying. Bullshitting, gaslighting, whatever you want to call it. He speaks intentional falsehoods to obscure the truth and mislead people.
He's a liar.
Trump is also, but I think Trump half-believes his own bullshit. By "half believes" I mean I think his thought process is something like "I want this to be true, so I'm going to act like it is true".
Vance seems, to me, profoundly more cynical than that. He knows what he's saying is false and just says it anyway.

This, in today's Times (a Murdoch paper), is by William Hague, ex-leader of the Conservative Party, and gives a rather better impression of what respectable UK rightwingers think of what is happening in the US, including on free speech:
John Bolton raid is a chilling sign of rule by vendetta
Former US security adviser was courageous in his criticisms of Trump’s approach to Putin — his treatment is alarming
William Hague
At 7am last Friday, the FBI searched the home of the former US national security adviser John Bolton. Boxes of files were taken away, apparently as part of an investigation into the misuse of classified documents — a regular topic in Washington, as both Presidents Biden and Trump have got into trouble over keeping sensitive material at home.
Such a raid might or might not be justified but there is a chilling aspect to it. Bolton is a highly effective critic of Trump’s foreign policies, from the well-informed vantage point of having been a close adviser to the president in his first term. In recent weeks his analysis of Trump’s negotiations with Vladimir Putin has been perceptive, widely broadcast and damning, enraging his old boss.
That this was followed by a raid on Bolton’s home and office by law enforcement officers is suggestive, to say the least, of the use of state power to pursue a vendetta, a pattern more familiar in authoritarian regimes than in the United States. It raises questions about free speech in America and should draw our attention to the cogent argument Bolton has been making about the recent talks on Ukraine.
I know Bolton, although he is some way from being a kindred spirit — he has always been more hawkish than I am over matters such as negotiations with Iran. But his understanding of world affairs is acknowledged and there is no doubt that he speaks from huge experience and sticks to his principles. This left him appalled by his experience in the first Trump administration. Afterwards he wrote a damning book, which the Justice Department attempted to block.
A few years ago, Bolton told me he thought there had never been any serious chance of a deal with Kim Jong-un over North Korea’s nuclear weapons when Trump was enthusiastically pursuing that in his first term. Bolton witnessed those talks at first hand but thought that the president, desperate to be seen as the great dealmaker who could build a rapport with a dictator, was completely unrealistic: North Korea was never going to throw away the powerful leverage in world affairs that a nuclear arsenal provides. Kim was turning up to the meetings for the prestige and acceptance that came from being treated with great respect by the president of the US.
Having seen Trump make this mistake at close quarters, it is not surprising that Bolton was unsparing in his comments about the same opportunity being afforded to Putin earlier this month — invited on to US soil in Alaska for a long talk with Trump, looking like the two great world leaders trying to settle matters graciously between them. He pointed out that even the initial set-up of the meeting was “a great victory for Putin — he’s the rogue leader of a pariah state and he’s going to be welcomed into the United States”.
Bolton went on to give a depressing but realistic assessment of the chances of a deal. “I don’t think there’s a peace deal anywhere in the near future,” he said. “As long as Putin is advancing on the battlefield, even if it’s three yards in a cloud of dust, he’s not going to give up anything if he can get away with it.”
He argued that Trump’s desire to be awarded the Nobel peace prize was a highly motivating factor in his behaviour but that he was being played by Putin, whose “flattery campaign is working Trump over, as seen by Trump’s statement recently about how Ukraine shouldn’t have taken the war on. Ukraine didn’t take anything on, they were invaded”.
These accurate comments incensed Trump, who complained about the “very unfair media” who were “constantly quoting fired losers and really dumb people like John Bolton”. That such personal comments from a president were followed within ten days by FBI agents turning up at the house of the offending critic is what suggests a system moving towards vendettas rather than justice.
At the same time, events in recent days only confirm that Bolton’s analysis of the Alaska talks was spot on. Putin did a professional job of buttering up Trump, by saying, for instance, that the war would never have happened if Trump had been in charge at the time.
Trump’s comment to President Macron that “I think he wants to make a deal for me” was revealing of how Putin will have played the personal flattery for all it’s worth, as Bolton mercilessly pointed out. But in the past few days, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, has revealed how little Moscow’s position has changed, dismissing hopes of any imminent meeting between Putin and President Zelensky, accusing European leaders of not being interested in peace and asserting that any future security arrangements for Ukraine must be agreed with Russia and even China.
Lavrov has been performing this function for decades — after Putin has had an encouraging chat with a foreign leader, Lavrov makes sure nothing really happens. In doing so, he follows Putin’s orders to the letter: I have been in meetings with him, years ago on Syria, when he has repeatedly telephoned Putin for precise instructions on what he can say or agree to. It is a double act particularly suited to lulling Trump into a false sense that he is on the edge of the peace prize while the Russians continue to intensify the war.
What has happened this month is that Putin, seeing Trump was finally getting impatient with him and threatening tougher sanctions, offered a meeting to play on Trump’s weakest spot — the wish for a big deal with a powerful dictator. Once Putin pulled that off beautifully, Zelensky and European leaders had to rush to Washington to administer the only known antidote: an equal dose of chumminess, flattery and reason to cancel out Putin’s poison.
At the end of all that rushing about, the essential problem remains. Putin will not end the war unless the terms make it impossible for a diminished Ukraine to function as a sovereign and defensible state, or unless he cannot gain by further fighting. The only way to change that calculation is to raise the cost to him of continuing to fight. Trump’s approach of avoiding new pressure on Russia while chasing an unlikely peace deal is at least as likely to lengthen the war as shorten it.
As Bolton has put it, what Trump should really do is tell Putin “if they don’t get serious about withdrawing Russian forces from Ukraine that he will significantly increase US assistance … to restore Ukraine to its full sovereignty and territorial integrity”. That is very good advice.
It is a great pity that it is not currently heeded in the White House — and it will be a tragedy for America and the world if such advice cannot be given without fear of reprisal.

most Germans (or Central Europeans in general for that matter) can't grasp the English/US paranoia about national ID cards*.
Can't speak for the UK. In the US folks who object to / are afraid of national ID cards are conservatives who think the government is going to exploit national ID to round them up and do horrible things to them.
Irony is dead. Or, if not dead, laying in a gutter somewhere bleeding.

I'm reasonably certain they can't prove they are.
They don't have to. They are OFFICIAL thugs (authorized to NOT show their face, to NOT have to show their writ of authority etc.) and have military hardware to back them up. And where does it say that they have to be legal residents let alone citizens? Is there a law (not that they would care) banning Kapos or foreign mercenaries from serving as muscle?
For that matter, I don't routinely carry proof of citizenship with me. Do you?
Yes, I do. But this is Germany and the national ID card serves so numerous useful functions that most people would carry it even if not legally mandated (the mandate got dropped after reunion iirc). To the contrary, most Germans (or Central Europeans in general for that matter) can't grasp the English/US paranoia about national ID cards*.
Of course we know that one reason the GOP vehemently opposes the idea is that it would serve as voter ID too, thus making disenfranchisement more difficult.
I even remember attempts in at least one state to exclude US passports from the valid ID list (only liberals travel abroad, thus needing a passport).
*not even counting those that argue with The Book of Revelation that any ID card would be the Mark of the Beast.

And yet, you have somehow absorbed his talking points and have brought them here to share with all of us.
He can't be wrong about everything all the time... :)

There are activists on the left bringing books into schools that are, at best, not age-appropriate or shouldn't be in schools at all.
It strikes me that if removing books from a school library doesn't amount to banning books, the presence of a book in a school library doesn't amount to advocacy of whatever point of view it presents. Or a requirement that any given kid read them.
If people don't want kids reading about Heather and her Two Mommies, then mom and dad should sit junior down and explain that they don't want him or her reading it. If they are concerned that their kid is gonna sneak a copy from the library and read it sub rosa, they can talk to the librarian and let them know they don't want their kid checking it out.
Or, you know, pay attention to what your kid is reading.
As opposed to, not only can my kid not have it, but *nobody's* kid can have it.
Books that are banned tend to be about (a) sexuality or (b) race. I respect parent's wishes to have some control over how those topics are presented to their kids. Those parents don't have the right to deny *every freaking kid* access to them.
I don't listen to Vance and care very little about anything he has to say.
And yet, you have somehow absorbed his talking points and have brought them here to share with all of us.
I blame ChatGPT.
GIGO

Gotta cite? Either way, "activists" don't sound like people weilding sanctioned government power.
These days, telling the difference can be difficult.
Gotta cite?
Here's a list of books. Arguments can be made about which books for which student age ranges, if at all.
Controversial Books in US Schools