Where We Are This Week 01/27/2023
Sneetches, committee assignments, AI, and classified documents abound.
We often overlook the ‘classics’ as trite or banal simply because we’ve either heard or seen them all our lives, or unbeknownst to us, contemporary hits are just derivations of their pioneering predecessors. But typically, the ‘classics’ are venerated for good reason.
If you don’t immediately understand what I mean, try listening to the Eagles’ Lyin’ Eyes or Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge over Troubled Water with fresh ears, watch Woody Allen’s Annie Hall with no preconceptions, or read - not just read, imbibe - Hamlet’s ‘to be or not to be’ soliloquy and, hopefully, you’ll see what I mean. And no, you don’t have to be holding a human skull for the last exercise - though it certainly enhances the experience.
My last suggestion is to reread Dr. Seuss’s The Sneetches. I’m only just beginning to relive the stories and experiences of my youth with my daughter, but rereading this piece of Seuss’s has recapitulated my whole interpretation of the story.
I’m sure I’m not the first to have this analysis, but if you haven’t thought this, let me lay it out for you. Dr. Seuss’s genius isn’t just in his cartoon analog for irrational derision and bigotry. That’s the part that was imparted to me all those years ago when I was first introduced to the Sneetches and their beaches, and it is a wonderfully instructive tale even if you stop there.
I always thought that the Star-Bellied Sneetches were the antagonists of the story; not letting those poor Plain-Bellied Sneetches join in on all of their fun. But really, they were just ignorant, they didn’t know any better. The real villain of the story is Sylvester McMonkey McBean, who, professionally, is known as the Fix-It-Up Chappy. McBean is the rabble-rouser who strolls into town and capitalizes on the Sneetches’ mutual contempt.
It’s only after McBean absconds the beaches with the Sneetches, leaving them penniless and in dismay, that the beach-dwellers acknowledge the error of their ways. The point of the story being this: there will always be someone, be it a charlatan like the Fix-It-Up Chappy or something more nefarious, who will be willing to convert your prejudice into profit. This is why I’m writing the Common Denominator; to remind each other that we’re all just Sneetches, starred or starless, and we should do our best to avoid having a McBean of our own rob us blind before we reach that conclusion.
As always, I truly appreciate you reading this week’s post. If you would, please consider sharing it with a friend! It helps me grow tremendously.
These Are My Confessions
Before we get too far into things this week, I’d like to usher in one more additional segment: a confession. Last week, we saw the addition of an omissions and errors column, but I realize I was being too self-effacing; I, too, have grievous misdeeds to confess.
It has come to my attention that I am also in possession of Classified Documents™. I was unaware that they were in fact ‘classified’ and not meant to be in such a vulnerable locale until I noticed the bright red, block letters marking them as such. Since their discovery, I’ve scheduled an FBI raid of my house for next week - I’ll update you on how that goes!
Don’t worry about me, though. I’m in good company. In addition to Donald Trump, and President Biden, former vice president Mike Pence has been revealed to have stored classified documents of his own at his Indiana home.
This latest revelation of a seemingly continual stream of verboten material could mean a few things. It could mean that: (a) we have a serious national security issue concerning the protocol of storing and accounting for national secrets, (b) our federal government systemically over-classifies information to the extent where meaningless ‘highly confidential’ information is easily mistaken for detritus and its whereabouts are without consequence, or (c) we, as a nation, have a tendency of electing any half-witted jamoke that is so incompetent in their personal lives they decide they’d be better suited for public service. Hint: it’s (b) and (c).
As a member of the general public - and an unlikely owner of my aforementioned documents - I can tell you that we have no idea the processes by which material is classified. No doubt most of it is insignificant data or glorified clerical work - surely their incompetence couldn’t rise to the level of misplacing highly sensitive material relative to national security, right? Yes, I see that I’ve backed myself into a rhetorical corner. The answer has to be a combination of (a), (b), and (c).
The real story isn’t the fact that these documents are abundant and scattered about residential America because clearly, the original stories were nothing-burgers - a term I hate, and can’t believe I just typed - though, I admit, the handling of said documents does beg further questioning; Trump refused to cooperate with the FBI and incurred the raid upon himself - as I am doing - and Biden’s team delayed the disclosure of his malfeasance until well after the midterm elections. The real story here is that our media apparatus - left and right - forced us to care about the Trump and Biden scandals as if they were borderline treasonous while there’s an infinite amount of actual news (i.e. the trillion dollar omnibus bill, government collusion with big tech, the ongoing recession, the mishandling of the pandemic, the unrelenting persecution of Assange and Snowden, etc.) they could’ve been discussing.
Granted, I reserve the right to change my mind about the significance of the papers if we ever find out their contents. But that’s just the thing, isn’t it? They’re classified.
Chat GPT
That’s it, folks. We, humans, had a good run. 200,000 years or so as the preeminent species - save for dolphins and lab mice according to Douglas Adams - on Earth isn’t so bad, is it? It warrants a much-deserved pat on the back. Now, that’s over, let’s welcome AI to the chat.
OpenAI’s dialogue model Chat GPT has been up and running for a couple of months now. OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research and development company with the intent of creating autonomous systems that can “outperform humans at most economically valuable work”. The company’s charter even spells out that they’re concerned about the safety of humanity regarding the nature of the work but insist that they’re taking appropriate precautions.
Because I know I feel much safer knowing that potentially humanity-crippling technology rests in the hands of a few billionaire-funded engineers in San Francisco - no slight to SF is intended, I love that place.
Not to sound like a Marxist - or the new, less stigmatized stakeholder capitalist which is just Marxism with extra steps - but as a society, are we comfortable allowing private companies to explore whatever avenues they’re interested in? We all saw how well that worked out at that one dinosaur park in the 90s.
Elon Musk, who, ironically, helped found the company, has repeatedly urged the federal government to provide congressional oversight in the AI sphere. Stephen Hawking cautioned the development of artificial intelligence back in 2014.
“The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race…It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever-increasing rate…Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete and would be superseded,” Hawking said.
ChatGPT can write papers for you, code in different languages, tell you a story, and it can also write a song for you - and a variety of other things. As soon as this version of AI is optimized, corporations will dispense with whole squadrons of their workforce. Don’t believe me? BuzzFeed announced Thursday that they’ll be implementing OpenAI to create content this year - not that anyone would notice per se. BuzzFeed’s share prices shot up 150% Thursday after their announcement - almost as if they announced they’d be cutting huge amounts of overhead in the coming months.
What’s worse is that ChatGPT and its rival models are free to use. With every encounter with a human, the dialogue will continue to get more and more convincing. As interaction with us deepens, the system will learn our idiosyncrasies, our conventions, and our predilections - and we’ll be vulnerable to its newfound expertise.
We’ve seen this before. Every time you use social media, the minutia of your activity is being harvested and coagulated into information ready to be commoditized. Consumers all around the world have paid to hand over their DNA to companies like 23andMe - who in turn sold their genetic data to third parties like pharmaceutical corporations.
Now, similarly, whenever a user logs on to ChatGPT, it’s augmenting itself to better align to - or imitate - its biological counterparts; the difference being that while this system doesn’t make you a product, it might render you obsolete. Will we know when pandora’s box is opened or is already too late?
Somedays, in the 21st century, when I’m just trying to embrace what it means to be alive, eschewing technology for the ethereal, to savor the vast creation that lays before me, the wind picks up slightly. Is that rain I feel? No, it’s my own saliva from when I spat moments before.
Alas, the jig is up fellow humans! Join the Borg! Assimilate!
Pity Committee
Oh, how the tables have turned. After eking out the House of Representatives, Republicans tenuously installed Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House. Immediately getting down to business, McCarthy used his discretion as Speaker to remove Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from their assignments on the House Intelligence Committee while he also vowed to remove Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Democrats are now complaining that McCarthy is purely engaging in party politics, exacting revenge for the censures Nancy Pelosi led against Paul Gosar, and Marjorie Taylor Greene. While the two instances aren’t entirely equivalent, Republican Byron Donalds didn’t help matters when he said to Joy Reid regarding the matter, “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”
Let’s take a look at Schiff’s and Swalwell’s removal because those are decidedly different than Omar’s potential ousting. Schiff and Swalwell - Schiff was the Chair -served on the Intel Committee, the most powerful committee available to the House. Members of the Intel Committee are privy to state secrets unrivaled by most other elected officials, and thus, are charged with a much higher responsibility for ethical behavior.
Schiff, during his tenure as the helm of the prestigious posting, spent years leading the American public down the Russia-gate rabbit hole. As Chair, Schiff alluded to his inside knowledge that former president Donald Trump had colluded with Russian officials repeatedly - that knowledge being classified™, of course, so he couldn’t exactly divulge the information to the public.
We now know that every bit of the Steele dossier was fraudulent as the night is dark and full of terrors. McCarthy’s refusal to approve Schiff’s reappointment has been criticized by Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and the White House though the Speaker hasn’t ruled out the possibility of Schiff’s appointment elsewhere. But doesn’t that just smack of petty partisanship? Thanks for the goose chase, Adam. What a ride!
Swalwell, however, is the turkey that consorted and gallivanted with Fang Fang, a known Chinese spy, while serving on the Intel Committee. Yet, somehow, Democrats are perturbed at his removal and insist his “experience” is invaluable to the committee. I mean, the Swalwell affair reads like a less glamorous Bond screenplay - Scarn, Michael Scarn. It would be more exasperating if it weren’t so hilarious, so we won’t spend too much time deliberating here.
Democrats do have a decent point when it comes to Omar’s appointment to the Foreign Affairs Committee. Her possible dismissal is obviously due to her consistent display of antisemitism - not unlike MTG’s pre-Congressional ‘space laser comments that earned her censure from Pelosi. As a side note, isn’t it surreal we’re debating about multiple elected officials’ overt antisemitism?
Previously, it had been up to the representative’s own party to admonish them, like when Republicans punished, thankfully, Steve King for defending the terms ‘white supremacist’ and ‘white nationalism’. Pelosi bucked that tradition with her rebuke of Republicans Gosar and MTG - Gosar had inexplicably posted a photoshopped video from Attack on Titan, of all things, that showed him killing a titan with the head of AOC before turning his sights on Joe Biden. The meme-ification of Congress is truly a sight to behold.
I should probably care based on principle and procedure, but is it a letdown if I say that I just don’t? I’ll cheer the relegation of Omar the same way I did MTG’s. Let’s chalk it up to the ‘play stupid games’ rule, and move on, shall we?
See you next week.
Cheers,
~FDA