I think this also proves that the comments one sometimes hears in US media (and certain political circles) to the effect that the EU is supposedly going after US companies, are nonsense.
(1) Europe doesn't exist as a nation: it's like the US (states) without a federal government. That means it doesn't have an integrated defense industry or an army, which in turn means it doesn't have the economies of scale that enable the US to be a superpower. For a very long time this was considered to be in the US interest. US leadership was unquestioned, which had its use. Take e.g. the industrial side of the F16 and F35 fighter planes: those benefited (and continue to benefit) quite a lot from European clientele. The same holds for other types of weaponry. We're talking about 80 bln. in arms sales in 2023 and about 97 bln in 2024 to US allies (see e.g. here: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.state.gov%2Ffiscal-y... and here https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.defense.gov%2FNews%2FN... ). Arms sales don't exist in a vacuum: it also represents a buy-in in the US as a partner.
(2) For the entire period from 1945 to the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, the US and Europe had this bargain: the US provides the military-industrial muscle and the nuclear umbrella, Europe provides the battlefield, about half the manpower, a robust first line of defense plus 100% of civillian casualties in anything but an intercontinental nuclear war. The US had a very clear interest in this tate of affairs, like e.g. keeping the USSR bottled up in a land-locked environment without practical (non-blockable) ice-free ports en a big counterweight to USSR expansion.
(3) For that reason the US had (for that period) been very much against Europe getting anything like a European army or an integrated arms industry. All that changed only when it realised that China had become an economic and military rival. With the Warsaw pact disbanded and Russia no longer a threat, US interests in Europe became more diluted and its commitments there more of a burden.
(4) Europe is indeed ramping up its spending, but there is of course a lead time (of 5-10 years or so) before it can get its 'own' military up to scratch. Withdrawing support before that time means risking Russian expansion once again. That could be an issue if Russia e.g. regains the industrial muscle and mineral resources of the Ukraina.
(5) Currently the situation is that the US has put Europe on notice to get a move on with financing its own defense needs and those of teh Ukraine. And this is having an effect already. Just for the record, US aid to the Ukraine is about 183 bln. by the end of 2024 ehile the EU has contributed slightly more than 50% of all military aid to the Ukraine to date (see e.g. here: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Fnews%2Fartic... ). There is more to be done, but the figures mentioned by pres. Trump are outright misleading (as usual).
(6) It goes without saying that this development will (over the next 10 years or so) lessen US influence in that part of the world. With that withdrawal of influence there may also be a shrinkage of available military bases, and with it the ability to 'project power' abroad. That in its turn will further contribute to lessening US influence in the world. Whether or not this is desirable is another question, but I think it should be factored into any strategic decision makeing (which in my opionion currently is not the case).
As I see it, the reason for going to school and acquiring skills such as how to do mathematics and/or how to write clearly and coherently is training the LLM that resides inside our skull. I think that the process of learning something makes you better at learning in general, which then applies to other things as well.
The question is: is it beneficial to learn how to use your brains? That would depend on who or what you want to be. Some people can be very successful being e.g. an Instagram celebrity or an 'Influencer', where being able to spell or do maths just isn't relevant.
On the other hand, I think that people with academic qualifications like being able to spell, write, and do maths can make better use of an LLM than most others who are deficient in that respect.
Of course that's a testable hypothesis. I curious as to how that turns out.
Life is not fair and has biases.
True, but that provides exactly zero reason, and even less justification, to build 'm into algorithmic black boxes an turn 'em loose on the public.
If the AI captures objective reality then it will merely reflect the biases that really exist.
Yes. And? Red-lining people for loans on basis of their zip code reflects objective reality too. And it's illegal now. For excellent reasons.
Lost in the data will the the perfectly valid reasons why biases and differences in outcomes exist. [...] Until then it's just a game of blame the white male with Asian males occasionally being allowed to be the target.
Whee
Let's see if I can disentangle that a little for you.
First of all, you seem to go off on a rant about while (and sometimes Asian) males supposedly being "blamed". We could have lots of fun with that alone (like where else you hear that kind of stuff) but let's leave that for the moment and instead look a bit further than the Engadget website and at some sites which have some sober reporting about what this newly minted New York position is and isn't about. This site: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.smartcitiesdive.co... is informative and also links to a source document (the NYC press release) here: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww1.nyc.gov%2Foffice-of...
What New York city has done is to create a position with te following job description:
The officer will serve as a central resource to help city agencies with policies and best practices related to their use of algorithms. Another duty will be to provide resources for the public to learn more about the government's use of algorithms for decision making and service delivery. Equity, fairness and accountability will be at the forefront of the oversight and guidance.
The reason it did that is this:
The position was created following a review of recommendations in the recently released Automated Decision Systems Task Force Report. The task force spent 18 months holding meetings, public forums and gathering information for the report. The document examines how services and resources are provided to New Yorkers through the use of data, algorithms and machine learning or other artificial intelligence (AI). The report highlighted concerns with equity and implicit or explicit bias with data, algorithms and greater AI use. Bias is among the key concerns with new data-driven technologies. A report released by New York University's AI Now Institute went so far as to say the artificial intelligence industry has a "diversity crisis" across gender and race that creates bias and could influence how AI systems are designed and implemented. A Georgia Tech study earlier this year suggests that bias during the development of certain technologies used in autonomous vehicles may have made them perform poorly when detecting people who have darker skin. AI bias also has been found to affect low-income citizens.
So
When you do that sort of thing the algorithms will (if the training suceeds) pick up correlations in the data. A few examples of what happens if you do that and you're really stupid is nicely described in this article: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2019%2F1... A fun quote is this:
Another notion of bias, one that is highly relevant to my work, are cases in which an algorithm is latching onto something that is meaningless and could potentially give you very poor results. For example, imagine that youâ(TM)re trying to predict fractures from X-ray images in data from multiple hospitals. If youâ(TM)re not careful, the algorithm will learn to recognize which hospital generated the image. Some X-ray machines have different characteristics in the image they produce than other machines, and some hospitals have a much larger percentage of fractures than others. And so, you could actually learn to predict fractures pretty well on the data set that you were given simply by recognizing which hospital did the scan, without actually ever looking at the bone. The algorithm is doing something that appears to be good but is actually doing it for the wrong reasons. The causes are the same in the sense that these are all about how the algorithm latches onto things that it shouldnâ(TM)t latch onto in making its prediction.
See what I mean? You really, really need someone who is a bit educated about statistics, machine learning, and AI to keep all kinds of 'practical minded' bozos from putting all kinds of garbage machine learning algorithms into production. When your statistics professor told you to be careful not to mistake correlation for causation, this is (part of) what he meant.
That's why this position is needed.
Oh, and read before you rant, Ok?
(1) Norway does pay the EU. See here: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffullfact.org%2Feurope%2Fno...
(2) The EU would be more than happy to give the UK a Norway option (see e.g. this slide: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fec.europa.eu%2Fcommissio... ) The Norway option is shown as the second step from the left, just past full EU membership.
It's the UK that doesn't want this Norway option because it (a) absolutely refuses to accept any further free movement of people between the EU and the UK, (b) absolutely refuses to continue to make major financial contributions to the EU, (c) is adamant that it wants regulatory autonomy (i.e. no more EU regulations, especially since as a non-EU member it will have no more say in what those regulations entail, and (d) is adamant that it wants to pursue an independent trade policy (i.e. zero tariffs with e.g. Africa and China in order to obtain cheaper imports (the UK sports a really big trade deficit where goods are concerned).
Those conditions are known as the UK's "red lines", through which it has basically painted itself into a corner (i.e. leaving the EU without any deal in place).
Starting at midnight of the day the UK leaves the EU without a deal, its trade footing with the EU will basically be the same as that of Mongolia and Zimbabwe. That's the problem. Can you imagine the consequences if e.g. Mexico or Canada would, from one day to the next, be in a situation where they have absolutely no trade deal with the US? That's what the UK is facing with respect to the EU.
In fact, it illustrates the point that code correctness is one of nature's 'hard' problems. As in, the _only_ way to achieve correctness is to give a mathematical correctness proof for a piece of code. And anyone who's ever tried that knows how hard that is for any piece of non-trivial code (e.g. the textbook examples that information science students see the technique demonstrated on).
For those who don't know what I'm talking about, see e.g. here for a basic introduction: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cs.cornell.edu%2Fcou....
I like the understated way in which the lecture introduces the subject:
Today's dominant practice in the software industry (and when writing up assignments) is to prove program correctness empirically. The simplest form of this technique consists of feeding various inputs to the tested program and verifying the correctness of the output. In some cases exhaustive testing is possible, but often it is not. More sophisticated versions of this technique try to choose the inputs so that all, or at least the majority of the possible execution paths are examined. Independent of their degree of sophistication, these empirical methods do not actually that the respective program is correct. The only thing we can actually prove with the empirical approach is that the program is not correct - for this purpose, a single example of incorrect behavior suffices. Absent an observation of incorrect behavior, however, we can not know - in general - whether the program is correct, or whether we have just not tested it with an input that would trigger an error.
There are real-world examples where formal verification was used see e.g. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcacm.acm.org%2Fmagazines... ts.data61.csiro.au/publications/csiro_full_text//Klein_AKMHF_18.pdf https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpdfs.semanticscholar.o... and https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.schneier.com%2Fblog%2F...
As usual, Wikipedia has some useful material o nteh subject too: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F... .
The drawback of this approach is that it tales lots of time, actual computer scientists (as opposed to coders or even software engineers), and hard work. In practice there is no budget for that. As far as I know, proving correctness of a few thousand lines of code is feasible, given a few manyears. Proving correctness of the 20 million or so (I have no idea how big the scheduling part of the kernel is) of lines in the Linux Kernel is currently out of reach.
What we all know happens in practice is that some functionality is designed, implemented, and tested. If software faults happen infrequently enough for the software to actually do some useful work, then it's released (and tested further in production). At least the company can start billing customers for the product to fund further development and bug-hunting.
You realise that "importing cheap labour" would not be profitable if employers paid decent minimum wages and "illegals" would never get work unless employers are happy to employ someone who can't show an ID?
And that the plain fact is that it's a lot easier to squeeze a superior work/wage ratio from people who are illegal (and thus truly desperate for their job) than from an average US-born Joe? And that illegals usually are the hardiest and most motivated segment of the population? What's not to like for an employer?
Razzing on "illegals" and "foreigners" is popular, but probably not the root cause of US wage problems.
In addition, just compare the number of jobs replaced by automation (30% of the workforce) with the number of "illegals" and "imported cheap labour" (get your estimates from reputable republican wall builders). You'll realise that imported labour can account for no more than about 5% of jobs.
Nothing fishy or "biased" about that.It would be biased if those stories did *not* appear in the search engine.
Besides which, Dirty Donald has a long history of lashing out with accusations and conspiracy theories whenever he's pushed into a corner. As happened last week for example,
How? Well, the logical conclusion of Mr. Cohen's testimony seemed to be that Dirty Donald had personally ordered Mr. Cohen to commit a federal crime.
Combined with the conviction of Mr. Manafort olus the news that Mr. Allen Weisselberg (Dirty Donald's longtime financial man) was about to testify against him. Ouch.
That's the kind of stuff that could even get a sitting president in deep trouble. My guess is that it made Dirty Donald nervous. Very nervous.
And what does Dirty Donald do when people make him nervous? Well, he tries to divert attention from his predicament by changing the subject and he lashes out against people with all kinds of accusations. We saw him do both.
As to trying to change the subject, he suddenly started talking about a preliminary draft agreement with Mexico and desperately tried to pass of what he had achieved (a few minor adjustments to the existing NAFTA treaty) as a major win.Plus he was quite desperate to call it something other than "NAFTA-plus-a-few-minor-adjustments".Considering his base, he may well get away with that.
As to lashing out, he always picks whoever he thinks he can sufficiently muddy the water against. The media. Search engines. Institutions. Mrs. Clinton. Illegal immigrants. The Government. Anything really. As long as it resonates sufficiently with his base to provide a target for a good smear campaign. In this case that would be Google.
As regards explanations for his coverage this explanation looks much simpler than any conspiracy theory about who met whom how often three to four years ago. It's all based on known facts about Dirty Donald's behaviour. As reported in the media.
Small wonder he hates the media that consistently put his grotesque and puerile antics on display.
Does he really have any credibility left? Apart from his diehard fan-base that is?
In play? You mean the trade war against China that Dirty Donald has just kicked off?
You mean the trade war that had already begun with steel tariffs?
No, I mean the trade conflict that Dirty Donald has grown into a trade war by promising tariffs on 200 bln. worth of trade.
Business was (and is) strongly in favour of it.
"Business" is always in favor of making money, no matter the cost to somebody else or the longterm future of the nation.
You mean mainstream business ethics that has for the past century or so consistently made our firms No.1 in the world and is the cork upon which our collective prosperity floats?
You can either put in place conditions that take care of the needs of business (such as the rule of law, free trade, and fair shot at getting a level playing field), or you can sacrifice all that for a short-term BS publicity stunt trade war, and end up with a big recession in a world where the rule of law is absent and success is determined by whoever has the best collusion between state and business.
Take your pick. Oh wait
Surely you understand trade issue with China is still in play? No, you do not, because you are in Denial Land.
In play? You mean the trade war against China that Dirty Donald has just kicked off? Which is probably going to cost a few thousand soy-bean farmers their farms? After a humiliating display of inane backslapping, rudderless posturing in return for "concessions" that will benefit Japan, South Korea, and Germany more than the US? You call that a success? Who's in denial here?
The devil is in the details. Signing a bad deal to try and get a better deal with China doesn't make sense.
TTP wasn't "bad" in any sense of the word. Business was (and is) strongly in favour of it. That means there's money in in. If you're afraid that US workers aren't going to benefit from that, that's a totally different problem.
Plus it was still not quite settled when Dirty Donald withdrew. It would have ensured that US norms and values governed trade in the Pacific, if not world-wide. Not Chinese ones. And with one populist stroke of the pen Dirty Donald threw all that away. Wow, what a huuuge success, right?
And now he's (a) alienated and atagonised US allies in the Pacific by showing them that there is little advantage for them in dealing with a fickle US instead of with consistent Chinese (b) proven to them that the US is stupid enough to abandon long-term objectives in favour of chasing a limited, short-term objective, (c) driven home the fact that they had better be very polite to Chine and make sure their own long-term strategy is aligned with China's.
That's what doesn't make sense.
In the mean time Dirty Donald has adroitly manouvered the US to the sidelines so that developments in the Pacific will more or less run their course without the US being in the lead. Well, hoo-rah! Let's sell that to the fan-base, shall we?
Those big underlying issues are something you can only change if you're able to isolate China by building trade blocks around it. Like TPP (and TTIP). And guess what? That was the first thing Dirty Donald destroyed.
Preferring instead to try his off-the-cuff macho man approach. Which yielded only optical results, embroiled the US in two major trade wars, and totally blew away any chance of isolating China. Both Putin and Xi couldn't have believed their luck.
Some people are happy to go along with his continuous fake-it-until-you-make-it approach. They're known as his Fan Base.
Other people (like me) insist on him actually earning some of the credits he doesn't tire of claiming. Anyone who does that has a claim to being fact-based and a realist. Except to his Fan Base, who knows us as "Trump Haters".
Twisting arms is something Dirty Donald might be able to do against small building contractors, but it doesn't seem to be getting him (and more importantly: the US) any results on the world stage.
Oh really?
Yes, really.
The fundamental trade issue between the US and China on is _not_ tariffs.
Instead it's China's routine use of state interference (subsidies, dumping, wholesale IP theft, espionage targeted at overseas military projects, tarif barriers, non-tarif barriers, requirements to deposit IP and source code for those wishing to open a plant in China, installation of a Chinese "partner", etc.) to ensure that China grows firms that suck in global state-of-the-art knowhow, build a local logistics chain, and as a result are globally competitive. Followed by said firms wiping the floor with overseas competitors.
See e.g. here: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2018%2F0...
Of course it all depends on your negotiation objective. If your negotiation objective is to ensure a level playing field, then Dirty Donald's antics so far have failed miserably.
If your objective is to engage in some political window-dressing (like opening up the Chinese car market a little bit so that Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes, Toyota, Honda, Mitsubishi and, yes, Ford and GM too, can duke it out there) in order to sucker voters into misinterpreting the meaning of what the results achieved so far, then his antics are a thundering success of course.
So: 10/10 for political window dressing and 1/8 for actual achievement. Yup, Sounds like a certain real-estate dealer we all know.
China, the provider of North Korea's military umbrella, has fought the US to a stalemate in Korea before. And it has only gotten stronger since then. Much stronger. It has kept North Korea in the saddle militarily, politically, and economically
... and there's nothing the US could have done about that.
That's a flat-out lie, because as Trump showed, the US had leverage with China that it was too afraid to use. It was Trump that succeeded in getting China to get tough on sanctions.
There, there. Don't strain yourself now. By checking up on facts for example.
(1) Take Wikipedia for example: North Korea's missile program and the start of its nuclear programme dates from 1962. Good idea to blame those failings on President Obama, but that won't wash. Except perhaps with the Trump base.
(2) Much as I'd like to hear that Dirty Donald had actually scored a major win against North Korea, I'm skeptical about the extent to which North Korea will actually, well, get rid of its nukes. I surely hope so, and if it does I'll be happy to accord Dirty Donald due credit. Only, so far it looks as if Little Rocket Man has scored a major PR win without actually doing any concessions. The phrase "Work towards de-nuclearisation" doesn't have a firm end date, does it? And it doesn't promise any actual deliverables or other concrete results does it?
It might go either way, but as I see it, an over-eager greenhorn politician just got suckered into granting a major PR coup to a dictator who has zero intention of making good on the suggestions he used as bait.
And you might also note that China hasn't given an inch on the North Korea issue before it was made to lose face when North Korea actually exploded a nuke.
I know, I know, never pester someone from the Trump base with facts
Granted, some arm-twisting can sometimes go a long way. But only competent arm-twisting. Not the incoherent verbiage coming out of the WH now.
Funny, because here you realize Trump actually succeeded with arm-twisting, but then seek to immediately discredit it. Let's get real: Obama was a doormat when it came to foreign affairs.
Yes, very funny, because I happen to think he failed in achieving any results at all on North Korea. Like Pres. Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush Jr., and Obama before him. Except for putting his face in yet another a photo op. That's why I made that remark. Twisting arms is something Dirty Donald might be able to do against small building contractors, but it doesn't seem to be getting him (and more importantly: the US) any results on the world stage.
The US have been unable to stop the Sovjets from obtaining nuclear weapons. And the Chinese. And the Indians. And the Pakistani. And Israel.
Where do people suddenly get there idea that the US could have stopped North Korea? I think they're wrong.
I can understand that people might be a bit upset about that, but there it is.
China, the provider of North Korea's military umbrella, has fought the US to a stalemate in Korea before. And it has only gotten stronger since then. Much stronger. It has kept North Korea in the saddle militarily, politically, and economically
The only way North Korea will let of of its nukes is if it wants to. Dangling the view of South Korea has an appeal. Except for the one person in charge. Unfortunately Dirty Donald and his adminstration have made it abundantly clear to North Korea's dictator that he'll be signing his own death warrant if he lets go of his nukes. Do Mr. Bolton's helpful comments on Khadaffi's example ring a bell? Gods, what a fiasco.
Granted, some arm-twisting can sometimes go a long way. But only competent arm-twisting. Not the incoherent verbiage coming out of the WH now.
If there's any message that Dirty Donald is managing to convey, that's: if you're enough of a criminal (Putin, Xi, Duterte) you can be his best pal. At least he'll respect you. If you're an honest, decent type of politician then he'll squeeze you like the sucker you are until you drop dead or put up a real fight. Whichever comes first.
Let's not forget that Mr. Trump has proudly bankrupted several of the companies he ran, and his most impressive accomplishment so far has been to weather those bankruptcies wile avoiding jail time.
It's fascinating how he seems to be repeating that accomplishment with the US Inc. amidst acclaim from political flat earthers who feel disgruntled about something, hear Dirty Donald's incoherent rants, and decide well
Might still happen though, if the manufacturers keep up the shoddy security we've come to expect from them.
We don't really understand it, so we'll give it to the programmers.
