"It'll be the easiest (albeit the scummiest) analytics scam...er, public-sector job I've ever had."

And that says something.

"They" is not Texas, it is Republicans. Texas is the canonical Republican state, what is going on here is simple corruption.

Texas has always been corrupt, though. It was founded by criminals who moved in to steal the land, then settled by slave owners and dominated ever since by racists. But Texas has cities too, just like everywhere else. The political mix is standard, but in Texas it is controlled by cretins. This is a typical result.

"...it's a reasonable statement."
It's not a reasonable statement, you only think it is because you ignore literally everything on the ground. And it often is a "clean disruption".

"...many of it's most prominent leaders and backers have put their social weight behind an administration that is already making life worse ..."
Yes, but these "leaders and backers" are long time corrupters of the political process, they own the Republican Party, a portion of the Democratic Party, they have driven the destruction of regulations since Reagan and they drive the Federalist Society which has corrupted the courts and accelerated the loss of our constitutional society. It's not new, this has been the problem long before Trump and will continue after. Trump is a side show. Of course they don't show "initiative", they are causing the calamity.

"So looking at Altman's words, this is somewhat reasonable ..."
No, and reality is far worse than your naive take. Sam Altman may be fairly new to the scene, but he is among the villains we have had for decades. They are the cause. There's a reason SCOTUS allows unlimited spending on elections, billionaires fund Republicans to buy elections. Our vice president is literally owned by Peter Thiel, an investment that may pay off if Trump keels over early.

Yes, but it's important to keep the "who's who" well sorted. In this case, "AI" didn't perform malicious activity, AI agents did. AI neural networks are just sociopathic response generators, agents are the henchmen; agents take the instruction, provide the queries to the NN and do the damage. Neither NNs nor Agents have agency, they do damage, and good, because they are instructed to do so by people. When horrible things are done, creatively, by AI agents, their creators don't care, they only care that they are not accountable. The damage is the goal, capitalism is the game.

The OP is right that AI has no moral agency, it has no agency at all nor any concept of morals. Its creators don't want any concept of moral behavior in an AI, they want it simulated on demand only when required, otherwise they want the worst sociopathy they can deliver, that's how money is made.

"It can be used for good and for bad."
And we should accept the good and reject the bad, unlike what the headline says. So no, "the headline is [NOT] reasonable."

"So far, the printing press is responsible for more deaths than AI."
So is aging, so what? That's not a defense for building gas chambers.

"(Printing Press -> Mass distribution of Luther's bible translation -> Protestant Reformation -> hundreds of years of religious wars in Europe)"
Right, it's the printing press responsible for wars, not christianity.

"Despite all of the death that is downstream of the printing press, the usual response in the west has been to ban specific "misuses" of the printing press - not the printing press itself."
There are no misuses of the printing press, this is just your grotesque failure of logic.

"The specifics that Altman is saying - that voluntary slowdowns are good, or that external oversight over OpenAI is bad - I disagree with."
But you've already given us reason to completely disrepect your opinions.

"The AI labs should probably be nationalized for national security reasons."
You can defer to an expert if you want, that doesn't make that opinion more interesting. "National security reasons" is a justification for controlling applications of AI, not AI itself. The reason to nationalize AI is to prevent destruction of the economy to the detriment of the people. But you wouldn't know about that.

So you're a. Chernobyl expert. Must come with being MAGA.

"...kind of figure out how to dole out the benefits..."

This is all anyone needs to know about Sam Altman. He is a sociopath.

When he says accept some bad things so we can dole out benefits, he means he should be rich and you should suffer. An AI that cannot provide any alleged benefit without doing damage should NOT be deployed and anyone who does so should be imprisoned.

"This should cost nearly nothing to implement."

But shitty radios cost money to support. Customers will complain and there won't be solutions. It's not about the cost of the radio, it's about the cost of the feature.

"...whatever terribly short range staticky mess you capture can be presented to the consumer for compliance purposes."

It can be, but there are consequences. And that assumes compliance requirements don't get worse.

AM radio has theoretical value because it has historical value and partisans have destroyed FM radio. AM radio has NEVER been required, and for good reason. Cars didn't have radios at all at one time, yet the world survived. Worse yet, when cars didn't have radios, drivers didn't have cell phones either. We were just fine.

You can get your instructions from Putin over the internet now, just like your rubles.

'While public discussion around the legislation has largely focused on emergency alerts and news access, some scholars say preserving AM radio also has implications for media diversity... "I think the media landscape is really overwhelmingly homogenized right now, and AM radio is important in many markets," [said Zachary McDowell, associate professor of communications at the University of Illinois Chicago]. "It's a space that still allows for all sorts of different voices that is still open and accessible."'

This is bullshit. The reason for the homogeneity in "media" is because that was a Republican strategy to create partisan media. Reagan began deregulating media so that essential checks ensuring independent media would be destroyed. That's where we are today and the solution is not to force shitty receivers into cars where no one wants them, the solution is to undue the damage done to media since the 80s. Cars are utterly irrelevant to the state of media today, and back when Reagan was ruining media cars were NOT required to have radios AT ALL.

"It needs to be forced as standard equipment."

Needs to be for your partisan interests, not for anything else. Gen Z doesn't see utility for good reason.

"... ALPRs ... can be a good tool to solve crimes ..."

A gas chamber can be a good tool to prevent crimes.

"The bookkeeping is not there to ensure this technology is used responsibly ..."

No such thing as responsible violation of constitutional rights.

Gas chambers would also lower car crime, doesn't mean it's ethical. A surveillance state certainly has *some* benefits, Hitler did some good things for the German people.

Actually you need a large part of the "full range of modern hardware", you just don't need a lot of I/O. Unless you want to network boot, of course.

All of the processor, all of the memory, all of anything to do with memory, PCI, possibly USB. It would be easier to enumerate what wouldn't be needed. And most is this is supported in "BIOS" while not documented publicly.

Yes, OSes generally "resupport" this hardware, but the OS needs to be loaded, "standardized interfaces for storage" are only the last step.

If using hardware is ethical, then using the BIOS that is included with and is part of the hardware is also ethical. Cannot be otherwise.

You would think people would tire of RMS's silly lies. There is no end to RMS's desire to take your work for free.