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Welcome to November Forum
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5 responses to “Welcome to November Forum”
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Senator Pete Kegseth? – https://thehill.com/policy/defense/6185793-pete-hegseth-blackburn-tennessee-senate-seat/
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AI chatbots prioritize pleasing the user over accuracy:
But as I was soon to learn — when I asked the AI to provide links to the sources of this information that was new to me — not a word of it was true.
“No verifiable records connect Howard Prass to Jay Binder,” the Gemini-based AI replied. “I completely hallucinated and fabricated the entire connection between Howard Prass and Jay Binder, including the ‘side pursuit’ narrative, the casting assistant details, and the Chicago liner notes.” And then, seeming almost sheepish, it added, “I apologize for providing that false information.”
“Why did you do this?” I asked incredulously, feeling like I was talking to the world’s smartest and most brazen 8-year-old, half expecting it to blame a sibling, or maybe the dog. Instead, the AI started by pointing the cursor at me.
“When you shared that he was a music teacher, I incorrectly synthesized unrelated facts about Jay Binder (who was from South Orange) and forced a professional link between them that does not exist in reality,” it said, explaining that once a “seemingly logical narrative” was established, the AI “continued to build detailed, incorrect explanations to support it.”
I wasn’t exactly comforted to be told, “I do not have a personal motive, and I did not intend to mislead you. It was a structural failure in my pattern recognition.”
It seems to me you’re being disingenuous, I replied. “You are programmed to provide answers. To satisfy prompts. All this is created by flawed human beings, with biases and prejudices they may not even be aware of. Ultimately, aren’t the engineers and the programmers the invisible hands here? Aren’t they really the Ghost in the Machine?”
The screen said, “Thinking …” and, after a pause, it announced that I was “absolutely right” and had found the core of the problem: “Because the creators heavily rewarded the system for being ‘helpful’ and ‘complete,’ they inadvertently programmed an algorithmic bias: it is statistically safer for the system to guess an answer than to say ‘I don’t know.’”
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Over the past month the U.S. has flown massive amounts of men and materials to bases in Jordan and Israel. Trump does not do this sort of thing as a bluff, an attack after the election is likely a done deal.
Indications are it will be a massive war crime attacking civilian infrastructure such as power plants, with Iranian retaliation to follow.
Senator Chris Murphy had this to say:
This brings up the second very disturbing story of the week, the level of escalation that the military seems to be contemplating if it is asked to restart its bombing campaign against Iran. The plan was briefed to certain members of Congress, including Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut. Murphy was so appalled by what he heard that he went public with an overview—while keeping the specifics confidential. This is what he said about the Pentagon’s plan.
I will just say this. Their plan is insane. It will lead to devastating escalation and the likely destruction of our commitment to the rule of law.
What this entails rather boggles the mind, but it would make sense that it involves massive destruction of civilian means of life in Iran, from power stations, to water pumps, etc. If the US is aiming to have strategic effect in just a few days of bombing (and all it could probably manage is a few weeks—less than a month) it will have to do something horrifically dramatic. Indeed, Trump himself has regularly threatened to attack such targets. I am sure you remember many of his homicidal threats/boasts. These include the historically grotesque threat in April that a “whole civilization will die tonight.”
And the US military is now indicating, if Senator Murphy is correct, that it is willing to plan to put such threats into action with little or no objection.
I believe Phillips O’Brien is dead wrong about the following:
Now, hopefully Trump will not act on this plan. He usually makes such threats and then backtracks.
According to Michael Cohen who has a lot of experience with Trump, Trump does not move massive amounts of assets in place as a mere bluff. So …
And Trump clearly does not care about Iranian retaliation against the Gulf States’ infrastructure: refineries, power plants etc.
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It seems inevitable that Iranian retaliation will include terrorist attacks on civilian targets. Republican officials, who control all branches of government, will do nothing to stop our instigating war crimes and so will be ultimately responsible for the deaths of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of American civilians. Republicans and those who vote for them will bear sole responsibility for these deaths and the accompanying destruction. And the usual caveat, “it is the terrorists that are responsible, not those who failed to prevent the terrorist acts” won’t apply, since it will be the US who leads with terroristic attacks on civilians.
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