7/22/2023

JRB,

            I have limited time this AM – off to Wisco at 10:30. My list of to-dos includes laundry, plants, packing, a dog & meds for husband. It will be a busy morning.

            So, I have two topics, AI & dengue fever.

            Did you see the NYPost article, “Biden declares ‘I am the AI’ while pushing rules for artificial intelligence” which included the quote, “If any of you think I’m Abe Lincoln, blame it on the AI.” You remind me of my dad who once asked, “do you know about THE Google?”

            I found it extremely creepy that the squad of 7 tech leaders at your AI event was so homogeneous. Mustafa Suleyman & Dario Amodei were the only guys who were not WASPy. Interestingly, they were NOT representing the biggest companies. Why not invite at least one woman, just for appearances sake!

            As you know, this Hollywood strike is about AI. The artists worry that “all our work could be frankensteined”. Renée DiResta of the Stanford Internet Observatory is less concerned. She says “people are going to believe what they see if it conforms to what they want to believe. … we (may) move further into (even more) divergent realities – where people are going to continue to hold the belief in something that they’ve seen on the internet as long as it tells them what they want.”

            As you know I am more concerned about the use of AI for military purposes. In general, I think AI is like a knife, a human invention that can be very handy, but can also be used to threaten & kill. The genie is out of the bottle. It’s time to educate ourselves.

            On to dengue fever – there’s an outbreak affecting the displaced children of Kalay Township in Burma. 20% of people who get dengue a 2nd time die. That’s bad! It’s hard to protect kiddos from mosquitoes in the tropics during monsoon season. Let’s do more to get things calmed down in Burma so people do not have to be crammed together in camps in unsanitary conditions.

            BYBS,