Sugoi & Yokunai

7 ways Multnomah and Portland are wasting your tax dollars

#1. $18,000 of tax dollars to send Multnomah and Portland politicians to Europe for a meeting (Willamette Week 6/30/22).

#2. Multnomah bought 22,700 brand new tents and 69,514 brand new tarps to lavish on the homeless. That is nearly five free tents/tarps per homeless person. (KGW-TV 12/7/22)

#3. Multnomah County gave out $500 cash loaded debit cards to the homeless. No wonder homeless grew 22% in Oregon while it only grew .3% nationwide (OPB 12/24/23).

#4. Portland ended up with a $62 million projected budget surplus in 2021 and $35 million surplus in 2022. Where did this near $100 million tax surplus go? (Oregonian 10/8/21, Willamette Week 5/6/2022).

#5. Portland unloaded millions of city taxpayer dollars in grants only available to private business marijuana shops. This happened as police were defunded, 911 calls hit record delays, street trash was left to expand into mountain-sized problems and pot holes remained unfixed.

#6. Over $85 million of tax dollars and government help for a private (yes, private) luxury Portland hotel that lasted about one year before facing a financial crisis and being bought out (Willamette Week 4/1/20).

#7. Portland gave out $3 million in cash loaded $364 debit cards to random strangers with the promise that they would use it for personal internet expenses. No record of who used it or how it was spent. One person alone took home 6 debit cards. (KGW 10/21/21)

There are two main reasons why creating artificial consciousness, whether deliberately or inadvertently, is a very bad idea. The first is that it may endow AI systems with new powers and capabilities that could wreak havoc if not properly designed and regulated. Ensuring that AI systems act in ways compatible with well-specified human values is hard enough as things are. With conscious AI, it gets a lot more challenging, since these systems will have their own interests rather than just the interests humans give them.

"Many of the tasks in white-collar land will look very different in the next five to 10 years"

After 20 Years as a Prosecutor in Illinois, I Quit.  It's happening.  Oregon is already short of public defenders, and supposedly this is one of the reasons those charged with crimes are set free.

In 2021, the Washington State Supreme Court invalidated the primary criminal drug possession statute in a case called State v. Blake. This decision effectively legalized the possession of hard drugs, including methamphetamines, fentanyl, cocaine, and heroin. The Legislature, at the time, approved a bill to make possession of hard drugs a misdemeanor after two pre-arrest “referrals.” Since 2021, the open use of hard drugs has significantly increased across the state, sparking demands for change from law enforcement, counties, and cities.

During this year’s legislative session, the legislature debated a bill, SB 5536, attempting to rectify the consequences of Blake. …Some Democrats voted against the bill, expressing the opposite view: that punishment for substance abuse is inherently inhumane.

You may have seen in the news that some cities, like the Bellingham City Council, have passed ordinances making public drug use an arrestable offense in response to Blake and growing concerns about drug use and crime in urban areas. If SB 5536 is passed by the full House of Representatives and signed by the governor, cities would be prevented from taking their own steps to address open drug abuse in their streets.

Oregon finally drops the requirements that healthcare workers be vaccinated against SARS-CoV2.  A little late, eh?

When compared to similar data taken from the US and Europe, the Tsimane fare much better, especially in old age. Tsimane brains lose about 2.3 percent of their volume per decade, compared with around 2.8 percent for the Moseten and about 3.5 percent for industrialized populations. For septuagenarians and older, the difference nearly doubled.

Superaging studies also suggest that being social, happy, and exercising your mind all play a role in keeping the brain healthy.

With the support of GPT-4, I feel unstoppable. The overnight surge in productivity is intoxicating, not for making money or starting a business, but for the sheer joy of continuously creating ideas from my mind, which feels like happiness.

Several participants in a study designed to simulate over-the-counter use of Perrigo's drug reported taking dozens or even hundreds more pills than they were dispensed to take. 

"This finding of improbable dosing in this study is really quite extraordinary. This is not something we see in a typical actual use study. And the results have to be incredibly extreme to show up in this kind of a study," the FDA's Theresa Michelle told the panel.

Almost a third of study participants reported taking far more tablets than they were supposed to receive, a result that the FDA worried cast doubt over the validity of all of the results from the study by Perrigo's contractor.

South Korea's moon rover is sending pictures back, and there's nary a mention in the news media.  Great to see another country join the club.

Last thing humanity needs.  A vaccine is out that effectively sterilizes women.  It induces an immune response to hCG, which could last indefinitely.  Although there could be appropriate indicates to render someone incapable of pregnancy, taking an immune approach to this problem seems fraught with hazard.  It will likely be applied to third-world countries or countries like India, rather than Europe, Eastern Asia, or North America.

How do you square these two articles?

• California Defaults On $18.6 Billion In Debt, Saddling Employers With The Expense
• California Approves Reparations Recommendations, Proposing $1.2 Million Checks For Black Residents

More insightful A.I. commentary:

• The A.I.-P.R. industrial complex:  If a Press Release Says “Artificial Intelligence,” There’s a Good Chance It’s Meaningless.  Seems like everybody wants to jump on the A.I. bandwagon.  "Technology this powerful should be able to make workers more productive, not unnecessary."  
• Researcher Meredith Whittaker says AI’s biggest risk isn’t ‘consciousness’—it’s the corporations that control them.  This person seems to agree with Ted Chiang to some extent.
• Free-lance writer posts on Reddit the experience of losing all his writing contracts due to ChatGPT, and having to switch occupations to being a plumber.  Well, at least A.I. didn't drive him to suicide as it did this Belgian man. 
• Stanford published a summary of the state of A.I.  The most important takeaway (to me) is:  "More than 70% of Chinese, Saudi, and Indian respondents felt AI had more benefits than drawbacks. Americans? 35%."  Indeed China is not afraid of advancing A.I. (even while American leaders advocate for a 6 month pause).  Chinese A.I. will come with a few quirks, though.
  

So true!

RAGCs are facilitated sessions involving participants grouped according to self-identified racial or ethnic identity to support integration of antiracism curricula into clinical practice.

Seems like everyone's got an opinion about the impact of A.I.  Here are some recent ones that I thought were worth sharing:

• Artifical general intelligence will be possible in a few years. At least some form of it. This is from Google DeepMind's CEO, who ought to know.
• Well, you might put it that way. AI is Just Someone Else’s Intelligence.  Current A.I. is just outputting the results of what it has been trained on.  But in the near future, there may be true synthesis.
  
• Fears of hypercapitalism. Sci-Fi author Ted Chiang has given interviews and writing articles about the real threat to A.I., which is that it will accentuate the negative aspects of capitalism and put more money and power in the hands of those who harness the technology to their advantage.  I think that now, perhaps more than ever, those with a special knowledge and capability can gain control over those who don't have this special permeative expertise.  People in power currently will want and will pay for this ability, which will only feed the drive to develop the technology to its ultimate end.  About a year ago, before all the current hype, Ted thought that the Singularity would never come.  Wonder if he feels the same way now.