FTX - another Theranos

Obviously, FTX is (or rather was) in a very different line of business than Theranos. But the crypto currency exchange and the diagnostic company shared several characteristics that led to their very high profile implosion.  

First both were operating on a relatively new technology space that very few people understood. That made it much easier for their founders to spin a wildly over-optimistic yarn without fear of contradiction. Those yarns may well had strayed into falsehoods in both cases too. 

Second, both had young, apparently brilliant founders that may wanted to believe in. America is plagued by the cult of personality and hero-worship, and both Sam Bankman-Fried and Elizabeth Holmes, managed to convince a lot of seemingly smart people to buy into their stories.  With a posse of powerful influential but largely uncomprehending bakers, they were able to weather headwinds that would have sunk less well protected firms far earlier.   And that unnatural longevity increase the scale of the damage inflicted when they eventually imploded. 

If is fitting and not entirely surprising that high profile founders ended up failing in such spectacular fashion.. But until people, particular the influential (who by dint of their prior accomplishments, often overestimate their abilities) learn not to be take in by "bright young things" with an appealing story and do a little more due diligence fueled by a good does of skepticism, we'll be here again before too long.  

Existential Risks

Geoffrey Hinton, the father of Artificial Intelligence, worries about AI as an existential risk for humanity. While he is concerned about the potential societal disruption of mass unemployment, political division driven by social media message targeting, the increase "ease" of going to war when your side only looses "battle-bots" and not people, not to mention the further erosion of trust in messaging and institutions, his principle concern is that unconstrained AI well see no need for human direction and control, and perhaps no need for humans at all. That is the existential thread he and many others worry about. 

The threat from AI has been compared to that we faced sixty years ago from nuclear weapons.  But there are two critical differences. First, nuclear weapons were designed and built by governments while A.I. is being developed in the private sector. Governments therefore only have indirect control over its development and their ability to influence it is somewhat "arms-length".

The second critical difference is incentives. Both nuclear weapons, particularly the H-bomb, have a clear downside - the total destruction of life on earth. But the up-side is quite different. For the bomb, it's the deterrent effect that is thought to have prevented World War III. Importantly, the diminishing marginal return from the number of weapons allowed governments to negotiate a halt to the arms race.

For AI however, the up-side is not only quite different but much more complex. First, AI offers clear benefits to society from better medical diagnoses, safer roads, more targeted teaching and tutoring and faster access to information. And since AI is being developed in the private sector, the potential profits are a strong incentive that weren't directly part of the decision making in developing the bomb. That incentive is exacerbated by the potential network effects common to software and other non-rival goods and services. Companies who fall behind in developing AI are destined to lose; that creates a strong incentive to push forward as fast as possible. And since the software industry has historically been more concerned with speed then safety, the "fail-fast" mentality, when flaws are discovered after the product is launched rather than before, guard-rails are likely to be an after thought at best and a band-aid for a severed artery at worst. 

All of which means that companies are unlikely to self-regulate effectively, leaving that job to governments. But governments have two problems. First, legislators have in the past have had difficulty grasping the some of the basics of new technology, let alone its implications and how they might be mitigated. Second, there is not only inter-firm competition but inter-country competition. The US government for example may be loath to impose too much regulation on AI for fear that China and Chinese firms will gain a competitive advantage which will have consequences for US competitiveness and its economic welfare.  

Finally there is an issue of oversight and enforcement. With nuclear weapons, a physical entity, inspection and intelligence gathering allowed both side in the cold war to know enough about the other was doing.  That's much harder when the development is not being carried out by singular government entities but dispersed throughout the private sector. And when there are no physical tell-tales to monitor, oversight and enforcement of any international agreement limiting the development of AI is going to be much harder.   

None of these issues applied to the development of nuclear weapons. Were one were looking to the history of the cold war for a road map to control the development of AI, the historical analogy would be  quite misleading.  One can only hope that around the world there are enough people with sufficient foresight to design some kind of effective global agreement. But given the political dysfunction in the US, the lack of cohesion in Europe given the tension between a European identity and its composite sovereign states and the lack of democratic accountability in China and Russia, it's hard to be sanguine about the future. 

Russia's regression

Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a plane crash along with nine of his deputies on Thursday. No one was particularly surprised. Prigozhin's plan crash looks very much like a carefully planned assassination by the Russian military, in all likelihood ordered by Putin. Prigozhin had risen to prominence as Russia's dictatorial president, Vladimir Putin, came to rely increasingly on the Wagner group mercenaries to do the work the regular Russian army was seemingly unable to.

The more Putin relied on Prigozhin's men in Ukraine, Prigozhin's influence and leverage grew. Prigozhin's increasing frustration with what he saw as the incompetence of the leadership of the regular army led to his demands to replace top Russian military leaders in June and ultimately to his failed coup.

While Prigozhin's demise isn't surprising - after all disposing of political opponents is precisely what autocrats do - what was, at least until yesterday, was the fact that Prigozhin appeared to have reached a deal with Putin. Yet what we now know, assuming the assessment is correct, is that Putin was merely biding his time. The supposed deal was never one on which Prigozhin should have relied.

It has been suggested that Putin liked "revenge as a dish served cold". Yet there seems a more pragmatic reason for his delay in exacting retribution. By lulling Prigozhin into a false sense of security, allowing him to travel back and forth between his self-imposed semi-exile in Bellaruse and Mother Russia, he found an opportunity to eliminate not only Prigozhin but all his top lieutenants at the same time. That not only disposes of the charismatic Prigozhin but neutralizes any potential threat from other Wagner Group leaders who might have shared Prigozhin's aspirations for power.

The other surprising aspect here is that Prigozhin never seemed to have seen this coming. Thinking he could challenge Putin's leadership and get away with it seems the height of hubris. Putin's enemies have been assassinated all over the world. Flying back and forth to Russia was a flagrant challenge to Putin's stature, one that he simply could not tolerate.

Looking forward two things seem clear. The first is that Putin's hold on power, at least for the moment, is more secure. The fate of Prigozhin and his top lieutenants will make others who might have thought to challenge or even disagree with Putin far less likely to do so. The second is that there are only two ways in which Putin's hold on power will end; with a coup or if he dies on the job (although the two are not mutually exclusive).

Causality is not always bidirectional

Causality is often not bidirectional. In many cases causality runs in one direction only with changes in A leading to changes in B but not vice versa.  China appears to be a case in point.  It has been generally assumed by economists that democratic free market economies function more efficiently and therefore generate more wealth than centralized command and control economies.  In the 1990s that reasoning was turned on its head and many political scientists assumed that the corollary would also hold; that greater economic prosperity and freer markets would lead to an inevitable transition from a centralized political system to a decentralized democratic one.  The quarter century since that view came to prominence has shown that in China at least, market liberalization and greater personal wealth do not lead to democratic reform.  When relationships are not simple and dyadic (A->B, B->A) but are the product of many different mechanisms one cannot assume causality runs both ways.      

Trump vs. the Establishment

A legal pundit on The News Hour yesterday suggested it was never a good idea to antagonize the judge in a case in which you are the defendant. That may be the case for mere mortals but not Trump.  He believes, and with good reason, that the normal rules don't apply to him. If you color inside the lines you are indeed constrained by the rules and norms most of us take as given. But Trump has learned from experience that if you ignore the rules a range of possibilities open up not all of which end in tears.

What the News Hour pundit seemed not to realize is that insulting the judge and disparaging the legal system may hurt Trump's legal case, but helps his political campaign. And since his fate belongs less in the hands of the legal system and more in the hands of the electorate, insulting the judge and not playing by the rules seems like a pretty good strategy.       

Now it's down to us, the electorate

Donald Trump was indicted for what to a lay person looks like an attempted coup. Nothing in America's political and constitutional history has been more serious. 

Many have argued that the fact that he was charged shows that the judicial system has held even under the most sever stress it may ever had have to endure. That may be so, but despite the compelling evidence and care in selecting how to charge Trump, the outcome for the country still hangs in the balance. 

A decision tree is illuminating here. The first branch deals with whether Trump is able to delay the trail until after the 2024 general election. The next two branches are the same except order depends on whether or not his delaying tactics were successful. The two branches are the outcome of the trial and the outcome of the general election.  

The decision tree can be simplified since the two right sets of branches (election outcome and trial outcome) are the same except that order of their application depends on the outcome of the leftmost branch.  For the moment, assume that the probabilities of winning in court and winning in the general election are the same whether the upper branch or the lower branch obtain. The model is then completely insensitive to the likelihood of the trial being delayed past the election, depending, along both "delay" and "no delay" branches, only on the combined probabilities of an election win (or loss) and a win (or loss) in the courts. Given that the first branch only flips the order of the subsequent branches, the tree can be reduced to:

Interestingly even if the trial were an open and shut case, with 100% certainty of a conviction, Trump's odds are still good, depending solely on the likelihood of his being reelected.  That's why winning the presidential election is so important for him.  In essence, his best route to freedom is by being elected. 

While the simplification depends on the assumption that election outcome is unaffected by the trial outcome on the lower branch ("no delay") it is worth noting that Trump's many indictments and his two impeachments have had no decipherable adverse impact on his electoral changes, nor popularity on the right (or for that matter his unpopularity on the left).  Similarly, one would hope that his trial verdict would be unaffected whether or not her were to be elected.

His fate therefore depends almost entirely on the electorate; they cannot put him in jail but they can certainly keep him out of jail. Even if his conviction were absolutely assured, his accountability rests with the American people.  This, then, is the ultimate test of America democracy. 

Lunar trajectory

(c) NASA

When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out of the Lunar Excursion Module in 1969 I remember a feeling a wonder, awe and hope.  I was eight years old and had followed the Apollo program from Apollo 8, the first manned flight crewed by astronauts Borman, Lovell and Anders who were the first men ever to fly around the moon. 

In what seemed an eternity later but was in fact only six months, Armstrong and Aldrin planted the American flag on the lunar surface.  The Apollo program was only three years old, and less than a year since the first Apollo astronauts had left earth^*

Five more moon landing were made until the program was terminated after the flight of Apollo 17 in 1972.  It had taken only three years from the first manned flight of the Saturn V to the sixth lunar landings. In hindsight, the speed with which the program moved forward was astonishing. That was fifty one years ago. 

In 1989 the Soviet Union collapsed and the "space race" effectively ended. The Space Shuttle never seemed to fulfill its original promise and didn't capture the public's imagination as the moon landings had. America turned inwards to become increasingly consumed in what we now think of as the culture wars. 

Existential challenges confront the country and the world yet America's increasingly chronic inability to tackle anything consequential, at least with any success, imperils the country and the wider world. Two wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq, failed to achieve their objectives, the wealth gap has widened and trust in institutions has all but evaporated. 

The feeling I had as I watched man set foot on the moon, the sense that there was almost no limit to what could be accomplished, has given way to the realization that America's sclerotic politic and societal dysfunction has turned the dream of a bright future, brimming with possibilities, into to a bleak and deeply depressing nightmare         

^*Tragically Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee, the crew of Apollo 1, died in a fire on the launch pad in Feb 21st, 1967.

Strange priorities

Judge Aileen M. Cannon, in what appears to be a very unjudgmental decision, split the difference between Special Counsel Jack's Smith request for a speedy trial and Donald Trump's attempts to evade justice by delaying his trial until he might be in a position to direct the Justice Department to drop his case.

To a Brit the situation seems utterly bizarre and Kafkaesque. First Trump's argument that the trial might interfere with his political campaign is mind-boggling.  Defendants in criminal cases generally don't get to use the argument that they can't go to trial because they can't get time off work.  So clearly not everyone is equal in the eyes of our justice system. 

Second, that notion that it is possible to campaign for an elected office that could be used to alter the course of ones own criminal case equally baffling. To suggest that this would create a conflict of interest is, even for a Brit, an extraordinary understatement.  It's as if Jeffrey Dahmer stood for election to the governor of Wisconsin in order to stop his case going to trial or to grant himself a pardon were he to be convicted. 

While there may not be constitutional or legislative guard-rails that prevent a presidential candidate from either the delaying of a trial or the possibility of self-pardon or of stopping an ongoing prosecution, the Founding Father's almost certainly would have not approved of such self-dealing.  The constitution does seem to suggest that public service requires people be of "good moral character";  and what that meant may, to the Founding Father's, have seemed completely self-evident. 

However while they may have met or been aware that individuals as unscrupulous as Trump existed, it probably never crossed their minds that the electorate would ever entertain such as absurd notion as electing such a person to the highest office in the land.  Yet the morality that the Founding Father's considered sufficient to keep individuals lacking "good moral character" out of the White House seems to have evaporated. With the increasing polarization of American politics both sides are willing to turn a blind eye to a lack of "good moral character" if their side stands to gain.  What is  particularly ironic is that the GOP, which routinely rails against the decline in societal  morals, is willing to entertain the candidacy of a deeply immoral person ostensibly in order to restore the country's morals. 

Nemesis follows... eventually

On Saturday, the unthinkable happened; although with 20-20 hindsight, not entirely surprising after all.  Yevgeny Prigozhin, owner of the Wagner Group mercenary army, mounted the first serious challenge to Vladimir Putin's autocratic grip on power. 

Over the last several months Prigozhin had become increasingly and publicly critical of Putin, suggesting he was increasingly confident of his own power and his indispensability to Putin.

The Wagner group, in recruiting from Russia's prisons, turned out to be a more effective fighting force than Putin's regular army. As the war on Ukraine  bogged down, Putin begin to rely increasingly on the Wagner Group to backstop his regular army's failings and in so doing ceded power to Prigozhin.

As Prigozhin's confidence grew, along side his frustration with the Russian bureaucracy that seemed to be starving his mercenary army of military supplies, so did his impatience and his criticism of Putin. The feud between Prigozhin and Putin's Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff came to a head on Friday June 23rd when Russia’s Federal Security Service issued a warrant for Prigozhin’s arrest.  The following day, confident of his own invincibility, Prigozhin ordered his private army to advance on Moscow in what looks very much like an attempted coup. 

Things escalated quickly. Putin appeared on national television branding Prigozhin as a a traitor.  And then almost as quickly as it began it was seemingly over.  A deal brokered by Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko allowed Prigozhin to take sanctuary in Belarus in return for Prigozhin ordering his army to return to barracks. 

      

But while the situation seems to have de-escalated, the political landscape in Russia is now very different  from what it was 72 hours ago.    

Although Prigozhin's immediate challenge to Putin has subsided, he has not disappeared. The incident exposes the fragility of Putin's power. It highlights the weakness of the Russian army and the lack of support for the war in Ukraine, particularly among Russia's regular soldiers. 

Politically that gives Putin another headache. The war was in part his way of bolstering public support as the economy faltered and democratic freedoms were eroded. As support for the war evaporates and the bold claims Putin made at its outset ring increasingly hollow, he must rely increasingly on the authoritarian control of a police state.  In making a deal with Prigozhin rather than capturing and trying him for treason, Russians can now see Putin's invincibility for the myth it has now become.   

All of which creates a volatile inflection point. While Russia is preoccupied with an internal struggle for power,  Ukraine may benefit in its effort to expel the invasion. At the same time, Putin may become increasingly desperate in an attempt to hold on to power, leading him to act with increasing unpredictability.  The invasion of Ukraine was seen by many as an act of irrational hubris; that does not auger well for what Putin may do next.

Academic Freedom?

Many of my colleagues have been lamenting the infringement of academic freedom in red states which are passing laws preventing the teaching of subjects related to race and gender.  

What is striking but not perhaps surprising is that very few made the same augment about infringement of academic freedom when AB1460, a law mandating the teaching of ethnic studies in the CSU was passed three years ago.

Apparently infringement of academic freedom is only problematic when it's a policy that many of my colleagues don't like but is perfectly fine when its one they support.  

It appears that hypocrisy is alive and well on the left as well as on the right.   

Farewell Rat Boy

 

Yesterday I had to say a very sad goodbye to Rat-boy. He was 15 and had been suffering from a thyroid problem for the last four years.

Rat was our second Sonora rescue after Buddy. His early preoccupation was climbing into my waste-paper bin, a pastime he kept well into his second year.

He and Tab-tab were great buds until Tab-tab and Buddy began feuding and we had to find Tab-tab another home (where I understood from Judith he is the center attention and of is very happy).  Rat was a gentle soul, would come when called even when it wasn't meal time. 

Until his middle years, he was also a playful cat...  












The last month he'd lost a lot of weight (yesterday he was down to 7lb 6oz) and was eating almost nothing despite all the varieties of tempting foods we had to offer. At first I thought it was just not wanting to eat with the others, but it became clear that despite being hungry he'd lost his appetite and could not stomach almost any of the cat or human food I tried to tempt him with. 

Quite suddenly yesterday he had a terrible episode of violent convulsions and although he perked up a little and ate two tins of pate, Wes Whitman agreed that it was his time. So sadly he made one last very quite one way trip to Mono Way Veterinary Hospital. Usually he hated travelling but this time he was quiet; I think he knew this was his final journey.

At 5:10pm he was put to sleep with his head in my hand, and went to join Mrs, Mookie, George, Bullwinkle, Buddy, Vic and Judith on the other side.

Consequential? Not as one might expect

Donald Trump was indicted yesterday on thirty-one counts of Willful Retention of National Defense Information (in layman's terms, 'espionage'), and another six counts of obstruction of justice and conspiracy. For anyone not is a position of national power and influence, this would appear to be an open and shut case. Trump had no right to retain classified information, lied to the authorities investigating the case and tried to cover up his wrong-doing, allegedly.

But Trump is not an ordinary individual in two ways that matter in this case.  First he is a national figure, at present the front runner in the Republican presidential primary. While justice is supposed to be blind, the Justice Department cannot proceed without at least considering the political implications of bringing the case. While Trump's notoriety should not influence the pursuit of justice, it clearly influences the process by which justice might be arrived at. For example, Jack Smith, the Special Council tasked by Attorney General Merrick Garland with investing the case, is hoping to move the process forward quickly to avoid it dragging on into 2024 and the presidential primaries. It appears too, that he has been meticulous in his collection of evidence and the building of the case to ensure that any claims that this is a shoddy, politically motivated "witch hunt" might be easily laid to rest. 

The other way Trump differs from many other criminal defendants is in his brazen attacks on the legitimacy of the judicial system and the judicial process. Just as may autocrats, when deposed and  brought to trial, claim the the system under which they are being prosecuted has no legitimate right to hold or try them, so Trump is making the same argument. Of course the difference is that when a dictator is deposed, there is often a question about the legitimacy of the judicial system in which they are being tried; but that is certainly not the case in America.  Trump has and will continue to claim he is the victim, that the charges are trumped up and politically motivated, and are only being brought by the "elites" to bring him down. He will raise money for his presidential campaign on the back of the indictment. And he will try every trick in his extensive play-book to delay the proceedings so that he can leverage his court case into his victim-hood narrative as he campaigns for the nomination and likely the presidency. 

While much of the punditry has been focusing on the legal implications of the case, ultimately the outcome may be largely irrelevant. If Trump is not convicted, he will claim it as a victory that demonstrates not only his innocence, but a vindication of his claims to have been persecuted.  If he is convicted, he will claim that his is yet further evidence of his being victimized by his political opponents who have manipulated justice to their own political ends. Politically, Trump makes hay either way.  

Since the verdict may not matter much, his inability to find a legal team experiences in dealing with espionage cases may not matter much either. What he is probably looking for is a team that is prepared to risk everything (think Sydney Powell or Rudy Giuliani) while being adept at brazening things out in the face of overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing. Ultimately, while I'm sure he'd like to be acquitted, he is looking for a victory in the court of Republican public opinion, not the legal system, betting that the former matters more than the latter.   Yes, the indictment is consequential, but less in terms if its legal implications than its political ones.

A Millennium of Tradition and Symbolism

King Charles III of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was crowned today in Westminster Abbey.

Much of the imagery will be of the finery and the trappings of royalty; the crown, the orb and sceptre, the gilded carriage. Much will be made of the pageantry, the four thousand man and women from the armed services, the splendid (if somewhat bizarre to an outsider) uniforms of the Grenadier Guards or the Household Cavalry. 

But two things stuck me particularly today. One was an old man in his undershirt, the other a old wooden chair.  

That old man was the new King, being ceremonially undressed and then anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Charles is the constitutional head of the Anglican Church, established by Henry VIII in 1543.  I was struck by the symbolism of this public display of vulnerability, of the public acknowledgement of his role as the servant of god as well as the people. 

In the second image, we see Charles standing without any finery in front of the 727-year-old Coronation Chair on which 26 monarchs, including Charles' mother, have been crowned since the coronation of Edward II in 1308. And below the seat, the Stone of Scone, on which kings and queens of Scotland have been inaugurated since the middle ages.    
       
While Britain has in large measure come to terms with its diminished role in the world, from the super-power of the 19th century to a middle size country in the north of Europe, it is still steeped in tradition and history.  That history is everywhere from the real Tudor houses with thatched rooves to the Norman churches found in so many English villages. 

It is that history, that sense of heritage, that anchors Brits and allows them to cope with the tumult of the country's changing role, its increasing diversity, its more inclusive and tolerant culture. Tradition may appear to be an obstacle to progress but it can also facilitate change by balancing the uncertainty change brings with the stability of that long heritage.  

A year ago today

Exactly a year ago Judith and I drove to Sacramento. It was dark when we left the house. We had to be there before eight I think. I don't remember exactly, except that we drove half way there before sunrise and stopped for coffee and egg white bites at the Starbucks in Angel's Camp. 

We had some time to wait. Most of what happened is now a bit of a blur, save three memories. The first was saying goodbye as she was taken into the operating room. She was frightened; I held her hand and told her it would be fine. l really believed that. 

I waited in the car park. The operation was scheduled for ten and was supposed to be over by noon; but by 1:30 I'd heard nothing. Then I got the call from Max Horowitz, the surgeon. The operation had run longer than expected but he thought it had been a success, at least as far excising the cancer was concerned. It had progressed to Stage 3, I think he'd said, but the margins were clean.  I was relieved that the operation was over but concerned; Stage 3 was not what I'd wanted to hear.  Now we had the chemo ahead of us, but that was a month away and I was looking forward to Judith coming home.  

The next memory was going into recovery as Judith was waking up. She was under a heating blanket, still very groggy, her hands making little grasping motions. She wanted her special hydrogen infused water  water which we'd brought from home. The nurses let me stay till 6pm when I set off home to feed the cats.  

I would retrace that journey for a week. Judith was supposed to come home after three or four days but because someone had cut into a large vein during surgery (that was why the operation had run so long) and she'd not been re-positioned, she sustained serious motor nerve damage from the sustained compression. That deprived her of any motor function in her left ankle. Foot-drop was the very non-technical-sounding term for the condition. That was why she stayed in hospital several days longer than planned, and had a significant impact on her life for the next six months, confining her to her chair for most of the time. It was the first indication that things weren't going to go smoothly.   

The last memory from that early hospital episode was picking her up to go home. I think she was to be discharged around noon. I went to her room, talked with one of the surgeons about her foot drop (although that may have been a different day) and then went to bring the car round. But there was some confusion and crossed wires about which entrance she'd be coming out from and it took a few phone calls to sort that out. She was pissed and I was annoyed that the episode had soured what should have been a happy occasion.  As things turned out, there would be very few happy occasions after that. 

The appearance of impropriety

Clarence Thomas was treated to gifts and favors from a variety of wealthy conservatives which he didn't disclose.  His house, in which his mother lived, was bought and his mother allowed to continue to live there rent free. He enjoyed vacations and flights on private planes.  Although it all looks very fishy it's not corruption, at least as the law understands it. There is no evidence of a direct "quid-pro-quo".

However the strict legal definition of corruption is really not that important here. What does matter is impropriety and the appearance of impropriety as the Founding Fathers noted. 

It's hard to say if Thomas' rulings were directly influenced by his wealthy friends lavishing him with gifts or whether their friendship arose and was sustained by a shared world view. 

Nevertheless, that fact they became friends only after he was appointed to the Supreme Court, while not in and of itself improper, it could be construed as a conscious attempt by his benefactors to exert some subtle influence in his general thinking even if not directly on his legal opinions.

The second question which Journalists haven't looked at (and which I think they should) is whether his donors sought out and then lavished similar gifts on other like-minded thinkers or whether their "outreach" was only to those who wielded significant power.  If that were to be the case it would look suspiciously like an attempt to influence Thomas' (and other powerful peoples') decision-making and hence his opinions.

Since the Court like many important institutions of democracy relies on public trust (just as banks do, as First Republic has just shown us), the appearance of impropriety undermines that trust and so creates instability in society. 

SCOTUS needs to get its ethical act together for the good of the country and do so without Congress getting involved. Showing it can police itself will be important to restoring trust; having ethical rules imposed on it from outside will only reinforce that idea as an institution it cannot be trusted to do the right thing.

The demise of the "knowledge worker"

Academia has a lot to answer for; it may have ruined the lives of a generation or more. To understand why, we need to go back to the 1990s.  

Once the Berlin Wall fell, America turned its attention to international trade. Governments (and economists) thought growing international trade would bind nations states more closely economically and that would reduce the likelihood of war. Parenthetically, in 2022 Russia proved that to be an unfortunately illusion. Business and manufacturing companies in particular saw the post-Cold War order as an opportunity to move jobs to lower wage countries and offshoring took off.

As manufacturing jobs in the US (and Europe) disappeared, management scholars began lauding the "knowledge economy" as the answer to offshoring.  In order to meet the demand for "knowledge workers", at least 40% (Tony Blair suggested 50%) of high-school graduates would need to get a four-year degree. In the UK polytechnics became universities with the stroke of a pen.  

Fast forward a quarter century and academia (and much of the US) is either up in arms or enthralled by ChatGPT, a deep learning Artificial Intelligence engine. Tellingly, a member of the Wharton business faculty asked it to answer one of his exam MBA questions and he considered its answer, had it been a student's, would have earned a "C".  So the debate about whether to use ChatGPT in the classroom or ban it is in a sense moot. If ChatGPT gets a a "C" a Wharton, anyone with a Wharton C or lower is effectively unemployable.  Why hire a Wharton MBA at $300k when you can get as good an answer for free? 

What does this all mean? First, ChatGPT provides a universal standard by which to calibrate work across institutions. If a Wharton professor thinks a ChatGPT answer is worth a "C" and a San Jose State prof thinks it's a B, that suggests a Wharton "C" is about the same as a  San Jose State "B".

Second, it creates a performance threshold, an "AI bar"; get less than a Wharton "C" (or a San Jose State "B") and you are no better than ChatGPT.  So to be competitive (with AI) in the labor market, students have to do at least as well as ChatGPT; otherwise they're unemployable. That's why the debate about banning or using ChatGPT is moot.  Students may use it but if they do, they won't clear the AI bar and their degree is effectively worthless.

In the longer run, the employment landscape will change radically.  Knowledge work will be eviscerated. High-school leavers will eschew four year degrees for jobs that require physical presence, service and manual jobs. For a while at least jobs that require individual customization may be immune from automation and offer a temporary respite from the technological tsunami.  For those in early in their careers AI will soon over-take them and they will find themselves looking for work outside the knowledge economy.  

We are at an inflection point, one that OpenAI has created with the launch of ChatGPT. Suddenly everyone has been given a salutary lesson in AI's potential. CEOs who had either not been paying attention or not taken it seriously, will now be asking what is the scale of the threat it poses to their companies if they don't get on board. That will light a fire under AI's adoption and its development.

The better AI becomes (and its progress will be ever more rapid), the less knowledge work the will be. Those most effected will be knowledge workers in their early careers, say one to ten years in.  But that age range will get larger as AI improves. Only those with deep experience will be immune from replacement by "intelligent" machines. And as a consequence of academia's hype and enthusiasm over the knowledge economy we have created a huge group of people in their 30s and 40s who are most at risk from being replaced by AI.  That's a big potential social problem for which academia is responsible.

Moreover, that creates a conundrum; if people early in their careers are replaced by AI, fewer and fewer will get the experience needed to stay ahead of the machines.  The result will be an increasingly divided society with a tiny elite rising above the "AI bar" and commanding insane salaries while everyone else will be jobless or working for minimum wage.  It could even be worse (although I doubt that politically this would be allowed to happen - but that's another story); AI could render even the best and the brightest redundant. 

By the 2030s the political divide won't be between red states and blue states, but between a small insanely wealthy elite who have jobs and the 99% who will be out of work or earning minimum wage. How well the country's leaders prepare for that future will determine whether we navigate it peacefully or have to deal with a tinderbox of volatile social unrest.