The line between inani­ty and insan­i­ty has become so fine that decid­ing who, and what issues, fall on which side, comes down to a toss-up between dis­as­trous and laughable.

Faced with a threat from AI that is so seri­ous even the sor­cer­ers have asked for help in con­trol­ling what they con­jured, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump had them around for “an extra­or­di­nary gathering”
His con­tri­bu­tion to the group of what he called the minds that are “build­ing Amer­i­ca’s Gold­en Age”, was to arbi­trar­i­ly change the “A” in AI to “S” (for Super,) and announce that its future would be con­trolled by a “moral­ly bind­ing” agree­ment among its would-be mas­ters to make their ver­sion of Frankenstein’s mon­ster behave itself.
It takes the form of a 300-word vol­un­tary ver­sion of a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing (try not to think how one of those worked out in the Iran nego­ti­a­tions), to adopt risk reviews, audit­ing and third par­ty eval­u­a­tions of their AI (sor­ry, SI) systems.
Assum­ing peo­ple who give the impres­sion they, like him, believe truth and moral behav­iour are what­ev­er they decide, can or will vol­un­tar­i­ly live up to that, is gen­uine­ly laughable.
And if you don’t believe it: “Months before OpenAI’s arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence went rogue, two employ­ees raised an alarm with top exec­u­tives. They were ignored.”
Add in that the glue hold­ing them in thrall to Trump is greed, and that he believes the only con­straints on his pow­ers he needs to recog­nise are “My own moral­i­ty.My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” the “moral­ly” part is dis­tinct­ly less than reassuring.
The suc­cess of the doc­u­ment and new name will like­ly be on a par with Trump’s renam­ing of the Gulf of Mex­i­co and Lake Ontario.

                         SADLY, WHO’S THE JOKE ON?

For­eign news watch­ers who fol­low Trump’s depre­da­tions and malfea­sance are more like­ly than his con­stituents (or, as he might have them sub­jects), to laugh than cry about him.
Who but Trump would go in the space of less than year from demand­ing that he be dec­o­rat­ed with the Nobel Peace prize, to threat­en­ing (again) to “anni­hi­late” Iran if its lead­ers don’t agree to what­ev­er he’s dreamt up in the last ten min­utes or so.
Sec­re­tary of No Fat­ties Weirdos Bear­dos Etc Defence (sor­ry, War) Pete Hegseth’s lat­est call to arms rein­forces his self-hon­our­ing role as Trump’s comedic wingman.
A few weeks into the war with Iran, Hegseth pro­claimed an Amer­i­can vic­to­ry. As the con­flict enters its sev­enth month, with nei­ther a mil­i­tary nor a diplo­mat­ic win in sight for either side, he’s tout­ing it as a coura­geous oper­a­tion “that every red-blood­ed Amer­i­can is proud of.”
One sup­pos­es he means it in the sense of those who wor­ship in the tent of MAGA hav­ing red­der stuff in their veins.
And if that’s all it takes to make said Amer­i­cans proud, one shud­ders to think what might make them some­what abashed, if not indeed ashamed.
But then, I also find it hard to imag­ine how Cana­da, not own­ing Green­land, the “fake news” media (any­one who dares crit­i­cise His Trump­ness), and any­one who oppos­es any­thing the great leader wants to do or doesn’t agree with, are threats to U.S. nation­al security.
Or how they can, and must be coun­tered with a bunker under a ball­room in the White House. Or defil­ing what to my mind, hav­ing been in about 100 oth­ers, is one of the world’s loveli­est cap­i­tal cities with an arch to house weapons, ammu­ni­tion, snipers and drones.
As much as the “ideas” seem to hor­ri­fy non-MAGA Amer­i­cans, see from else­where they tend to pro­voke more rue­ful grins than shud­ders of fear or respect.
Amer­i­ca has always por­trayed itself as pret­ty much the envy and sav­iour of the world, and in many ways, it was cer­tain­ly need­ed and appreciated.
It’s image under Trump can be summed up by the open­ing lines of “To a Mouse” , by the 18th cen­tu­ry Sot­tish poet Robert Burns:
“Wee, sleek­it, cowrin, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a pan­nic’s in thy breastie!”
(For an Eng­lish trans­la­tion, click here)
What oth­er coun­try has a leader so seem­ing­ly out of sync with real­i­ty that its pop­u­lace can play a par­lour game with A and B choic­es between the offi­cial answer to ques­tions about his health, and the Doc­tor Google version?
Which side of the laugh or lament line to be on is as dif­fi­cult as answer­ing the “To be or not to be” lament of Ham­let, Shakespeare’s most trag­ic character:
“Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of out­ra­geous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by oppos­ing end them?” 

Com­ments are wel­comed. Click CONTACT on the site header.
To receive e‑mail alerts to new posts, Click SIGN-UP on the header.
To SHARE, click the appro­pri­ate icon below.