Spend enough time with ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence chatbots and it doesn’t take long for them to spout falsehoods.
Described as hallucination, confabulation or just plain making things up, it’s now a problem for every business, organization and high school student trying to get a generative AI system to compose documents and get work done. Some are using it on tasks with the potential for high–stakes consequences, from psychotherapy to researching and writing legal briefs.
Washington Post, September 30, 2022
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is serving a nine-year sentence in a maximum-security penal colony. This essay was conveyed to The Post by his legal team.
What does a desirable and realistic end to the criminal war unleashed by Vladimir Putin against Ukraine look like?
If we examine the primary things said by Western leaders on this score, the bottom line remains: Russia (Putin) must not win this war. Ukraine must remain an independent democratic state capable of defending itself. Continue reading Money Where His Mouth Is: Alexei Navalny’s Vision of a Better, Peaceful Russia
[NOTE: Anybody, especially a church bureaucrat or official, who tells you that Big Christianity, Catholic & Protestant, is not cracking apart over LGBT and associated issues, is either terribly under-informed, or putting you on. Such happy-or “We (& Jesus)-can work-it-out” talk is red-flag stuff, a warning that either their competence or their candor, or both, is in serious, maybe fatal doubt.
The two articles below are emblematic of this ongoing tumult: one is by a self-described “Asian American apostate” from American evangelicalism. The other is by a writer for a journal that has long advocated for purges of open LGBTQ Catholics and Anglicans, along with their straight supporters.
They are offered here as continuing food for thought.]
A scathing critique of the evangelical culture at a Christian university in pre-Trump America.
By Kathryn Post — April 18, 2023
(RNS) — R. Scott Okamoto still believed in Jesus the first time he strode onto the campus of Azusa Pacific University, an evangelical Christian school in Southern California, for a job interview in 1998. Fifteen years later, he left without a job or his faith.
But in his debut book, “Asian American Apostate: Losing Religion and Finding Myself at an Evangelical University,” Okamoto explains that his experience granted him more clarity and sanity about religion and Christianity in particular than he had enjoyed before. Continue reading Two Clashing Religious Views: An Asian American Apostate Speaks; and Anglican & Catholic Internal Splits: Big Crashes Ahead? Two Perspectives
Washington Post — April 18, 2023
An intellectual battle rages: Is the U.S. in a proxy war with Russia?
Vladimir Putin says the West is trying to ‘finish’ Russia. The Biden administration denies the accusation. But leaked documents reveal the extent of U.S. involvement in the Ukraine fight. Continue reading Is Ukraine Fighting a U. S. “Proxy War” With Russia? The Answer Is . . .
[NOTE: The New York Times has a stable of columnists who include some of the most disturbingly smart writers I see regularly. Ezra Klein is one of them, and while his curiosity wanders widely, he is homing in on AI and its repeatedly mind-boggling character and possibilities. Which he does again here.]
New York Times — EZRA KLEIN
This Changes Everything
March 12, 2023
By Ezra Klein — Opinion Columnist
In 2018, Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google — and not one of the tech executives known for overstatement — said, “A.I. is probably the most important thing humanity has ever worked on. I think of it as something more profound than electricity or fire.”
Try to live, for a few minutes, in the possibility that he’s right. Continue reading Ezra Klein on AI