Recently finished Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life by Robert Dallek. I really didn't care for FDR as a person, but I do admire his will and ability to overcome his disability. I also admire many of his legislative accomplishments during the depression, and his ultimate ability to lead the U.S. into the war and mobilize.
Overall I'm caught up on his lack of moral courage to take unpopular political decisions. Perhaps the U.S. would have been better served by 2 term or single term presidents who cared less for maintaining their political base, and more for plight of Jews (FDR did essentially nothing for Jewish immigrants), his own Japanese citizens (interned), the Allied cause (didn't enter the war before he was attacked, and took fairly limited measures in advance of that to mobilize the country and support the Allies through Lend Lease).
Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Thursday, January 24, 2019
Friday, January 18, 2019
China and AI - it's about control
According to Signal, the newsletter of the Eurasia Group: "control is a central motivation of the [Chinese] government’s bid to become a 21st century AI superpower"
They go on:
The idea is to create a nation in which every person, company, road, bridge, river, air particle, hospital, school, and police station is monitored by sensors, cameras, or data hoovers. And then to feed that data into AI systems, developed by China's increasingly capable homegrown tech industry, that can help the government do to three things:
They go on:
The idea is to create a nation in which every person, company, road, bridge, river, air particle, hospital, school, and police station is monitored by sensors, cameras, or data hoovers. And then to feed that data into AI systems, developed by China's increasingly capable homegrown tech industry, that can help the government do to three things:
- Improve people’s quality of life by using massive data sets and artificial intelligence to make roads, rails, hospitals, schools, and other public services run better and more responsively – without ever having to open up to the mess of democratic accountability or oversight. This might look good to those people around the world who believe democratic governments can barely tie their own shoes.
- Keep order by controlling the movement of “threatening” people and ideas. This is much easier to do via technology and data analysis than by sending spooks out to spy on people. This idea will appeal to governments looking to create the kind of stability that doesn’t demand power-sharing.
- Create incentives for people to follow the rules by using technology to limit the access of lawbreaking citizens to important services. That might appeal to both law-abiding citizens and political officials.
Sunday, November 11, 2018
US, China, AI and warfare
Some highlights from an FT article entitled "Washington unnerved by China’s ‘military-civil fusion"
... scientists and companies in both China and the west have become interwoven. Large numbers of young Chinese study and work in related disciplines in Europe and America. As many as 25 per cent of graduate students in science, technology, engineering and maths in the US are Chinese citizens, according to an estimate from the Pentagon. Western technology companies are heavily invested in China and Chinese firms have been a growing source of funding for AI start-ups in Silicon Valley.
... “The entanglement in AI creates a dual-use dilemma,” says Elsa Kania, a fellow at the Centre for a New American Security. “Our open and liberal societies facilitate the development of AI, but the Chinese state’s single-minded pursuit of these technologies puts this same openness and freedom at risk.”
... role of private companies means that industry “is moving centre stage in geopolitics”, says Su Tzu-yun, a senior official at the Institute for National Defence and Security Research, a think-tank backed by Taiwan’s defence ministry and National Security Council.
... scientists and companies in both China and the west have become interwoven. Large numbers of young Chinese study and work in related disciplines in Europe and America. As many as 25 per cent of graduate students in science, technology, engineering and maths in the US are Chinese citizens, according to an estimate from the Pentagon. Western technology companies are heavily invested in China and Chinese firms have been a growing source of funding for AI start-ups in Silicon Valley.
... “The entanglement in AI creates a dual-use dilemma,” says Elsa Kania, a fellow at the Centre for a New American Security. “Our open and liberal societies facilitate the development of AI, but the Chinese state’s single-minded pursuit of these technologies puts this same openness and freedom at risk.”
... role of private companies means that industry “is moving centre stage in geopolitics”, says Su Tzu-yun, a senior official at the Institute for National Defence and Security Research, a think-tank backed by Taiwan’s defence ministry and National Security Council.
...“So far, their main interests appear to be in harnessing AI for command and control, and to use augmented and virtual reality to make exercises more real — an important feature for a military that has essentially not fought since the Vietnam war,” says Elsa Kania, a fellow at the Washington-based Centre for a New American Security.
NYTimes on musicals converted from other formats
In his review of King Kong (with Ben Brantley), Jesse Green stated:
When I see a musical drawn from a work in another genre — in this case the 1933 movie and its novelization — one thing I look for is the added value. What is gained in bringing “King Kong” to the stage? Certainly not provocative or insightful songwriting. The score is a hodgepodge of soundtrack-style murk by Marius de Vries and a clutch of no-profile songs by Eddie Perfect, whose score for “Beetlejuice” is heading toward Broadway even as we speak
When I see a musical drawn from a work in another genre — in this case the 1933 movie and its novelization — one thing I look for is the added value. What is gained in bringing “King Kong” to the stage? Certainly not provocative or insightful songwriting. The score is a hodgepodge of soundtrack-style murk by Marius de Vries and a clutch of no-profile songs by Eddie Perfect, whose score for “Beetlejuice” is heading toward Broadway even as we speak
Nitin Noria's comments on veterans and business
Nitin Noria wrote this article in the Washington Post in 2013 about his experience teaching veterans in business school and the importance of cultivating ties between business and the military.
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