Geoffrey Hinton

Dear Commons Community,

Geoffrey Hinton, a pioneer in artificial intelligence, has joined a growing list of experts sharing their concerns about the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence. The renowned computer scientist recently left his job at Google to speak openly about his worries about the technology and where he sees it going.

“It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things,” Hinton said in an interview with The New York Times.

Hinton is worried that future versions of the technology pose a real threat to humanity.

“The idea that this stuff could actually get smarter than people — a few people believed that,” he said in the interview. “But most people thought it was way off. And I thought it was way off. I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away. Obviously, I no longer think that.”

Hinton, 75, is most noted for the rapid development of deep learning, which uses mathematical structures called neural networks to pull patterns from massive sets of data.

Like other experts, he believes the race between Big Tech to develop more powerful AI will only escalate into a global race.

Hinton tweeted Monday morning that he felt Google had acted responsibly in its development of AI, but that he had to leave the company to speak out.

Jeff Dean, senior vice president of Google Research and AI, said in an emailed statement: “Geoff has made foundational breakthroughs in AI, and we appreciate his decade of contributions at Google. I’ve deeply enjoyed our many conversations over the years. I’ll miss him, and I wish him well! As one of the first companies to publish AI Principles, we remain committed to a responsible approach to AI. We’re continually learning to understand emerging risks while also innovating boldly.”

Hinton is a notable addition to a group of technologists that have been speaking out publicly about the unbridled development and release of AI and should be listened to.

Tony

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. (Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters)

Dear Commons Community,

Last week, a Congressional House hearing on pandemic-related school closures descended into a personal attack from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., against teachers’ union leader Randi Weingarten .

Passions were expressed in a “very homophobic” way by the outspoken congresswoman, Weingarten told Yahoo News last Friday. The hearing had taken place two days before, but she was still plainly rattled by the exchange.

During the hearing, Greene repeatedly noted that Weingarten is not a “biological mother,” a seeming reference to the fact that the 65-year-old American Federation of Teachers president is married to a woman, Sharon Kleinbaum, a rabbi at the world’s largest LGBTQ synagogue. She sat behind Weingarten during the hearing.

“She was just attempting to dehumanize me,” Weingarten said of Greene.

Weingarten told Yahoo News that she has been forced to travel with a security guard since November of last year, when former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called her “the most dangerous person in the world.”

And she said the exchange with Greene has resulted in a flood of “vile” emails, many of them homophobic or antisemitic.

Weingarten was the sole witness at the hearing, which was conducted by a subcommittee of the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee that is tasked with investigating the nation’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The subcommittee’s chairman, Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, had opened the hearing by pleading with members of both parties to focus on the topic at hand, which was whether the AFT unduly influenced Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines on school reopenings.

Emails previously made public showed Weingarten asking for amendments in the guidance, a request the influential union leader said was not out of bounds and one of many inputs that the CDC considered.

Republicans disagreed, but none with more vehemence than Greene, a hard-right congresswoman with a penchant for controversy.

Greene said Weingarten should not have had any say in the reopening guidelines because she’s “not a medical doctor, not a biological mother and, really, not a teacher, either.”

Kleinbaum has two daughters from a previous marriage, as Weingarten noted, but that did not appear to satisfy Greene, who has made gender and race issues a centerpiece of her legislative career.

“Let me tell you, I am a mother, and all three of my children were directly affected by the school closures — by your recommendations — which is something that you can’t understand,” Greene said. (Her insistence on “biological” motherhood appeared to invalidate not only the experiences of LGBTQ parents but also of those who become parents through adoption or remarriage after divorce.)

“Somewhere, Ronald Reagan, an adoptive parent who gave conservatism a friendly face, is shaking his head,” former White House speechwriter David Kusnet wrote on Twitter of Greene’s assertion.

The congresswoman’s office did not return a request for comment.

Democrats unsuccessfully attempted to have her attacks on Weingarten stricken from the Congressional Record, but Wenstrup said House rules would not permit him to do so.

Greene doesn’t care that she continues to devolve to the lowest depths of indignity

Tony