Maggie Haberman at Trump Hush Money Trial.  AP Photo.

Dear Commons Community,

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman gave gripping updates on the “extraordinary moment” Judge Juan Merchan threatened former President Donald Trump with jail time — and pointedly noted that Trump was much less defiant. As reported by various news media.

Court began Monday in the Stormy Daniels hush money-election interference trial with fireworks, as Merchan issued his ruling, telling Trump “I find you in criminal contempt for the 10th time,” and adding “Going forward this court will have to consider a jail sanction.”

Haberman and her Times colleagues reported from inside the courtroom with live updates, as they have since the trial began in earnest, and were all over that dramatic moment.

But Haberman, who has consistently called it BS on the idea that Trump wants to be jailed in order to benefit from sympathy, observed that Trump wasn’t as defiant as he has been in the past over such threats.  Below is her transcript.

Tony

————————————————————-

Maggie Haberman
May 6, 2024, 9:30 a.m. ET

Justice Merchan is speaking directly to Trump, in an extraordinary moment. He tells him he’s finding him in contempt of the gag order a 10th time, but that the $1,000 per instance fines aren’t working and that he has to consider jail. “The last thing” he wants to do is put Trump in jail, the judge says, adding, “You are the former president of the United States and possibly the next president as well.”

Maggie Haberman
May 6, 2024, 9:32 a.m. ET

Justice Merchan tells Trump his ongoing violation of his gag order is a “direct attack on the rule of law. I cannot allow that to continue.” He says he wants him to understand he will put him in jail if he has to.

May 6, 2024, 9:32 a.m. ET

Justice Merchan says that his job is to “protect the dignity of the justice system,” and calls Trump’s violations of his gag order “a direct attack on the rule of law.” And now he hands down his decision. We’ve already heard that he held Trump in violation a 10th time, in addition to the previous nine violations.

May 6, 2024, 9:33 a.m. ET

Trump had no noticable reaction to Merchan warning him that jail could be in the offing if he continues to flaunt his gag order.

Kate Christobek
May 6, 2024, 9:33 a.m. ET

Trump was hunched over at the defense table staring at Merchan as he issued his warning. When the judge concluded, Trump shook his head.

Jonathan Swan
May 6, 2024, 9:38 a.m. ET

It’s worth underscoring what a stunning moment this was. I have never seen anybody warn Trump, to his face, about the prospect of incarceration. He’s now sitting quietly, frowning, still seemingly absorbing that message from the judge.

Maggie Haberman
May 6, 2024, 9:43 a.m. ET

It’s an extremely subdued reaction compared to when Lewis Kaplan, a federal judge, threatened to jail him in one of his civil trials and Trump shot back, “I would love it.”

Photo courtesy of Between the Lines.

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times first reported that Trump, addressing a retreat for Republican donors in Florida on Saturday night, railed against the dozens of felony charges he is facing and claimed that the cases were orchestrated by the Biden White House.

“These people are running a Gestapo administration,” Trump said, according to audio obtained by The New York Times. “And it’s the only thing they have. And it’s the only way they’re going to win, in their opinion, and it’s actually killing them. But it doesn’t bother me.”

The White House yesterday slammed Trump for comparting the Biden administration to the Gestapo police force in Nazi Germany.

“Instead of echoing the appalling rhetoric of fascists, lunching with Neo Nazis, and fanning debunked conspiracy theories that have cost brave police officer their lives, President Biden is bringing the American people together around our shared democratic values and the rule of law — an approach that has delivered the biggest violent crime reduction in 50 years,” deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement.

Saturday’s event featured a number of prominent Republican lawmakers, including several in the mix to serve as Trump’s running mate in November. Trump’s campaign touted that they had raised $76 million in April and made the case at the event for Trump to expand the electoral map ahead of November.

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R), who attended the event on Saturday, essentially confirmed Trump’s comments during an appearance Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“This was a short comment deep into the thing that wasn’t really central to what he was talking about,” said Burgum, who is in the running to join Trump on the GOP ticket in November.

“A majority of Americans feel like the trial that he’s in right now is politically motivated,” Burgum added.

Trump’s comments referred to the secret police force used by Nazi leaders who cracked down on political opposition and targeted Jewish people during the Holocaust.

Saturday’s remarks were the latest instance of Trump drawing criticism for using language reminiscent of dictatorships during World War II.

The former president has on multiple occasions claimed immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally were “poisoning the blood” of the country, language that Democrats argued was parroting Adolf Hitler.

Trump last year also referred to his political opponents as “vermin” who posed a threat to the country from within, drawing further condemnation from critics who said it echoed the autocratic language of Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

Trump once again shows he lacks any semblance of decency and should be nowhere near our seat of government.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I have just finished reading Burn Book:  A Tech Love Story by writer, podcaster and  columnist, Kara Swisher, who established herself as a major chronicler of the tech industry in the 1990s and 2000s.  It is a memoir of her life especially of her time living and reporting on the goings-on in Silicon Valley.  She provides insights into the dispositions of many of the major tech players such as Steve Jobs,  Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg. She credits her success as a reporter to her “obnoxiousness,  persnicketiness, a distaste for lies and a proclivity to call out nonsense, no matter the power of the person uttering it.”  Her last chapter on AI technology and the future is must reading.  One of her best lines is “I am not as afraid of AI as I am fearful of bad people who will use it better than good people.”  Anyone interested in how high-tech has gotten to its commanding world position would appreciate what Swisher has to offer in this book.

Below is a review that appeared in The New York Times.

Tony

—————————————————————————————-

The New York Times

In “Burn Book: A Tech Love Story,” the pioneering journalist recounts a life in, and of, Silicon Valley.

A self-driving tractor-trailer maneuvers around a test track in Pittsburgh. The truck is owned by Pittsburgh-based Aurora Innovation Inc. Courtesy of Las Vegas Review Journal.

Dear Commons Community,

In less than nine months, Aurora Innovation Inc., an autonomous transportation company, will launch up to 20 driverless trucks carrying loads on Texas highways for partners such as FedEx, Uber Freight and Werner. As reported by The Associated Press.

On a three-lane test track along the Monongahela River, an 18-wheel tractor-trailer rounded a curve. No one was on board.

A quarter-mile ahead, the truck’s sensors spotted a trash can blocking one lane and a tire in another. In less than a second, it signaled, moved into the unobstructed lane and rumbled past the obstacles.

The self-driving semi, outfitted with 25 laser, radar and camera sensors, is owned by Pittsburgh-based Aurora Innovation. Late this year, Aurora plans to start hauling freight on Interstate 45 between the Dallas and Houston areas with 20 driverless trucks.

Within three or four years, Aurora and its competitors expect to put thousands such self-driving trucks on America’s public freeways. The goal is for the trucks, which can run nearly around the clock without any breaks, to speed the flow of goods, accelerating delivery times and perhaps lowering costs. They’ll travel short distances on secondary roads, too.

the autonomous trucks will save on fuel, too, because they don’t have to stop and will drive at more consistent speeds. Also, Aurora says its testing has shown that if a maintenance issue arises while one of its trucks is traveling on a freeway, the vehicle will automatically pull to the side of the road and remotely call for assistance.

The image of a fully loaded, 80,000-pound driverless truck weaving around cars on a super-highway at 65 mph or more may strike a note of terror. A poll conducted in January by AAA found that a decisive majority of American drivers — 66% — said they would fear riding in an autonomous vehicle.

But in less than nine months, a seven-year science experiment by Aurora will end, and driverless trucks will start carrying loads between terminals for FedEx, Uber Freight, Werner and other partners. Aurora and most of its rivals plan to start running freight routes in Texas, where snow and ice are generally rare.

The vehicles have drawn skepticism from safety advocates, who warn that with almost no federal regulation, it will be mainly up to the companies themselves to determine when the semis are safe enough to operate without humans on board. The critics complain that federal agencies, including the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, take a generally passive approach to safety, typically acting only after crashes occur. And most states provide scant regulation.

But Aurora and other companies that are developing the systems argue that years of testing show that their trucks will actually be safer than human-driven ones. They note that the vehicles’ laser and radar sensors can “see” farther than human eyes can. The trucks never tire, as human drivers do. They never become distracted or impaired by alcohol or drugs.

“We want to be out there with thousands or tens of thousands of trucks on the road,” said Chris Urmson, Aurora’s CEO and formerly head of Google’s autonomous vehicle operations. “And to do that, we have to be safe. It’s the only way that the public will accept it. Frankly, it’s the only way our customers will accept it.”

We hope Urmson is right!

Tony

Kevin O’Leary.  Courtesy of Fox Business.

Dear Commons Community,

ABC TV’s “Shark Tank” host and investor Kevin O’Leary says pro-Palestinian student protesters will be “screwed” when they start job hunting.  As reported by The Business Insider.

This, O’Leary says, is because employers can now use artificial intelligence to screen applicants and filter out those who’ve taken part in protests. Advancements in technology have made it much easier to identify people on camera, the businessman says.

“Here’s your résumé with a picture of you burning a flag. See that one. That goes in this pile over here, cause I can get the same person’s talent in this pile that’s not burning anything,” O’Leary said on Fox News’ “The Five” on Wednesday.

“There’s plenty of consequences for all those people. Even an image that far away, AI can generate who they are by the way the body moves. I can’t believe the stuff I find in background checks now. These people are screwed,” he said.

O’Leary told CNN in an interview on the same day that protesters could still be identified via retinal scanning even if they tried to hide their identity by donning a mask.

“This is what’s happening with AI. So if you’re burning down something, or taking a flag down, or fighting with police, I’m sorry, you’re trashing your personal brand,” O’Leary told CNN’s Laura Coates.

Representatives for O’Leary didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.

O’Leary isn’t the only business executive who’s weighed in on the pro-Palestinian student protests taking place at various campuses, such as Columbia University and UCLA.

ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods told CNBC in an interview last month that the oil giant “wouldn’t be interested” in hiring students from universities that had been embroiled in pro-Palestinian protests.

“Harassment and intimidation, I think there’s no place for that, frankly, at those universities, and certainly no place for that at a company like ExxonMobil,” Woods told the outlet. “If that action or those protests reflect the values of the campuses where they’re doing it, we wouldn’t be interested in recruiting students from those campuses,” he added.

Comments such as those from O’Leary and Woods suggest students may be inflicting damage on their own careers through their political activism.

In October, the law firm Winston & Strawn said it revoked a job offer for a New York University law student who publicly condemned Israel for Hamas’ terrorist attacks. The announcement came on October 10, just three days after Hamas had attacked Israel.

Interesting take on this issue!

Tony

Dame Wendy Hall is a British computer scientist who also sits on the UN AI Advisory Board. The Telegraph.

Dear Commons Community,

Humans could become “slaves to the machines” just like in The Matrix as artificial intelligence evolves, a UN adviser Dame Wendy Hall has warned.

Hall said there was a “finite” chance mankind could enter into a scenario like in the futuristic science fiction film in which humans were used as “biofuel” for “cleverer” technology. As reported by The Telegraph.

The computer scientist – who sits on the United Nations AI Advisory Board – said while the likelihood of this happening was low, “we have got to worry about this”.

Speaking on The Today Podcast, Dame Wendy referred to a BBC interview with the late Stephen Hawking in which he spoke on the potential dangers of artificial intelligence.

The academic said: “He said, well, of course, if we develop something that’s cleverer than us, then that would be the end of the human race because we’re biological, we take a long time to evolve.

“Machines can evolve very quickly. Assuming they’ve got the material they need to recreate themselves or their next generations, we could just become the biofuel in the machine, the Matrix scenario, because they’ll out-think us.

“And then we become slaves to the machines. There is a finite chance that could happen.”

The Matrix, starring Keanu Reeves, depicts a dystopian future in which humanity is unknowingly trapped inside a simulated reality that intelligent machines have created to distract humans.

Dame Wendy, the regius professor of computer science at the University of Southampton, added: “That doesn’t mean we’ve got the technology to end the human race as the superpower.

“I think it’s more decades away and it won’t just be on the sort of generative AI we’re doing today. We need other breakthroughs as well.

“We do need to talk about it and we have got to worry about this.

She also warned about the rise of deepfake technology, in which a person’s face or body has been digitally altered so that they appear to be someone else – typically used maliciously or to spread false information.

She said: “The deepfakes that are coming out now, particularly those that are using generative AI, which is quite hard to do – it’s not off-the-shelf technology at the moment – they’re very mature and it’s very difficult to tell technically, or even looking at them, whether it’s a fake or not.

“And so we have got to do this collectively, the official campaigns need to put their stamp on things.

“We will get watermarking over time and we will get technology that will help with this, but not in time for this year’s elections.

“Social media, of course, amplifies things and we need to have a public awareness campaign about being very careful about what information they trust.”

I agree that the scenario that Hall describes is likely to happen.  However, it is not difficult to predict “what” will happen – it is the “when” that is the hard part.  As Hall mentions the day machines take over is at least decades if not more away.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Two boaters were seen on a viral video (below)) dumping trash into the ocean off Florida and charges against them are imminent, said a state official on Thursday.

Attorneys for the men have advised them not to cooperate with investigators, said Maj. Dustin Bonds, a south region commander with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, or FWC.

The agency is working with prosecutors in Palm Beach County’s state attorney’s office to determine the appropriate charge, Bonds said.

Bonds said he was in disbelief as he watched the video because he has never seen anyone dump trash into the ocean.

“I was shocked that folks that are enjoying our waterways, just like the hundreds of boaters in Boca that day were doing, but this one boat decided that it was OK to dump two trash cans overboard,” he said.

Others seen on the boat have also been identified, the wildlife agency said.

But Bonds said he hopes witnesses on the boat step forward and speak to investigators. Bonds said that about 16 minors were on the boat and that only one of them has voluntarily spoken to investigators.

FWC Chair Rodney Barreto said on NBC’s “TODAY” show that the video “has become a worldwide story. I mean, the world is watching this.”

Officials did not publicly identify the people they said were involved.

The wildlife agency said it is working with the state attorney’s office to “identify appropriate charges” in the incident, which happened Sunday at the Boca Inlet.

The video, which content creator Wavy Boats posted on YouTube, shows two people each dumping a trash bin full of garbage into the sea.

The boaters in the video attended the annual Boca Bash, according to its organizers, who said they are working to identify them.

“We cannot be more angered and disturbed by these actions,” the Boca Bash said in a statement on its Facebook page. “Once the video was posted we quickly got to work with the community to discover who the owner of the boat was and who was on the vessel in this particular instance committing an egregious act. Several people that helped in identifying them had already contacted authorities to handle the situation.”

Organizers also said they would like to see the boaters involved face “repercussions”:

“We do not condone this behavior by any means and are appalled that the passengers even had the audacity to clap at the drone that was filming them dumping their garbage. We hope the repercussions handed down can be viewed publicly as a warning of how important our waters are to us native Floridians.”

Disgraceful!

Tony

Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs signs the repeal of the Civil War-era near-total abortion ban. Matt York/AP..

Dear Commons Community,

Democratic Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs signed a bill yesterday repealing a Civil War-era ban on most abortions.

Hobbs says the move is just the beginning of a fight to protect reproductive health care in Arizona. The repeal of the 1864 law that the state Supreme Court recently reinstated won’t take effect until 90 days after the legislative session ends, which typically happens in June or July.  As reported by The Associated Press.

Abortion rights advocates say they’re hopeful a court will step in to prevent what could be a confusing landscape of access for girls and women across Arizona as laws are introduced and then reversed.

The effort to repeal the long-dormant 1864 law, which bans all abortions except those done to save a patient’s life, won final legislative approval Wednesday in a 16-14 vote of the Senate, as two GOP lawmakers joined with Democrats.

Hobbs denounced “a ban that was passed by 27 men before Arizona was even a state, at a time when America was at war over the right to own slaves, a time before women could even vote.”

“This ban needs to be repealed, I said it in 2022 when Roe was overturned, and I said it again and again as governor,” Hobbs said during the bill signing.

In early April, Arizona’s Supreme Court voted to restore the 1864 law that provided no exceptions for rape or incest and allows abortions only if the mother’s life is in jeopardy. The majority opinion suggested doctors could be prosecuted and sentenced to up to five years in prison if convicted.

Congratulations Governor Hobbs and state legislators involved with the repeal!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education had a featured article Wednesday entitled “The Ghost Writer in the Machine”  which was a critique of Dennis Yi Tenen’s new book Literary Theory for Robots: How Computers Learned to Write.  The article, written by Matthew Kirschenbaum, a distinguished university professor of English and digital studies at the University of Maryland at College Park, takes a measured critique of Tenen’s book from the point of view of a scholar.  Kirschenbaum comments that the book is marketed for “general readers.” Here are several excerpts.

“By looking at where we’ve been, he argues, we can gain some insight into where we might be headed.

The opening chapters of Literary Theory for Robots walk us through a range of historical figures and their associated writings, thought experiments, and sometimes actual devices. Some, like the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz or the mathematicians and inventors Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, are familiar as recurring characters in popular histories of computing; others, like the medieval Tunisian scholar Ibn Khaldun, the German poet Quirinus Kuhlmann, and the 17th-century Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher, are likely less so.

…

Tenen develops two converging themes. The first is that the quest for a universal symbolic language was also accompanied by a quest for a universal machine, what ultimately became the modern computer. The second is the idea that “intelligence” is always an artificial construct, which is to say a function of external conditioning and tools as much as it is innate ability or aptitude.”

Kirschenbaum’s conclusion:

“We may think we know how robots learned to write; at the very least, as Tenen shows, it makes for a great story. But is it the history that will matter in the end? And who — or what — will get to write it?”

I have just ordered Tenet’s book on Amazon.

Tony