Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dowd in her New York Times column yesterday painted Donald Trump as an ugly American whose sole interest is himself.  She laments the vanishing breed of Republicans who pledged allegiance to our flag.  Here is an excerpt.

“…Republicans pledge allegiance to Donald Trump’s ego. He has to be bigger than everything — even America itself.

“Bush wrapped himself in the American flag,” David Axelrod said. “Trump wants to wrap himself in the Mar-a-Lago flag.”

Just as Trump has remade the Republican Party in his own nasty and selfish image, he wants to remake America in his own nasty and selfish image.

Trump doesn’t seem to subscribe to any of the verities about this country. He doesn’t believe America is exceptional. He only believes that Trump is exceptional — an exception to all the rules that the rest of us live by.

If American laws get in his way — like counting votes to choose a president — he tries to smash them. He’s bigger than democracy, after all.

If American values get in his way — like our distaste for authoritarians like Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban — he mocks those values. When Putin and Orban flattered Trump, that seemed more important to the Mar-a-Lago megalomaniac than our nation’s proud history of facing down autocrats.”

Dowd is so right. 

The entire column (see below) is important reading!

Tony

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The New York Times

The Florida Fraudster and the Russian ‘Killer’

Feb. 17, 2024

By Maureen Dowd

Opinion Columnist, reporting from Washington.

When I covered George H.W. Bush’s presidential campaign in 1988, he was so eager to wrap himself in the American flag that he took us to a New Jersey flag factory. That way, he could claim that the G.O.P. was “on the American side” while caressing pieces of striped, red-and-white nylon.

At the time, it seemed like a cynical move by Republicans, trying to bogart patriotism. But at least they respected our country enough to try to monopolize its symbol.

That vanishing breed of Republican pledged allegiance to the American flag. Now Republicans pledge allegiance to Donald Trump’s ego. He has to be bigger than everything — even America itself.

“Bush wrapped himself in the American flag,” David Axelrod said. “Trump wants to wrap himself in the Mar-a-Lago flag.”

Just as Trump has remade the Republican Party in his own nasty and selfish image, he wants to remake America in his own nasty and selfish image.

Trump doesn’t seem to subscribe to any of the verities about this country. He doesn’t believe America is exceptional. He only believes that Trump is exceptional — an exception to all the rules that the rest of us live by.

If American laws get in his way — like counting votes to choose a president — he tries to smash them. He’s bigger than democracy, after all.

If American values get in his way — like our distaste for authoritarians like Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban — he mocks those values. When Putin and Orban flattered Trump, that seemed more important to the Mar-a-Lago megalomaniac than our nation’s proud history of facing down autocrats.

Bill O’Reilly asked President Trump in 2017 why he respected Putin even though he was “a killer.”

“You got a lot of killers,” he replied. “What, you think our country’s so innocent?”

America the Beautiful, our Shining City on a Hill, is not so hot. Get in his way, and Trump will bust up institutions, trash courts, tear down cultural icons like Taylor Swift and egg on acolytes to storm the Capitol.

He doesn’t see America as the idealistic leader of the free world. He sees the world as “The Hunger Games,” as Axelrod put it. And frighteningly, Trump sometimes acts as if he prefers America’s enemies to America.

The former president shocked the world last weekend when he said at a rally that if NATO countries did not pay more for defense, he would “encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to our allies. Biden called that “un-American.”

Trump’s bromance with the sociopathic Putin, unimpeded by Putin’s foul bid to swallow Ukraine, grew even more sickening with news that the Russian president’s most potent opponent, Aleksei Navalny, 47, died mysteriously in an Arctic prison — very, very suddenly, as high-profile Putin critics often do.

“Make no mistake: Putin is responsible,” President Biden said.

When a CNN reporter asked if Trump had a response to the heroic Navalny’s death, the Trump campaign pointed her to a Truth Social post that wasn’t about Navalny or Putin. It was about how awful America was.

“America is no longer respected,” Trump posted, “because we have an incompetent president who is weak and doesn’t understand what the World is thinking.”

This American Carnage garbage is how he bonds with his base, many of whom are deeply cynical about politics and government, seeing hypocrisy and conspiracies everywhere.

His hallucinatory worshipers admire him as a strongman, even when he’s shown to be liable for sexual assault and an aggrandizing con man whose real estate empire was a Potemkin village. On Friday, a New York judge ordered Trump to pay a penalty of $355 million plus interest and barred him from holding high-up roles at any New York business — including his own — for three years, saying about Trump & Company, “Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological.”

The Renfields to Trump’s Dracula are also busy playing sycophants to dictators. At an Axios conference in Miami, Jared Kushner — who was festooned with $2 billion in Saudi investments after he left the White House — called Mohammed bin Salman a “visionary leader.” Asked about the crown prince’s complicity in Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, Kushner replied with exasperation, “Are we really still doing this?”

Before Navalny’s death, Tucker Carlson — who scorned Ukraine’s desperate fight for its independence — cavorted in the Kremlin. His interview with Putin was so indulgent that even Putin complained of a “lack of sharp questions.”

In an interview with an Egyptian journalist, Carlson defended his decision not to ask Putin about freedom of speech or assassinations of his opponents.

“Every leader kills people,” Carlson said blithely, adding, “Leadership requires killing people, sorry.”

Will the craven Republicans ever stand up against autocracy — at home or abroad?

Navalny’s death at the hands of the murderous Putin has given momentum to the push for military assistance for Ukraine.

It’s the American thing to do.

Credit:  The Boston Globe

Dear Commons Community,

Representative Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) went after former President Trump for his legal woes in an interview on MSNBC yesterday.

“I’ll take the individual who’s 81 over the guy who has 91 felony counts,” Swalwell said, making a reference to President Biden’s age in an interview on MSNBC’s “The Katie Phang Show”.

“It’s not about two individuals,” Swalwell continued, speaking about the 2024 election. “It’s about the idea of competence versus chaos, or even greater, freedom versus fascism. If we make it about those ideas, and what they mean in our daily lives, we’re gonna win.”

Swalwell’s comments come after Trump was ordered to pay almost $355 million in penalties in a civil fraud case and amid increased scrutiny faced by the president on his age and memory in the wake of a special counsel report on Biden’s handling of classified documents. The report noted that Biden had problems with memory and recall.

“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” special counsel Robert Hur wrote in the report.

Ezra Klein, a columnist and podcast host for The New York Times, made an argument that Biden should stop running for reelection due to the scrutiny the president is facing over his age and memory Friday on his podcast “The Ezra Klein Show.”

“To say this is a media invention, that people are worried about Biden’s age because the media keeps telling them to be worried about Biden’s age?” Klein said.

“If you’ve really convinced yourself of that, in your heart of hearts, I almost don’t know what to tell you,” he added. “In poll after poll, 70 percent to 80 percent of voters are worried about his age. This is not a thing people need the media to see.”

A recent poll, conducted in the wake of the report, found that 86 percent of Americans think he is too old for office.

Trump still faces several other legal challenges heading into the 2024 election season, including in the ongoing Georgia probe.

While I would hope that the Democrats can find another able presidential candidate, I agree with Swalwell if it is a Biden-Trump election.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) referred to Tucker Carlson as Putin’s “useful idiot”  for the conservative pundit’s recent fawning over Russian President Vladimir Putin following a Moscow trip the commentator took that included a stop at a local grocery store.

“Ah yes, Russia is so much better than the U.S. with all those cheap groceries and lavish subway stations,” Tillis wrote in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, mocking Carlson. “The Soviets had a term for people like Tucker: useful idiots.”

Tillis was specifically responding to a video Carlson had posted of a trip he took to a grocery store in Moscow in which he praised the country for the price of its groceries and what he said is superior cleanliness compared to the United States.

Earlier last week, Carlson praised Moscow as “so much nicer than any city in my country.”

Carlson also published a wide-ranging interview with Putin, who used the two-hour conversation to spread propaganda about Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine and admonish the United States and other Western countries.

Carlson, a former Fox News host, is an embarrassment to his profession!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Over the past two months I have been reading about illuminated manuscripts.  I previously posted about a new book entitled, The Manuscripts Club (2022), by Christopher de Hamel.   See:   https://apicciano.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2024/01/13/new-book-christopher-de-hamel-the-manuscripts-club/   

I so enjoyed de Hamel’s work that I decided to read his previous book, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts: Twelve Journeys into the Medieval World (2016), which is every bit as interesting as The Manuscripts Club. In Meetings with Remarkable…, de Hamel reviews the histories of twelve illuminated manuscripts produced during the medieval period. From the gospels of St. Augustine to the Book of Kells to the Canterbury Tales, de Hamel takes  the reader on explorations of these incredible works of art. His last chapter on The Spinola Hours was my favorite.

My life’s work has been based on modern technology and research methods. de Hamel’s work could not be more different as he explores art, composition, and the mystery of how these manuscripts came to be.  Most of the illuminators and monks who toiled on these manuscripts  are unknown and will never be known yet their work will continue to be admired for ages. In sum, de Hamel’s book is a most worthwhile read.  Below is a review of Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts as published in The New York Times.

Lastly, de Hamel’s work piqued my interest so that I was curious about  what it would be like to develop a “modern” illuminated manuscript.  While I have written a great deal in my professional career, I have absolutely no talent for drawing or visual art. However, I decided to rely on what I know best and that is digital technology and so I spent the better part of six weeks, developing what I call  an  illuminated “technuscript.”   See: https://apicciano.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2024/02/08/an-illuminated-technuscript-of-theories-and-frameworks-for-online-education/  Essentially, I used design techniques from medieval times and applied them with digital technology and relied on generative AI to produce colorful images to depict the subject matter of the “technuscript.”  I found it an exhilarating experience.  If you have a few moments, take a look at my work and let me know what you think.

Tony

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The New York Times

Illuminating the Past, One Precious Book at a Time

By Helen Castor

Dec. 19, 2017

MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE MANUSCRIPTS
Twelve Journeys into the Medieval World
By Christopher de Hamel
Illustrated. 632 pp. Penguin Press. $45.

“Meetings With Remarkable Manuscripts” is one of the least likely and most wonderful books I have ever read. Least likely: Where to start? It’s a vanishingly rare pleasure, given the commercial constraints of modern publishing, to handle 600 smoothly weighty pages in which the printed text winds its way seamlessly among more than 200 glorious, often full-color illustrations. And in producing such a gorgeous object, Christopher de Hamel’s publisher has had the courage of his convictions, because its physical and visual delights mirror its commercially unlikely subject matter.

De Hamel — who, after an immensely distinguished career at Sotheby’s, is now a fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge — wants us to meet 12 of the most extraordinary medieval manuscripts that survive in archives around the world. They appear in chronological order spanning a thousand years, beginning with the sixth-century Gospels of St. Augustine, now in the Parker Library at Corpus, and ending with the National Library of Russia’s 15th-century armaments treatise called the Visconti Semideus, and the 16th-century Spinola Hours, housed in the luxury of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

Strange as it may seem, “meet” is exactly what de Hamel means. You and I would not be allowed within touching distance of these rock stars of the manuscript world, but de Hamel’s expertise gives him access behind the velvet rope. We travel with him, seeing libraries and librarians through his eyes, from Trinity College Dublin’s affable keeper of manuscripts (who sports “a neatly cropped graying beard, a bit like a friendly Schnauzer dog with glasses”) to the “saint among manuscript librarians” in St. Petersburg, who feeds him whiskey-flavored Russian chocolates when, work-absorbed, he misses lunch. We hold our breath with him as the priceless volumes are propped on special bookrests or foam pads or cushions (or, in one case, a pile of other books in an unsupervised photocopier room), and we exhale with him as they begin to reveal their secrets.

De Hamel thinks of these encounters as “interviews,” and — as with all the best interviewers — he takes his place as a character in his own narrative. He is voraciously completist, recording impressions of each journey, place, building and reading room, as well as every recoverable detail of each manuscript’s creation, content and existence as a physical object through time and space. Both supremely learned and cheerfully opinionated, he hates the pictures in the eighth-century Book of Kells (“I am not qualified to say whether the four unpleasant-looking angels are lifelike, but they are certainly anatomically very improbable”) but loves its script (“It is calligraphic and as exact as printing, and yet it flows and shapes itself into the space available. It sometimes swells and seems to take breath at the ends of lines”). Forced to wear unnecessary and unhelpful white gloves while examining the 13th-century Carmina Burana, he is left disconsolate when his wife puts them, blackened with the 800-year-old dust he has brought home as a souvenir, straight into the wash.

On this archival odyssey, I lost count of the things I learned. In the Middle Ages, an impossible task was one harder “than it was for a one-legged man to shave a hare” (which accounts for the wooden-legged figure holding a pair of shears over a long-eared beast in a margin of the 12th-century Copenhagen Psalter). Perhaps the most prolific and gleeful thief in the history of manuscripts was the 19th-century Count Guglielmo Bruto Icilio Timoleone Libri-Carrucci dalla Sommaia — known appropriately as “Libri” — for whom de Hamel has an unmistakable soft spot. Paleographers of de Hamel’s caliber can guess where in Europe a manuscript was made simply by the touch and smell of the parchment. And the move from Egyptian papyrus to locally prepared animal skins after the fall of the Roman Empire changed the shape of books from square to rectangular: “most mammals,” after all, “are oblong.”

What of the manuscripts themselves? Some are tiny, jewel-like, exquisite: The Hours of Jeanne de Navarre, from the 14th century, was made for the hands and the devotions of a queen, its psalms and prayers framed by illuminations of extraordinary delicacy. Some are mammoth and intimidating: The seventh-century manuscript Bible known as the Codex Amiatinus is made of the skins of 515 calves and weighs as much (an earlier scholar noted) as a fully grown female Great Dane. Some have barely moved from the places where they were written, while others have taken long and troubled paths to the hushed havens in which they now lie: Jeanne de Navarre’s book was found alongside the “Très Belles Heures” of the Duc de Berry — which was mistaken for a brick by the soldier who stepped on it — when the train carrying Hermann Göring’s stolen art collection was raided by French troops in 1945. Most are sacred texts, but some are deliciously secular, like the sometimes bawdy poems and songs of the Carmina Burana or the tales of Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims. All are fascinating, all speak of the world in which they were made, and all are tangibly, movingly human, thanks to the skills and quirks of the mostly unknown scribes and illuminators whose remarkable creations they are.

The Copenhagen Psalter contains a collect for peace, asking that we “may pass our time in rest and quietness.” Its words, de Hamel suggests, are as relevant today as they were to the Danish kings Valdemar the Great and Knud IV, “who read them here too, as we do.” In the ambiguous tense of that verb, “read,” past and present for a moment collide and intermingle. This, like the volumes that are its subject, is a book of wonders.

Dear Commons Community,

Judge Arthur Engoron has ordered Donald Trump and his companies to pay $355 million in penalties for engaging in a years-long scheme to deceive banks and insurers.

The ruling adds to Trump’s legal woes as he prepares to defend himself at trial against criminal charges in four cases while also vying for the Republican presidential nomination. He said he would appeal.

Trump and his adult sons, who serve as top executives of the family’s Trump Organization, denied any wrongdoing and characterized the case brought by Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James as politically motivated.

Addressing reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida after the ruling, Trump declared that it was “election interference,” a term he often applies to recent cases against him.

Trump attorney Christopher Kise said the decision from Judge Engoron could “cause irreparable damage to both the business community and the rule of law in our country” if not overturned.

James, meanwhile, called it a victory for fair play in business and “for every American who believes in that simple but fundamental pillar of our democracy that the rule of law applies to all of us equally.”

Here’s a look at three major takeaways from the judge’s ruling as reported by The Associated Press.

_____

TRUMP BARRED IN BUSINESS

In addition to the huge financial penalty for Trump and his businesses, Engoron barred the former president from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation for three years. The ruling also prohibits Trump from getting loans from banks registered in the state for three years.

The judge wrote that the “frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience,” adding that Trump and his co-defendants were likely to continue their “fraudulent ways” without the serious consequences and controls the ruling imposed.

Trump had argued the financial documents in question actually understated his net worth and came with caveats that should shield him from liability. But his testimony during the more than 2 1/2-month trial appeared to do little to help his case with the judge.

Engoron wrote that Trump’s and his co-defendants’ “complete lack of remorse borders on pathological,” noting that the former president testified that he doesn’t believe the Trump Organization needs to make any changes going forward. The judge also wrote that Trump on the witness stand “rarely responded to questions asked” and “frequently interjected long, irrelevant speeches on issues far beyond the scope of the trial.”

“His refusal to answer the questions directly, or in some cases, at all, severely compromised his credibility,” Engoron wrote.

THE BUSINESS EMPIRE

The verdict, if upheld on appeal, stands to roil the C-suite at the Trump Organization. Engoron barred company Executive Vice Presidents Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump from being officers of New York corporations for two years. Their father doesn’t currently have a formal leadership position at the company.

But Trump’s businesses also got a bit of a reprieve in Friday’s decision.

Before the trial, the judge ruled that Trump engaged in years of fraud with his financial statements. At that point, the judge ordered some of Trump’s companies to be removed from his control and dissolved. An appeals court put that decision on hold months ago.

On Friday, the judge backed off the earlier call for rescinding the companies’ business licenses — but left the door open for watchdogs to take action, if they see fit.

One of those watchdogs is a retired federal judge whom Engoron appointed last fall as an independent monitor for the Trump Organization. Friday’s verdict also adds an “independent director of compliance,” to be appointed by the monitor.

Given their oversight, “cancellation of the business licenses is no longer necessary,” Engoron wrote. But he said “the restructuring and potential dissolution” of any of the companies would be “subject to individual review” by the compliance director, with input from the monitor.

DON JR. AND ERIC

Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump were each ordered to pay $4 million. In his ruling, Engoron characterized portions of Donald Trump Jr.’s testimony as “entirely unbelievable” and described Eric Trump’s credibility as “severely damaged” by his claim that he was not aware of his father’s role in compiling the organization’s financial statements.

Eric Trump testified at trial that he relied on accountants and lawyers to assure the accuracy of the financial documents at the heart of the case, while Donald Trump Jr.  said he never worked on his father’s financial statements.

Justice served!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Alexei Navalny, long seen as the most significant political opponent to Russian President Vladimir Putin, died in prison this morning, the federal prison service announced.

Navalny was held in a high security prison in Yamal near the Arctic Circle. He was 47 years old.  As reported by Politico.

“On February 16, 2024, in Penal Colony No. 3, the convict Alexei Navalny felt unwell after a walk, almost immediately losing consciousness, according to representatives of the department,” the statement said. “Medical personnel from the institution arrived promptly, and an ambulance crew was called. All necessary resuscitation measures were carried out, but unfortunately, they did not yield positive results. The emergency medical team pronounced the convict dead. The cause of death is being investigated,” the statement from the Yamal directorate of the federal penitentiary service added.

That sudden collapse is unexpected as he had appeared in good health and spirits only on Thursday. The independent Russian news outlet SOTA published a video of a court session, in which he was joked he was running out of spending money in prison.

For years, Navalny has been the most significant opposition figure in Russia.

With the Kremlin cracking down on all forms of dissent, Navalny was seen as the only person still capable of mobilizing Russians to participate in organized protest against the Kremlin.

In August 2020 he went into a coma after suffering a poison attack with the nerve agent Novichok in what his supporters say was a state-sponsored attempt to kill him.

But Navalny survived and, after receiving treatment in Germany, returned to Russia in 2021.

Upon arrival at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, he was immediately arrested and had been behind bars ever since

Putin was informed about Navalny’s death, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

“As far as we know, the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) is currently handling all the existing rules, conducting investigations, and so on. There’s no need for any specific instructions because there are certain regulations that the FSIN is currently following,” he added.

Peskov said he didn’t have any information about the cause of death. “The medical staff should investigate somehow,” he said.

Navalny’s close ally Leonid Volkov wrote on Telegram said he had no independent confirmation of the death. “As soon as we have any information, we’ll announce it,” he said.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

OpenAI has unveiled a new system called Sora that creates videos that look as if they were lifted from a Hollywood movie. A demonstration included short videos (see demos below) — created in minutes from short descriptions — of woolly mammoths trotting through a snowy meadow, a Tokyo street scene seemingly shot by a camera swooping across the city, and a fuzzy character gazing at a melting candle.

OpenAI, the company behind the ChatGPT chatbot and the still-image generator DALL-E, is among the many companies racing to improve this kind of instant video generator, including start-ups like Runway and tech giants like Google and Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram. The technology could speed the work of seasoned moviemakers, while replacing less experienced digital artists entirely.

It could also become a quick and inexpensive way of creating online disinformation, making it even harder to tell what’s real on the internet.  As reported by The New York Times.

“I am absolutely terrified that this kind of thing will sway a narrowly contested election,” said Oren Etzioni, a professor at the University of Washington who specializes in artificial intelligence. He is also the founder of True Media, a nonprofit working to identify disinformation online in political campaigns.

OpenAI calls its new system Sora, after the Japanese word for sky. The team behind the technology, including the researchers Tim Brooks and Bill Peebles, chose the name because it “evokes the idea of limitless creative potential.”

In an interview, they also said the company was not yet releasing Sora to the public because it was still working to understand the system’s dangers. Instead, OpenAI is sharing the technology with a small group of academics and other outside researchers who will “red team” it, a term for looking for ways it can be misused.

“The intention here is to give a preview of what is on the horizon, so that people can see the capabilities of this technology — and we can get feedback,” Dr. Brooks said.

OpenAI is already tagging videos produced by the system with watermarks that identify them as being generated by A.I. But the company acknowledges that these can be removed. They can also be difficult to spot. 

The system is an example of generative A.I., which can instantly create text, images and sounds. Like other generative A.I. technologies, OpenAI’s system learns by analyzing digital data — in this case, videos and captions describing what those videos contain.

OpenAI declined to say how many videos the system learned from or where they came from, except to say the training included both publicly available videos and videos that were licensed from copyright holders. The company says little about the data used to train its technologies, most likely because it wants to maintain an advantage over competitors — and has been sued multiple times for using copyrighted material.(The New York Times sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, in December, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems.)

Very impressive technology.  While I would like to think it can be controlled.  I don’t think it will!

Tony

This video’s A.I. prompt: “Several giant wooly mammoths approach treading through a snowy meadow, their long wooly fur lightly blows in the wind as they walk, snow covered trees and dramatic snow capped mountains in the distance, mid afternoon light with wispy clouds and a sun high in the distance creates a warm glow, the low camera view is stunning capturing the large furry mammal with beautiful photography, depth of field.”CreditCredit…Video by OpenAI

This video’s A.I. prompt: “Beautiful, snowy Tokyo city is bustling. The camera moves through the bustling city street, following several people enjoying the beautiful snowy weather and shopping at nearby stalls. Gorgeous sakura petals are flying through the wind along with snowflakes.”CreditCredit…Video by OpenAI

This video’s A.I. prompt: “Animated scene features a close-up of a short fluffy monster kneeling beside a melting red candle. The art style is 3D and realistic, with a focus on lighting and texture. The mood of the painting is one of wonder and curiosity, as the monster gazes at the flame with wide eyes and open mouth. Its pose and expression convey a sense of innocence and playfulness, as if it is exploring the world around it for the first time. The use of warm colors and dramatic lighting further enhances the cozy atmosphere of the image.”CreditCredit…Video by OpenAI

Dear Commons Community,

The Rockefeller Institute of Government on Wednesday announced its study on the State University of New York’s economic impact, which reached $31 billion in 2020, up eight percent from 2016. SUNY has a measurable impact in 91% of all industry sectors across the state.

According to the report, “The Economic Impact of the State University of New York,” based on the 2020-2021 academic year, SUNY’s impact derives from its role as one of the state’s largest employers, as well as its preeminent role as a hub for research and commercialization. SUNY supports 157,600 jobs, 1.6% of the state’s workforce. If SUNY were a private company, it would rank among the 10 largest employers in all of New York.

The study updates the Rockefeller Institute’s estimates on SUNY’s economic activity and its return on the state’s investment. For every $1 invested, SUNY generates $8.67 for the state.

Further, SUNY plays a critical role in developing talent across New York. Thirty-four percent of the workers in the state with a postsecondary degree earned a credential from SUNY, and alumni of SUNY who work in New York State earned an estimated $127.3 billion in 2020, 17% of all payroll earned by New York employees that year.

“As shown in prior reports from our research team, the SUNY system is a key driver of New York’s economic engine,” said Rockefeller Institute President Bob Megna. “This new economic-impact analysis quantifies the breadth and depth of SUNY’s contributions across virtually all industries, in research, and as one of the state’s largest employers, and makes clear the value of investments in the state’s public higher education system.”

Other key findings from the report include:

• Research and development activities system-wide reached more than $1.4 billion in 2020, an increase of more than 22% from just five years prior.
• SUNY employees and students generate $2.4 billion of demand in the real estate industry across the state, supporting almost 12,600 jobs.
• SUNY employees and students spend $736 million in restaurants, supporting an additional 7,117 jobs.
• The SUNY community generates demand at and supports employment in retail stores, doctor’s offices, wholesale traders, and hundreds of other industries across New York.
• SUNY campuses reported a record $1.42 billion in research expenditures, or 19.7% of New York’s total academic R&D across all institutions, tripling its activity level of 20 years.
• 35% of all college students enrolled in New York were attending SUNY institutions.
• One year after graduation, 80% of SUNY grads stay in New York.

The Rockefeller Institute of Government study breaks down SUNY’s economic impact for each of the state’s regions.

Congratulations SUNY for proving the economic benefits of public higher education.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Aneesh Raman, a work force expert at LinkedIn, and Maria Flynn, the president of the nonprofit Jobs for the Future, in  a guest essay yesterday,  argued that the advent of generative artificial intelligence marks a historic turning point for our economy and our society, one as important as the rise of the knowledge economy. They argue that the premium placed on technical skills will fade, leaving us with work that’s anchored more in our uniquely human abilities.

“The early signals of what A.I. can do should compel us to think differently about ourselves as a species. Our abilities to effectively communicate, develop empathy and think critically have allowed humans to collaborate, innovate and adapt for millenniums. Those skills are ones we all possess and can improve, yet they have never been properly valued in our economy or prioritized in our education and training,” they write. “That needs to change.”

They conclude that maybe there’s a future for humanities studies in the age of AI.

Below is the entire essay.

Tony

—————————————————————————————————————————-

The New York Times

When Your Technical Skills Are Eclipsed, Your Humanity Will Matter More Than Ever

Feb. 14, 2024

By Aneesh Raman and Maria Flynn

There have been just a handful of moments over the centuries when we have experienced a huge shift in the skills our economy values most. We are entering one such moment now. Technical and data skills that have been highly sought after for decades appear to be among the most exposed to advances in artificial intelligence. But other skills, particularly the people skills that we have long undervalued as “soft,” will very likely remain the most durable. That is a hopeful sign that A.I. could usher in a world of work that is anchored more, not less, around human ability.

A moment like this compels us to think differently about how we are training our workers, especially the heavy premium we have placed on skills like coding and data analysis that continue to reshape the fields of higher education and worker training. The early signals of what A.I. can do should compel us to think differently about ourselves as a species. Our abilities to effectively communicate, develop empathy and think critically have allowed humans to collaborate, innovate and adapt for millenniums. Those skills are ones we all possess and can improve, yet they have never been properly valued in our economy or prioritized in our education and training. That needs to change.

In today’s knowledge economy, many students are focused on gaining technical skills because those skills are seen as the most competitive when it comes to getting a good job. And for good reason. For decades, we have viewed those jobs as “future-proof” given the growth of technology companies and the fact that engineering majors land the highest-paying jobs.

The number of students seeking four-year degrees in computer science and information technology shot up 41 percent between the spring of 2018 and the spring of 2023, while the number of humanities majors plummeted. Workers who didn’t go to college and those who needed additional skills and wanted to take advantage of a lucrative job boom flocked to dozens of coding boot camps and online technical programs.

Now comes the realization of the power of generative A.I., with its vast capabilities in skills like writing, programming and translation (Microsoft, which owns LinkedIn, is a major investor in the technology). LinkedIn researchers recently looked at which skills any given job requires and then identified over 500 likely to be affected by generative A.I. technologies. They then estimated that 96 percent of a software engineer’s current skills — mainly proficiency in programming languages — can eventually be replicated by A.I. Skills associated with jobs like legal associates and finance officers will also be highly exposed.

In fact, given the broad impact A.I. is set to have, it is quite likely to affect all of our work to some degree or another.

We believe there will be engineers in the future, but they will most likely spend less time coding and more time on tasks like collaboration and communication. We also believe that there will be new categories of jobs that emerge as a result of A.I.’s capabilities — just like we’ve seen in past moments of technological advancement — and that those jobs will probably be anchored increasingly around people skills.

Circling around this research is the big question emerging across so many conversations about A.I. and work, namely: What are our core capabilities as humans?

If we answer that question from a place of fear about what’s left for people in the age of A.I., we can end up conceding a diminished view of human capability. Instead, it’s critical for us all to start from a place that imagines what’s possible for humans in the age of A.I. When you do that, you find yourself focusing quickly on people skills that allow us to collaborate and innovate in ways technology can amplify but never replace. And you find yourself — whatever the role or career stage you’re in — with agency to better manage this moment of historic change.

Communication is already the most in-demand skill across jobs on LinkedIn today. Even experts in A.I. are observing that the skills we need to work well with A.I. systems, such as prompting, are similar to the skills we need to communicate and reason effectively with other people.

Over 70 percent of executives at LinkedIn last year said soft skills were more important to their organizations than highly technical A.I. skills. And a recent Jobs for the Future survey found that 78 percent of the 10 top-employing occupations classify uniquely human skills and tasks as “important” or “very important.” These are skills like building interpersonal relationships, negotiating between parties and guiding and motivating teams.

Now is the time for leaders, across sectors, to develop new ways for students to learn that are more directly, and more dynamically, tied to where our economy is going, not where it has been. Critically, that involves bringing the same level of rigor to training around people skills that we have brought to technical skills.

Colleges and universities have a critical role to play. Over the past few decades, we have seen a prioritization of science and engineering, often at the expense of the humanities. That calibration will need to be reconsidered.

Those not pursuing a four-year degree should look for those training providers that have long emphasized people skills and are invested in social capital development.

Employers will need to be educators, not just around A.I. tools but also on people skills and people-to-people collaboration. Major employers like Walmart and American Airlines are already exploring ways to put A.I. in the hands of employees so they can spend less time on routine tasks and more time on personal engagement with customers.

Ultimately, for our society, this comes down to whether we believe in the potential of humans with as much conviction as we believe in the potential of A.I. If we do, it is entirely possible to build a world of work that is not only more human but is also a place where all people are valued for the unique skills they have, enabling us to deliver new levels of human achievement across so many areas that affect all of our lives, from health care to transportation to education. Along the way, we could meaningfully increase equity in our economy, in part by addressing the persistent gender gap that exists when we undervalue skills that women bring to work at a higher percentage than men.

Almost anticipating this exact moment a few years ago, Minouche Shafik, who is now the president of Columbia University, said: “In the past, jobs were about muscles. Now they’re about brains, but in the future, they’ll be about the heart.”

The knowledge economy that we have lived in for decades emerged out of a goods economy that we lived in for millenniums, fueled by agriculture and manufacturing. Today, the knowledge economy is giving way to a relationship economy, where people skills and social abilities are going to become even more core to success than ever before. That possibility is not just cause for new thinking when it comes to work force training. It is also cause for greater imagination when it comes to what is possible for us as humans, not simply as individuals and organizations but as a species.

                                 Stan Altman.    Photographer:  Dustin Chambers for Bloomberg.

Dear Commons Community,

Stan Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, said Tuesday that the dangers that keep him awake at night regarding artificial intelligence are the “very subtle societal misalignments” that could make the systems wreak havoc.  OpenAI is one of the leaders in the AI field.

Sam Altman, speaking at the World Governments Summit in Dubai via a video call, reiterated his call for a body like the International Atomic Energy Agency to be created to oversee AI that’s likely advancing faster than the world expects.  As reported by The Associated Press.

“There’s some things in there that are easy to imagine where things really go wrong. And I’m not that interested in the killer robots walking on the street direction of things going wrong,” Altman said. “I’m much more interested in the very subtle societal misalignments where we just have these systems out in society and through no particular ill intention, things just go horribly wrong.”

However, Altman stressed that the AI industry, like OpenAI, shouldn’t be in the driver’s seat when it comes to making regulations governing the industry.

“We’re still in the stage of a lot of discussion. So there’s you know, everybody in the world is having a conference. Everyone’s got an idea, a policy paper, and that’s OK,” Altman said. “I think we’re still at a time where debate is needed and healthy, but at some point in the next few years, I think we have to move towards an action plan with real buy-in around the world.”

The UAE, an autocratic federation of seven hereditarily ruled sheikhdoms, has signs of that risk. Speech remains tightly controlled. Those restrictions affect the flow of accurate information — the same details AI programs like ChatGPT rely on as machine-learning systems to provide their answers for users.

The Emirates also has the Abu Dhabi firm G42, overseen by the country’s powerful national security adviser. G42 has what experts suggest is the world’s leading Arabic-language artificial intelligence model. The company has faced spying allegations for its ties to a mobile phone app identified as spyware. It has also faced claims it could have gathered genetic material secretly from Americans for the Chinese government.

G42 has said it would cut ties to Chinese suppliers over American concerns. However, the discussion with Altman, moderated by the UAE’s Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence Omar al-Olama, touched on none of the local concerns.

For his part, Altman said he was heartened to see that schools, where teachers feared students would use AI to write papers, now embrace the technology as crucial for the future. But he added that AI remains in its infancy.

“I think the reason is the current technology that we have is like … that very first cellphone with a black-and-white screen,” Altman said. “So give us some time. But I will say I think in a few more years it’ll be much better than it is now. And in a decade it should be pretty remarkable.”

We need to listen to Mr. Altman for “better” or worse!

Tony