🇺🇸 The Bots Are Here

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📉 Monday, January 30: President Biden Job Approval: Approve 45, Disapprove 48 (Marist)

📉 Monday, January 31: President Biden Job Approval: Approve 43, Disapprove 54 (Rasmussen Reports)

📉 Monday, January 30: Direction of Country: Right Direction 28, Wrong Track 66 (Rasmussen Reports)

📉 Sunday, January 29: President Biden Job Approval: Approve 44, Disapprove 56 (CBS News)

TRENDING

Right: State of the Union Is Worse Off Because of Biden Raven Harrison, DC Examiner

Right: California Shows How Not To Run an Election Deroy Murdock, American Spectator

Right: Salon Comes Out in Defense of Groomers Stephen Green, PJ Media

Left: Trump Lawyer John Eastman Should Be Disbarred Jessica Levinson, MSNBC

Left: DeSantis Triggers Trump's MAGA Dissent Heather Parton, Salon

Left: Trump Fires at Only 2024 GOP Rival He Cares About Stephen Collinson, CNN

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QUICK CLICKS

Trump Takes the Fifth, Debt Limit Details, Exxon Earnings Record

US: Trump pleaded the fifth more than 400 times in fraud deposition, video shows (The Guardian)

Weather: Treacherous ice storm stretches from Texas to Kentucky (Axios)

US: Alec Baldwin formally charged with involuntary manslaughter in 'Rust' shooting (KOAT)

US: Paul Murdaugh's tragic final texts before he was gunned down revealed (NY Post)

World: Tanks, jets and justice: Ukraine’s top prosecutor tries to rally US on legal battle (The Hill)

US: In Debt Limit Fight, Republicans Won’t Say What Spending Cuts They Want (DNYUZ)

US: Ron DeSantis fires back at Trump over ongoing series of criticisms (Fox News)

Business: Exxon smashes Western oil majors' earnings record with $56 billion profit for 2022 (Reuters)

TECHNOLOGY

The Bots Are Here

The hottest trend in tech is ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence bot that can create content and answer queries in a way that closely mimics human behavior. Some compare it to a new-age search engine, given its versatility and ability to produce answers to questions.

Reporting from the Left: BuzzFeed to use AI to 'enhance' its content and quizzes (The Guardian)

Reporting from the Right: ChatGPT outperforms humans on Wharton MBA exam (New York Post)

From The Flag: Now, schools are grappling with what this technology means for things like writing papers, as well as questions of plagiarism. Beyond that, it adds to the growing debate involving human workers and automation technology. Here’s more from both sides.

RIGHT-LEANING SENTIMENT

ChatGPT Is In Its Baby Stage, But That Doesn’t Mean It’s Not Dangerous

• ChatGPT’s writing is not overly impressive at this point, but that’s because it’s new and has yet to scale, as emerging technology will.

• Many conservative scholars find ChatGPT has an ideological slant – not so surprising, considering it comes from the Silicon Valley.

• ChatGPT, and more broadly AI, threatens to eliminate purpose, meaning, and individuality from human life.

“Can ChatGPT Write This Column?” Andy Kessler, Wall Street Journal Opinion: “ChatGPT uses machine learning to find patterns of patterns in training data, mostly written by humans, to produce human-sounding prose in response to prompts. … I’ve played around with ChatGPT, and it’s pretty good—if you need to turn in a high-school freshman term paper. Its answers are dull, repetitive and often filled with mistakes, like most freshmen. … So will generative AI scale? Inevitably. We already have silicon chips, such as Google’s Tensor, purpose-built for machine learning and AI. … Over time, ChatGPT will get faster, cheaper and, like Google searches, more focused and accurate. But remember, AI is only as good as the data it’s trained on. Garbage in, garbage out. I asked it: “Write 800 words in the voice of Andy Kessler on whether ChatGPT scales.” It was as bad as a New York Times guest essay. Generative AI could be stuck at high-school freshman level for a while.”

“Inside ChatGPT's woke AI problem” Eric Spitznagel, New York Post: “ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot built by San Francisco company OpenAI, was released to the general public as a prototype in late November… and it didn’t take long for users to share their questionable experiences on social media. Some noted that ChatGPT would gladly tell a joke about men, but jokes about women were deemed ‘derogatory or demeaning.’ Jokes about overweight people were verboten, as were jokes about Allah (but not Jesus). … While ChatGPT was happy to write a biblical-styled verse explaining how to remove peanut butter from a VCR, it refused to compose anything positive about fossil fuels, or anything negative about drag queen story hour. Fictional tales about Donald Trump winning in 2020 were off the table — ‘It would not be appropriate for me to generate a narrative based on false information,’ it responded — but not fictional tales of Hillary Clinton winning in 2016.”

One more opinion piece from the Right: The Brave New World of Artificial Intelligence Frank Miele, RealClearPolitics

LEFT-LEANING SENTIMENT

The Next Big Thing In Tech Could Change Everything, Including Democracy

• The development of ChatGPT is kicking off a new era in tech, and intense competition between Google and Microsoft.

• Many are worried about how ChatGPT will impact the job market, but a bigger concern is its potential ability to upend democracy.

• Artificial intelligence like ChatGPT will change the definition of skilled labor, destabilizing certain industries and professions.

“ChatGPT pits Microsoft against Google in a battle for our inevitable AI future” Navneet Alang, Toronto Star Opinion: “The strange thing about ChatGPT is that it may in fact be both underappreciated and overhyped at the same time… on the one hand, it is clear it is not even close to being truly intelligent, while also being troubling in about a hundred ways; but on the other hand, it promises to be revolutionary all the same. The current round of AI essentially works like a smart chatbot — enter a prompt and watch it spit out a response — but one the capabilities of which can be a bit shocking. … That kind of capability to understand normal human speech and present information in a coherent way means that Google and its search business must react to AI. It’s been speculated that one reason Microsoft is investing in OpenAI is to challenge Google in search by offering up a natural language alternative.”

“How ChatGPT Hijacks Democracy” Sanders & Schneier, New York Times Opinion: “But for all the consternation over the potential for humans to be replaced by machines in formats like poetry and sitcom scripts, a far greater threat looms: artificial intelligence replacing humans in the democratic processes — not through voting, but through lobbying. ChatGPT could automatically compose comments submitted in regulatory processes. It could write letters to the editor for publication in local newspapers. It could comment on news articles, blog entries and social media posts millions of times every day. It could mimic the work that the Russian Internet Research Agency did in its attempt to influence our 2016 elections, but without the agency’s reported multimillion-dollar budget and hundreds of employees. … Right now, the only thing stopping a ChatGPT-equipped lobbyist from executing something resembling a rhetorical drone warfare campaign is a lack of precision targeting. AI could provide techniques for that as well.”

One more opinion piece from the Left: How ChatGPT Will Destabilize White-Collar Work ​​Annie Lowrey, The Atlantic

FLAG THIS

Most Americans Unsure About AI, More Than 3 in 10 Worry

Polling conducted last year found that 37% said they’re more concerned than excited about the growth of artificial intelligence, while 18% felt the opposite. The largest percentage (45%) reported being equally concerned and excited (Pew Research).

A separate poll asked people what they were most worried about in terms of AI’s future applications. The biggest areas of concern were national security, banking and insurance, and finally crime prevention (ECNL).

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WATERCOOLER

Civil Rights Sit-In Starts, Misophonia, The New “It” Flavor

On February 1, 1960, in Greensboro, North Carolina, four Black college students spark a nationwide civil rights movement by refusing to leave a “whites-only” lunch counter at a popular retail store after they are denied service.

Fast Company: 3 Simple Habits That Can Protect Your Brain From Cognitive Decline

The Guardian: Misophonia: how ‘sound rage’ destroys relationships and forces people to move home

Salon: How Pistachio Became the New “It Flavor” of Early Winter

Today I Learned vending machines kill more people annually than sharks do.