February 16, 2025

OK, I'll be THAT guy. AI is a fraud.

AI is a fraud in the same sense that all the big buzzwords have always been massively deceptive and massively exaggerated. Think of "the Internet" in 1997. Everybody made wild claims about "the Internet", but very few knew what they were talking about. At the time, I worked in Silicon Valley, which was just crawling with people blathering about this.

In the end, 95% of those people and ideas were wrong. But the 5% went forward and, over the next 25 years, the Internet did become transformational. But none of what the Internet is today was predicted by the buzzword champs.

And that's where we are with AI today. There indeed are some apps where AI is doing some useful things. But in most cases, the best we get is a system that is completely unreliable, but may be able to occasionally present some "Gee whiz" results. A perfect example of this is Musk and his Swastikars. He has been promising fully self-driving "in a few months" for an entire decade now, yet the system is still at the primitive level-2 stage. It might eventually work, but it is not close today. Meanwhile others who have used different technologies, not nearly as dependent on AI, are much closer to the goal.

Another example is in the field of music. There are AI engines now that can take a pop song (e.g. from an MP3) and break that into separate rMP3s of drums, guitar, bass, piano and vocal. That is dazzling even though it is only about 90% accurate. That is to say, a trained human musician can identify 100% of the content from each instrument, but it would take a human many hours to create the separated streams, whereas AI can do it in a few minutes -- at a level that is useful, if not commercial-grade.

How much venture capital is being dumped into AI things? How much electricity is it burning? Some say AI will soon consume more than 10% of our total electricity generation.

That brings us to Musk and what he is doing to our government agencies. The big lie is that he is stealing the data because he can turn our government agencies into AI factories that need almost no people to handle everything government does. That is the fraud. So far, Musk hasn't produced a single AI solution that actually does what he promised. And this will be no different.

We have seen what health insurance companies can do with their computer systems. They can train them to deny claims faster than any human can. But it really doesn't take any AI to do that. And that is the same thing Musk is aiming for. Most of government is there to PROTECT the people. From air crashes. From pollution. From poisons. From ignorance. From rotten food. From financial scams. What the billionaires call "oppressive regulations" are actually simply consumer protections.

The game plan is to use the fraud of AI to break government completely. And you can believe that Elon intends to bill the government many billions of dollars for these fraudulent AI systems. The new systems will deny workers compensation for injuries. They will deny veteran benefits. They will send all the education money to charters. And so on. It really doesn't take AI to do all these things. And that's good for Musk because he, and AI, are frauds.

January 22, 2025

The consequences of letting DeJoy continue to kill the USPS

Many of us have been very unhappy, even outraged, that Biden seemed so oblivious to the importance of protecting the USPS. Biden simply took no interest in the USPS and we will pay a bigger price than most people believe.

And let's dispense with the lame argument that the President can't get rid of the PG. It would have been the easiest move ever to have canned DeJoy. Biden named a majority of board members and obviously could have selected only people who were willing to act in favor of the USPS. But he didn't. And Biden had 2 additional openings that sat vacant without even nominees for many months. Let's look at the consequences of not taking this simplest of all possible actions any time during Biden's 4 years. And let's not forget that Schumer was also culpable, as he gave no priority to getting Postal Governors confirmed, or insisting that they can DeJoy as condition of their confirmation by the Senate.

What are the consequences? The obvious consequences are that DeJoy continues to wreck the USPS, intentionally driving down morale and service levels in order to justify outsourcing to for-profit companies, with which he maintains major conflicts of interest.

A second issue is that the postal workers are represented by the American Postal Workers Union. Biden tried to portray himself as a friend of the union workers, yet he allowed this union-buster to stay on 4 years, and on into Trump's 4 years. WTF? How could he do that?

A third consequence is rarely mentioned. The USPS fleet of vehicles is very important. it is highly visible, symbolic, and largely welcome in communities throughout the country. And this is particularly true of rural communities, or was before DeJoy started killing rural routes, forcing many rural people to get their mail only at a box in the post office. To the credit of some of Biden's appointees, there was a good plan to convert most of the USPS carrier fleet to electric vehicles. There have been some delays, and DeJoy has fought this every step of the way, but the Governors held firm as long as they could. However, since the election, DeJoy has been acting to kill the entire order of electric vehicles, and the contractors (Oshkosh) is only too willing to keep providing gar-burners, because that means they don't have to do any innovation.

This is a major problem. The postal EVs would have demonstrated to all parts of America, especially rural America, that clean energy vehicles are practical, efficient, clean, reliable and cost-effective. This would have significantly changed the national attitude about clean energy, but it is an opportunity lost.

I realize this is forum is about "The Way Forward". It is obviously too late to can DeJoy. And it may already be too late to save the EV contract, requiring Oshkosh to deliver what they promised. But we should be pushing the Postal Governors to stand firm on this, demanding that DeJoy and Oshkosh stick with the plan.

This is so sad because it would have been so easy to have canned DeJoy and avoid this problem altogether.

November 14, 2024

Every President is entitled to a cabinet ...

of his own choosing, consisting of people he has confidence in. The founders fully appreciated that and in their wisdom decided that this must not be an arbitrary, unlimited power, but instead must meet the collective wisdom of the Senate. Article 2, Section 2 says:

This will be a moment of truth for the Republicans in the Senate.

* Of course, the President can choose an AG, but not one who is a sex offender and has practiced law only two years in his entire life.

* Of course, the President can choose a Director of National Intelligence who shares his philosophies, but he can't have an SNI who is effectively a Russian agent and could never get a security clearance in any normal administration.

* Of course, the President can choose a director of Health and Human Services, but not one who has no training whatsoever in any aspect of health, actively agitates against life-saving vaccines, and willingly spreads wild conspiracy theories that kill people.

* Of course, the President can choose a Secretary of Education, but not one whose only real claim to fame is giving a hand job in public.

We must put the maximum pressure on the Senate to do their job, just as the founders instructed them. Public hearings for every last one of them.