This is a nice premise, but it isn't possible:

x.com/DimaZeniuk/status/1839199128745590911

"I have a concern really for all the major AI programs. The two biggest ones are Gemini & OpenAI. I think it's actually a very big issue. They are not maximally truth-seeking."

The problem with claiming this should be the first and foremost (overriding all other things) is that its never going to happen.

Why?

Because a computer cannot think.

It is therefore always an NPC.  A very fast NPC with (in this case) a very large repository of data against which to analyze but since it cannot actually think out of scope it can't possibly correct bias whether the introduction is intentional or not.

In other words a computer always follows its programming.  It is not capable of doing otherwise no matter the sort of arm-waving nonsense that many in the field of so-called "AI" like to put forward.  Until and unless you show me a machine that can actually demonstrate out-of-scope results then this will never change because the machine cannot determine that it is under the influence of bias.

To do so it has to go out of scope.

No machine has ever demonstrated that capacity to any degree, even the very-slightest.  We don't know how we do it as humans, but the evidence is that we do from time to time.  Not nearly as often as many would like to think when it comes to themselves but consider this.

A long time ago everyone used a chamber pot to put their human waste in at night if you didn't want to light a lantern or hooded candle and go to the outhouse.  This was all thought of as entirely reasonable and normal.

So how did someone come up with the idea of a water closet and the sewage piping to connect it to?

If you think about the last piece of that innovation, the flush valve and trap arrangement in the commode, you might think that was rather obvious.  No it wasn't, and neither were the other elements of how to, for example, engineer sewage systems from scratch including preventing the gases from getting back into the building.  We don't think anything of this at all today but no machine has ever dreamt up such a thing, even the most-trivial, and yet humans have repeatedly done such things through the eons.

We carried things in our hands for a long time yet at some point some human dreamed up a wheel and, of course, the axle to put it on.  From there we dreamed up two of them with an axle between, and so on.

Where is the evidence of so-called "Artificial Intelligence" ever putting forward a single out-of-scope thing simply by sitting there and grinding on its alleged "knowledgebase"?

I challenge you to find it.

It is that out-of-scope capacity that leads us to question what is put in front of us as a claim and attempt to either support or refute it.  That out-of-scope capacity in the human mind is the very thing that created the scientific method, a method that we now fight to keep from being corrupted -- and often fail.  I'd go through a long list of those recent failures but then this article would have to go on the other side of the blog, so feel free to expound on them yourselves.

Take a 1970 carbureted car, feed the elements of same into an "AI" and without any reference to modern engines and digital closed-cycle controls, having it only work with the information that existed in 1970, ask it to optimize the operation of the engine for both emissions and power.  It will never dream up the elements of closed-loop operation we have today simply because to do that it has to go out-of-scope of the existing knowledge it has access to -- and it can't.  Without being able to do that it can never invent the oxygen sensor nor EFI -- without which closed-loop control is impossible.

Never confuse out-of-scope thought and engineering.  One is how you dream of things that aren't; the second is how you make what you dreamed work.  Without the first all you can do is improve the efficiency of what you already have, complete with all the biases that are incorporated in it.

.... a good corruption scandal for the Democrats right in front of the election.

A Manhattan grand jury has indicted New York Mayor Eric Adams on federal criminal charges, multiple sources familiar confirmed to Fox News. The details about the indictment remain under seal.

But wait, I thought all the corruption was on the GOP side and Democrats were lily-white, pure as the undriven snow?

Maybe not.

Several people have recently been raided but nobody has had a decent read on whether Adams himself is implicated.  Apparently he is, and what's worse this looks to be related to foreign involvement in Adams' campaign, which is strictly illegal.

We shall see, of course, but now can we discuss a particular candidate literally seizing the nomination without winning a single vote, and her apparent inability to actually answer questions?

Important ones too, like in yesterday's MSNBC (very friendly) interview: "if you do not have the House and Senate exactly how will you fund all these giveaways you've promised voters?"

Oh by the way that same candidate just invited a foreign head of state to literally sign shells, along with the State's governor, intended for the enemy said foreign head of state is at war with as a photo-op and, it appears, said foreign head of state traveled on and using official US Government aircraft and resources.

Could someone explain to me how that isn't foreign influence and coordination in our elections?

Should Trump show up for CNN's "invitation"?

No.

Should he (and Harris) be willing to debate on any reasonable schedule and number of times?  Yes.

So how do you square these two?  Simple -- the current format as presented are not debates.

We can't leave aside the affidavit that exists on the ABC "debate" and the allegedly-deliberate gaming of it along with the complaint filed with the SEC related to same since Disney, which is a public company and owns ABC.  The root of the problem however is not whether or not such occurred: It is that the deliberate structure of these events has been designed in the last couple of decades so such games can occur, and thus they're not DEBATES.

How else do you explain the fact that Fox News offered both candidates a debate immediately when Harris deposed Biden and she has yet to answer but the media calls Trump a "coward" for refusing to "debate" on CNN after it is disclosed and quite-clear, simply from the stagecraft, that ABC got in the middle of the one they hosted even if only with the height of the lecterns.

Simply put what the media proposes are stage shows, not debates.  They're no more "real" than a WWE "wrestling" match.

If you've ever actually done debating (e.g. in High School, if you attended a real one, or College if you actually got a rigorous education in same) you understand this.  An actual debate is on a subject or set of subjects agreed to by both parties in advance.  Both parties comes and present their case in an opening statement, there are frequently some set of questions which must be related to the subjects under debate and the persons asking them should be selected by the adversary of each side, there is a limited time for answer to each question and then finally a summation.

Note that the moderator has no role in asking anything; the only questions from the floor are from a limited number of adversaries chosen by the other side and limited in both scope and number.  This prevents anyone from tampering with either the words or tone of the question as they don't have it in advance.  Each candidate is permitted a pen and paper for notes and any pre-arranged notes on cards or similar that they wish (along with the displays for the main presentation) but no communication devices of any sort.

I would agree to any number of debates and would urge both sides to do so under the following conditions:

• There is no preference in lighting, audio or lectern; the choice of lectern is determined once both candidates show up and make a coin toss.
  
  
• The topics to be debated are limited to one or two per debate and fully disclosed at least a week in advance to each side.  No topic beyond the subjects of the debate will be entertained.
  
  
• Each side gets a 3 minute opening statement; no written material or charts are permitted, words only.  Flip a coin for who goes first (and that will determine the closing statement order in reverse.)
  
  
• Next each side gets a 15 minute uninterrupted period to make their case with whoever won the coin toss going first.  They may present written charts, data or other materials but those must be publicly displayed so the audience and the other party can see them and are part of the permanent record.  No interruptions are permitted from the other side during this time.
  
  
• 5 minute Intermission.  Go pee if you need to.
   
• Each side now gets two challengers, chosen by their opponent and not necessarily disclosed until the time of the debate, that stand and ask one or more questions on the presentation.  The questions must bear on the topics of the debate and the challenger is permitted two minutes to ask said question(s), which must be complete before the answer period begins, with each response by the candidate being no more than five minutes in length.  The challengers alternate (flip a coin as to who goes first) until exhausted and the other side must stand mute during that time.
  
  
• Once exhausted each candidate has five minutes of rebuttal related to the questions and answers.  Again, uninterrupted but the rebuttals must pertain to the topics, presentations, questions and answers.  Anything within that scope is fair game.
  
  
• After the rebuttal each person gets a five minute uninterrupted closing statement.  The person who lost the opening coin toss has the option to go first or last as they prefer and he or she makes such election after the questions and rebuttals are exhausted.

This will run right near 90 minutes total.  Some people would argue that they want more but I'm deliberately limiting to the topics to two per debate and there will be more than one debate, allowing the subject matter at hand to be expanded upon and explained.  Open door topic areas can't be done in this amount of time and longer periods of time simply exceed Americans' willingness to listen and networks' willingness to block the time for it.  In addition the terms must require that simulcast to other networks and unlimited and no-fee video access must be permitted, whether by the principal agency or anyone else who wishes to; each such presentation must explicitly waive all copyright and other related claims.

The moderator has no questioning authority whatsoever.  His or her job is only to present the candidates and be the host of the proceedings.  If one of the parties wishes to assert that the other has lied that is the purpose of rebuttal or closing statement period.  The moderator's only job is to mute a microphone if either presenter runs out of time and refuses to cease or if they attempt to go outside the topics of the debate.  The microphones are directional (super-cardioid pattern) with the lecterns placed at a roughly 20 degree off-axis angle to center so as to make attempting to shout over or otherwise interrupt non-productive (each candidate is in the side-lobe "null" of the other's microphone) and each mic is only enabled when it is the candidate's turn to speak.  The standard 3-light tree is to be present on each lectern with a countdown timer (green > 2 minutes remaining on the displayed clock, yellow < 2 minutes, red time has expired and microphone is OFF) and a prominently-displayed and large "straight ahead" countdown clock directly in the sightline of each candidate at the back of the room corresponding to the lights on the lectern.

I would argue these should be presented before a live audience with the proviso that no interruptions from said audience is permitted, and if you violate that you get removed from the room -- and during that period of time the person who has the floor has their time suspended.  I like the presence of an audience but a "heckler's veto" must be prohibited and evenly enforced.  If that cannot be reasonably assured then no audience it is.

That's it.

The premise that a "news organization" can play "gotcha" and favor one side or the other makes any such "debate" nothing more than a stage show.  Either let us see real debates or stop the charade.

Well look what we have here.

WAMBUI KAMAU, BYLINE: The lawsuit seeks over $100 million to recoup the costs of reopening the Fort McHenry Federal Channel and the Port of Baltimore, following the collapse. Benjamin Mizer is with the U.S. Department of Justice. He says the Singapore-based Grace Ocean, which owns the ship, and Synergy Marine, which operates it, are financially responsible for the cleanup - not U.S. taxpayers. Mizer says they knew of vibration problems on the ship that could lead to blackouts, and didn't fix them.

As with most disasters which have at their core human action (or inaction) there's more than one thing that has to be compromised due to stupidity or the disaster does not occur.

The usual count is three, but two sometimes suffice.  That's because engineers typically will try to mitigate faults and thus one fault does not lead to a disaster because the mitigations are there to avoid a failure (which can always happen) turning into a disaster.  It is thus typically the second or even third act of stupidity that results in the serious "oops."

We know the basic timeline -- the ship left dock, it was steaming toward the bridge, it lost all electrical power, recovered it for a brief time before losing power again and, by the time power came back on the second time it didn't matter as collision was inevitable.  It also appears that at no time after the first power loss was main propulsion restored (only electrical power), but that's not established.

A few things to note here, most of which I've covered before.  Modern ships all have computer-controlled engines for emissions reasons.  Old ocean-going (and even recreational) diesels, from pretty-small (e.g. truck engine size) to huge (train, ship, etc.) were mechanical and once started (which frequently could be done with a reservoir of compressed air rather than electrical power) they'd continue to run provided they had air, fuel and lubricating oil.  Meeting modern emission standards this way is impossible, thus now they're all electronically controlled and that in turn means they require electrical power all the time.  That, in turn, means such a ship is engineered with two electrical buses, transformers and similar to provide full redundancy since its essential that you not lose the portion of the electrical system required for propulsion and steering to work at minimum.

If you recall it was discovered that the crew had some sort of problem with electrical power loss while at the dock.  The presumption was that they had found the cause and fixed it, never mind that due to the critical nature of electrical power for modern ships you have two redundant systems such that losing one does not screw you.

What was found is that the power loss at the dock wasn't actually from the same cause that led to the collision; that was an error on the part of one of the crew members.  However, that event led the crew to switch to the second set of switchgear and transformer which was the one active when the Dali left.

During the local repairs and inspection investigators found a loose connection on that second control system for the transformer bank that provided main power to the Dali and were able to reproduce the condition by messing with it.  This would cause that transformer to trip but there is an automatic fail-over to the other one so that event should not have caused the extended and dual outage.  It did because, it appears from reports, the crew had the selector for said automated fail-over shut off!

Worse is that they apparently had the generator fuel system automated change-over turned off as well!  You see the fuel pumps of course require some sort of power and thus you have a chicken and egg problem; if you want to start up the ship with nothing running (thus batteries and/or stored air for pneumatics only -- note that pneumatics also run things like the ship's horn) something has to pressurize the fuel system so the generator can start.  That system is typically pneumatically driven and is also used to polish the fuel -- but it is not capable of operating for an extended period of time (since it will run out of air in the tank!) nor can it supply enough flow for full operational power.  It doesn't have to since once there is electrical power you've got plenty for the normal fuel system to run and recharge the pneumatics.  The fuel system is quite complex because, among other things, once again for emissions when in and near port the main engine runs on diesel but because it runs at a very low (by our standards with trucks and such) RPM it also is perfectly capable of operating on bunker fuel, which is much cheaper (but dirtier) and thus once out of the EEZ of nations who care that's what they use.  That fuel has to be both heated and scrupulously cleaned because it is extremely thick at ordinary temperatures and in any event diesels are extremely intolerant of contaminants in their fuel; water in even tiny amounts will destroy the injectors and any sort of contamination can stick them open which on modern engines will almost-immediately cause them to self-destruct.  Since the fuel tanks on a ship of that size are huge and ships float on water (and get rained on) which could conceivably find its way into the fill or vent pipes the potential for contamination is always there and thus the fuel system is both quite-complex and needs a lot of power to operate normally.

So they take the first fault and are dark for a fairly extended period of time because the automated switch-over has been disabled.  Then, when they get the power up again it fails a second time either due to the same fault or because the generator's fuel flow is insufficient to carry the load.  By the second time they get power back its too late and they hit the bridge.

Admiralty law is very different than what you're used to in the world of car accidents and similar and covers a lot of incidents that occur with ships (more than you'd think), but this looks an awful lot like they believe they can go after various entities under US domestic law, which if true could turn this into a fairly-basic negligence claim.

The obvious question here is that there should be a pre-departure checklist for the entire engineering space on the vessel so why did they leave the dock configured as they were?

This will be interesting to follow as it winds its way through the judicial system and more facts come to light.