Is ChatGBT The Same Old Story?
The latest popular development in “Artificial Intelligence” (AI), ChatGBT is an application of Large Language Models which generates tantalizingly humanlike written answers to common, practical questions. It works by combining massive amounts of text taken from the internet with statistical models that predict which word should follow the present one. Although at root ChatGBT is simply […]
Private Profit at Everyone’s Expense
“Your right to throw a punch ends where my nose begins.” This common aphorism—often used to illustrate the limits of personal freedom—integrates two bedrock moral principles: reciprocity and harm. You can’t get more universal than “Do unto others” and “Do no harm,” the first moral principles widely taught to young children. In practice, of course, […]
Welcome to My Website!
As I write this piece, my new book Which Future? Choosing Democracy, Climate Health, and Social Justice is finally for sale at Amazon.com and on its way to local bookstores. I’d like you to buy the book, of course, but my ultimate objective goes beyond book sales. I wrote Which Future? to introduce and promote a new, […]
Misogyny, a Case of Superiority and Domination
One important sidebar to the January 6th hearings this past summer was the difference between how male and female witnesses were treated after their testimony implicating former President Donald Trump. The most prominent examples were Cassidy Hutchinson, once aide to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and Sarah Matthews, once deputy White House […]
Why Humanism, not Socialism?
In 2016, extreme inequalities in American society fueled support for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign as an avowed Socialist. Sanders emphasized that health care in particular should be a universal human right, and publicized the connection between such government social welfare spending and Socialism as a political stance. Socialism takes many forms, but the common elements, […]
