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    tom engelhardt

    Texas border

    How Can We Transcend the Borders We’ve Created?

    There are natural borders and natural differences between people, but to arm those differences and make them absolute, utterly, utterly ignores the connectedness that is also present and crucial.

    Robert C. Koehler
    Mar 30, 2024

    I call it “naked insanity,” as in: The emperor has no clothes.

    He has no sane and transcendent values, no wisdom—not when it comes to survival. Global governance is consumed by power. Those who have it insist on keeping it, no matter the cost. Hence: nuclear weapons... and the threat to use them! Hence: climate change, a.k.a., ecocide.

    Keep ReadingShow Less
    Opinion
    borders
    Abstract AI brain

    A Few Thoughts on 'Less Than Artificial Intelligence' From a Human Practioner

    I must admit that AI, whatever its positives, looks like anything but what the world needs right now to save us from a hell on earth.

    Tom Engelhardt
    May 12, 2023

    After almost 79 years on this beleaguered planet, let me say one thing: this can’t end well. Really, it can’t. And no, I’m not talking about the most obvious issues ranging from the war in Ukraine to the climate disaster. What I have in mind is that latest, greatest human invention: artificial intelligence.

    It doesn’t seem that complicated to me. As a once-upon-a-time historian, I’ve long thought about what, in these centuries, unartificial and — all too often — unartful intelligence has “accomplished” (and yes, I’d prefer to put that in quotation marks). But the minute I try to imagine what that seemingly ultimate creation AI, already a living abbreviation of itself, might do, it makes me shiver. Brrr…

    Keep ReadingShow Less
    Opinion
    artificial intelligence
    Books in a bookstore.

    On Burning Books, Burning Book Publishers, and Me

    What it means when we lose a publishing house.

    Tom Engelhardt
    Sep 27, 2022

    No one listened better than Studs. For those of you old enough to remember, that's Studs Terkel, of course. The most notable thing about him in person, though, was this: the greatest interviewer of his moment, perhaps of any moment, never stopped talking, except, of course, when he was listening to produce one of his memorable bestselling oral histories -- he essentially created the form -- ranging from Working and Hard Times to The Good War.

    I still remember him calling my house. He was old, his hearing was going, and he couldn't tell that my teenage son had rushed to answer the phone, hoping it was one of his friends. Instead, finding himself on with Studs talking a mile a minute, my son would begin yelling desperately, "Dad! Dad!"

    Keep ReadingShow Less
    Opinion

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