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    AI and ChatGPT: Yet Another Assault on Democratic Governance?

    We must understand that democracy is morphing with more technocratic systems of governance that lack full oversight and a clear understanding of their social and political impacts.

    Tom Valovic
    Feb 03, 2023

    ChatGPT has become an overnight sensation wowing those who have tried it with an astonishing ability to churn out polished prose and answer complex questions. This generative AI platform has even passed an MBA test at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and several other graduate-level exams. On one level, we have to admire humankind’s astonishing ability to invent and perfect such a device. But the deeper social and economic implications of ChatGPT and of other AI systems under rapid development are just beginning to be understood including their very real impacts on white-collar workers in the fields of education, law, criminal justice, and politics.

    The use of AI systems in the political sphere raises some serious red flags. A Massachusetts Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, Jake Auchincloss, wasted no time using this untested and still poorly understood technology to deliver a speech on a bill supporting creation of a new artificial intelligence center. While points for cleverness are in order, the brief speech read by the Auchincloss on the floor of the U.S. House was actually written by ChatGPT. According to his staff, it was the first time that an AI-generated speech was made in Congress. Okay, we can look the other way on this one because Auchincloss was doing a little grandstanding and trying to prove a point. But what about Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) who used AI to write a bill to regulate AI and who now says he wants Congress to pass it?

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    Speaker Kevin McCarthy walks to the House floor

    New Campaign Aims to Fight Off GOP Threats to Social Security and Medicare

    "Democrats were elected on the promise that they would defend Social Security against Republican attacks. Now is the moment of the truth."

    Jake Johnson
    Jan 30, 2023

    A coalition of progressive advocacy groups on Monday launched a campaign urging every member of Congress to pledge to "never vote to cut Social Security or Medicare under any circumstances," an effort that comes as House Republicans are weighing attacks on the two programs as part of their sweeping austerity spree.

    Led by Social Security Works and More Perfect Union, the new campaign highlights the massive stakes of the ongoing showdown over the U.S. debt ceiling, which House Republicans have said they will refuse to raise unless congressional Democrats and the Biden White House agree to major federal spending cuts—including damaging changes to Social Security and Medicare.

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    United Arab Emirates' minister of industry and CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, speaks to U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry at the opening session of the Atlantic Council Global Energy Forum in Abu Dhabi on January 14, 2023.

    US Lawmakers to John Kerry: Urge UAE to Remove Oil Boss From COP28 Presidency

    Allowing Sultan al-Jaber, head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, to preside over the next U.N. climate conference "risks undermining the very essence of what is trying to be accomplished."

    Kenny Stancil
    Jan 30, 2023

    More than two dozen members of Congress have called on top U.S. climate diplomat John Kerry to push the United Arab Emirates to replace Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, as president-designate of the United Nations COP28 meeting set to begin this November.

    In a Friday letter to Kerry, 27 U.S. lawmakers wrote that "the decision to name the chief executive of one of the world's largest oil and gas companies as president of the next U.N. Climate Change Conference risks jeopardizing climate progress."

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