Bill Ackman thinks it’s bad to tax billionaires… really intrepid reporting. It’s amazing they can produce something this bad on the same day as the crucial reporting on the Supreme Court. The entire gamut of journalistic quality in one day.

New York’s Anti-Rich Current Reaches Apex With Second-Home Tax Plan

The NYT coverage of Mamdani is breathtaking in its complete lack of shame.

“But many New Yorkers worried the new moves against the rich could upend livelihoods. Agents working in real estate, a major driver of the city’s economy, were eager to hear more details about plans for a second-home tax.”

Reopen the Golden Door Repeal the Immigration and Nationality Act—immigration restrictionism is the Slave Power of the 21st century.

This is the way we should talk about immigration.

Super envious! Glad you’re enjoying it!

Promising young scholars had to burnish their resumes with useless publications long before anyone thought of asking them to do real research.“

This is a great bit “Today, we’re used to complaints that modern academia is fallen because promising young scholars now have to spend their time burnishing their resumes with useless publications instead of doing real research. This is precisely backwards...

The Inside Story of Five Days That Remade the Supreme Court

Roberts has a lot to answer for. If I were him, I would hope there is no hell.

Whoa. Looks good!

It’s been a real week of triumph for JD; maybe we should try having him endorse cancer or something

This sounds right to me.

… and safety testing before widespread adoption. But I will say, the offloading of intellectual skill development offered by LLMs seems like it might be a big enough difference to make for a difference in kind, even if there is continuity with previous problems.

Well, I certainly agree that this is a pre-existing problem! Like with many issues in ethics of AI, LLMs intensify existing issues. But the difference in degree here might be pretty significant. I think the potential problems seem plausibly significant, in a way that calls for caution…

We also still teach kids to do arithmetic before we give them calculators.

The point here is that we need to consider the educational aspects of early career work in science, just as in other fields. That's crucial for achieving the goal of understanding in science.

We teach people to code in Python now, it's true, but it's still good to learn some of the basic ideas of programming, so you have a feel for how it works. If you learn in python, it's still good to learn the basics of simple functions, loops, recursion, etc. Even if later you just use libraries.

I don't think that's an apt comparison. The worry is losing out on understanding by not developing the skills needed to evaluate and understand the output. It's not about abstracting from machine code, or never automating things in your work. It's about education.

This is great. h/t @neuroyogacara.bsky.social

“Why would x do this?” Meme where billionaires shoot jobs and ask the titular question of Mamdani.

When they talk about Trump’s effects on the economy, they always include caveats about a President’s limited control. But somehow the Mayor of NY is fully responsible for all economic circumstances in the city, global events and other economic factors be damned.

Mamdani Acknowledges ‘Troubling’ Job Losses in 100 Days’ Interview

The Times’ attacks on Mamdani are as absurd as they are shameless. “Muslim socialist Mamdani murders jobs with his hammer and scimitar”

And, you know, not just because PPR always rejects me.

Agreed.

I'm opposed to the President of the United States threatening to commit genocide. Also to him committing genocide, and to all the other crimes against humanity he has already committed. I'm going to take part in the May 1st demonstrations. I hope you will, too. And any that come up before then.

Brutal.

The workshop is organized by myself and Brian Berkey, with generous support from Georgetown's Center for Digital Ethics and Wharton's Accountable AI Lab. Watch out for another CFA for next year.

(Sadly, I didn't manage to get everyone in the photos.)

A group photo of participants at the PGDEW

A talk at the PGDEW

Some audience members for a talk at the PGDEW

A talk at the PGDEW

This weekend we had another great edition of the Penn-Georgetown Digital Ethics Workshop. We had eight excellent talks, along with comments from eight great commentators. I really enjoyed the conversations. This year, we were hosted again by Penn.

Front page of the NYT website showing what I talk about in the post.

The NYT page today is really a bizarre thing to see. Trump threatening genocide, accompanied by an article about his wife’s “unexpected Easter look”.

Haha, I didn’t actually look before making that post…

See, before I wasn’t *actually* insulted that you don’t cite me…

A deadline you can get an extension for, even. Sounds like a 6 months from now problem to me. I’m still working on last month problems.