Politics

[Altitude sickness]

What’s the odds of Barack Hussain Obama being the Harris pick for VP

According to the 22nd Amendment, “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person [who has served more than half a term] shall be elected to the office of the president more than once.”

Doesn’t say anything about VP or assuming the office. But they can’t be elected into office.

 

[Wishfulthinker580]

Oh good Lord. You would think you were contemplating dealing with a covid infected face towel. Reddit, which is a forum by the way, is made up of a large number of different communities or stovepipes. Quite a few are political or cultural in nature which do not interest me. On the other hand, there are several that are specifically related to the Ukraine War, or current armed conflicts in general. They are the closest thing to first person testimony that we can get in real time from those engagements. It does not take much effort, even for those with no military experience, to separate the propaganda from information.

I do realize that. I was strictly referring to Reddit itself. As a rule I really don’t like to or want to expand my internet presence and the time I spend on it, got enough actual living to do. I get the general picture and am for the most part satisfied with the information I get from various sources and the posts you and others provide here on AH. I admittedly am fascinated by the warfare aspect of the Reddit posts however (despite the horrific nature of some of it).

 

[ActionBob]

What’s the odds of Barack Hussain Obama being the Harris pick for VP

According to the 22nd Amendment, “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person [who has served more than half a term] shall be elected to the office of the president more than once.”

Doesn’t say anything about VP or assuming the office. But they can’t be elected into office.

I have to wonder if he isn't most content to be pulling the strings from behind the curtain. His goal to "fundamentally change America" has made more progress under Joe than himself.

 

[Red Leg]

What’s the odds of Barack Hussain Obama being the Harris pick for VP

According to the 22nd Amendment, “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person [who has served more than half a term] shall be elected to the office of the president more than once.”

Doesn’t say anything about VP or assuming the office. But they can’t be elected into office.

Zero.

 

[sgt_zim]

What’s the odds of Barack Hussain Obama being the Harris pick for VP

According to the 22nd Amendment, “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person [who has served more than half a term] shall be elected to the office of the president more than once.”

Doesn’t say anything about VP or assuming the office. But they can’t be elected into office.

Ain't happening. The language and intent of the 22nd are unambiguous.

 

[Altitude sickness]

I don’t think they would do that either. BUT Obama does not think she can win. And he doesn’t think she should be President

 

[ActionBob]

I don’t think they would do that either. BUT Obama does not think she can win. And he doesn’t think she should be President

Might be an interesting Democrat Convention yet if that is correct.

I'm still really concerned about how many ways there are to cheat....

 

[Altitude sickness]

Just do some basic research on how our certain entities have been “influencing” elections all over the world for decades.

And you will see how it’s happening. Bots do a lot of the daily basic grunt, ground work now. Appearing to come from our enemies. And I guess technically they could be seen as our enemy

But I’m sure you can imagine what capabilities certain groups have.

 

[Altitude sickness]

“There is an old joke about why there are never coups d’état in the United States of America: because there is no US embassy there.”

 

[PARA45]

Venezuela is having their elections today. I wonder if Maduro opposition has a chance with such a corrupt dictatorship. My wife is hopeful; she still has a lot of family living there. I, on the other hand am not too optimistic of the outcome.

 

[bashaw]

"It's not who votes it's who counts the Votes" Joe Stalin
I'm very cynical after 2020 election

 

[steve white]

It is impossible for me to think what "might" happen to twist the Constitution without looking to see how Liberia has ALREADY twisted it!! They have our constitution, too...

 

[sgt_zim]

interesting

google and copilot give similar responses

 

[John Wasmuth]

interesting

google and copilot give similar responses

View attachment 622353

Nothing to see here, move along…..

 

[sgt_zim]

so last updated in 2021, except...not really

 

[Red Leg]

Warning, This is a fairly gruesome film clip over on X (another information source avoided by many?) But, it demonstrates a major concern I have with the new battery technology - perhaps like the one (s) in the EV in the garage? Poor bugger was likely taking this one (a lithium battery for an EV bike of a type very popular in Asia) upstairs to charge it in his apartment.

A decade ago. when I was still gainfully employed, my business unit built probably 2/3's of the EOD robots used nationwide by local police forces. They were electric powered and we provided extremely stringent charging and storage guidance with each sale. I see none of that today in consumer products. I am not certain the technology has improved to quite that level of perfection.

x.com

x.com

 

[Alistair]

View attachment 622354

so last updated in 2021, except...not really


View attachment 622355

For context on this, Copilot, as with all these AI systems, is effectively a black box system trained on a data set at some point in time. Post the initial training set, it can access and include any public domain information.

As such, it is virtually impossible for any individual (even those who programmed it) to 'see' the process between input and output for a given query. Hence, it is almost impossible to train it to tell the truth, or make it relay facts, or really influence or control what information it presents in a predictable fashion.

I expect that Microsoft have realized that with the huge amount of rather suspect information floating around the web on this topic right now, the AI model is throwing out blatantly incorrect misinformation, or at least nothing with any informational value. Garbage in, garbage out and all that.

I believe you'll also get this response if you ask it about various very recent, divisive news topics, or stock tips, or ongoing court cases prior to a verdict, or for an opinion on a political figure. I've not confirmed that though.

Anyway, on those two topics they seem to have made the socially responsible choice to just straight up bounce any such queries, instead of letting it percolate unpredictable, probably misleading information from unreliable sources. The statement about the data set being circa 2021 was probably the original boiler plate 'we won't answer that question' statement they programmed back in 2021 at launch, and haven't updated it since.

For recent stuff that's not subject to quite as much 'noise', or where there is some consensus, or topics that ultimately aren't that damaging if misleading information is provided (eg historical information, sports results, weather, entertainment, celebrity news, published science etc) they'll happily let it answer, even if the results are potentially also unreliable, hence you will get information on topics post 2021 on that stuff.

Good on Microsoft on this one. If only Facebook had such morals with their news algorithms...

 

[sgt_zim]

IDK what EVs are going to use as their power source in 25 years, but it's for damned sure it won't be Li batteries.

 

[sgt_zim]

For context on this, Copilot, as with all these AI systems, is effectively a black box system trained on a data set at some point in time. Post the initial training set, it can access and include any public domain information.

As such, it is virtually impossible for any individual (even those who programmed it) to 'see' the process between input and output for a given query. Hence, it is almost impossible to train it to tell the truth, or make it relay facts, or really influence or control what information it presents in a predictable fashion.

I expect that Microsoft have realized that with the huge amount of rather suspect information floating around the web on this topic right now, the AI model is throwing out blatantly incorrect misinformation, or at least nothing with any informational value. Garbage in, garbage out and all that.

I believe you'll also get this response if you ask it about various very recent, divisive news topics, or stock tips, or ongoing court cases prior to a verdict, or for an opinion on a political figure. I've not confirmed that though.

Anyway, on those two topics they seem to have made the socially responsible choice to just straight up bounce any such queries, instead of letting it percolate unpredictable, probably misleading information from unreliable sources. The statement about the data set being circa 2021 was probably the original boiler plate 'we won't answer that question' statement they programmed back in 2021 at launch, and haven't updated it since.

For recent stuff that's not subject to quite as much 'noise', or where there is some consensus, or topics that ultimately aren't that damaging if misleading information is provided (eg historical information, sports results, weather, entertainment, celebrity news, published science etc) they'll happily let it answer, even if the results are potentially also unreliable, hence you will get information on topics post 2021 on that stuff.

Good on Microsoft on this one. If only Facebook had such morals with their news algorithms...

WTF is "socially responsible" WRT the assassination attempt on Trump? HTF is that even controversial? "Somebody shot at president trump, inflicting a flesh wound in the upper part of his right ear." That isn't even remotely in dispute.

The honest answer would be "I'm currently prohibited from commenting on ongoing political affairs." Everything else is just a lie. Your dissembling is no better.

 

[Alistair]

WTF is "socially responsible" WRT the assassination attempt on Trump? HTF is that even controversial? "Somebody shot at president trump, inflicting a flesh wound in the upper part of his right ear." That isn't even remotely in dispute.

But the AI model doesn't know truth, it only knows what is presented in the data set.

As an example, let's say you ask the AI 'what color is the sky?'

The AI will look at the data in the model set, seek the highest scoring answer based on weighting factors (number of times the point is stated, number of sites where that answer occurs, the times where it was stated, etc) and throw out an answer. If, in the example above, some bot has created a site stating 30 billion times that the sky is red, people found that funny and reshared it to other sites, the AI will tell you 'The sky is red.' It cannot discern truth, nor can it parse 'useful info' from 'useless info', that was the consensus opinion based on the data presented to it.

Taking your query above, if in the public domain there's a load of sites saying its a conspiracy set up by Trump himself, those sites have lots of views, lots of traffic and lots of secondary posts, then the AI is quite likely to present that narrative in its answer. It could also link those sites, or incorrectly give the wrong perpetrator, or accuse a foreign actor based on pure internet speculation, or incorrectly say he was killed, or that it was unfortunate that he wasn't...

It can't discern fact from fiction, it only sees consensus based on whatever weighting factors were assigned in the model. The Microsoft guys can't see the decision web or the sources drawn upon in building the response, and it'll change minute by minute as the data set grows, so they can't stop it spreading anything that the social zeitgeist is pushing. They also can't force it to limit it's answer to verifiable facts such as 'it happened, where it happened, did he survive'.

In cases where the topic of a query is any combination of 'very recent, very politically charged, the subject of a great deal of misinformation, potentially very damaging to persons or movements', it's probably a sensible time for corporate ass covering and simply denying the query in case it spits out something really dicey or really wrong to a huge audience that could have very real implications for persons or events.