MIT’s Dr. Peter S. Park and academics associated with the Center for AI Safety examined deception by Artificial Intelligence. They conclude that increased capabilities of AI pose a serious risk and computers are now capable of inducing false beliefs and encouraging harmful outcomes…
I was planning to write about the dangers of unregulated artificial intelligence, but ChatGPT told me that AI is not inherently dangerous. So I’ll leave that subject for another day. Besides Monday was too good a day for pessimism…
After watching a grandchild and other nine-year-olds playing in a Little League baseball tournament, I was reminded about the positive and negative aspects of youth sports. Done right, they’re beneficial. Done wrong, they’re harmful.
On Facebook, Northeast BC resident RanD Hadland says he visited the Bennett Dam and gained an understanding of why the downstream Peace River is so low. Behind the dam is the Williston Reservoir. Despite ongoing drought conditions, British Columbia has allowed oil and gas companies to draw water for fracking from waterways in the northeast, including the Peace and Liard rivers.
Climate change denialism remains strong. It has been strongly linked to right-wing nationalism and to the anti-feminist far-right but it was built primarily with funds from oil companies. Denialists have accumulated wealth by serving fossil fuel interests.
I won’t be much affected by climate change, but my grandchildren will pay a very high price. For older folks, watching this country do the wrong things for the wrong reasons is difficult. Many of us care much about the world we leave to future generations. Political leaders in Canada care too little…
The concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere is a critical environmental issue. One important cause involves the production and use of fossil fuels. Canada’s government just released the National Inventory Report (NIR) detailing GHG emissions for the years up to 2022. It provides useful information, but it is incomplete.
An IN-SIGHTS reader asks, “Who gains from chaos on American university campuses?” He suggests the theme of the 1997 movie ‘Wag the Dog’ motivates Netanyahu. Dark forces believe the conflict in Gaza also serves Trump.
In the House of Commons, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre told Canadians: “Everything is broken.” Canada is imperfect, but it is far from broken.
Professor Bent Flyvbjerg, Executive Chairman and co-founder of Oxford Global Projects has written about proponents getting large undertakings approved by using “strategic misrepresentation” when they conjure up budgets. Strategic misrepresentation is the planned, systematic distortion or misstatement of fact — lying — in response to incentives in the budget.
By consensus, climate scientists believe that future restorative actions will be futile if policies followed today are insufficient. In our daily lives, we routinely limit or reduce potential harms. However, elected representatives choose not to apply the precautionary principle if they believe economic interests would be negatively affected.
According to MIT Economics Professor Daron Acemoglu, a bountiful supply of good jobs is the best way to generate shared prosperity and also to cultivate civic and political participation from the broad cross-section of society. But organizations that regularly appear in corporate media are paid to oppose the concept of shared prosperity…
We dined recently at an “upscale casual” restaurant in Port Coquitlam. The service and the food were fine, but I was troubled by the noise level. My iPhone decibel meter calculated an average of 86 decibels with a peak level of 95 dB reached often. While the noise level I experienced may do little harm to a diner exposed for only 90 minutes, the risk is quite different for servers working hours-long shifts…
If I told my spouse that I had decided to buy a car for $30,000, then I returned home with one priced at $150,000, she would bar me from the house. The same should happen to every person from bureaucrat to politician who said taxpayers ought to build an oil pipeline.
Many citizens shape their opinions by paying attention to corporate media. What if those news providers are unreliable?
There are many good journalists working in corporate media today. But, lack of resources stifles their work. At times, news people simply accept press releases as accurate and report the contents without close examination…
Many readers of IN-SIGHTS examine public issues with great care and email private comments to me along with links to worthwhile material. What follows comes from a paper sent to me by a long-time follower North Van’s Grumps, fellow blogger at Blog Borg Collective. The complete paper shown below is authored by the late Dr. Karen Bakker of UBC and Richard Hendriks from University of Toronto’s Civil and Mineral Engineering faculty…
This item, contributed by a reader, comments upon BC Hydro now offering a ten to fifteen billion dollar commitment to private power producers. This continues Gordon Campbell’s aim of twenty years ago: PRIVATIZATION BY STEALTH.
For as long as I can remember, we’ve been told that putting more wealth in the hands of the already wealthy will benefit everyone through greater economic growth, more jobs, and higher wages. Academic studies find the opposite is true. However, with most major media outlets controlled by the super-rich, these studies are barely reported…
Tell The Dam Truth (TTDT) is a California based non-profit with initial funding from outdoor clothing retailer Patagonia. TTDT’s aim is to protect and restore free-flowing rivers by educating people about the impacts of river-destroying projects. The group promotes decommissioning of existing dams.
Under the heading - Lessons From America. Emeritus Professor, Melania Trump – Who really doesn’t care. Do U? - stepped…
Lovely story Norm. My university summers were spent at the other end, figuratively and literally, of yours; pulling Douglas fir…
[…] When I was in high school, I spent time working for my uncles at Mahood Logging Ltd. That experience…
This is certainly a good news story. Indigenous nations take a multi generational approach to land use along with a…
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[…] The idiot crew around Donald Trump may have been so focused on personal enrichment schemes that they didn’t bother…