The language of this article is a great example, "... thanks to an AI agent that gave an employee inaccurate technical advice ...".

It should more-correctly read, " ... thanks to the people who made it possible for an AI agent to give an employee inaccurate technical advice ... ".

It is at our peril that we deem it acceptable to blame a black box for an error, especially at scale.

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-119publ38/pdf/PLAW-... : the Attorney General was to have produced the entirety of the Epstein files, with very narrowly-enumerated redactions, in December. She has not done so.

Furthermore, there are numerous allegations that the documents that have been released contain CSAM, which (referencing the PDF above) may fall afoul of 18 U.S.C. 2252–2252A.

In addition, one need only glance at the action in US courts to see egregious violations of the Constitution and valid court orders playing out daily.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26513988-trorder0128...

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.230...

The challenge, as we're all experiencing together, is that the law is not inherently self-enforcing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRACE_and_GRACE-FO

The primary challenge in determining the mass of Earth is actually measuring the gravitational constant, G, itself. Everything else involved is known at much higher precision. The product of G and Earth's mass is known to two parts in a billion, but the uncertainty in G is ~22 parts per million.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_constant

LISA is primarily sensitive to time-varying gravitational gradients on timescales of a fraction of a minute to a few hours and won't be terribly useful for determining the orbits of objects in our solar system. (but it is very, very cool).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O34BnFu8Kk

Even when the technique is known, everyone remains susceptible (the victim team in the above video is the trickster here): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSNTfFg4XW0

For movement of humans at industrial scale, though, there are only a few operators with ICE contracts. Avelo, GlobalX, Eastern, Key Lime Air, and Omni come immediately to mind. For international flights, there's at least one Learjet operator that flies a bunch for them, too.

These days, the aforementioned carriers fly 20-30 flights/day. Here are Saturday's flights (apologies for the sign-in wall, but lalabote keeps their account somewhat locked down): https://bsky.app/profile/lalabote.bsky.social/post/3mai6lach...

Here is JJ's account -- he is a prolific flight-tracker: https://bsky.app/profile/jjindc.bsky.social

Here is an Avelo flight moving through California right now: https://bsky.app/profile/jjindc.bsky.social/post/3malkyew432...

Here is an Avelo flight on the ground in Seattle on Saturday: https://bsky.app/profile/jjindc.bsky.social/post/3magxcnri32...

Avelo flies a number of flights each week for ICE.

https://bsky.app/profile/jjindc.bsky.social/search?q=avelo

To me, one of the greatest dangers of the present moment is that we can't tell whether the LLMs are being asked to give subtly biased answers (or product-placement) on some questions. One cannot readily tell from the output.

(As an anecdotal example -- I first heard about Backblaze from these reports many years ago and have relied on them to an extent in selecting new drives. I'm now a Backblaze customer.)

As these tools make it possible for a single person to do more, it will become increasingly likely that society will be exposed to greater risks than that single person's (or small company's) assets can cover.

These tools already accelerate development enough that those people who direct the tools can no longer state with credibility that they've personally reviewed the code/behavior with reasonable coverage.

It'll take over-extensions of the capability of these tools, of course, before society really notices, but it remains my belief that until the tools themselves can be held liable for the quality of their output, responsibility will become the ultimate bottleneck for their development.

If you want scientific research as you know it to persist in the United States, please take a moment to help support for science in Congress go viral in your community.

Empirical science is non-partisan. It is good and helpful to know what's true.

If your friends are devout readers of the bible, point 'em toward Philippians 4:8. While I'm not religious, that passage has resonated for me my entire life.

Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Interferometer_Space_Ant...

Edit: and the already-flown Pathfinder : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LISA_Pathfinder