Brussels, Belgium is the capital of the European Union. Asunción, Paraguay is the capital of (you guessed it) Paraguay. There is important news from both this week, one a note of caution; the other a sigh of relief.  

Decisions that have long-term, potentially irreversible consequences, need a heavy dose of adult thinking. As a society, we are not protecting our children. After all, it takes a village to raise a child.

This week (April 20, 2023), it will be 21 months until the next U.S. presidential inauguration. What are some possible scenarios between now and then?

AI development is at the point where researchers are not sure when its intelligence will surpass humanity’s and concede perhaps it already has. Earlier this week, an open letter containing names like Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple) and others gained over 1,000 (latest count 2,137) signatures calling for at least a six-month pause in training the AI systems to be more powerful than Chat GPT-4. Others are saying the pause needs to be 30 years. Good luck with that.

Our lack of acceptance of many issues on the table today is simply because no one has made the effort to explain them in a way we can understand. As long as they can be lazy and just implement such issues by government fiat, they will not attempt to explain them. Such an attitude is an insult to democracy and to our citizens.