US Politics Mega-thread - Page 8924

On October 05 2017 03:02 LegalLord wrote:

Your hyperbole here (which to be fair you might genuinely believe not to be so) doesn't help your point one bit.

Silicon Valley celebrates artificial intelligence and robotics as fields that have the power to improve people’s lives, through inventions like driverless cars and robot carers for the elderly.

That message isn’t getting through to the rest of the country, where more than 70% of Americans express wariness or concern about a world where machines perform many of the tasks done by humans, according to Pew Research.

The findings have wide-reaching implications for technology companies working in these fields and indicates the need for greater public hand-holding.

“Ordinary Americans are very wary and concerned about the growing trend in automation and place a lot of value in human decision-making,” said Aaron Smith, the author of the research, which surveyed more than 4,000 US adults. “They are not incredibly excited about machines taking over those responsibilities.”

Pew gauged public perception of automation technologies by presenting respondents with four scenarios, including the development of completely driverless cars; a future in which machines replace many human jobs; the possibility of fully autonomous robot carers and the possibility that a computer program could evaluate and select job candidates with no human oversight .

According to the findings, 72% of Americans are very or somewhat worried about a future where robots and computers are capable of performing many human jobs – more than double the 33% of people who were enthusiastic about the prospect. Seventy-six per cent are concerned that automation of jobs will exacerbate economic inequality and a similar share (75%) anticipate that the economy will not create many new, better-paying jobs for those human workers who lose their jobs to machines.

One of the most visible examples of automation that’s likely to disrupt daily life is driverless vehicles. There’s a broad agreement among proponents of the technology that driverless cars will be safer than those driven by humans, who are often distracted, drunk or falling asleep at the wheel.

The American public disagrees.

“People are not buying the safety argument about driverless vehicles,” Smith said. “There’s widespread concern about being on the roads with them, which conflicts with what is consensus in the technology world.”

A slim majority of Americans (54%) express more worry than enthusiasm for the development of driverless vehicles, with 30% expecting that they would lead to an increase in road fatalities. Fifty-six per cent said they would not want to ride in one if given the opportunity, citing a lack of trust in the technology or an unwillingness to cede control to a machine in a potentially life-or-death situation.

Another unexpected finding was the vehement opposition to robots making hiring decisions, despite the fact that such technology is already starting to creep into the hiring process as well as other areas such as assessing individuals for loans or parole from prison. Proponents say that using AI can make these decisions less biased, but the public is not convinced.

Seventy-six per cent of respondents said they would not want to apply for jobs that use such a computer program to make hiring decisions.

“A computer cannot measure the emotional intelligence or intangible assets that many humans have,” said one 22-year-old female respondent. “Not every quality can be quantitatively measured by a computer when hiring someone; there is much more learned by face-to-face interactions.”

Smith said: “It speaks to the general lack of recognition of just how widespread algorithmic decision making is in our lives by the average people in the street.”

The survey also asked people about their attitudes towards existing workforce technologies such as social media, industrial robots and technologies that help customers serve themselves without the assistance of humans. The findings revealed a big split between college educated respondents (typically white collar workers) and those who didn’t attend college (typically blue collar workers).

“White collar workers see tech as something positive that helps them get ahead and has improved their opportunities for career advancement, giving them agency to do their jobs better, make more money and get promotions,” said Smith.

“When we asked the same questions of working class folk, you don’t get the same sense that it’s something that is helpful to them or improves access to career opportunities.”

These social factors play into people’s attitudes towards the coming wave of automation technologies.

“Those folks who are optimistic hope it will take over the dull and boring work we hate and create new categories of work for humans to do,” said Smith, “but the American public does not buy the notion that it will be good for everyone.”

Three-quarters of Americans expect that machines doing human jobs will increase inequality between the rich and the poor.

“They believe that a small number of people do well and everyone else loses their jobs to the robots,” said Smith.

On October 05 2017 00:51 xDaunt wrote:

Y'all on the Left should be shaming this post a little more. I know how much you guys hate having your patriotism questioned, and this kind of stupid shit does nothing but reinforce those very sentiments.

On October 05 2017 03:18 Liquid`Drone wrote:


really dunno how you got the impression leftists hate having our patriotism questioned. As far as I'm concerned, what you seemingly regard as patriotism (based on how you phrase your condemnation of gahlo's post) is a vice more than a virtue.

On October 05 2017 03:25 Velr wrote:
Hispaniols (so spanish/portugese decent) for some reason (racism) aren't white in the US. How much more bankrupt can you go?

On October 05 2017 03:02 LegalLord wrote:

Your hyperbole here (which to be fair you might genuinely believe not to be so) doesn't help your point one bit.

Top Senate Republicans said Wednesday they are open to considering legislation banning devices that were reportedly used to gun down scores of people in the worst mass shooting in modern American history.

Bump stocks — also known as “slide fire” devices, which work by rapidly “bumping” the trigger of a semi-automatic weapon to boost the rate of fire — were reportedly used by Stephen Paddock to kill 58 people and wound more than 500 in Sunday’s Las Vegas massacre.

No Republican has yet joined Democrats in endorsing a bill targeting bump stocks, but their comments suggest a potential shift in the party’s typically hard-line opposition to gun control measures.

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas), the second-ranking Senate Republican who sits on the Judiciary Committee, has dispatched his staff to research the use of bump stocks and said it would be “worthwhile” to have a hearing on the topic.

“It is ordinarily illegal to transform a semi-automatic weapon into an automatic weapon, and it’s illegal to buy an automatic weapon unless you have a special license and undergo a special background check,” Cornyn said in an interview. “I’m not sure how these bump stocks fit into that scheme, but that’s certainly something that’s got my attention and I think we ought to get to the bottom of it.”

South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 3 Senate Republican, said he had talked to other GOP lawmakers about the narrow topic of bump stocks and said several were at least interested in finding out more about how those devices are used.

“I think it’s something we ought to look into,” Thune said. “I don’t know a lot about them and I’m somebody who, I’d like to think, is fairly familiar with a lot of firearms and you know, the use of those. And that incident out there is something that I think we need to take a look at.”

Use of the accessory has become more widespread since the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said in 2010 that it would not object to their sale.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and more than two dozen Democrats unveiled a bill on Wednesday to prohibit the sale of bump-stock devices.

“Bump stocks — which cost less than $200 — increase a semi-automatic rifle’s rate of fire from between 45 to 60 rounds per minute to between 400 to 800 rounds per minute. That’s the same rate of fire as automatic weapons,” Feinstein, a longtime gun-control advocate, told reporters. “The only reason to modify a gun is to kill as many people as possible in as short as time as possible.”

The sale of automatic weapons has long been tightly regulated, including by a 1986 law that banned individuals from owning or transferring such weapons. Kits to convert semi-automatic to automatic weapons are also banned.

A host of rank-and-file GOP senators expressed interest in learning more about the devices Wednesday.

“We’re looking at that too. I wasn’t familiar with them until this came up. So we’re looking at that and studying the issue,” added Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). “It’s a terrible tragedy and we should look at it.”

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said that he’s not a “gun nut,” so he’s been quizzing a close friend familiar with technical specifications of bump stocks to better understand the issue. Flake said a ban should not be dismissed summarily out of hand, though he worried that Democrats would rush to push legislation before Republicans familiarized themselves with the matter.

Other Republicans, including Sens. Mike Rounds (S.D.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and David Perdue (Ga.) also left the door open to action on bump stocks.

On October 05 2017 04:01 LegalLord wrote:
Also, I think it worth mentioning that instead of trying to refute the point xDaunt made, or try to explain why it's disingenuous, the first impulse was to rush to say "well the US ain't any better!" A good way to show where one's priorities lie, to be sure.

On October 05 2017 01:28 xDaunt wrote:

See, the problem is that Left has taken subjectivist thought too far and to its ultimate conclusion -- there are no meaningful distinctions anymore. We're all the same.

On October 05 2017 03:18 Liquid`Drone wrote:


really dunno how you got the impression leftists hate having our patriotism questioned. As far as I'm concerned, what you seemingly regard as patriotism (based on how you phrase your condemnation of gahlo's post) is a vice more than a virtue.