Four Views on General Artificial Intelligence Progress, and What It Should Get

Taking one step up from specific AI accomplishments, or lack of same, we have what it needs to advance – and what tactics might be too problem-ridden to pursue.  Here, we have a month’s worth of both.

In “The Tech Fantasy That Powers A.I. Is Running on Fumes” (The New York Times, March 29^th), Tressie McMillan Cottom said we are now in “the decade of mid tech,” as “most of us aren’t using A.I. to save lives faster and better,” but “using A.I. to make mediocre improvements, such as emailing more,” as “even the most enthusiastic papers about A.I.’s power to augment white-collar work have struggled to come up with something more exciting than “A brief that once took two days to write will now take two hours!””  Although there have been sharp improvements in other areas, such as medicine, those most people see constitute “a mid revolution of mid tasks,” as “cashiers are still better at managing points of sale,” airport facial recognition “hasn’t particularly revolutionized the airport experience or made security screening lines shorter,” and as “A.I spits out meal plans with the right amount of macros, tells us when our calendars are overscheduled and helps write emails that no one wants,” its contributions seem only incremental.  The “tech fantasy” in the title that is running dry, per Cottom, is that “we won’t need institutions or expertise.”  Indeed, that doesn’t seem even close.

Next, an April 1^st editorial of sorts by Jason Kwan in Fox News, “AI’s development is critically important for America – and it all hinges on these freedoms,” namely interpreting and allowing “fair use” of “fundamental science and publicly available content used to train AI tools for the rising AI industry,” even if it is copyrighted, if “the application is transformative, meaning it uses existing works to create something new and different and without eroding the commercial value of such works.”  Kwan also suggested that there should be more “government data and government-funded data available.”  He has a reasonable viewpoint worthy of debate, especially in Congress.

“Use it or lose it,” in The Economist on April 5^th, revealed its subject in its subtitle, “Never mind who is better at developing AI.  What matters is who is first to harness it.”  Instead of technical accomplishments determining that, “it is more likely to be the country where governments, businesses and ordinary people use AI at scale every day.”  If the first piece above is correct, that isn’t happening in the US, yet China, which ranked in a World Intellectual Property Organization survey as being AI’s “47^th-best adopter” of technology and 32^nd in “technological diffusion,” is not excelling there either.  But according to another study, Chinese citizens had much better “attitudes toward AI and technology,” meaning it could still prevail.  Ultimately, per the article, “The AI race… will be won in places like Dayton and Zhengzhou, where ordinary companies and consumers harness the technology to do extraordinary things.”

Last, the “First autonomous AI agent is here, but is it worth the risks?” (Kurt Knutsson, Fox News, April 23^rd).  The issues the author saw with Manus, which can “do its own research, make decisions and even carry out plans, all with barely any human oversight” are about “data privacy,” as its “combination of weak oversight, powerful automation and questionable data practices makes it far riskier than your average AI assistant.”  To avoid such acquisition, which could end up with hackers even if Manus turns out to be harmless, Knutsson recommended securing and removing personal information, maintaining software updates, and using multifactor authorization.

What do we have now?  It’s too early to say that artificial intelligence has grown up, but it has moved along a lot, with many modest and some high-value applications.  It is not too soon to call it a 4 or 5-year-old instead of a toddler, as it still doesn’t have common sense but is taking shape.  Its authority figures, as with parents of humans, will need to agree on how it should and should not be limited.  Likewise, its next few years will be critical, but hardly definitive. 

My next post will be published on May 30^th, on a subject to be determined.

Five New Robots, All AI in Another Guise

Robotics is now an artificial intelligence subfield.  Perhaps it always was, but now it’s being driven more by the state of AI than by any mechanical improvements.  Here are some developments to underscore that.

The first I saw this year was “Chick-fil-A’s lemon-squeezing robots cut over 10,000 labor hours per day: report” (Greg Wehner, Fox Business, January 8^th).  It’s a way for the chain to make lemonade, in “a plant just north of Los Angeles with machines occupying space larger than a typical Costco Wholesale,” which employs 120 who are among other tasks “bagging the juice and sending it off to Chick-fil-A locations all over the country.”  It seems simple, but lemons vary in size, could not as effectively be juiced with ordinary machines, and using robots spares the company “injured fingers.”  The process also allows the company to remove “the oils from the peels,” which are “sent to cosmetic and fragrance industry companies, which brings in a new stream of revenue.” 

Next, “Is this robot after our hospitality, retail and healthcare jobs?” (Kurt Knutsson, Fox News, April 12^th).  The automation in the question is a Pudu Robotics product known as “FlashBot Arm.”  It is “semi-humanoid,” “is designed to interact with its environment in a more human-like way,” and with its arms and “dexterous” hands can “perform tasks such as pressing elevator buttons, swiping card keys and carrying objects.”  It is almost five feet tall, and “automatically returns to the charging station when the battery is low.”  It uses lidar “for real-time mapping and obstacle avoidance,” costs about $28,000, and has a “10.1-inch touchscreen capable of displaying facial expressions.”  Could this become standard at offices around the world?

The next day, we saw as an “AI humanoid robot learns to mimic human emotions and behavior” (Kurt Knutsson, Fox News, April 13^th).  It is a Walt Disney Company product, “uses advanced artificial intelligence to replicate natural gestures and deliberate actions with striking accuracy,” and “learns by observing and mimicking human operators who guide its emotional responses during interactions.”  Disney will apply it, Newton, “to enhance its robotic character platform.”  This one could be controversial, but with more and more people expecting such powerful technology, especially at that company’s theme parks, Newton will catch few by surprise.

From the same writer and source, we wonder, “Can this $70,000 robot transform AI research?” (April 18^th).  This product, Reachy 2, is from open-source AI company Hugging Face.  It is another “state-of-the-art humanoid robot” designed to be “a lab partner for the AI era,” and is “already making waves in labs like Cornell and Carnegie Mellon.”  The piece told us that Reachy 2 is “perfect for research, education and experimenting with embodied AI,” and would “help with the chores,” but got no more specific than that.  Is it worth $70,000?  That will probably depend on how much value it can actually add.

The last one was a classic automaton application, updated for modern technological, and political, times.  “China Has an Army of Robots on Its Side in the Tariff War” (Keith Bradsher, The New York Times, April 23^rd).  As “factories are being automated across China at a breakneck pace,” reaching higher levels “than in the United States, Germany, or Japan,” the country will be well placed to “continue to dominate mass production even as its labor force ages and becomes less willing to take industrial jobs.”  Automobile production is a huge area, but so are “many thousands of back-alley workshops” such as a place with “11 workers who cut and weld metal to make inexpensive ovens and barbecue equipment,” scheduled to replace some with “a robotic arm with a camera,” running $40,000 instead of 2021’s almost $140,000, which “uses artificial intelligence to observe how a worker welds the sides of an oven, and then duplicates the action with minimal human intervention” – just as automated barbers did in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Player Piano.  And there are and will be vastly more.

Overall, robots are, and will continue to be, highly beneficial AI products.  If they are relatively unconnected to other resources, the fear they generate will be simply physical instead of existential.  Eventually they will unnerve no one.  They will be less prone to other problems with the technology such as hallucinations.  If office AI use turns out to be little more than advanced editing, robots could save artificial intelligence’s value, much as applications in human-driven cars are now showing the worth of autonomous vehicle research.  That might be good enough – or it may not.  Hang on.

Per Latest Jobs Report, Employment Keeps on Trucking; AJSN Says Latent Demand Way Down To 16.0 Million

This morning’s Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Summary was forecasted to show a real decrease in the number of net new nonfarm payroll positions, from last month’s surprising 228,000 to 125,000 or 135,000.  It did better than that, with 177,000, way beyond what we have reason to expect given our slowing population growth and our recent series of strong employment months.  That is a fine result, and hints at no jobs-related effect from current or canceled tariffs, at least through mid-April.

Otherwise, results in the report were mixed.  Seasonally adjusted unemployment held at 4.2%.  On the good side, the two measures of how common it is for people to be working or close, the employment-population ratio and the labor force participation rate, each gained 0.1% to 60.0% and 62.6%.  Unadjusted joblessness dropped 0.3%, mostly but not completely from seasonality, to 3.9%.  The count of people working part-time for economic reasons, or keeping that sort of work while thus far unsuccessfully seeking full-time opportunities, lost 100,000 to 4.7 million.  Unadjusted employment rose an excellent 631,000 to just over 164 million.  Worsening numbers included a 200,000 jump in those jobless for 27 weeks or longer, to 1.7 million, and average hourly nonfarm payroll earnings, edged out by inflation at $36.06, or 6 cents more. 

The American Job Shortage Number or AJSN, the metric showing how many new positions could be quickly filled if seekers knew that getting one would be little more than another errand, lost almost 700,000 as follows:

 

Six hundred thousand of the decrease was from lower official employment, with the rest from fewer people wanting work but not looking for it during the previous year.  Other changes were small.  The share of the AJSN from those unemployed fell 2.1% to reach 36.9%.  Compared with 12 months before, the AJSN was virtually unchanged, with higher joblessness covered by a lower estimate of the number of American expatriates.

What happened this time?  It was a positive month for employment.  While 270,000 more said they were not interested in work, driving a 205,000 increase in those not in the labor force, they seemed to be those who did not have jobs, as the count of those working reached a strong local high.  The categories of marginal attachment changed little, which was fine since that meant they held last month’s improvements.  So far, then, the antics of our Executive Branch have not, overall, affected American employment, and though I am expecting something from the high China tariffs, we are still in good shape.  Yet we cannot take anything like 177,000 new jobs for granted, and that sort of result may cease.  It’s all largely up to our president’s whim.  This month, though, the turtle took a substantial step forward.

Another Month of What People Are Doing with Artificial Intelligence

The users are finding more and more applications for the most newsworthy technology of the 2020s.…

Nikolas Lanum, in Fox News on March 22^nd, told us that a “Texas private school’s use of new ‘AI tutor’ rockets student test scores to top 2% in the country.”  At Alpha School, “students are placed in the classroom for two hours a day with an AI assistant, using the rest of the day to fucus on skills like public speaking, financial literacy, and teamwork.”  Their ability to work on things they call “passion projects,” and therefore have strong interest in, can explain these results, but for that AI may indeed be the way to go.

We saw also that “AI enables paralyzed man to control robotic arm with brain signals” (Kent Knutson, Fox News, March 30^th).  The experimental achievement started with “sensors implanted on the surface of his brain,” which “recorded neural signals as he imagined movements like grasping or lifting objects,” and “over two weeks, these signals were used to train the AI model to account for daily shifts in brain activity patterns.”  After months of practicing “controlling a virtual robotic arm,” followed by using a “real” one, “he quickly mastered tasks such as picking up blocks, opening cabinets and even holding a cup under a water dispenser.”  Promising, but will take years at best before it can be provided at scale.

The same source told us about “The dangers of oversharing with AI tools” (April 9^th).  While the likes “of ChatGPT have become incredibly adept at learning your preferences, habits and even some of your deepest secrets,” that means their “knowing” so much about you “raises some serious privacy concerns.”  Information they have may be relayed back to their manufacturers, but it is not clear how much damage that actually does.  It may take a known case of someone being badly hurt before we can effectively regulate, or even understand, the true threat.

More tamely, “These AI transcription voice recorders surge in popularity” (Christopher Murray, still Fox News, April 19^th).  With them, users can “record, transcribe and summarize content effortlessly,” using AI’s ability to “transcribe in 112 languages” and “generate comprehensive summaries” – now.  One, PLAUD’s NotePin, is wearable as a pin, a wristband, or a necklace, and, by using encrypted cloud storage, presents no privacy concerns.  The devices are generally low-priced but require paid subscriptions for the AI itself.  This is one use of AI almost certain to continue without existential scariness.

Could we say the same about coworkers who aren’t real?  On that, “Anthropic anticipates AI virtual employees coming in next year, security leader says” (Alex Nitzberg, Fox Business, April 22^nd).  That company is creating “digital AI employees” with “”memories,” parts to play within the business, and company accounts and passwords,” with “much greater autonomy than agents currently do now.”  Yet even Anthropic’s chief information security officer of the title said there are many such unsolved problems, such as “AI employees” being able to “hack the system in which code is merged and tested prior to being rolled out.”  Since this is more of a potential application than a real one, it may not belong in this post at all, but since users can clearly now create bogus employees of some sort, with small but growing capabilities, we should be aware that new names on organization charts may not be Homo sapiens – or anything alive at all, even if they can converse.  Yes, it may not be possible, as author Erle Stanley Gardner once had his character Perry Mason say, to “correspond with a corpse,” but it is with these electronic automata.  So don’t be fooled – or surprised – and that goes for the other four AI functions here as well.

Artificial Intelligence Regulation – Three Months’ Worth

Controlling AI has been more fun for some people than using it or thinking about what it can do.  What’s the story been?

Before the current regime, we watched as the “Biden Administration Adopts Rules to Guide A.I.’s Global Spread” (Ana Swanson, The New York Times, January 13^th).  The “sweeping rules… governing how A.I. chips and models can be shared with foreign countries,” included various limitations on the number of A.I. chips that companies can send to different countries, with no bounds on those going domestically or to “18 of (our) closest partners,” with those “already subject to U.S. arms embargoes” barred, and all others “subject to caps restricting the number of A.I. chips that can be imported.”  There were also rules governing how much American companies can sell chips they have acquired elsewhere.

Is it true that “The Rush to A.I. Threatens National Security” (Heidy Khlaaf and Sarah Myers West, January 27^th, The New York Times)?  The authors claimed that “now that Donald Trump is taken office, the tech industry is moving full steam ahead in its push to integrate A.I. products across the defense establishment, which could make a dangerous situation even more perilous.”  Companies involved in the “slew of new partnerships and initiatives to integrate A.I. technology into deadly weaponry” included OpenAI, Anduril, Palantir, Meta, and Scale AI.  Potential problems include hallucinations, “cybersecurity vulnerabilities,” and data that could manipulate software, issues that the authors did not think could be solved.

What was “The Dangerous A.I. Nonsense That Trump and Biden Fell For” (Zeynep Tufekci, The New York Times, February 5^th)?  “America’s approach to A.I. safety and regulations,” which “was largely nonsense,” as “it was never going to be possible to contain the spread of this powerful emergent technology, and certainly not just by placing trade restrictions on components like graphics chips.”  “Instead… the government and the industry should be preparing our society for the sweeping changes that are soon to come.”  Specifically, “it’s time to harden our networked infrastructure,” “to start thinking clearly about how corporations and governments could use the A.I. that’s available right now to entrench their dominance, erode our rights, worsen inequality,” and determine “what we can do so that this powerful technology with so much potential for good can benefit the public.”  Perhaps regulation, Tufekci seems to be saying, is futile.

Some companies don’t mind that attitude, as “Emboldened by Trump, A.I. Companies Lobby for Fewer Rules” (Cecilia Kang, again The New York Times, March 24^th).  When under Biden “they wanted Washington to regulate them,” citing “the potential to disrupt national security and elections” and the chance to “eventually eliminate millions of jobs,” starting in late January AI companies have made “bold requests of government to stay out of their way,” by saying “it is legal for them to use copyrighted material to train their A.I. models” and “asking for the federal government to pre-empt states from creating A.I. laws.”  The Trump Administration has at least symbolically taken the less-regulation side through executive orders, statements supporting fewer laws, and invoking the value of “America’s global A.I. dominance.”

One form of regulation took effect April 2^nd, as “Deceptive deepfake media now a crime in N.J.” (Associated Press in Advertiser-News North, April 10^th).  New Jersey governor Phil Murphy “signed legislation… making the creation and dissemination of so-called deceptive deepfake media a crime punishable by up to five years in prison,” joining “at least 20 states.”  This version “defines a deepfake as any video or audio recording or image that appears to a reasonable person to realistically depict someone doing something they did not actually do,” and “establishes civil penalties that would permit victims to pursue lawsuits.”  Will the number of violations be small enough to allow enforcement?  Will such laws damage our need to assess veracity ourselves?  Will they turn out to be just adjuncts to others barring child sexual imagery?  I don’t think these questions will be easy to answer.  That makes this example, along with the others here, an artificial intelligence output which we will need to judge, accept, or reject.  It will take a while.

Eleven Observations on All Those Tariffs

As mentioned in a recent post, I have not been covering the day-in, day-out activity with the Trump Administration’s proposed, threatened, scheduled, started, stopped, and discontinued tariffs, as they have changed too quickly to put in a weekly blog with posts that will not be read immediately.  Most if not all seemed to me like negotiation efforts more than parts of any real economic policy. 

Now, though, they seem more permanent.  Reactions from other countries, from Canada and Europe to especially China, have changed from quick concessions to their own levies and threats.  Some may still be withdrawn, and some agreements will certainly take place, but we can’t count on that anymore.

As of Wednesday morning’s “Live Updates:  Asia Grapples With Punishing Tariffs as Its Stocks Sink Again” in The New York Times, “U.S. tariffs on its largest trading partners” listed the following effective or to be effective April 9^th:  China 84%, Mexico 25%, Canada 25%, European Union 20%, Japan 24%, Vietnam 46%, South Korea 26%, Taiwan 32%, India 27%, United Kingdom 10%,  Switzerland 32%, Thailand 37%, Malaysia 24%, Singapore 10%, Brazil 10%, Indonesia 32%, Israel 17%, Colombia 10%, Turkey 10%, Australia 10%.  There are others.  By the time you read this, there will be differences – I recommend either the New York Times or Fox Business for keeping up with changes too frequent for my reporting.

So what do I have to say?  Here are my views.

First, I am against all tariffs.  Not only do they go directly to the bottom lines of consumers, they prompt retaliatory ones which hurt our employment though reduced business profitability, and decrease product quality by reducing or eliminating healthy foreign competition.  Virtually all economists agree.

Second, the end does not justify the means.  That is a solid principle, with few if any exceptions.  Even if the administration knows something vast numbers of knowledgeable people on both political sides do not, which I have no reason to think, there should not be any tariffs.

Third, presidential overreach, here and in general, should be checked and balanced by the legislative and judicial branches.  If either one is unwilling to do that, we have a structural problem, or, more likely, the national lack of will has reached people we need to trust the most.  Either requires our attention and action.

Fourth, we still don’t know how long these tariffs will last.

Fifth, for top management at large businesses, uncertainty is as bad as poor business results.  That will pull down their stocks under this administration even if the tariffs go away.

Sixth, Trump has refused to use blind trusts or make his financial moves public.  Is it possible that he or his agents are selling stocks short before announcing tariffs or other moves certain to hurt the market?

Seventh, trade deficits are meaningless when considering tariffs.  They reflect relative richness and number of customers, at which the United States almost always outranks its trading partners.

Eighth, the April 5^th protests were better attended than many expected.  As the tariffs continue, and the administration does other things to attack prosperity, they should continue.

Ninth, maybe the strongest point against gun control is that any invaders would have to conquer not one government but over 100 million armed households, making that in effect impossible with today’s technology.  The same thing goes for people speaking up against our government – the more who do that, the safer they will be.

Tenth, when this is over, and it will end sometime, there will be a reckoning.  Those who did not resist Trump when they had the opportunity and capability will be identified and possibly punished, formally or informally.

Eleventh, my personal investment decision now is to sit tight.  As The Motley Fool said in a recent Facebook message, bear markets don’t destroy wealth – panic selling in bear markets does.  I will not make any stock trades, indefinitely.  If you choose that course too and it turns out to be wrong, at least you won’t die alone. 

The time will come when we have a better government.  In the meantime, keep living, do what you can and have to, keep the faith, and look at least to 2026 and 2028.

March Jobs Data Showed More New Positions Than Expected, with AJSN Giving Latent Demand Down 400,000 to 16.7 Million – No Clear Tariff Effect Yet

A combined published estimate for today’s number of net new nonfarm payroll positions was 138,000.  The result in this morning’s Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Summary exceeded that by 90,000, a welcome surprise.  Except for one area, the other numbers, though, changed in light and variable ways.  Both seasonally adjusted and unadjusted unemployment were 4.2%, the former up 0.1% and the latter, as we moved to an average employment month, down 0.3%.  The adjusted counts of those unemployed in general and those out for 27 weeks or longer stayed the same, at 7.1 million and 1.5 million.  Those working part-time for economic reasons, or looking for a full-time position while temporarily keeping a shorter-hours one, lost 100,000 of last time’s 400,000 gain to reach 4.8 million.  The two measures showing how likely it is for Americans to be working or one step away, the employment-population ratio and the labor force participation rate, stayed the same and gained 0.1%, to 59.9% and 62.5%.  Average hourly private nonfarm payroll wages rose 7 cents, or close to the inflation rate, to get to $36.00.

The area with the clearest pattern was partial labor force attachment, the second through eighth rows on the chart below.  While the count of those claiming temporary unavailability was up, the other six were down, some substantially, with the group of people saying they wanted work but were not looking for it for the past year showing the largest loss.

The American Job Shortage Number or AJSN, the metric showing how many fresh positions could be quickly filled if all knew they were easy to get, improved by 404,000 to reach the following:

About 300,000 of the loss was from official joblessness, and almost all the rest was from the categories of marginal attachment.  The share of the AJSN from unemployment edged down from 39.8% to 39.0%.  Compared with a year before, the AJSN gained about 400,000, with increases in those unemployed, discouraged, not wanting work, and not looking for a year or more mostly offset by fewer expatriates. 

What does the overall picture look like?  Except for the higher-than-expected number of new jobs, and the mostly seasonal increase in employment, up 868,000, not much happened.  Lower figures in the marginal attachment statuses may start a trend, but they are only down to about where they were a year before.  As it usually does during increased employment months, whether seasonally caused or not, the labor force grew, with 362,000 fewer out of the labor force and 153,000 fewer not interested.  Next time we will see the effect of Wednesday’s announced tariffs, if they are still in place, and other labor-affecting presidential moves.  For now, though, I saw the turtle take a tiny step forward.  I hope that the May report will not be worse.