So, now all data will present whatever picture Trump wants to see. Jobs? We've got the best jobs, the most jobs, jobs are great, couldn't be better. However, accurate data is necessary for planning and adjustment. Keeping inflation low and maintaining full employment are competing issues in the Fed's dual mandate, and without accurate data, the Fed is shooting in the dark. Not that it will matter much soon, as Trump will appoint a lackey as Chairman in May of 2026, who will push to cut rates regardless of prudence. We're steaming full-on towards that iceberg....
The Siena College poll released Tuesday shows Mamdani leading by 19 points over his next-closest opponent, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, 44 percent to 25 percent. Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa was considerably behind them with 12 percent, followed by incumbent Mayor Eric Adams with 7 percent.
If you do the math, Mamdani's 44% matches all the rest combined (25% + 12% + 7%), which is pretty impressive.
A pardon would be too obvious, and would take her off the leash. Much safer to transfer her to a cushy Club Fed prison and give her work release. That way, if she steps out of line she has a lot to lose.
Trump continues his war on reality. The problem is that no matter how elaborate and widely believed a fantasy, eventually it will bump up against reality, and reality wins every time.
What we've seen is financial erosion - slow and steady over time. What is coming will be unlike anything in our lifetimes. We'll see markets plummeting, bank runs and failures, hyperinflation >50% per year, and lot and lots of panic.
It's even worse than that, because Trump's grip on the Federal Reserve is growing, and in May of next year he gets to appoint a new Fed Chairman. You can absolutely bet that Trump's appointee will be chosen by how quickly he does what Trump demands, so there is a high probability that we will see imprudent rate cuts that will give us the greatest financial bubble of all time, followed by the biggest financial collapse. The dollar will be destroyed in the process.
There has to be a ballot approval of removal of anti-gerrymandering districting rules. Newsom has said that the legislation is prepared and that the legislature is prepared to call a special election for it.
I used to love reddit, about a decade ago. It's been enshittified so much now that I don't enjoy using it. I went back there the other day, and my account inbox had several messages, even though I haven't posted there in months. All engagement bots asking inane questions.
Anthropic admitted that they pirated millions of books like Meta did, in order to create a massive central library for training AI that they permanently retained, and now assert that if they are held responsible for this theft of IP it will destroy the entire AI industry. In other words, it appears that this is common practice in the AI industry to avoid the prohibitive cost of paying for the works they copy. Given that Meta, one of the wealthiest companies in the world, did the same exact thing, it reinforces the understanding that piracy to avoid paying for their libraries is a central component of training AI.
While the lower court did rule that training an LLM on copyrighted material was a fair use, it expressly did not rule that derivative works produced are protected by fair use and preserved the issue for further litigation:
Again, Authors concede that training LLMs did not result in any exact copies nor even infringing knockoffs of their works being provided to the public. If that were not so, this would be a different case. Authors remain free to bring that case in the future should such facts develop.
Emphasis added. In other words, Anthropic can still face liability if it's trained AI produces knockoff works.
Finally, the Court held
The downloaded pirated copies used to build a central library were not justified by a fair use. Every factor points against fair use. Anthropic employees said copies of works (pirated ones, too) would be retained "forever" for "general purpose" even after Anthropic determined they would never be used for training LLMs. A separate justification was required for each use. None is even offered here except for Anthropic's pocketbook and convenience.
...
We will have a trial on the pirated copies used to create Anthropic's central library and the resulting damages, actual or statutory (including for willfulness). That Anthropic later bought a copy of a book it earlier stole off the internet will not absolve it of liability for the theft but it may affect the extent of statutory damages. Nothing is foreclosed as to any other copies flowing from library copies for uses other than for training LLMs.
Emphasis in original.
So to summarize, Anthropic apparently used the industry standard of piracy to build a massive book library to train it's LLMs. Plaintiffs did not dispute that training an LLM on a copyrighted work is fair use, but did not have sufficient information to assert that knockoff works were produced by the trained LLMs, and the Court preserved that issue for later litigation if the plaintiffs sought to bring such a claim. Finally, the Court noted that Anthropic built it's database for training it's LLMs through massive straight-up piracy. I think my original comment was a fair assessment.
Accordingly, I think it is very fair to say that (1) AI steals copyrighted works; and (2) repackages the essential portions of those works into new works. Might a re-write of copyright law be in order to embrace this new technology? Sure, but if I'm a actor, or voice actor, author, or other artist and I can no longer earn a living because someone else has taken my work to strip it down to it's essence to resell cheaply without compensating me, I'm going to be pretty pissed off.
Hopefully, AI will force the world to move toward the Star Trek future.
Lol. The liberal utopia of Star Trek is a fantasy. Far more likely is that AI will be exploited by oligarchs to enrich themselves and further impoverish the masses, as they are fervently working towards right now. See, AI isn't creative, it gives the appearance of being creative by stealing work created by humans and repackaging it. When artists can no longer create art to survive, there will be less material for the AI models to steal, and we'll be left with soulless AI slop as our de facto creative culture.
"Give me the chronic, or give me death!"