Political lying and ‘post-truth’: for a socialist approachDAWN BUTLER’S exclusion from Parliament for calling Boris Johnson a liar will leave the country bemused. Even among Tory voters the suggestion that honesty is an attribute of our current Prime Minister would prompt laughter. The need to be courteous in professional settings is familiar to most of us. But Westminster’s archaic conventions invite ridicule. Few have shown them up so sharply as the long-standing Bolsover MP Dennis Skinner. No politico will forget the occasion when, instructed to withdraw his remark that half the MPs on the Tory benches were crooks, he obliged: “OK, half the Tory members aren’t crooks.” Butler’s reproof will only draw attention to the gulf between Westminster’s view of itself and the low esteem in which it is almost universally held. In surveys politicians are routinely ranked the least trustworthy profession in Britain: a 2019 poll found that just 14 per cent of people would “generally trust them to tell the truth.” The collapse in confidence is deserved, as journalist Peter Oborne has demonstrated in books from The Rise of Political Lying, about the Blair years, through to The Assault on Truth which focuses on Johnson.
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/e/political-lying-and-post-truth-socialist-approachArtificial Intelligence Wants You (and Your Job)My wife and I were recently driving in Virginia, amazed yet again that the GPS technology on our phones could guide us through a thicket of highways, around road accidents, and toward our precise destination. The artificial intelligence (AI) behind the soothing voice telling us where to turn has replaced passenger-seat navigators, maps, even traffic updates on the radio. How on earth did we survive before this technology arrived in our lives? We survived, of course, but were quite literally lost some of the time. My reverie was interrupted by a toll booth. It was empty, as were all the other booths at this particular toll plaza. Most cars zipped through with E-Z passes, as one automated device seamlessly communicated with another. Unfortunately, our rental car didn’t have one. So I prepared to pay by credit card, but the booth lacked a credit-card reader. Okay, I thought, as I pulled out my wallet, I’ll use cash to cover the $3.25. As it happened, that booth took only coins and who drives around with 13 quarters in his or her pocket? I would have liked to ask someone that very question, but I was, of course, surrounded by mute machines. So, I simply drove through the electronic stile, preparing myself for the bill that would arrive in the mail once that plaza’s automated system photographed and traced our license plate. In a thoroughly mundane fashion, I’d just experienced the age-old conflict between the limiting and liberating sides of technology. The arrowhead that can get you food for dinner might ultimately end up lodged in your own skull. The car that transports you to a beachside holiday contributes to the rising tides — by way of carbon emissions and elevated temperatures — that may someday wash away that very coastal gem of a place. The laptop computer that plugs you into the cyberworld also serves as the conduit through which hackers can steal your identity and zero out your bank account. In the previous century, technology reached a true watershed moment when humans, harnessing the power of the atom, also acquired the capacity to destroy the entire planet. Now, thanks to AI, technology is hurtling us toward a new inflection point. Science-fiction writers and technologists have long worried about a future in which robots, achieving sentience, take over the planet. The creation of a machine with human-like intelligence that could someday fool us into believing it’s one of us has often been described, with no small measure of trepidation, as the “singularity.” Respectable scientists like Stephen Hawking have argued that such a singularity will, in fact, mark the “end of the human race.”
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/07/artificial-intelligence-wants-you-and-your-job.html“I Don’t Have Anything”The federal government’s unemployment assistance program became a “lifeline” for Susan Hardy when the pandemic made it impossible to find work as an oil and gas title researcher, a job she held as a contractor. Hardy, 71, has six grandchildren living with her and relied on the $724 a week she received in benefits to take care of them and support her son, who was denied unemployment benefits. At least, she relied on the money until West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R) announced that beginning on June 19, the state would end its participation in federal unemployment programs enacted during the pandemic to encourage people to go back to work. As an independent contractor, Hardy was receiving Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), a federal program created last March as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act to provide unemployment insurance for workers like Hardy, who don’t normally qualify for jobless aid. Now, Hardy is at a loss. “If I needed $10 worth of gas right now, I can’t get it,” she said, adding that she has also maxed out her credit cards. “I used all the savings that I had just to maintain the household.” Hardy is one of more than 4 million people who stopped receiving pandemic-related jobless aid during the past two months due to decisions by 25 Republican governors and one of their Democratic counterparts.
https://www.dailyposter.com/i-dont-have-anything/