Who Wants Gun Control? 

In a recent essay in The Free Press, Nellie Bowles (a very smart and funny writer) wrote that “while conservatives balk at even the mildest gun control efforts… progressives have absolutely no intention of enforcing even existing gun control laws.”

* Example #1. Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner explaining why he will no longer prosecute illegal gun possession: “We do not believe that arresting people and convicting them for illegal gun possession is a viable strategy to reduce shootings.”

* Example #2. US Attorney for DC Matt Graves justifying why he has declined to prosecute 67% of all those arrested in his district: “The declinations are mostly coming after arrests in cases such as gun possession, drug possession, and misdemeanors – not violent crimes.”

AI: Let’s Take a Pause Before This Gets Out of Hand! 

The news about AI is moving at an incredible pace. Last week, Google announced that it had launched an application it calls “Bard.” Testing was scheduled to begin immediately in the US and the UK.

This week, Elon Musk joined Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and more than 1,000 other AI experts and industry executives in signing an open letter calling on all AI labs to “immediately pause” training of systems more powerful than Chat GPT-4 for at least six months. Citing extensive research, they argue that AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose “profound risks to society and humanity” and change the “history of life on Earth.”

A Government Agency Does One Thing Right 

I’m inclined to be skeptical of government programs on many levels and for many reasons. My observation is that, even if they are well-intentioned, they tend to do more harm than good.

I don’t feel that way about the FTC’s Consumer Alerts program. The agency sends out warnings about scams to the public. The warnings typically explain how the scams work and provide advice on how to protect against them. Impressively, the alerts are short and comprehensible, a rarity in US government publications of any sort.

Click here to see an email scam they’ve been alerting me to lately.