Category Archives: culture

A Brief Thought on AI and Employment

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It seems that newly minted college graduates are having trouble getting those entry level, low-paying jobs that used to be virtual guarantees in most avocations. Employers are discovering that AI can do many of those entry level jobs just fine, so they’re only interested in hiring folks with a few (say 5-ish) years of actual experience into those jobs that need that experience.

The question becomes what to do after those 5-ish years when those relatively experienced employees move on. Having hired few to no inexperienced folks fresh out of college, there now is no pool of somewhat experienced folks from which to hire.

My thought: use AI to train those who are inexperienced, both new graduates and by now 5-ish years post-college and still inexperienced, to do the entry-level and the somewhat experience-needing work. Continue that cycle as AI advances into the work heretothen requiring more experience, using AI to train employees into those yet more experience-needing positions.

Humans are always going to be better than robots at doing work that requires actual thinking, including jobs that don’t require much thinking directly but do require interaction with other humans in teamwork and/or collaboration (which are not the same thing), with supervisors, even with robots. It also takes humans to train that thinking, and robots can be useful tools in that training.

Carlyle, an investment firm, already is doing this sort of thing, but it needs to get more widespread.

The investment firm Carlyle now pitches to prospective hires that they won’t be doing grunt work. Junior hires go through AI training and a program called “AI University” in which employees share best practices and participate in pilot programs, said Lúcia Soares, the firm’s Chief Information Officer.
In the past, she said, junior hires evaluating a deal would find articles on Google, request documents from companies, review that information manually, highlight details, and copy and paste information from one document to another. Now, AI tools can do almost all of that.
“That analyst still has to go in and make sure the analysis is accurate, question it, challenge it,” she said. “The nature of the brain work that needs to go into it is very much the same. It’s just the speed at which these analysts can move.”

California’s Disdain for our 2nd Amendment

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The 9th Circuit(!) has ruled that California’s demand for background checks (and associated delays in obtaining) as a precondition for citizens of that State buying ammunition is unconstitutional.

Naturally, California’s Progressive-Democrat Governor, Gavin Newsom, is up in arms over that ruling:

Strong gun laws save lives—and today’s decision is a slap in the face to the progress California has made in recent years to keep its communities safer from gun violence. Californians voted to require background checks on ammunition and their voices should matter.

It’s a well-deserved slap in the face, though; in response to Newsom’s administration’s and State legislature’s own slap in the face of American citizens. What Newsom and his fellow Party syndicate members carefully ignore is that we already have a strong gun law—the strongest—in the form of our 2nd Amendment. Writing for the 9th Circuit, Circuit Judge Sandra Ikuta tacitly reminded Newsom, et al., of this:

By subjecting Californians to background checks for all ammunition purchases, California’s ammunition background check regime infringes on the fundamental right to keep and bear arms[.]

She expanded on that [citations omitted]:

…a person who wants to keep an operable firearm must necessarily acquire ammunition. Because the right to keep and bear arms includes the right to keep operable arms, rules on ammunition acquisition implicate the plain text of the Second Amendment if they meaningfully constrain the right to keep operable arms.
We conclude that California’s ammunition background check meaningfully constrains the right to keep operable arms.

The 9th‘s ruling was on Rhode v Bonta, and it can be read here.

A Clear Choice

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The recently passed OBBBA has Federal funding for private school tuition in the form of tax credits—private schools being, primarily, charter and voucher schools. States must opt into the program, though; the tax credits won’t be available automatically.

As The Wall Street Journal headline put it, Blue States Face Big Decision. And then,

Now comes a protracted debate at the state level. Progressives and public-school groups object to funding private schools and say the new program will hurt public education. Supporters say the money will give families options outside of their neighborhood school.

The thing is, though, public schools are already beyond increases in hurting, especially in blue States—pupil test scores are bad and falling (rising recently only against the prior Wuhan Virus Situation school lockout steep drop), and public school’s pupil test scores especially lag those private schools’ student outcomes, as well as the test scores of homeschooled students.

A clear choice, indeed, and over the coming months we’ll see very clearly just how opposed to school choice and children’s education are Progressive-Democrat politician-run States and municipalities, and just how far in thrall are those politicians to teachers unions.

Fault and Blame

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This example is all too typical. An elderly couple was scammed out of their life savings–$5 million—by a “pig butcherer” who conned the husband into wiring the couple’s savings, in a number of tranches, to the scammer under the guise, among others, of investing the money in a sure-fire investment.

What happened:

A year or so earlier, Craig had responded to an online ad about investments and later received a text message from someone calling themself Tiffany, according to his hazy account. The person struck up a flirtatious exchange and was soon telling him about a lucrative opportunity. All he needed to do was wire money from his bank account.

And

The adviser [at an earlier bank where the husband had begun his “investing” with Tiffany] had repeatedly tried to convince Craig that “Tiffany” was scamming him, to no avail.

The husband after that had pulled his—their—money from that bank and placed it with another bank, from which the husband continued “investing” with Tiffany.

And

Shortly after discovering the scam, Anamarie learned something else about Craig that helped explain what had happened. His doctor told her that Craig had vascular dementia, likely due to a brain injury from a fall he took in 2015 while walking his brother-in-law’s dog.

The first the wife knew anything was amiss was when her credit cards were declined at a Walmart.

In the end, the couple is blaming bank for their having been scammed, claiming that the bank hadn’t acted nanny-ish enough [my term] to protect the couple from themselves.

I have questions, and I’m not entirely sympathetic with the couple or with their blame-shifting.

Why didn’t the wife know more about the couple’s financial situation? True enough, they’re of an age where money matters usually was the husband’s job, but that doesn’t excuse her ignorance; it only illustrates how widespread such ignorance is.

What was the husband doing getting flirty with an online person about whom he knew nothing about, including whether the person even was female? See below for this before readers get up in morality arms.

Why didn’t the wife know anything about her husband’s medical condition? Certainly, this is related to a couple’s internal dynamics, but there’s little reason for one member of the couple to be so ignorant of the other member’s medical state. This is another aspect of couples of an age, but again, this doesn’t excuse the ignorance; it only illustrates the widespread nature of it.