Tag Archives: culture

Fixing Itself

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A question arises: can France fix itself so it can fix its economy so it can get its debt under control and on a downward path to a sensible level?

That answer depends on whether it can fix its national method for settling questions and the disputes that give rise to those questions.

A free democracy has one primary method for settling national questions and disputes: debate, argument, and then voting for one or another of the politicians the people want to represent them and to lead the government, or voting against another or one of those politicians.

France is unique in that it has a second method of settling national questions and disputes. This method has been in prominent use since the months and days leading into the Revolution of 1793: rioting in the streets, destroying businesses, attacking police personnel. Over the course of the Fifth Republic, extant since the 1950s, the technique of rioting and destruction has become elevated to the same level as voting. That elevation has resulted from the French government’s inability to quell the rioting and to restore order—an inability that results, not from a true lack of capacity, but from utter cowardice on the part of the men and women in charge of the government, especially the President, Prime Minister, and members of the National Assembly and the Senate.

So far, the rioters have succeeded in intimidating the government personnel into backing down and giving them what they demand, however bad for the nation as a whole over any timeframe beyond tomorrow. See the Yellow Vests riots of 2020 and the current “student” and “teacher” riots today.

Macron’s government men and women, including Macon himself, were intimidated into significant watering down of economic reforms that Yellow Vesters disapproved, and his government today is on the verge of giving prima donna pupils and (union) teachers whatever they want.

The answer to the question, then, at least for what France is confronting for its future, is…No.

What’s In A Name?

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Lately, cutesy names seem to have become more important than the work being done under those labels. “Digital ninja.” “Storyteller.” (At least today’s cutesy pluses up the work. Yesterday’s cutesy deprecated it: “Guy that operates the other seat’s equipment.” “Guy in back.”)

Now we’re getting “marketing engineer” in the world of AI. James Cadwallader, Co-Founder of Profound:

This person is going to be part builder—meaning they’re able to understand this technology and build and deploy and tinker with these agents—but part marketer, in that they’re very human and they have good taste and judgment[.]

So do used car salesmen need to understand their product and display taste and judgment. And salesmen and -women in any department store. No one there, though, dilutes the useful meaning of “engineer”—a person who actually designs and then carries out the execution of some thing—by attaching it to a job title.

So, what’s in a name? In this case, not much. A marketer is still a salesman, no matter his title. How he smells depends on what he does, too, not how he’s called.

Own the work, my man, and let the names and titles fall where they may.

AI Development and Testing, and Humans

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OpenAI has decided not to release its latest iteration of ChatGPT, which it had labeled GTP 6.1 Astra. The company had safety concerns that researchers raised during internal testing.

The model was more capable than the company’s previous models in completing challenging tasks from end-to-end without human assistance, as well as writing.

But.

GPT-6.1 Astra regressed in two areas. Compared with its predecessor, GPT-6 Astra, the model performed poorly on tests measuring alignment, or how well the model adheres to what humans would like it to do. Specifically, GPT-6.1 Astra showed higher levels of deception: it wasn’t always honest about telling users of the actions it did or didn’t take.
Another issue was what OpenAI calls “scope authorization,” meaning that GPT-6.1 Astra would push ahead on a task without asking the user for permission, and would at times reach for external tools and services even if it might be unsafe.

This tale demonstrates pretty conclusively the criticality of humans having controlling involvement in AI sandbox construction, isolation, and enforcement and in testing. It also demonstrates the importance of corporate culture—i.e., corporate human managers—in creating and then enforcing the internal culture that supports and drives dedication to that human control of and involvement in development and testing.

It also proves that we humans are up to the task if we care enough about our responsibilities—closely akin to Madison’s and Franklin’s remarks that our republic requires a moral, virtuous people in order to survive.

Progressive-Democrats, Education, and Assimilation

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California’s Progressive-Democrat governor, Gavin Newsom, is illustrating how thoroughly the Progressive-Democratic Party and the education of American children are an oxymoron, and this doesn’t even involve teachers unions.

Nearly 1 million California students designated as English learners will no longer have to pass a set of tests and benchmarks to exit the program, under a new law signed Sunday by [Progressive-]Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom.

Newsom’s—Party’s—move also illustrates the disdain that they have for American culture. Language is at the heart of any nation’s culture. It informs and strongly influences how a nation’s citizens think about themselves and how they understand their nation’s culture. By dumbing down English learning in California’s schools, Newsom and Party are deprecating the very thing that makes our nation American—our culture. Party doesn’t care that it’s very hard for immigrants to assimilate into our culture when they’re not required to become even reasonably conversant, much less proficient, in our language. But Party doesn’t care about American culture, either, so there’s that.

Busy?

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Boeing’s 737 MAX has a software glitch that can cause an automated navigation feature to fail at difficult moments during an approach.

It emerged from a cockpit software update and can occur when flight crews alter their planned flight path following a missed approach. In a certain scenario, pilots may have to fly manually without some autopilot functions. That, some industry officials said, could overwork pilots while they are already busy, at low altitude and possibly dealing with situations like bad weather.

I have two comments about that. One is my usual: who tested that software update, in what scenarios, and with what test procedure?

The other concerns what constitutes “busy” in the cockpit. A single seat fighter pilot crossing the IP inbound to his ground target in a hostile environment is busy. Even a two-seat fighter crew approaching his airborne target(s) in a target rich environment is busy. In both cases, the busy-ness increases exponentially as the pilots begin actually engage their respect targets, a much more fluid situation than a go-around on a missed approach.

Airline pilots during a go-around, especially in low-altitude bad weather, do see their workloads increase, but they aren’t busy enough to be threatened with overwork.

It’s certainly true that “busy” is relative to what a fighter pilot or civilian aircrew are used to. That, though, is what time in the simulator—and there are very good ones extant for both military and airline pilots—is for. That includes failing the nav feature in the simulator to drill the aircrew on proper and timely responses until a fix to the software update—properly tested this time, hopefully—can be installed. Perhaps, also, this particular failure should be added to the unexpected and emergency drills in the simulator.