Is anyone really in charge around here?

New technology tends to produce a weird combination of excitement and fear. Generative AI is the latest example of this phenomenon.

Some gurus argue that AI will open an unimagined abundance for the world, with humans about to enter a golden age. Anyone not exploring AI is a Luddite. 

More gurus are issuing warnings, and it seems wise to at least pay attention to the potential dangers posed by uncontrolled technology (doesn't anyone read Isaac Asimov anymore?).

Yesterday we learned that HHS issued a lengthy report that included a number of non-existent citations, likely due to someone using AI to generate the research. And we aren't surprised since such stories are everywhere and all you need to do to test the software's propensity to simply make things up is to open up ChatGPT and ask it to create a report with formal citations. 

In some ways, a robot that lies somewhat regularly is in tune with the times, since we have a president and a large number of his cult members who lie blatantly and shamelessly. The challenge is rapidly becoming finding sources we can trust and strategies we can use to verify accuracy. 

But my assumption is that AI will continue to be refined and will produce fewer and fewer errors, though we really don't know exactly how the robot arrives at the answers. 

Today there is a report that new college grads are having more trouble getting hired by companies needing programmers because those companies are opting for AI to do the work that traditionally helped train new employees, immerse them into company culture, etc. There are no reports on whether the robots are more accurate than their human counterparts. They probably are at least as good and they demand no creature comforts, annoying pay raises, or even a comfortable chair. 

"Deep thinkers" are overwhelmingly alarmed by the combination of rapidly improving AI capabilities and the relative ignorance the "human masters" of the robots possess as to how they "think." Of course, there is fame and money to be made in issuing dire warnings and predicting disaster, so such negative stories outnumber the positive ones. That's the nature of news and social media. 

One report predicted that it won't be long until the AI begins to program itself, with no need for pesky humans to oversee the work or place limits on the robots. 

Just as the U.S. appears to be blase about the rule of law, common sense, and decency being quickly overtaken by a corrupt, hate-filled Trump administration, we are simultaneously sleep walking through what are the early stages of tech disaster. 

I'm just along for the ride, of course, telling myself that judges and various "smart people" in positions of authority will save the day (in the long run) and that the tech giants aren't going to create a system that has no use for the billionaires who are in charge of the robots. 

Just as AI appears to often present the "unreal" in its products (hallucinations and lies), so Trump and Republican politicians are content to create their own reality. 

An appeals court is apparently taking the next week or so to gather arguments about whether Trump has the right to simply make up a national emergency that justifies using tariffs to protect us from... something. 

My guess is that there really IS a national (international?) emergency, but it has nothing to do with a few shady characters entering the country illegally and nothing to do with phony anti-Christian slander. 

The emergency is the robots. 

Who has control of the "kill switch"?

A passive nation watches quietly as a president steals and bullies

At some point, the country might wake up and wonder what the heck was happening as Donald Trump and his family, plus his highest ranking cult members, brazenly extorted individuals, corporations, and even entire countries. 

It's bad enough that this Mafia-style boss seems fixated on amassing money and power without limits, but his lack of interest in actually governing the nation that elected him is allowing some of the most rabid white nationalist bigots (often with some sort of personality disorder) to impose their will on a nation that simply doesn't know what to do about it and that hasn't fallen into bad enough times (yet) to even care.

Each morning I wake up to check online news publications I subscribe to, and each morning I find multiple outrages being pushed or passed or proposed by Trump's minions. What once were wacko conspiracy nuts are running a country of nearly 340 million. Trump is in early stages of dementia and has lost whatever ability he once had of seeing reality. 

The other day he forced everyone in the Oval Office to sit and watch an obviously fake video showing white South Africans being buried. The video was from another country, shot two years ago, something that school children are routinely taught to find. When the president of South Africa gently suggested that he had never seen this before and that all the evidence says that one percent of all murders in his country have white victims, Trump's response was to talk over him.

I am not certain why any world leader should agree to sit in the White House for one of these orchestrated attacks. Perhaps desperation might account for gambling on something positive coming out of the experience. Hubris? All future dignitaries who meet Trump in his golden palace deserve their fate, I guess, but that assumes they can see reality.

Voters narrowly put Republicans in charge of the federal government and that slight majority may or may not end up suffering from the deficit-inflating, safety net for the poor diminishing, handout to Trump supporters already awash in money. I hope some of them suffer, which I admit is petty of me. Some nasty part of me like it when people get exactly what they deserve.

Last night Trump and sons hosted 100 crypto tycoons, all paying a million for a dinner and the chance to bribe Trump personally. Seventy percent were foreign nationals. America first! 

My protest is, I'm sorry to say, this blog. And no one reads it, so this is mostly me "shouting" at my screen. 

I don't want to give up hope as to the future. After all, Anna is graduating from high school tomorrow and Grace just finished her sophomore year at Iowa, and Max will be a freshman at Ballard HS this fall... and Jack is about to finish 6th grade. Giving up on America seems like giving up on our grandchildren and their futures. 

Maybe that is what most Americans are relying on: hope that a nation that once was the clear leader of the planet, flawed and damaged as it is, might find its way back to, at least, being upfront about wanting justice and a reasonable chance at happiness. 

I didn't want to get into all this for this post but a lot of Trump corruption has become so visible in the past week that I couldn't resist. I did want to reflect on how our younger granddaughter battled through some tough times last fall, from her Grandma Olson dying after a long, horrible disease robbed her of mobility and speech, to breaking her big toe while weightlifting and being denied a fair shot at returning to the varsity volleyball squad as a starting middle hitter. Oh, and her media adviser left her without much help for most of the year as he suffered from depression and occasional fear of crowds. 

Somehow, she managed to overcome all the crap. I can see that she seems more mature in the past few months, and maybe all the crap that she overcame is part of that. 

The USA is currently going through a lot of crap - far more crap than is normal - and maybe, just maybe, we will come out the other side (in about four years) both stronger and more sober about how taking a flyer on a criminal narcissist who entertains and lies like he breaths is something we should avoid. 

I am under no illusion that America is a moral nation or a fair one, but I always have thought we at least agreed that being moral and fair was worth fighting for. 

We will see.

Seriously? Can that already be five years ago!?

This week, a long-time friend from Colorado State University emailed me with some questions about J-Day, the state conference of the Colorado Student Media Association that bring over a thousand students and advisers together. He was putting together a proposal to have the conference return to CSU in 2027, after two years on the CU-Boulder campus. 

I did my best to dig up some old documents (mostly dealing with the costs of using the Lory Student Center for the event) and shared my own practices in organizing the day. I hope J-Day returns to Fort Collins... and still am a bit shocked that the CSMA board changed the location in the first place. My sense is that the board simply wanted to rotate the event every couple years, possibly prompted by a new dean at CU reaching out with their own proposal a couple years ago.

But what really surprised me was that it is "already" five years on from my retirement as executive director, after ten years on the job. That also means I am 15 years on from high school classroom teaching, though I have kept my hand in the game, so to speak, with my college courses.

Time doesn't vary in its pace, if we are being completely objective. But time SEEMS to move more slowly or quickly and my tendency is to just go with the latest deadline or project or necessity and not worry much about the actual time that has passed.

But then come the reminders. Our granddaughter Anna was named the 2025 Eric Benson Scholarship winner a couple weeks ago, which is terrific. Grace earned the same award two years ago. It comes with a one-time $2,000 scholarship, which is a nice amount, even in an age of very high tuition costs. 

When I began as CSMA director in 2010, I also inherited administering this scholarship, and the award was $800. Not horrible, but to rise to $2,000 is far more than inflation. 

Yesterday, Kathleen and I had our somewhat regular conversation about how we could not believe we were halfway through May. Anna will be graduating in eight days but we retain vivid memories of her as a small child. Our grandsons in Seattle visited this past weekend and the elder is starting to look like a full-grown adult. Eldest grandchild Grace has finished her sophomore year of college and will turn 21 this fall.

We, of course, haven't changed. Ha! 

Last night we watched "Nonna," a new movie on Netflix that is based on a real restaurant on Staten Island, where the "hook" was that four grandmothers (really, just women in their early 70s as far as I could tell) did the cooking... "just like cooking for their families." 

It was a pleasant couple hours, but I was startled by how rickety and, well, old, the actors played the parts. We met one of them in a home where she was being wheeled to lunch. Another mostly sat in her house, having conversations with her long-dead husband and avoiding the world. You get the idea.

But here's the thing: we are older than those characters were supposed to be. And we aren't all that rickety. 

We are more vulnerable, I suppose, to accidents or illness or forgetfulness, but we prefer to remain young and vigorous in our minds, at least. 

Reality is not our friend, I suppose. 

The good news is that both of us are engaged in new projects that keep us focused and busy. The latest Trumpian outrage still intrudes most days and, yes, the first 100 days of his benighted presidency seemed to last forever. 

But 2029, and a new person in charge, is not really that far away. 

Here's to getting to there in one piece.

There is danger in optimism, and yet...

Today's daily blog post from Seth Godin was about the benefits of keeping our expectations low, and thus avoiding lots of unnecessary disappointment and creating space for possible joy.

That was the philosophy espoused by my father, particularly when it came to sports. As my dad would say from time to time, "Keep your expectations low and you'll never be disappointed."

That was comforting through much of my life as an Iowa sports fan, certainly, but I find myself trying to adopt that somewhat stoic philosophy in many areas of life. For instance, I never expected to have much money... certainly no EXTRA money. But here I am with more income in my "retirement" than I ever had working full time. Each month, I find myself marveling over this unexpected situation.

Last night, we were watching the Nuggets' playoff game and Jokic had a miserable game, though the score remained tight throughout. My expectation was that all those misses from our star would doom us to defeat. So the team's overwhelming the Oklahoma City squad thoroughly in overtime produced a thrill that I had not anticipated.

Same with seeing Caitlin Clark in last Sunday's WNBA exhibition game, knowing she had some minor leg issue and expecting her to take it easy and not do further damage prior to the regular season. Then she goes out and hits her signature long jumpers along with some dextrous passes. 

I said to Kathleen, "That Caitlin seems to always rise to the occasion." But deep down I suspected that THIS would be game she would crumble to the court and have trouble rising. 

I saw a video of WNBA great Sue Bird mentioning that she had an ACL tear early in her career (she clearly recovered quite well). I have seen Caitlin get blasted on many occasions, usually due to defenders being out of position but sometimes purposefully, and she always gets up.

Maybe I should just enjoy her good fortune and her unique talents, but for a guy who has thoroughly adopted the "keep your expectations low" philosophy, I find myself holding my breath after each collision. 

On the other hand, I have enough experience in things like creating curriculum or grading or teaching (in general) that I don't think in terms of keeping expectations low... or high. I don't think much about what I do day in and day out. I just assume everything will work out.

The other day I noted that one of my online writing classes was increasingly demonstrating the use of AI to compose simple essays. Well, I am guessing about that, but I've read a lot of student writing and it rarely changes quickly to a sophisticated level... and I never would think my remarks on earlier work would actually lead to more logic, higher levels of diction, etc. 

I made a mental note to rethink many of my writing assignments and even tactics for this fall's classes. I have started browsing the internet for advice and strategies to (somehow) both embrace AI and still get students to produce personalized and even creative work. 

A skeptic might say that my quest is likely doomed and that AI's continuing growth and sophistication will likely lead to courses like mine phasing out. 

My dad would probably counsel me to rein in my hopes that I can create some AI-resistant assignments in just a couple months. But I am not coaching Iowa football or basketball, enterprises I absolutely know will disappoint me in ways both large and small. 

I plan to come up with something that works. 

I defy the Fates.

May Day! May Day! My brain's hard drive seems to be full.

I must admit that I was unaware until I saw it on some site that April 30 marked the 50-year anniversary of the fall of Saigon. I should have known, since I had seen a quiz on the Washington Post site about "how much do we remember about the Vietnam War?" I didn't bother to take it. BTW, in Vietnam that conflict is called "The American War."

Overlooking THAT anniversary reminded me that I completely missed celebrating my own anniversary from that war: my discharge from the Air Force on May 8, 1974. Perhaps I hoisted an adult beverage last year, by accident. But that really should have been a bigger deal.

And THAT reminds me that the entire Vietnam War thing is not that big a deal to most Americans at this point. That really isn't a huge surprise when we look at the math.

The current U.S. population is about 340 million and it was about 213 million in 1975. Some percentage of those alive in 1975 have died and simple arithmetic gives us about 127 million not even born when the war ended. My roughest guess is that a majority of Americans were not alive when Saigon fell and I would also guess that an even larger majority of Vietnamese were not yet born. And many alive in 1975 were too young to retain much in terms of firm memories.

Much like the Korean War (really, a conflict), Vietnam was not a "glorious" war, and perhaps that is why there are relatively few pop culture reminders of those difficult times other than in music. WWII continues to reign supreme in movies and TV shows. I assume that is because we clearly "won." The music of the late 60s and '70s clearly still strikes a chord, so to speak, since it continues to show up in all sorts of movies and TV shows. 

Of course, old timers like myself will shake our heads, annoyed by something so important in our lives being ignored by the wider public. 

That is somewhat hypocritical since we ourselves likely find events from half a century ago tough to keep in our thoughts. Or maybe that's just me.

Really, though, it is healthy to forget (though I would argue that younger people should have SOME familiarity with major historical events and eras). 

I hope that my grandchildren will eventually find current political events equally forgettable, despite the seemingly existential pain at least some Americans are feeling right now, and likely will continue to feel for years. I am relatively confident there will still BE an America in fifty years and equally confident that our grandchildren will be somewhat close to my current age at that point... 

And it is comforting to imagine them sitting at a dining table with their own children and grandchildren and reminiscing about the whole Trump thing. "Tell us about the days when civil liberties were simply assumed, gramps."

One thing I will predict is that our current political era will NOT produce great movies or TV shows that future generations will come back to again and again. And I'm not too confident about the music this time.