The routine placement of DEI famatics in positions of authority around America is a dangerous and destructive fad. Witness M. Kaleo Manuel, former deputy director of the Hawaii Commission on Water Resource Management, who said in a livestream debate hosted by the University of Hawaii last year, in discussing water distribution on the island,

“Let water connect us and not divide us! We can share it, but it requires true conversations about equity…How do we coexist with the resources we have?”

Manuel, a former Obama Foundation leader who coached volunteers in “practical skill building for social change,” Manuel said he considered water “an important tool for social justice.” So it should not be surprising that when the real estate developer that supplies water to areas southeast of Lahaina recognized the threat posed by a dangerous combination of high winds and drought-parched grasses in Maui and asked Manuel for permission to fill up one of its private reservoirs in case firefighters needed it, the Obama social justice warrior’s main concern was equity, not preventing death and destruction from fire. Manuel told the company that it had to consult with a local farmer about the impact of water diversion before he would approve the request. Five hours passed without water being added to the reservoir, and the brush fire that had been contained that morning flared up again and swept through Lahaina, burning everything and everyone in its path.

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District Court Judge for the District Of Columbia Beryl A. Howell endorsed the United States Copyright Office’s decision to refuse copyright protection to the owner of an artificial intelligence system that generated visual art. Stephen Thaler owns a program called the “Creativity Machine,” but he was denied a copyright by the office for a piece of visual art his system created. It “lacked human authorship,” Howell decided, meaning that it lacked the “bedrock requirement of copyright.”

“[T]his case presents only the question of whether a work generated autonomously by a computer system is eligible for copyright,” Howell wrote. “In the absence of any human involvement in the creation of the work, the clear and straightforward answer is the one given by the Register: No.”

Wait: the thing didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to create something. A human being was involved at some level. If a human enters the perimeters that an AI program follows and the result is unique art, isn’t that sufficient “human involvement”?

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is that ruling competent and fair?

My guess is that this is another (of many) examples of courts misunderstanding new technology, with rulings that will eventually look silly in the rear-view mirror.