Month: September 2024

Artificial Intelligence Raises a Lot of Ethics Issues, But This Isn’t One of Them…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

From An Experiment in Lust, Regret and Kissing (gift link!) in the Times by novelist Curtis Sittenfeld :

My editor fed ChatGPT the same prompts I was writing from and asked it to write a story of the same length “in the style of Curtis Sittenfeld.” (I’m one of the many fiction writers whose novels were used, without my permission and without my being compensated, to train ChatGPT. Groups of fiction writers, including people I’m friends with, have sued OpenAI, which developed ChatGPT, for copyright infringement. The New York Times has sued Microsoft and OpenAI over the use of copyrighted work.)

The essay describes a contest between the bot and the human novelist, who also employed suggestions from readers. I do not see how an AI “writer” being programmed with another author’s work is any more of a copyright violation than a human writer reading a book or story for inspiration. Herman Melville wrote “Moby-Dick” after immersing himself in the works of William Shakespeare. Nor is imitating another author’s style unethical. All art involves borrowing, adopting, adapting and following the cues and lessons of those who came before. In “Follies,” Stephen Sondheim deliberately wrote songs that evoked the styles of specific earlier songwriters. He couldn’t have done this as effectively as he did without “programming” himself with their works. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: PJ Media Pundit Stephen Green [Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

“The Dems got what they wanted tonight. The Progressive Axis — Harris and her ABC News foils — got under Trump’s skin and stayed there…”

Stephen Green, aka Vodkapundit, on last night’s debate.

Finally. This is the first time I’ve seen anyone adopt the Ethics Alarms description of the anti-democratic cabal as “the Axis.” I did a search just now: I may have missed one somewhere, but Green’s is the first I can find. Good. Ethics Alarms has been using the term “Axis of Unethical Conduct” for years. It is fair, descriptive, and appropriate.

The coordination last night between Harris and the unabashedly biased ABC moderators during the debate was one of the more obvious examples of the Axis at work.

Added: I bailed out when the ABC hacks let Harris’s Big Lie about Trump calling white supremacists “fine people” go with being “factchecked” after the Axis pair had repeatedly challenged Trump. Presumably I wasn’t the only one who noticed.

Tuesday PM Ethics Anxieties, 9/10/24

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

It’s been slim ethics pickin’s of late, probably because everyone is obsessed with the campaign and the Debate To Decide The Fate Of Democracy (or DTDTFOD for short). These things always launch ridiculous numbers of fake news items, like “How Trump and Harris Will Try to Attack Each Other at the Debate” on the Times website, a variety of what I call “psychic fake news;” “How Trump Has Used Debates to Belittle Women” (‘poisoning the well”) on its front page, and also “As Debate Looms, Trump Is Now the One Facing Questions About Age and Capacity.” Translation: The mainstream media Democratic shills want to make the election about “age and capacity.” Then we have the hilarious “Hillary Clinton Has Advice on Debating Trump: ‘He Can Be Rattled’” Taking advice from Hillary on how to beat Trump is like taking advice from George Foreman about how to beat Muhammad Ali. I chuckled at “Liz Cheney Accuses G.O.P. Trump Backers of Betraying Their Principles.” Kamala Harris literally represents the opposite of everything she and her father at least pretended to stand for until Trump Derangement struck. Still, there are some issues lying around that need to be cleared…

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Who IS This Woman? Why Does CNN Let Someone This Dishonest Appear On A Panel? Do CNN Viewers Realize What the Significance of Her Argument Is?

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

There are so many frustrating aspects of this clip from CNN’s Newsnight, but let’s get to the main issue: what the Harris surrogate/Democratic Party mouthpiece/shameless gaslighter said:

I find it ironic where, in 2020, Republicans were screaming at the top of their lungs when people were changing rules because we were in a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic and we needed to do it to accommodate voters …I want to remove politics from this and talk about people being actually able to exercise the franchise. And it is disenfranchising North Carolina voters right now that they believe they can start voting today and they are not. That is how confusion is disseminated in communities. That is how mis and disinformation starts, that is how you start to see narratives that our system is not working, when you start to let politics play into the role of when people should be able to start voting. Follow the rules. He was on the ballot, he wanted to run, he decided he didn’t want to run, he should have made that decision 6 months ago, but disenfranchising voters is not right.

The issue being discussed is a Democratic Party that was once fighting to keep Robert Kennedy Jr. OFF the ballot in states where the party thought he would draw votes away from Biden is fighting to stop him from removing his name from the ballot because he has dropped out of the race and endorsed Donald Trump. NOW they want him on the ballot because they think he will take votes from Trump.

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ABC Provides A Fake News Classic!

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

“Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!” I find this stunt by ABC News today as astounding as it is unforgivable.

The Axis, as I noted yesterday, is shaken to its core by polling data that seems to show that Kamala Harris’s efforts to hide, lie, cackle and flip-flop her way to the White House is no longer working despite the news media’s intense assistance. Meanwhile, Nate Silver posted today that his analytical model gives Trump a 53.4% chance of winning Wisconsin, 54.9% in Michigan, 60.8% in Nevada, and a 64.9% chance of winning Pennsylvania, giving Trump a likely 312 votes in the Electoral College.

So ABC, determined to rescue their party’s flagging spirits, published a story headlined, “Harris support rises among some likely voters: POLL.” “As previously reported, Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump by a slight 4 percentage points, 50-46%, among all adults and registered voters alike, and by 6 points, 52-46%, among likely voters in the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll. While those numbers are virtually identical, closer assessment shows movement to Harris in some groups when comparing all adults with likely voters — notably, those younger than 40, younger women in particular and Black people,” this trusted name in journalism announced.

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What’s Going On Here? Whatever It Is, Someone Is Extremely Unethical…

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

I love this story! It has everything…except any certainty about who is telling the truth.

Chad Condit, California Senator Marie Alvarado-Gil’s former chief of staff, has filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against her. He alleges that she pressured him into performing sex acts for her enjoyment when they were traveling together on her official business.

Point of interest #1: Does that name ring a bell? Yes, Chad is the son of Gary Condit, the former Congressman who was a suspect in the Chandra Levy disappearance and murder. He allegedly was having a sexual affair with her, an intern who worked in his office. Now, for this family, the alleged sexual harassment is on the other foot—well, you know what I mean.

Point of interest #2: Alvarado-Gila, meanwhile, is a longtime Democrat who recently got national headlines when she switched to the Republican Party, saying that the Democratic Party had become so extreme that she could no longer support it. I’m ruling that she is—if guilty, of course—is an embarrassment to both parties.

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THIS Is Ethics Zugzwang: The Infrastructure Problem

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

The tweet above illustrates a modern ethics zugzwang phenomenon. I was struck by the tweet because I had recently had an argument with my relentlessly Democratic sister about the Supreme Court’s decision in Relentless v. Department of Commerce and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, striking down the landmark 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council that made federal agencies the presumptive lawmakers in matters Congress had not specifically addressed if an agency rule was “reasonable.” She believes that Chevron’s fall will be a disaster.

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Ethics Quiz: Being Fair To Kamala Harris

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

This is a short one, but not am easy one, because bias is so likely to be involved.

Althouse posted the [I almost wrote “horrifying,” but that would be biasing you]clip above that has “surfaced” from a podcast earlier this year. (Isn’t it fascinating that virtually no one was paying attention to Harris most of the time until she was suddenly anointed?).

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Is it fair to conclude that Harris is an idiot from that response?

Or can her supposed endorsement of astrology (which in my view is about like saying you worship the Greek gods) be excused as just typical politician pandering to a substantial voting block? Althouse links to a list of ten leaders who supposedly believed in astrology, a collection which I would take with about about a truckload of salt. The claim that Ronald Reagan “leaned on astrology for guidance” is particularly weak: he met with an astrologer once, and he indulged Nancy’s interest in the nonsense, as most loving spouses would.

One question that occurred to me as I looked at the list: what is the cut-off point before which it is fair to attribute an individual’s belief in astrology to the absence of scientific knowledge generally?

Ethics Alarms Is Ready To Predict the Winner of the 2024 Election…

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

And it is...Abraham Lincoln!

It’s just one poll, but it’s a New York Times poll, and if any left-leaning, biased polling result is likely to try to bury bad news for the Democrats, it’s this one. The New York Times/Siena national poll was released this morning, and showed Donald Trump starting to regain the edge he had before Joe Biden was forced out and the news media joined the Democrats in a “She Isn’t What She Is” campaign of excitement, joy, and virtually no substance whatsoever.

Trump now leads Kamala Harris nationally among likely voters by a 48–47 margin, and Trump hasn’t received as much as 48% at the ballot box yet, not in 2016 or 2020. Though Newsbuster’s analysis shows Harris getting over 80% positive press coverage in this period (for doing nothing but repeating boilerplate, non-substantive speeches off teleprompters and avoiding any one-on-one interviews with even friendly journalists), and though she has reversed many of her most radical positions (more on that in a second) while saying that “her values haven’t changed,” whatever that means, “the ruse isn’t working,” as Jeff Blehar says at the Never Trump National Review:

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Another Parent Is Being Charged With Manslaughter Because of His School-Shooter Son. Good.

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

I surmise that the woke establishment has concluded in its unparalleled wisdom that parental responsibility is just a scapegoat for society’s evil gun problem. What will stop these mass shootings, see, is “sensible” and “common sense” gun laws that never seem to have any features that would prevent the tragedies that have triggered the anti-Second Amendment crowd.

Colin Gray, the father of 14-year-old son, Colt Gray, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter following his son opening fire at his school this week, killing four people and wounding others. (Yes, the shooter was named after a gun.) The AR-15-style rifle he used was a Christmas gift from his dad. Fourteen-year-olds can’t legally own guns, of course. Still, in Georgia, giving a child a gun is not a crime, nor does Georgia have a law requiring guns to be locked away from children. But Jennifer and James Crumbley were convicted of involuntary manslaughter earlier this year in Michigan because their son started shooting up his school. Prosecutors convinced a jury that the Crumbleys knew of their son’s dangerous proclivities and mental problems, and allowed him access to a gun anyway.

Georgia is following what seems to be that precedent despite having far weaker gun laws than Michigan. The elder Gray isn’t being charged with breaking a gun law. The criminal prosecution is more akin to the theory behind the prosecution of dog owners who let their untrained and dangerous canines roam free and the pets rip someone to pieces.

The anti-gun Left’s reaction is nicely encapsulated in Times reporter and anti-gun zealot Megan Stack’s op-ed in the Times,

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