As I’ve been saying over and over again here (mostly to offset the officials who over-optimistically state Russia can learn or adapt from mistakes) we’re looking at a paper bear going to war in Ukraine.

A dictatorship that destroys imagination and criminalizes innovation, there is little to no chance its troops being trained in how to learn and adapt to any immediate challenge (with the exception of looting and stealing).

The Atlantic now writes this in very exact language from the front lines of war in Ukraine.

He said he had spent much of the past few weeks in the trenches northwest of Kyiv. “The Russians have no imagination,” he said. “They would shell our positions, attack in large formations, and when their assaults failed, do it all over again. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians would raid the Russian lines in small groups night after night, wearing them down.”

It’s proof of both why technology augmentation works so well (human intelligence) and why technology automation is a disaster (human replacement).

“The Russians don’t empower their soldiers,” Zagorodnyuk explained. “They tell their soldiers to go from Point A to Point B, and only when they get to Point B will they be told where to go next, and junior soldiers are rarely told the reason they are performing any task. This centralized command and control can work, but only when events go according to plan. When the plan doesn’t hold together, their centralized method collapses. No one can adapt, and you get things like 40-mile-long traffic jams outside Kyiv.”

This is not to underestimate the suffering caused by Russia.

Just like Nazi Germany, totally ignorant dis-empowered soldiers can commit some of the worst war crimes imaginable and untold destruction of humanity. Even as they fail and falter, plans falling apart, men intent on doing harm can lash out relentlessly and try to take others down with them.

And just like Nazi Germany the war was lost very early, at least by 1942, but they kept fighting anyway for years and committing genocide. Nobody knows what happens next. Things could get worse before they get better. I didn’t even think Russia would invade because to do so is so incredibly stupid and self-defeating. That was my mistake, and I’ve since learned that the Kremlin is even dumber than I had imagined.

The idea of a worse future due to AI is rooted in understanding how automation of bad things happened in the past (e.g. philosophy, politics, economics), and how that will mean even more bad things ahead.

Ifeoma Ajunwa has written an amazing article giving exactly the kind of example we all should study.

He points out what any intelligent human operator would key in on: known qualifications.

…as Sen. Amy Klobuchar helpfully shared on the first day of hearings for Judge Jackson’s confirmation, the nominee has more judicial experience than “four people who are already on the Supreme Court.”

And before that, he points out what un-intelligent (e.g. dumb robot) operators get stuck on: fear based on the unfamiliar or unknown (e.g. racism).

If there were any doubt that this social discrimination still exists, just consider the minimally veiled racist remarks Tucker Carlson made about Judge Jackson’s African name while questioning her credentials. “So, is Ketanji Brown Jackson—a name that even Joe Biden has trouble pronouncing—one of the top legal minds in the entire country?” he asked. In the world of Fox News, an African name alone is disqualifying.

So true. So well said.

But it gets even better. Ifeoma links his analysis to a history of systemic racism in America.

In 2004, Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan published a now-famous field experiment they conducted to test racial discrimination in hiring. They responded with fictitious résumés to help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago newspapers. They assigned each résumé either a very African American–sounding name (think Lakisha and Jamal) or a very White-sounding name (think Emily or Greg). One result: In general, résumés with White (read European) names received 50 percent more callbacks for interviews. Bertrand and Mullainathan also found that the amount of discrimination was the same across occupations and industries.

The employers did not know for certain that the job applicants were Black Americans—they were making the conclusion based on how they perceived the name.

How our brains perceive a name can be actively manipulated by “deliberately misleading” partisan extremists like Tucker “gas chamber” Carlson.

For weeks, Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s prime-time show has featured racist attacks…

The fact that an alleged asset of foreign military intelligence (Russia) can poison information so openly in America is disappointing on its own, of course. Even worse is when automation technology gives them far more impact.

Fox “news” is basically this:

…open-ended endorsement of white supremacist ideology…

Recognize that Fox is a past form of automation and therefore foreshadowing of the ugly side to AI. The ability to move racism faster and wider, to create more harm more quickly than before, will be the outcome of “open-ended” use of technology for hate.

Shortly after announcing a CRITICAL security patch for CVE-2022-0971 Google is at it once again, dropping a HIGH security patch as an emergency yesterday.

Google is aware that an exploit for CVE-2022-1096 exists in the wild.

There is only one CVE listed in the update announcement, which hints towards a higher severity than just HIGH not to mention exploits exist in the wild.

The Stable channel has been updated to 99.0.4844.84… This update includes 1 security fix.

It also follows news of attribution for an exploit circulating at the start of 2022, which claims North Korea hunted Americans on Google Chrome with CVE-2022-0609 to steal crypto coin and intelligence.