[ExI] but i say what we really need is really smart ai to rein in potus, was: RE: Trump Says a Smart President Is All That's Needed to Rein In A.I.

[spike at rainier66.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of Ben
Zaiboc via extropy-chat

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> 
>>... I see all this thru the lens of a taxpayer who notes that the current 
> federal budget deficit is two trillion dollars a year.


>...Umm, veering off the topic big-time here, but ok. I know nothing about
economics generally, and less about US national debt, etc.

...

No worries, I will offer an executive summary.  The US government has been
spending about a third again more than it takes in, for a long time.  Now
the debt is unpayable and the interest on the debt is unsustainable.
Catastrophe is imminent, not just for the USA but for the world, for there
is investment cap from every country planted here.  Either the federal
reserve defaults on its interest payment or it offers such high rates for
loans that the result in runaway inflation, both of which have catastrophic
consequences.

And yet... the American superpower is the ability to ignore the clear and
present danger.

...
>>... Unless... AI generates unimaginable wealth.  John tells us it will.  I

> certainly hope so


>...So do I, but how do we avoid it also creating unimaginable inequality?

Contradictory terms.  All inequality is imaginable.  Granted it isn't
everyone's ideal to have a choice of working for Elon, Sam, Dario, Peter,
Bill or me.  But I don't have any heartburn with that notion.  Please submit
your resume to my email @.

>>... It is good, not great yet, but good.  I will take good.  Note that it 
> is also in time for us, and by the time we need it, it might be great.


>...That's not what I regard as a hopeful note. That's more like a slightly
ameliorated capitulation...

On that we agree.  I think we humans are too stupid to solve aging and to
solve the even more complicated problem of how to reanimate a frozen brain.
AI might be able to do it however.  As far as I can tell, that is the only
plausible hope of getting out of this life alive.

>...I don't hope for AI to comfort the aged, I hope for it to cure them!

Again we agree.  The technology isn't ready yet to cure what ails my father
in law, age 87.  But our problems would be bigger if he didn't have AI with
sports knowledge.

>...Can we get back to the original topic though: The constitution etc.,
Three+ term presidents etc.?

We have only had one of those, and none since amendment 22 was ratified.  I
don't spend much time worrying that one of the two major political parties
will nominate a guy who isn't eligible to run for office again.

>...I'd like to know who/what actually enforces the constitution...

The Supreme Court.

>... why you seem to have such faith in it, when it seems, up to now, to be
largely impotent?

Ben, the point of the constitution is to keep the federal government largely
impotent.  It limits what the fed can do.  Being British, I will offer a
yank's take on it: there was a king we didn't like, George the third.  He
had too much power.  We threw the tea into the harbor, provoked the
redcoats, there was a bit of a dust up, then the colonies became the United
States of America.  We did not become the United People of America, nor have
we ever been.  State governments united and handed power to the federal
government, very cautiously and with carefully drawn boundaries, what we
call "enumerated powers" clearly defined in the constitution.   

>...I'd like to know how all those abuses of power detailed in that document
(plus the many more since it was written) can possibly have occurred,
without anyone seeming to be able to do anything effective about them?

Most of that was POTUS doing stuff with the military, which is allowed,
since he is the commander in chief, and stuff done to the executive branch,
which is legal because POTUS is the head of the executive branch.

>...I'd like to know (as would many, many other people) why King Donald
isn't already wearing an orange suit and spending the rest of his life in a
very small room?
---
Ben

The constitution prescribes what happens if a POTUS commits a crime (or
misdemeanor.)  It starts in the House of Representatives, then if it passes
there, goes to the senate.  This has already happened twice.  In both cases,
the senate vote was insufficient to remove that POTUS from office.  So...
nothing happened.  I suspect congress will spend most of 2027 and 2028
impeaching POTUS, only to have the senate reason that if that guy is
removed, it hands the current VP, who is JD Vance, an advantage in the 2028
election: he seems to be a lot more reasonable than the current POTUS, and
he is also pro-AI.  

JD understands AI better than either the current POTUS or his former
opponent in the 2024 election, who explained AI thus:

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2201983450715369

spike


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