Much of the $1.8 trillion in student debt won’t ever be repaid, nonpartisan research organization says.

 ‘The government is poised to take a bath on its student loan portfolio’


Alicia Adamczyk
Tue, June 27, 2023 


Federal student loan payments will restart in October after more than a three-year break. But the government will never see most of the $1.8 trillion borrowers currently owe, with or without President Joe Biden's widespread forgiveness plan.

That's according to a new report from the Jain Family Institute, a nonpartisan research organization, that analyzed the credit reports of 1 million people ages 18 to 35 with student loan balances between 2009 and 2019. In the report titled The Student Debt Crisis Is a Crisis of Non-Repayment, the author, Marshall Steinbaum, a senior fellow in higher education at the organization, writes that because of a litany of factors, "much of outstanding federal student loan balances aren’t ever going to be repaid."

"The government is poised to take a bath on its student loan portfolio over the long term, even as that portfolio expands in size every year as the higher education system sucks up more federal funding," the report reads.

Why is that? According to Steinbaum, the ever-increasing cost of college combined with decreased state funding of higher education, stagnant wages, and more higher education requirements to attain any job at all means more and more people need to take on more and more student loan debt to live a middle-class life. But with wages not keeping up with the cost of higher education, more borrowers are unable to repay their balances, carrying the debt longer and "impairing economic well-being for a widening and diversifying swath of the population, inhibiting savings, increasing precarity, and draining the very incomes the student debt was supposed to increase."

This has happened in good economic cycles and in bad. "What we’ve considered to be economic prosperity of the last 10 years, prior to the pandemic, was in fact economically punishing to younger cohorts forced through the wringer of increasingly costly higher education and into a labor market characterized by stagnant wages and deteriorating job ladders," Steinbaum writes. Even in "normal" times—i.e., not in the midst of a worldwide pandemic and economic downturn—borrowers have trouble repaying their loans.

The three-year payment pause has been a temporary reprieve from ever-increasing loan balances and defaults and delinquencies. But Steinbaum writes that once payments resume in October, all of the financial progress borrowers made over the past three-plus years—declining balances, higher credit scores, increased savings, etc.—will be reversed. As other research has found, including the Biden administration's own, delinquencies and defaults will increase once the pause ends.

Many households simply will not be able to afford another multi-hundred-dollar bill each month, on top of inflated prices, rising interest rates, and other economic uncertainty. Other research has found that it is likely to lead to higher credit card debt (in fact, that is already happening), even as households pull back their spending.

The "single most striking finding" from the report, according to a summary, "is that the repayment pause actually resulted in the highest student loan balances decreasing for the first time ever," likely due to interest rates being set at zero for its duration. But that will end when interest starts accruing again in September.

A new income-driven repayment (IDR) plan proposed by the Biden administration could exacerbate the non-repayment. The plan, which has not taken effect yet, will allow more borrowers to pay less of their income toward their loans each month and reach forgiveness faster, meaning they will repay less throughout the life of their loan. That is, if borrowers know it exists.

"The idea that borrowers will transition smoothly from the repayment pause to enrollment in the new IDR plan is far easier said than done," Steinbaum writes. "A much more likely outcome is once the pause is rescinded, borrowers fall through the cracks."

And the new IDR plan could have the effect of actually increasing tuition and other costs, according to the report, as well as other higher education researchers.

"Universities can truthfully tell would-be students that the debt never really needs to be repaid," Steinbaum writes.

“Debt is a lifetime drag”

The Jain Family Institute's report looked at student loan demographics, and found that student debt-to-income ratios (in other words, having an increasing amount of debt compared to one's income) has grown the most for non-white and poor communities for the past decade. In turn, that means non-repayment has been getting worse for non-white borrowers.

That is hardly a new finding; in fact, the Biden administration names advancing racial equity among borrowers as one of the reasons for his widespread forgiveness program, which would cancel $10,000 to $20,000 in federal student loan debt for most borrowers.

The outcome of that program is dependent on a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court, expected this week. If the court strikes down the program, the Jain report finds non-repayment would be exacerbated.

As Steinbaum writes, this student loan burden has hit millennials especially hard compared to prior generations, but until something changes, Gen Z and future generations can look forward to the consequences, too. That includes delayed marriages, reduced childbearing, less entrepreneurship, and decreased retirement security, among others.

"The debt is a lifetime drag on social mobility," Steinbaum writes.

https://we.riseup.net/assets/393727/David+Graeber+Debt+The+First+5+000+Years.pdf

David+Graeber+Debt+The+First+5+000+Years.pdf\ 

Debt : the first 5,000 years I David Graeber. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-933633-86-2 (alk. paper). 1. Debt-History. 2.

Microsoft attempts to pick apart US legal argument against deal to buy Activision




By Greg Bensinger

Tue, June 27, 2023

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Arguing for the government on Tuesday in its legal fight against Microsoft's $69 billion deal to buy game maker Activision Blizzard, Harvard economist Robin Lee struggled at times to plainly demonstrate how the planned deal would hurt gamers.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has asked a federal judge to stop the transaction temporarily in order to allow the agency's in-house judge to decide if it can go forward. That said, the side that loses in federal court often concedes and the in-house process does not go forward. Lee was pressed by an attorney for Microsoft over the details of his analyses of potential market share gains for the Redmond, Washington-based company’s Xbox division, particularly the effect on gamers who would migrate due to the wildly popular "Call of Duty" videogame which is made by Activision.

Lee acknowledged that his analyses did not account for anything but full exclusivity of "Call of Duty" on Xbox and did not show what may occur if the game was available on Nintendo's Switch. If the deal goes through, Microsoft has pledged to provide the game to Switch for 10 years.

Microsoft attorney Beth Wilkinson pressed Lee in an effort to poke holes in his analysis of the deal, pointing out limitations of his economic modeling. At times the questioning grew testy, including when Wilkinson said forcefully, “Professor Lee, can you answer my question?” on a fine detail of his reports.

Appearing to grow frustrated with the difficulty in parsing Lee's answers, Wilkinson at one point mapped out his market share assumptions on a white board visible to the judge. Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, a federal judge in San Francisco who will decide the case, said little on Tuesday. The FTC says the transaction would give Microsoft exclusive access to Activision games, leaving Nintendo and Sony Group out in the cold. Microsoft has argued that it would be better off financially by licensing the games to all comers. The deal has won approval from many jurisdictions but has been opposed by the FTC in the United States and Britain's Competition and Markets Authority.

(Reporting by Greg Bensinger in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Diane Bartz in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

Conditions for Guantanamo detainees are cruel, inhuman and degrading, UN investigator says



In this photo reviewed by U.S. military officials, the control tower of Camp VI detention facility is seen on April 17, 2019, in Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. The first U.N. independent investigator to visit the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay said Monday, June 26, 2023, that the 30 men held there are subject “to ongoing cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under international law.” The U.S. response said Irish law professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin was the first U.N. special rapporteur to visit Guantanamo and had been given “unprecedented access” with “the confidence that the conditions of confinement at Guantanamo Bay are humane and reflect the United States’ respect for and protection of human rights for all who are within our custody.” 

(AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

EDITH M. LEDERER
Updated Tue, June 27, 2023 

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The first U.N. independent investigator to visit the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay said Monday the 30 men held there are subject “to ongoing cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under international law.”

The investigator, Irish law professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, said at a news conference releasing her 23-page report to the U.N. Human Rights Council that the 2001 attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania that killed nearly 3,000 people were “crimes against humanity.” But she said the U.S. use of torture and rendition against alleged perpetrators and their associates in the years right after the attacks violated international human rights law — and in many cases deprived the victims and survivors of justice because information obtained by torture cannot be used at trials.

Ní Aoláin said her visit marked the first time a U.S, administration has allowed a U.N. investigator to visit the facility, which opened in 2002.

She praised the Biden administration for leading by example by opening up Guantanamo and “being prepared to address the hardest human rights issues,” and urged other countries that have barred U.N. access to detention facilities to follow suit. And she said she was given access to everything she asked for, including holding meetings at the facility in Cuba with “high value” and “non-high value” detainees.

The United States said in a submission to the Human Rights Council on the report that the special investigator’s findings “are solely her own” and “the United States disagrees in significant respects with many factual and legal assertions” in her report.

Ní Aoláin said “significant improvements” have been made to the confinement of detainees but expressed “serious concerns" about the continued detention of 30 men, who she said face severe insecurity, suffering and anxiety. She cited examples including near constant surveillance, forced removal from their cells and unjust use of restraints.

“I observed that after two decades of custody, the suffering of those detained is profound, and it’s ongoing,” the U.N. special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism said. “Every single detainee I met with lives with the unrelenting harms that follow from systematic practices of rendition, torture and arbitrary detention. ”

Ní Aoláin, concurrently a professor at the University of Minnesota and at Queens University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, said there was “a heartfelt response” by many detainees to seeing someone who was neither a lawyer nor associated with the detention center, some for the first time in 20 years. During the visit, she said, she and her team scrutinized every aspect of Guantanamo.

Ní Aoláin said many detainees she met showed evidence of “deep psychological harm and distress – including profound anxiety, helplessness, hopelessness, stress and depression, and dependency.”

She expressed grave concern at the failure of the U.S. government to provide torture rehabilitation programs to the detainees and said the specialist care and facilities at Guantanamo “are not adequate to meet the complex and urgent mental and physical health issues of detainees” ranging from permanent disabilities and traumatic brain injuries to chronic pain, gastrointestinal and urinary issues.

Many also suffer from the deprivation of support from their families and community “while living in a detention environment without trial for some, and without charge for others, for 21 years, hunger striking and force-feeding, self-harm and suicidal ideation (ideas), and accelerated aging,” she said.

Ní Aoláin expressed “profound concern” that 19 of the 30 men remaining at Guantanamo have never been charged with a single crime, some after 20 years in U.S. custody, and that the continuing detention of some of them “follows from the unwillingness of the authorities to face the consequences of the torture and other ill-treatment to which the detainees were subjected and not from any ongoing threat they are believed to pose.” She stressed repeatedly that using information obtained by torture at a trial is prohibited and she said the United States has committed to not using such information.

She also found “fundamental fair trial and due process deficiencies in the military commission system,” expressed concern at the extent of secrecy in all judicial and administrative proceedings, and concluded the U.S. failed to promote fundamental fair trial guarantees.

Ní Aoláin made a long series of recommendations and said the prison at Guantanamo Bay should be immediately closed, a goal of the Biden administration.

Among her key recommendations to the U.S. government were to provide specialized rehabilitation from torture and trauma to detainees, ensure that all detainees whether they are “high-value” or “non-high value” are provided with at least one phone call every month with their family, and guaranteed equal access to legal counsel to all detainees.

The U.S. response, submitted by the American ambassador to the Human Rights Council, Michele Taylor, said Ní Aoláin was the first U.N. special rapporteur to visit Guantanamo and had been given “unprecedented access” with “the confidence that the conditions of confinement at Guantanamo Bay are humane and reflect the United States’ respect for and protection of human rights for all who are within our custody.”

“Detainees live communally and prepare meals together; receive specialized medical and psychiatric care; are given full access to legal counsel; and communicate regularly with family members,” the U.S. statement said.

“We are nonetheless carefully reviewing the (special rapporteur’s) recommendations and will take any appropriate actions, as warranted,” it said.

The United States said the Biden administration has made “significant progress” toward closing Guantanamo, transferring 10 detainees from the facility, it said, adding that it is looking to find suitable locations for the remaining detainees eligible for transfer.

The report also covers the rights of the 9/11 victims and the rights of the detainees released from Guantanamo who have been repatriated to their home country or resettled.

Ní Aoláin stressed that victims of terrorism have a right to justice, and called it “a betrayal” that the U.S. use of torture would prevent many from seeing the perpetrators and their collaborators in court. She also said children whose families accepted compensation in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and waived their rights should be able to pursue compensation and health care.

As for the 741 men who have been released from Guantanamo, she said, many were left on their own, lacking a legal identity, education and job training, adequate physical and mental health care, and continue to experience “sustained human rights violations,” poverty, social exclusion and stigma.

The special rapporteur stressed that the United States has international law obligations before, during and after the transfer of detainees and must provide “fair and adequate compensation and as full rehabilitation as possible to the men who were detained at Guantanamo.”

Indonesia starts reparations programme for victims of its bloody past


FILE PHOTO: Indonesia's President Joko Widodo speaks about the planned 

new capital Nusantara, at Ecosperity Week in Singapore


Tue, June 27, 2023 
By Ananda Teresia

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Tuesday launched an unprecedented reparation programme for victims of past human rights abuses by the state, a project critics fear will compensate only a small fraction of those who suffered.

Jokowi, as the president is known, in January expressed deep regret over 12 deadly events from 1965-2003 which include a purge by the military of suspected communists and their sympathisers, during which at least 500,000 people were killed and more than a million jailed, according to historians and activists.

It also included human rights violations by security forces during separatist conflicts in the Aceh and Papua regions, and the killing and abduction of students in 1998 after protests against the three-decade rule of autocratic former President Suharto. About 1,200 people were killed in subsequent riots, activists say.

The government has not disclosed the number of people who will be eligible for reparations, or any targets and it is unclear how victims can apply for compensation.

"Today we can start restoring the victims' rights," said Jokowi, who came to office in 2014 promising to take up the issue.

"This signals the government's commitment to prevent similar abuses in the future."

The compensation will range from educational and health incentives to house renovations, and visas for victims in exile.

However, Sri Winarso, a coordinator of a group of survivors of the 1965 crackdown, said only victims counted by government bodies had been included.

"They have to expand the coverage," he added.

Research by Indonesia's human rights commission, in cooperation with civil society groups, has estimated there are between 500,000 and 3 million victims and survivors of the 1965 bloodshed.

Commissioner Anis Hidayah said so far only 6,400 victims of the 12 bloody events had been verified, adding it was difficult to track those involved in incidents so long ago.

"We will try our best to reach more victims," Anis said.

Maria Catarina Sumarsih, the mother of a student killed in a 1998 protest, said compensation meant nothing if those responsible go unpunished.

"The president said the government will not negate legal resolution but there have been no concrete measures taken," she said.

(Reporting by Ananda Teresia; Editing by Martin Petty)

Colossal cave in Mexico that formed 15 million years ago is even more enormous than we thought


Lydia Smith
Updated Mon, June 26, 2023




three pictures showing different views of one of the descent into one of the deepest caves in the world

photo looking up at a caver descending into a dark cavern from a bright opening above

The deepest cave in the Western Hemisphere — the Sistema Huautla in Mexico — is even longer than originally thought, scientists and cavers have discovered.

Cave explorers expanded the map of Sistema Huautla, a cave system in the Sierra Mazateca mountains in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, by 728 feet (222 meters). This means the known length of the cave is just over 62.7 miles (100 kilometers) — but further exploration may reveal it is even longer.

Sistema Huautla, the 10th-deepest cave in the world, was first discovered in the 1960s by cavers from Austin, Texas. Since 2014, researchers have carried out annual expeditions as part of the Proyecto Espeleológico Sistema Huautla, or Sistema Huautla Speleological Project (PESH) to find out more about the enormous underground labyrinth.

The latest expedition took place in April, and PESH announced the revised length in a statement on June 6.

Related: Surprise discovery of world's 2nd deepest blue hole could provide window into Earth's history

Sistema Huautla is 5,118 feet (1,581 m) deep — equivalent to around four Empire State buildings stacked on top of each other. There are 26 connected entrances to the cave, which is estimated to be up to 15 million years old, according to the statement.


caver fills up a bottle of water from a waterfall inside a cave system

A caver descending into a lit cave with a forest in the opening above

A caver descending into a cave from a brightly lit entrance


A man stands in front of helictite bushes

A caver attached to a rope climbing across a pool

The cavers who led the most recent expedition — Tommy Shifflett and Bill Steele — said they carry out the expeditions every April because it is the driest month of the year in the region. Diving during the dry season minimizes the risk of being trapped underground by flooding.

"With teams camping deep underground with no way to contact the surface, we are always keeping an eye on water levels," Steele said in the statement. "This April it was wetter than normal — that hampered our exploration somewhat."

In addition to mapping out Sistema Huautla, the team also added 1.9 miles (3 km) to the known length of Cueva Elysium, a nearby cave system separate from Sistema Huautla.

The information and data collected during the expeditions is shared with cave scientists in Mexico. So far, the expeditions have helped scientists learn more about how life adapts to cave environments and have photographed the paleontological remains of extinct animals.

The work has also been used to identify ancient climate patterns through analysis of stalagmites, a type of rock formation that rises from the ground of a cave due to minerals that drip from the ceiling.

Research published in 2021 showed Sistema Huautla is a hotspot for biodiversity. Biologists have found spiders, millipedes, beetles and silverfish living in the cave system, as well as a colony of common vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus) in one of the entrances.

The 2024 expedition will focus on two other caves near Sistema Huautla for exploration and surveying, the team said in the statement.

Time Running Out for Surprise Winner Pita to Secure Thai PM Role

Pita Limjaroenrat 

Patpicha Tanakasempipat
Updated Tue, June 27, 2023 at 5:21 PM MDT·5 min read


(Bloomberg) -- Ever since Pita Limjaroenrat led his Move Forward Party to a surprise first-place finish in Thailand’s election last month, he’s faced a flurry of legal complaints and controversies challenging his bid to take power after more than a decade of military-backed rule.

Now with parliament scheduled to convene July 3 and lawmakers expected to vote on a new prime minister in the days or weeks afterward, time is running out for the 42-year-old leader to make sure his victory was anything other than symbolic.

Pita’s biggest challenge remains the 250-member Senate — a body appointed by the royalist military establishment following a 2014 coup, many of whose members oppose his proposal to ease penalties for criticizing the royal family. And they apparently don’t care that he won the most votes.

“It’s not our job to listen to the people,” Senator Prapanth Koonmee, a lawyer who said 90% of lawmakers in the upper chamber have already made up their mind, said in an interview. “Even if you got 100 million votes, I still wouldn’t pick you if I don’t like you or find you suitable.”

That hasn’t slowed down the Harvard-educated Pita. He’s built support from a range of pro-democracy parties since the vote and traversed the country seeking to sustain enthusiasm for the May 14 election results, which amounted to a shocking blow to the royalist establishment.

The stakes are high ahead of the parliamentary vote, expected soon after King Maha Vajiralongkorn opens parliament next week. A failure by Pita to get enough support could mean the unraveling of his coalition or even rule by a minority-led government.

The uncertainty has Thailand’s markets and global investors on edge. Thailand’s main stock index is the worst performer in Asia this year, having tumbled about 11%.

Read More: Here’s How Thailand’s PM Race Could Play Out as Talks Drag On

Pita has downplayed the uncertainty and sought to reassure supporters that he will lead the next government. That outreach has included meetings with various business groups, where he talks about the transition of power and the agenda for his first 100 days in office.

“We’re working hard to break the wall and forge an understanding between the two chambers,” Pita said at Parliament House on Tuesday. “There is constant progress.”

He added that he’s confident there will be enough support — he currently needs 64 senators — for him to be prime minister.

“Pita seems to be trying to create a sense of momentum and inevitability about him becoming prime minister, in the hope of putting pressure on senators to back him,” said Peter Mumford, the Southeast Asia practice head of consultancy Eurasia Group. “It is far from certain that the strategy will work, though.”

His performance as a prime minister-in-waiting has helped energize Move Forward’s supporters, who have pressured senators in online campaigns, public panels and street demonstrations to declare their support for Pita. But the voices run the risk of falling on deaf ears, as many senators have remained silent or publicly ruled out their support.

For many senators, resistance to Pita’s leadership is based largely on Move Forward’s platform to amend the lese majeste law, or Article 112 of the Thai criminal code, which penalizes criticisms against the king and other royals.

“Senators don’t like his disloyalty to the monarchy and his plans to reform and uproot Thai society,” said Senator Prapanth, 69. “It’s not acceptable.”

Pita has denied allegations that he is disloyal, saying he seeks to improve the relationship between the monarchy and the people.

Prapanth’s remarks underscore just how high the odds are stacked against Pita and his pro-democracy coalition. Yet with Move Forward previously ruling out alliances with conservative parties, there is little alternative but to win over as many senators as possible.

Behind the scenes, Move Forward has deployed top officials to approach individual senators — and even relied on a network of allies who are friends and families of lawmakers to make the party’s case.

“We’re trying whatever method is required to communicate with as many senators as possible,” said Parit Wacharasindhu, the party’s policy campaign manager, who is also one of the negotiators doing the outreach.

One of their strategies has been to argue that senators should vote for Pita not because they agree with him but for the same reason they cited in voting for incumbent Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha in 2019: because he had the support of the majority of the lower house.

Parit noted that hopes are higher for a group of 63 senators who previously voted for a failed measure to abolish the Senate’s power to vote for prime minister and limit it to the 500-member lower house. Parit said he’s confident he can win those senators over, then go for others.

“I still hope that senators will make decisions based on rational grounds, regardless of emotion and personal preferences,” Parit said.

One lawmaker in the Pita camp is Senator Zakee Phithakkumpol, a 45-year-old academic who considers himself a minority in the upper chamber. Zakee said he occasionally shares his views privately with those who oppose Pita in hopes of changing their minds. He also helped advise Move Forward negotiators who approached him on how best to address the senators’ concerns, he said.

“I tried to communicate with the elder senators that I’m not taking Pita’s side but the way we’re carrying on may not be good in the long term, especially if we want the monarchy to endure in Thai society,” Zakee said in an interview.

Zakee, who backed Prayuth in 2019, said he believes that abiding by democratic principles is the only way to prevent chaos.

“Thai society is at a crossroads between change and delaying it,” he said. “Your choice will upset some people either way, so what’s more important is to respect the rules. I believe that doing the right thing will protect you.”

--With assistance from Anuchit Nguyen and Margo Towie.

Will AI really destroy humanity?


Joseph BOYLE
Mon, 26 June 2023 

The Stop Killer Robots group has explicitly dismissed the Terminator scenario

 (JEWEL SAMAD)

The warnings are coming from all angles: artificial intelligence poses an existential risk to humanity and must be shackled before it is too late.

But what are these disaster scenarios and how are machines supposed to wipe out humanity?

- Paperclips of doom -


Most disaster scenarios start in the same place: machines will outstrip human capacities, escape human control and refuse to be switched off.

"Once we have machines that have a self-preservation goal, we are in trouble," AI academic Yoshua Bengio told an event this month.

But because these machines do not yet exist, imagining how they could doom humanity is often left to philosophy and science fiction.

Philosopher Nick Bostrom has written about an "intelligence explosion" he says will happen when superintelligent machines begin designing machines of their own.

He illustrated the idea with the story of a superintelligent AI at a paperclip factory.

The AI is given the ultimate goal of maximising paperclip output and so "proceeds by converting first the Earth and then increasingly large chunks of the observable universe into paperclips".

Bostrom's ideas have been dismissed by many as science fiction, not least because he has separately argued that humanity is a computer simulation and supported theories close to eugenics.

He also recently apologised after a racist message he sent in the 1990s was unearthed.

Yet his thoughts on AI have been hugely influential, inspiring both Elon Musk and Professor Stephen Hawking.

- The Terminator -

If superintelligent machines are to destroy humanity, they surely need a physical form.

Arnold Schwarzenegger's red-eyed cyborg, sent from the future to end human resistance by an AI in the movie "The Terminator", has proved a seductive image, particularly for the media.

But experts have rubbished the idea.

"This science fiction concept is unlikely to become a reality in the coming decades if ever at all," the Stop Killer Robots campaign group wrote in a 2021 report.

However, the group has warned that giving machines the power to make decisions on life and death is an existential risk.

Robot expert Kerstin Dautenhahn, from Waterloo University in Canada, played down those fears.

She told AFP that AI was unlikely to give machines higher reasoning capabilities or imbue them with a desire to kill all humans.

"Robots are not evil," she said, although she conceded programmers could make them do evil things.

- Deadlier chemicals -

A less overtly sci-fi scenario sees "bad actors" using AI to create toxins or new viruses and unleashing them on the world.

Large language models like GPT-3, which was used to create ChatGPT, it turns out are extremely good at inventing horrific new chemical agents.

A group of scientists who were using AI to help discover new drugs ran an experiment where they tweaked their AI to search for harmful molecules instead.

They managed to generate 40,000 potentially poisonous agents in less than six hours, as reported in the Nature Machine Intelligence journal.

AI expert Joanna Bryson from the Hertie School in Berlin said she could imagine someone working out a way of spreading a poison like anthrax more quickly.

"But it's not an existential threat," she told AFP. "It's just a horrible, awful weapon."

- Species overtaken -

The rules of Hollywood dictate that epochal disasters must be sudden, immense and dramatic -- but what if humanity's end was slow, quiet and not definitive?

"At the bleakest end our species might come to an end with no successor," philosopher Huw Price says in a promotional video for Cambridge University's Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.

But he said there were "less bleak possibilities" where humans augmented by advanced technology could survive.

"The purely biological species eventually comes to an end, in that there are no humans around who don't have access to this enabling technology," he said.

The imagined apocalypse is often framed in evolutionary terms.

Stephen Hawking argued in 2014 that ultimately our species will no longer be able to compete with AI machines, telling the BBC it could "spell the end of the human race".

Geoffrey Hinton, who spent his career building machines that resemble the human brain, latterly for Google, talks in similar terms of "superintelligences" simply overtaking humans.

He told US broadcaster PBS recently that it was possible "humanity is just a passing phase in the evolution of intelligence".

jxb/rl

£3m to fix the UK’s housing crisis? Ha ha ha ha ha, your royal highness

Zoe Williams
Tue, 27 June 2023

The Guardian
Opinion

Photograph: James Marsh/Shutterstock

Prince William is going to solve homelessness with a new royal foundation, launching a project called Homewards that starts with £3m for six towns and cities across the UK. It’s such a short sentence to make so little sense. You can look at the housing crisis from a range of perspectives. Some people are obsessed with planning permission; some have a supply-side fetish. You don’t have to chalk it all up to the ever more feudal rentier economy. Nevertheless, we could agree, I think, that dropping half a mil into a city, even if it might put a roof over a handful of heads, would barely scratch the surface.

Furthermore, whatever your view on equality – and again, there’s a spectrum, with some people thinking great concentrations of unearned wealth are good for motivation or whatnot – it would still, I think, strike you as piquant that a man with housing plenty beyond anything he could ever use would style himself as ambassador for the business of getting people off the streets.

Elsewhere in Gaslit Nation, the website This Is Money has been giving advice on how to clean up your credit score if you’re applying for a mortgage: make sure you have separated your finances from those of your feckless ex; get a credit card, and if you have one, keep on top of the bills; register to vote. Because definitely, in the matter of affordability criteria, you are the problem. If you had only kept up the minimum payments on your Marks & Spencer charge card and been a bit more careful in the company you kept, you would be a much better bet for the housing indebtedness that soon nobody will be able to afford and only the luckiest will be able to evade.

It’s baffling, this commitment to a delusion, where nothing systemic has gone wrong, there is no crash round the corner, no spectre of homelessness stalking all the graphs. It’s such an intricate phantasm, collectively constructed, of an old world in which individuals can solve all their own problems, and if they can’t, Prince William can help. I almost admire it.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny thought people were joking about the Wagner revolt and that it was just an 'Internet meme'

Charles R. Davis
Tue, 27 June 2023 

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his wife Yulia walk with demonstrators during a 2020 march in memory of murdered Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov in downtown Moscow. He suffered a life-threatening poisoning months later, in August 2020.

KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP via Getty Images

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said he first thought people were joking about the Wagner rebellion.


Navalny is currently in a Russian prison, accused of "terrorism" against the state.


"I thought it was some kind of new joke or Internet meme that hadn't reached me yet," he said.

The images out of Russia this past weekend were surreal. But for jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who faces the prospect of life in prison over what are widely seen as fabricated charges of "terrorism," the news that Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin had pulled out of Ukraine and was marching instead on the capital of Russia was literally a joke.

"I kept expecting someone to suddenly yell 'You got punk'd'!" Navalny wrote Tuesday in a series of posts on social media, recounting how he first heard the news from lawyers ahead of a recent court appearance. "So how did martial law go for you?" one attorney had asked him, according to Navalny, who gained notoriety in Russia by campaigning against official corruption. "I thought it was some kind of new joke or Internet meme that hadn't reached me yet."

The rebellion, led by a former ally of President Vladimir Putin, began just a day after Russia's highest court ruled that Navalny — convicted of "fraud" after returning to Russia following an apparently state-sponsored attempt on his life — could continue to be denied a pen and paper while behind bars. His social media missives are communicated to his legal team and posted by staff outside of Russia.

The irony of it all is not lost on Navalny, who on Tuesday noted that he stands "accused of forming an organization to overthrow President Putin by violent means," even as Prigozhin, whose mercenaries shot down more than a half-dozen Russian military aircraft on Saturday, killing service members, had the criminal case against him dropped within 48 hours of launching an armed insurrection, despite very publicly threatening the life of Russia's minister of defense, Sergei Shoigu.

"It was Putin personally who did this," Navalny said, noting that rebellion was led by an erstwhile ally and that Putin himself "pardoned all those convicts who were on their way to assassinate Shoigu and whoever else they wanted to kill."

The lesson, he continued, is that change in Russian cannot come through violent means — nor can stability be delivered by an autocrat — but rather through a commitment to free and fair elections. Russia's next presidential contest is scheduled for March 2024, even as Navalny faces the new charges that could extend his sentence by decades.

"It is not democracy, human rights and parliamentarism that make the regime weak and lead to turmoil. It is dictators and usurpation of power that lead to mess, weak government and chaos," Navalny said. "Always has been."

CONSIDERING HOW MANY INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES KNEW ABOUT IT WE CAN NOW CALL IT; A FALSE FLAG

British spies had ‘extremely detailed picture’ of Wagner’s mutiny plans

Joe Barnes
Tue, 27 June 2023

Yevgeny Prigozhin launched a shot-lived coup in Russia - AP

British officials had “an extremely detailed and accurate picture” of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny plans before his troops began to advance, according to reports.

The details were shared by US intelligence officials ahead of the short-lived insurrection, and contained information of where and how Wagner Group mercenaries planned to move.

Britain was one of the few allied countries to be handed the details, as Washington avoided circulating its reports to a wider group of Nato allies.

The intelligence, according to CNN, was kept so secret within the US that it was only briefed to the most senior officials and the so-called “Group of Eight” members of Congress, who have access to highly sensitive intelligence details.

“It was an extremely tight hold,” a source said.

The secrecy of the information was blamed for US and European officials being caught off guard when Prigozhin seized control of Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia before marching toward Moscow, other sources said.

Some Nato officials have expressed frustration that the intelligence was not shared in advance of the attempted mutiny, which eventually fizzled out after an agreement to end it.

Ukraine was also kept in the dark amid fears the information could be leaked to adversaries listening into calls between Washington and Kyiv.

Separately, Kyiv was urged not to launch strikes within Russia during the rebellion amid fears it could trigger an escalation in the conflict by Moscow, a Western official told CNN.

“The message was don’t rock the boat here,” the official said.

“Ukrainians were being cautioned by allies not to provoke the situation. Make hay of opportunities on Ukrainian territory but don’t get drawn into internal matters or strike at offensive military assets inside of Russia.”

After the attempted mutiny was launched, Joe Biden, the US president, was keen to stress that the US or other Nato allies had played no role in trying to oust Vladimir Putin’s most senior military officials.

Washington had been tracking Prigozhin’s mounting feud with the Russian defence ministry for many months.

Intelligence officials picked up information that his Wagner mercenaries were stockpiling weapons and ammunition leading up to the rebellion.

Democratic Senator Mark Warner, a member of the Gang of Eight, said the mutiny “was almost hiding in plain sight”.

“Putin of 10 years ago would have never allowed this to play out the way it did,” he told CNN, adding that the Russian president is “clearly weakened” by the incident.

“The fact that you have a mercenary group, that I don’t think had a full 25,000 troops the way Prigozhin claimed, but was able to literally march into Rostov, a city of a million people which was the command and control for the whole Ukrainian war, and take it over with barely a shot fired – that is unprecedented, to say the least,” Mr Warner said.

Welsh mining towns had alternative currencies 200 years ago – here's what the crypto world could learn from them


Edward Thomas Jones, Senior Lecturer in Economics / Director of the Institute of European Finance, Bangor University

 Laurence Jones, Lecturer in Finance, Bangor University

The Conversation
Tue, 27 June 2023

A halfpenny token issued by the Parys Mining Company of Anglesey in 1788. The hooded druid design was used for many years and was the first of hundreds of token designs. BrandonBigheart/Wikimedia

You can also read this article in Welsh.

The global cryptocurrency market has seen a number of recent setbacks: from the collapse of the Terra/Luna system in May 2022 to the failure of FTX, one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world.

Because of these factors, and other concerns over cryptocurrencies’ carbon emissions, these assets lost US$2 trillion in value (£1.5 trillion) in 2022.

But while cryptocurrencies get a lot of attention today, in some ways they are not a revolutionary concept. Hundreds of years ago, workers in Wales were often paid with alternative currencies instead of money.

These currencies were physical tokens that represented and were linked to the value of real money. Many cryptocurrencies work in a similar way, acting as digital tokens that represent a ledger of financial assets (this is known as “tokenisation”).

Digital currencies are also not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain their network of exchange. Again, this is similar to how physical tokens were used by Welsh mining companies.
Currency crisis

Towards the end of the 18th century the coinage of Britain was in a deplorable state due to the severe shortages of silver and copper coins. During the Industrial Revolution people migrated from the countryside into mining and manufacturing centres. But living in towns required money, and the ability to pay wages was impossible for businesses without small change.

With an influx of new workers using money, new shops were opened to meet demand, creating more jobs that required payment in coins. Although the production of counterfeit coins was illegal and punishable by death, it was not illegal to produce tokens with other designs which could be used instead of coins.

The first great era of token production during the first Industrial Revolution began in 1787 with the issue of the Parys Mining Company token. This company mined at Parys Mountain on the Welsh island of Anglesey. It briefly produced more copper than any other mine in the world during the Industrial Revolution.

What Parys mountain on Anglesey looks like today. rhianjane/Pixabay

It also used the high-quality ore from its mine to produce tokens which could be exchanged for official coin at full value at any one of its shops or offices. This made the Parys Mining Company the first company in the world to issue tokens. These were described as the “premier tokens” of the 18th century by that era’s coin experts.

Soon, practically every town in Britain was producing its own tokens. This was driven in part by a shortage of government coinage and improvements in coin manufacturing by Matthew Boulton’s Soho Mint in Birmingham, who also turned his hand to tokens.

By the turn of the 19th century, the total supply and fast circulation of tokens, foreign coins and other substitutes probably exceeded those of the official coin of the country.

The process of tokenisation was subsequently seen in other countries, in particular the United States. Mining and logging camps in the 19th century US were typically owned and operated by a single company, often in remote locations with poor access to cash.

These companies would often pay their workers in “scrip”, or tokens. The workers, given the limited places they could spend scrips, had little choice but to purchase goods at company-owned stores. By placing large mark ups on goods, the company could increase their profits and enforce employee loyalty.

A Parys penny produced by the Parys Mining Company. 

Obscurasky/Wikimedia

While the production of tokens by the Parys Mining Company were spurred on by the first Industrial Revolution, the adoption and popularity of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has been hastened by the fourth Industrial Revolution.

Although they are more than 200 years apart, the history of these tokens have important lessons for today’s cryptocurrencies. First, for cryptocurrencies to succeed there needs to be various ways for individuals to accumulate the crypto/tokens, plus a demand and use for the crypto that means it holds its value, and trusted environments where exchange for goods and services can take place.

And second, for cryptocurrencies to be successful and sustainable in the long term they must uphold their original purpose of having an ecosystem that remains independent of a single company or government. Efforts to lock cryptocurrencies to a single organisation do not look positive, for example Facebook’s failed attempt to launch a cryptocurrency, announced in 2019.

The tokens of Welsh mining companies inherently failed when the closures of the mine or shops led to the removal of one or more of the three components of the ecosystem. And then people left with the tokens lost their money, a lesson for us today.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.