DAMMIT. Edited version of my post below. I had some stuff bassackwards: Man....so much of these. Lack of humanity, decency, and empathy are fucking killing us. And you know, it doesn't even have to all be sincere, or perfect. It just has to EXIST. Just having it present acts as a guardrail -- shit, read Reagan's farewell "shining city on a hill" address. For his many, many, many faults....Ronald fucking Reagan showed more human decency in that single speech than we've heard from any of our "leaders," political or business, in the past year. Just have something, that tiny shred of "hope" huddling in the corner of the box. It's a start, and that can be enough. Business already has an affinity for shoving human concerns down to the bottom. Profit uber alles. We have cautionary tales about that dating back to the invention of writing (seriously, this is Biblical stuff, ancient greek and roman stuff, Dickensian stuff). Now that business is increasingly technology based - and by technology, we're talking about tech that doesn't just replace our physical labor (mining equipment did that long ago), it's replacing the things that are the essence of our humanity. Replacing and destroying the essence of our humanity, with the sole goal of increasing profits....for billionaires. And sociopaths like Altman are happy to push it along, stomping on the gas the whole way. Every cautionary tale? Ground to dust. Here's a good example, that pre-dates this AI bullshit. Many states have pushed through/tried to make it the LAW that "fiduciary duty" can ONLY consider profitability. That is, if you (as a fiduciary, CEO type or something like that) consider something OTHER than profitability, you can be sued by shareholders for breaching your fiduciary duty. "Yes, we decided to go with the design of the car that would lead to the gas tank exploding and killing 10 people a year, because the cost saving from building a shoddy gas tank would yield more dollars than we'd lose in wrongful death payments. The profitability dictated the proper outcome." That is your legal DUTY, and you'd be breaching your duty and subject to liability if you said "but man....doing something that would cost human lives is wrong, even if it makes each shareholder an extra $.00001. So, we opted for the safer design." That is, culturally, and even legally, we are not just abandoning humanity and empathy, we are defining them as EVILS. See the Elons etc., constantly harping against empathy. There are so many voices out there demonizing....fucking EMPATHY. WTF? Fuck. That. Shit. Profit and technology without humanity -- even worse, at the expense of humanity -- are poison. And don't think my world is immune to that. I remember well a conversation some years ago. An old friend of mine was in a very powerful judicial position. He authored a concurrence in a rather important case (I wasn't involved, but I was monitoring it because it would impact my practice). The decision came out during the week, and I read it all. I bumped into him at a random social event that weekend. We got to talking, and he proudly asked "didja read my concurrence in the ABC case?" I told him I had. He then told me the parts he was proudest of. I listened, and learned a lot. Because he was an intellectual. And an excellent writer. And the concurrence was clever, and brilliantly written. It was also devoid of humanity. It stated not a single word even acknowledging what its real-world impact would be, which was going to end up hurting a lot of people. Now, sometimes, that sort of outcome cannot be avoided. Faithfulness to the law sometimes means a bad outcome is required. But a good judge acknowledges that. Perhaps even beseeches the legislature to fix this law, because the way it works hurts people, and SURELY that's not what the legislature intended. But a technocrat, a disciple of the modern ethos, dispenses with empathy altogether. Like my friend's concurrence did. Don't think I'm condemning all judges, or even all judges of that particular political stripe. A classmate was an appellate judge, and a Republican, and we were chatting one time over drinks. And he shared with me how he'd been tossing and turning all night fretting over a family law appeal he was handling. He had to simultaneously wrestle with the law, and with his human concern over the kids, whose futures and lives were at stake. He shared with me that caring about this sort of thing surely took years off his life. It was the hardest part of the job. And him telling me that made me feel good, because that SHOULD be the hardest part of the job. That's all I want from my judges. From my CEOs. From the manager of my local coffee shot. Just fucking GIVE A SHIT. Start there, and eventually, good things will follow. And guess what? You can make a nice profit, too. Success and humanity are not mutually exclusive. Fixing that awful new "law" is the task for the coming generation. And maybe wrecking shop on all these AI sociopaths needs to be part of that.