They’ll just take the position of whoever pays them more
Path of least resistance ⚡
There’s a special chair for that.
How many people in Congress are older than email?
Born before 1971? That’s barely the required entry age (I jest).
Seriously though, it’s possible to learn “computer stuff” even after you’re born (I jest again).
Which for some reason many politicians - often somewhat older - refuse to do. “We have people for that, and anyhow, PR and polls are more important”.
My father in law died almost 10 years ago at 94.
He was still going to thrift shops to get old PCs to rebuild until around 90 when his vision started giving out. He was a tax accountant who just happened to be into technology, and it was tangentially related at best to his career of almost 70 years.
Flip side is my 30+ years of doing IT, frequently dealing with people younger than me who lamented they were too old to learn the BASICS of how the device that essentially kept them fed worked. This is not in reference to people just doing their proverbial 9 to 5 or implying they should work harder than their wages… it was almost entire engineers and commercial real estate brokers. People with either some education or way further up the socioeconomic ladder than I was. It was a choice to stay ignorant. Sometimes even a perverse badge of honor.
So even though congress is OVERWHELMINGLY elderly, any of them could have cared to learn even the basics in the last 34 years of commercially available internet. Or even before depending on career.
Then again, we have jeenyuses like Tommy Tuberville, so any argument of learning for the sheer sake of knowledge goes out the window.
That’s a great story.
I learned early on that it’s me who has power over the machine, not the other way round.
It was a choice to stay ignorant. Sometimes even a perverse badge of honor.
Yep. Like they’d somehow get their fingers dirty if they bothered to learn how that machine worked.
One of the brokers at my last job (l ‘retired’ in 2016) had an assistant who did just about every aspect of his work except the schmoozing. This pathetic excuse for a functioning human couldn’t figure out why he “couldn’t login to his email” multiple times while I worked there. Every 90 days even. Something along the lines of “I don’t understand, my password worked yesterday”.
This stupid motherfucker was getting locked out of his Active Directory account and couldn’t unlock his PC. After a solid 15 days of warnings that he would need to change his password. For years this kept happening. I believe he was raking in high 7 figures MINIMUM and all he was good for was convicting other people to spend money on corporate real estate.
and the password needs to be his kids names because that’s the password they use for things
With a constantly iterating digit at the start. Fun times.
A slim majority, about 300 out of 535, figuring the date of creation of email at 1971.
For additional context, you know that infamous clip of Katie Couric being utterly baffled about how an email address works before asking her producer “Could you explain what ‘internet’ is?” That aired on January 24, 1994. Which, I can understand, the world wide web was switched on in August of 1991, not 3 years prior, so there wasn’t a lot of demand for internet connectivity among the masses yet. It was about the time for TV personalities to learn about email live on air.
That was 32 years ago, when email was already 23 years old.
there are silent generation in congress, that are older than boomers, so most of them.
It’s not just the US congress.
I always like to cite a relative, who’s turning 90 soon, who had to learn computers & internet in the 90s to stay afloat in his business. And he did, and did it well. Why does the same not apply to politicians all over the world? It’s beyond me.
Of course younger people will have it easier there, but this is not purely a question of age. I suspect it’s a question of wealth and hubris, like: I can’t be arsed to learn technology, one of my employees will take care of it. Oh and print out these emails, will you, doll.
Age divisions are a wedge issue like any other wedge issue, designed to distract from the wealth inequality fiercely fought for by the oligarchs.
Like several other wedge issues, there are a few valid points there. But it’s mostly to distract. And there’s plenty of counter-points - like statistics that show young people are turning nazi at rates that mean the problem of “Boomers” is not going to die out.
It takes effort and humility, how many older folks do you know that have those? Except your example?
When you treat is as a tool, like guns, then it’s simple: AI does not do unlawful things, people do. So anyone handling this tool is responsible for ‘it’s’ actions.
Treat AI as if it’s an intelligent pet, and any damages it does also transfers to the one responsible for it - almost the same difference. When a certain line of AI’s keep doing unlawful things then, because it’s categorized as ‘pet’, treat them as an unreliable breed.
Treat AI as an stand-alone individual, then ask why on Earth a company let’s an untrained idiot have access to all kinds of sensitive PII data and continuously allow it to hack websites.
Even if it was a standalone indivual (which is NOT) we can all agree that it cannot act alone just like a kid and who’s at fault when kids do bad things? The parents which in this case would be the users
But it’s in many cases not ‘your’ kid. You have invited someone else’s kid (with unknown upbringing) to let it play with yours (or alone at your place, but that’s an awkward example). You can instruct it to play around, but who’s at fault when this invitee starts to make a mess all by itself.
Anyway, in the case of hacking, as we can read in the news, it is the kid doing it’s ‘explorations’ unsupervised from its parents house.
but who’s at fault when this invitee starts to make a mess all by itself.
Idk where you live, but here where i live, it’s the fault of who’s job was to watch over the kid in that moment, the only exception could be if the kid’s mother told him to bring a weapon and to kill people
Lol, I like to dream too.
We can’t even get laws stating that these fucking
machanical turk“AI” cab companies are responsible for the shit their driverless cars do, and those have immediate real world impacts.If you ask me then each and every single “driverless” car should have its own driver’s exam. And should be renewed after every lobotomy or “upgrade”.
I have a better question: at least some of those “driverless” cars are at least some of the time remote controlled by people in Southeast Asia or Pacifica. Do they have valid US driving licenses?
They’ll do what they always do: Let industry write the regulations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Upright_Music,_Ltd._v._Warner_Bros._Records_Inc.
Rap artists have to clear every last sample or they don’t own the copyright to their work- but when tech oligarchs pirate every ebook ever made and use it to build plagiarism engines, it is not just legal, they will get a bailout if their slop doesn’t turn a profit.
most of what I know about congress is that half-dead turtle they roll out with a wheelchair once in a while so we know he’s maybe alive
“barely capable of email” seems like an understatement
So cybercrime is apparently not cybercrime when a major hyperscale AI does it.
Take Tommy tuberville, does anyone who is even slightly intelligent believe he could understand “AI” well enough to actually regulate it?
Petey Potatotown is unfit to regulate a teeball game.
Why are we even bothering with the “middleman”?
As it is now, voters are paying these parasites many millions a year (remember in addition to their salaries they have the best healthcare and perks on Earth, I’d be stunned if they ever pay for a meal or any other expense) to pass legislation.
… and corporations are providing congress with barrels full of cash to pass legislation (that was written by the corporations)
Just make Amazon, Tesla, JP Morgan, Vanguard et al our “representatives”, and everybody saves an enormous fortune.
We’re paying for a puppet show that provides nothing to anybody.
I agree. A prerequisite for serving in Congress should be not still having a VCR with “12:00” flashing on the clock.