Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/811509
ChipThompson, Editor How to have your say: Letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and no more than two double-spaced pages or 500words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@ redbluffdailynews.com Fax: 530-527-9251 Mail to: Daily News 728Main St., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS ElonMuskissoobsessedwithself-improving artificial intelligence (A.I.) being mankind's biggest existential threat that he now has a new company, Neuralink. Musk'snewcompany,ac- cording to the Wall Street Jour- nal, will create devices known as "neural laces" that can be implanted in the human brain so people can mentally merge with software and ensure artifi- cial intelligence programs have less of a chance of taking over the world and destroying hu- manity. The Musk Mind Meld. Musk has given quite a few talks on the subject of A.I., never failing to remind his au- diences of the inherent dangers of creating algorithms that re- write themselves to improve their own effectiveness and ef- ficiencies, whatever they are, at the expense of any obstacles in their way, such as people. Imagine a factory run en- tirely on artificial intelligence that manufactures ice cream making equipment. The soft- ware is singularly focused on making robots that make equipment that makes ice cream. For this program, anything that gets in the way of making ice cream is counter-intuitive to its programming. And its evolving program- ming could easily be running in background processes. Too many people in too many houses taking up valu- able acreage for clover-covered fields upon which milking cows can graze? Get rid of the people and the problem is solved. This is the sort of scary sci- ence fiction stuff imagined by genius Musk and others. We just watch, agape, as ge- nius coders make microwaves and smart TV's that can spy on you and refrigerators that call the liquor store to replen- ish your stock of Victory Hop Devil. How else might these devices be programmed? We know today's computer- chipped cars can be hacked at 70 mph and tech gurus put masking tape over their laptop cameras. What we don't know is how many real jobs will be lost to robots that can operate other robots and to what extent they will be able to repair them- selves. Or how soon. In Arizona, a crashing self- driving Uber is simply a lesson learned from failure. In New Zealand, drones are delivering pizza. Last year, Bell-Hawk Sys- tems, a manufacturing process and inventory tracking com- pany, announced "how real- time Artificial Intelligence techniques originally devel- oped for the USAF and NASA are being applied to manufac- turing organizations to enable managers to run their manu- facturing plants with less stress and much smaller management teams." "Smaller management teams." Fewer employees, more production. How soon before Amazon decides human workers are too slow and expensive in the long term when robots and drones can do all the work with- out health insurance, workers comp and 401 (k) expenses? Your Amazon order comes in via the Internet, the receiving software transmits your order to fulfillment, which is an auto- mated electrical device travel- ing above the acres of automat- ically barcoded boxes, grabbing your precious merchandise with its mechanical grip, travel- ing the ceiling-mounted check- erboard of rails to the auto- mated postage stamping bay, from which it is delivered via rollers onto a truck with the automated truck loading sys- tem... or just to the drone with its GPS programmed with your front porch. Oft-quoted Oxford professor Nick Bostrom warns, "Horses were initially complemented by carriages and ploughs, which greatly increased the horse's productivity. Later," Bostrom notes, "horses were substituted for by automobiles and tractors. When horses became obsolete as a source of labor, many were sold off to meatpackers to be processed into dog food, bone meal, leather, and glue." "In the United States, there were about 26 million horses in 1915." Bostrom points out. "By the early 1950s, 2 million re- mained." So it follows that when A.I. software sees humans as ob- solete for the software's pur- pose, either some super-diligent army of Neuralink neuro-war- riors shut it down or it shuts us down. No wonder Elon Musk is so driven to populate Mars with as many humans as he can...as well as himself. RickJensenisDelaware's award-winning conservative talk show host on WDEL, streaming live on WDEL.com from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. local time. Contact Rick at rick@ wdel.com, or follow him on Twitter @Jensen1150WDEL. RickJensen I, robot. You, unemployed Cartoonist's take Am I the only one who realizes what was wrong with President Trump's decision to send guided missiles to an air- field on Syria's sov- ereign soil? I believe he was wrong because he admittedly gave an emotional re- sponse to the gas- sing of little chil- dren in Syria, a re- sponse undoubtedly shared by millions of Americans, but an emotional response nevertheless. We should not condone emotional responses from our Presidents. With hindsight, it appears President Bush did just this fol- lowing 9/11 and well before he had received complete informa- tion as to the true perpetrators of the Twin Towers attacks. We can only hope Putin does not re- act emotionally in defense of his pseudo ally Bashar al-Assad, who has been President of that back- ward country for 17 years. What should Trump have done? He should have first pre- sented his plan before Congress for its approval. Instead, he be- lieved for the moment, that a) those bastard Syrians were not going to gas little children again on his watch and b) this type of knee jerk reaction will further assure the devotion of his sup- porters. But responsible Presi- dents don't play "the little chil- dren" card to justify their action, regardless of the horror commit- ted by an adversary. In any case, the victims are Bashar al-Assad's people, not ours. It is his call how they are treated and it is the peo- ple's call to remove him from of- fice for his actions. The prob- lem is, how to do so under an op- pressive regime? The US did that in Iraq regarding Saddam Hus- sein, but that didn't turn out the way President Bush had planned even though it appeared to be the humanitarian thing to do at the time. ••• Internet humor: A recent study has found that women who carry a little extra weight live longer than the men who mention it. Did you know that dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captiv- ity they can train people to stand on the very edge of the pool and throw them fish? I can't under- stand why women are okay with JC Penney, which has an older women's clothing line named " Sag Harbor." The pharmacist asked me my birth date again to- day. I'm pretty sure she's going to get me something. ••• I received an endearing birth- day card that showed a dog on the cover with a short stick bal- anced on his nose and reading "Hope nobody else got you a stick for your birthday." ••• Police log reported Tuesday, on Sherwood Boulevard in Los Moli- nos, a woman wearing a wedding dress was sleeping on the side of the road and was asked to move along. She apparently did not get to the church on time. Officer might have given her a ride, but she was probably too late already. She might have missed the oppor- tunity of a lifetime. Tsk, tsk. ••• When you see a train rolling through town do you realize how important that mode of transpor- tation still is? Sources say goods travel more miles by train than any other mode — 40% by train, 29% by truck, 20% by pipeline, 12% by water and only 1% by air. The source did not report on hu- man freight or passengers. You may recall that we had once a railroad station on Madi- son and Walnut. It was next to a little park and was kept nice and tidy as long as the train stopped in our fair city. When Southern Pacific ceased local service, how- ever, the station fell into disrepair and was eventually torn down. However, what I remember most, as a lad walking to school and passing the old station, was its restrooms. They were acces- sible to passersby in addition to train passengers, and contained the latest in restroom poetry, which probably got me started on my love of same. I commit- ted many such poems to mem- ory. These were compelling in- structions from a bygone era. You probably can't even find them on the Internet these days. ••• We were surprised to learn, from this paper's "100 years ago" section a lesson way back then in patriotism that seems quaint by today's standards, and no lon- ger enforceable. The article read "Keep still if you can't speak well of the flag," and continued, "The United States government has thrown out a nationwide dragnet for spies. Every city and county as well as state officers have become a part of the system of secret ser- vice agents. In this county, Sher- iff Boyd has received his instruc- tion from the United States Mar- shal to arrest any person caught maligning the government, the flag or the President of the United States. The authorities will nat- urally look upon any person that denounces the government as un- friendly to the government and a potential source of mischief..." and so on. ••• A chicken farmer went to the local bar, sat down next to a woman and ordered a glass of champagne. The woman said, "How strange, I also just ordered a glass of champagne." "What a coincidence," said the farmer, who added. "It is a special day for me, I'm celebrating." "It is a special day for me too. I am also celebrating," said the woman. "What a coincidence," said the farmer. While they toasted, the man asked. "What are you cel- ebrating?" "My husband and I have been trying to have a child for years, and today my gynecolo- gist told me that I was pregnant." "What a coincidence" said the man. "I'm a chicken farmer and for years all my hens were infer- tile, but now they are all set to lay fertilized eggs." "This is awe- some," said the woman. "What did you do for your chickens to become fertile?" "I used a differ- ent rooster," the farmer said. The woman smiled and said, "What a coincidence." Robert Minch is a lifelong resident of Red Bluff, former columnist for the Corning Daily Observer and Meat Industry magazine and author of the "The Knocking Pen." He can be reached at rminchandmurray@hotmail. com. I say On President Trump's decision to bomb Syria How soon before Amazon decides human workers are too slow and expensive in the long term when robots and drones can do all the work without health insurance, workers comp and 401 (k) expenses? Sounding off A look at what readers are saying in comments on our website and on social media. Why was he even there its a private driveway to an orchard? If he wanted to stop he could have just pulled over on the side of the road, there is plenty of room. Sara Salazar: On a man injured when his SUV parked on railroad tracks was struck by a train. Wow. Deja vu. My dad did all that in 1969 when he ran the airport concession for the city. North Valley Aviation is still scratched in the sidewalk at the Red Bluff airport. I remember the Link trainer (flight simulator). My mom was the "Hertz girl," in the mustard uniform with pillbox hat. D'Lorah Hurton: On renovations planned at the Red Bluff Municipal Airport. Robert Minch StateandNational Assemblyman James Galla- gher, 2060 Talbert Drive, Ste. 110, Chico 95928, 530 895-4217, http://ad03.asmrc.org/ Senator Jim Nielsen, 2634 Forest Ave., Ste. 110, Chico 95928, 530 879-7424, senator. nielsen@senate.ca.gov Governor Jerry Brown, State Capital Building, Sacramento 95814, 916 445-2841, fax 916 558-3160, governor@governor. ca.gov U.S. Representative Doug La- Malfa, 507 Cannon House Of- fice Building, Washington D.C. 20515, 202 225-3076 U.S. Senator Dianne Fein- stein, One Post St., Ste. 2450, San Francisco 94104, 415 393- 0707, fax 415 393-0710 U.S. Senator Kamala Har- ris, 501 I St., Ste. 7-600, Sacra- mento 95814, 916 448-2787, fax 202 228-3865 Local Tehama County Supervisors, 527-4655 District 1, Steve Chamblin, Ext. 3015 District 2, Candy Carlson, Ext. 3014 District 3, Dennis Garton, Ext. 3017 District 4, Bob Williams, Ext. 3018 District 5, Burt Bundy, Ext. 3016 Red Bluff City Manager, Rich- ard Crabtree, 527-2605, Ext. 3061 Corning City Manager, Kris- tina Miller, 824-7033 YOUR OFFICIALS OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Friday, April 14, 2017 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6