"AI will of course take over any new requirements..."

by simply reporting what it's told to. You need the average to be 40 mpg, then it's 40 mpg. There's a reason Teslas have such good range, the company is run by pathological liars.

"This is a much-needed move..."

Nothing the Trump does is a "much needed move" unless you are a criminal. I guess that tells us who sinij is.

"Trump needs to pick fights the USA can win."

Trump's definition of "win" is not the same as yours. Trump's winning always ends in bankruptcy.

"Five months after releasing a plan to accelerate the development of artificial intelligence..."

LOL

"...the Trump administration is turning to robots."

LOLOL

What about robots enables Trump to steal billions of dollars without effort?

This is why such people should never be in positions of power.

What you're trying to do here is deal with the world the way you think it should be, not the way it actually is. So saying, "You can just do this" if the world was the way you think is should isn't a particularly well supported assertion.

I think you know...that they do exactly that, just like Apple leaves their devices listening even when you configure SirI to be off. Of course they do.

What I'd like is that, given YouTube knows what you've watched, that it stop recommending your watched videos. But that would be a feature for MY benefit, not Google's.

"The whole point of this is because Waymo isn't supposed to make those mistakes,"

There is no whole point in such a complex issue, but I would like to tell this person that the idea is part of the argument for automated vehicles is they may make less mistakes. Perfection shouldn't be a condition for improvement.

Look, I'm not above using a bit of AI when I'm coding, but that's limited to asking chat GPT to bang out a short function or something that I don't feel like coding myself (ie, most recently "Give me a bit of TSQL to determine if a date falls on Thanksgiving"). There is no way in hell I'd turn it loose with the ability to actually modify files on my system.

"They're at least open and blatant with their corruption. It's not hiding and pretending to be something else before the bullshit moment. It's bullshit right up front and center."

Trump views the US as his personal property. To him there is no corruption, he can do as he likes. The Supreme Court agrees, except when it suggests it might not. Congress has been dysfunctional since Gingrich, the destruction of US government has been the Republican plan for decades. To Trump, the US is the family business, it's not socialism or fascism, it's just taking money he's entitled to.

People need to see Trump for who he is. We don't have a functioning government or constitution any longer, only a fight over whether Trump owns everything and whether billionaires and christian extremists who put him in power are satisfied with the scraps.

"It was a terrific idea and I hope it got traction. "
No, it's a terrible idea and always was. It's not intended to solve the problem you think, nor does it solve any problem you want.

"But AI has turned software engineering into a mess. "
Perhaps, but licensing programmers does nothing to solve that.

"Right wing politics favors free markets and individual responsibility. "

No it doesn't not even close. "Right wing politics" favors deregulation at the expense of free markets and individual responsibility for you, not for me.

""Trickle down" economics was based on the recognition of a fact - the relationship between tax rates and revenues is not linear, it's a parabolic curve. "

LOL, "trickle down" was an abject failure and no one believes in that any more. Now billionaires don't justify their greed, they proudly display it. And never, ever was "trickle down" described as any shape of a tax/revenue curve.

"...the fact that conservatives function better in hierarchical environments than liberals do for a "blind faith in authority". "
Because what you claim is a fact isn't one. Conservatives prefer the status quo, because the status quo benefits them. Conservatives don't perform better, they just are more entitled.

"Liberals are very good at creating new hierarchies, but not good at working within them."
Neither of these things are true, but you sure like slapping stupid labels on things.

"Fun fact - Marx developed VERY hierarchical/authoritarian systems. Socialism/Communism are managed through multiple hierarchical layers of committees. Socialism is an incredibly authoritarian system. It must be, it's totalitarian."

Fun fact, you know absolutely nothing.

"By the time I had my degree, I learned to hate feminists and leftwingers. I was pretty liberal up until the end."

I believe none of those things are remotely true.

"I'm not saying you won't learn important skills."

You're not saying anything at all, you're just pushing a partisan narrative.

"It's a welfare system for people who couldn't care less if the students get degrees or not."

And you don't even know what welfare is. Moron.

"The fact that this is even being discussed in a serious forum..."

Citation please.

"They're going to kill us all."

Which is fine with them. An enormous population "correction" isn't just a possible consequence to them, it's a desirable consequence. Once you die, your property becomes theirs.

This is a really great comment.

It tells us all what /. is that there is no discussion of this, or even an appropriate upvoting, when there is the usual discussion of the garbage comments elsewhere.