Well, I'll have to admit, I didn't have "learning that someone on Slashdot believes that the Cold War was a myth" on my bingo card for today.

If there was a remote kill switch and China ever got to the point of ordering manufacturers to flip it, you would probably be more concerned about the hypersonic missiles and nuclear warheads coming your way.

Plus they would probably start with the western brands using the backdoors they have been saving for just such an occasion.

Funny you should mention decolonizing STEM, because that's basically what has happened here. Even now many people are in denial about what the Chinese have accomplished. They seem to think that only white people can invent stuff or push the state of the art forward, and that everyone else just copies them, steals their ideas and technology.

Many Western countries put a lot of effort into maintaining existing hierarchies. They would rather some people just don't have access to a good education and opportunities, than be more competitive. Education gets defunded by people who can afford to pay for their own kids to get a good one, or who got theirs and just want a supply of disposable, low cost labour, and lower taxes. The risk that someone else might get something they didn't "earn" is too great to fund anything properly.

I was a CWA member throughout grad school. It may be that they just put a lot more effort into the larger companies where their members were employed (think Verizon as one great example) but we didn't see much help from them as grad students. I remember one meeting my first year where we were reminded we could always ask for a union rep anytime we were talking with our PI, and that was about it.

This is a chat bot that answers questions about books.
Turning it off is merely not using it.

A better example of what you're complaining about is Google's AI shitpost at the top of every query.
This isn't it.

Frankly, this kind of thing is going to have huge adoption. It's precisely the kind of shit that people are using AI for right now.

You're going to have to decide if AI has agency, or is just a tool used by a person. You can't have it both ways.

It's that little dark urge that exists in most humans- the need to win by any means necessary- even if it means corrupting something.

The EU had the same question when limiting credit card processing fees. They simply looked at what the costs were and how much profits those companies were reporting from that part of the business.

You can still make it much harder for them. Physically disabled the write pin on the UEFI flash memory chip, for example. Some vendors let you require a password to upgrade the firmware.

None of it is undefeatable, but you have to consider who you adversary is. If it's just the cops and their IT people, it probably won't take much to thwart them.

There are also more passive measures like making sure you have decent CCTV coverage, so they can't do easily sneak in.

We had a similar thing in the UK with the BBC. Conservatives decided that it wasn't helping them win, so destroyed it. The formerly excellent news service, that held politicians to account and kept the other news services at least a little bit honest, was gutted.

The country is far worse off for it, in ways that cannot easily, if ever, be undone.

Trump and his ilk are doing the same thing in the US.

I've got family in Arkansas. They love Jews as long as they show proper deference to the Christian interpretation of Jewish texts.

How original- fascist declares political opponent to be non-person.

FTA:

Just be honest. You don't think it's a jobs program for Democrats (since the articles says nothing to that effect).
You're just pissed off that they don't limit their Republican representation to pro-Trumpers.

Of course they mod you down because you post a load of crap

Vanity and an ego problem