When More Than 650 Refugees Arrived in This Town… 

LC, a friend, forwarded me this story. It’s about how, in a rural town in Australia, attitudes towards immigrants improved over a period of several years. I suppose the intention of the piece was to suggest that familiarity breeds contentment.

Two problems with this conclusion:

1. Attitudes towards immigration are initially fueled by fear and prejudice. But they get better or worse depending on the customs and behaviors of the immigrant population compared to the cultural norms of the host population.
2. Even in cases where the cultures clash, the attitudes don’t become significantly negative until the percentage of the immigrant population becomes significant enough to be considered a threat. Based on what has happened in Sweden and Denmark, I think that threshold is around 10%.

More on Chat-GPT

People that haven’t used it find it difficult to believe that Chat-GPT can provide in seconds high quality (competently researched and well written) answers to any reasonable question. Many of my colleagues in the writing, research, and publishing industries have the impression that AI technology is capable only of basic work and that it will be decades (if ever) before its production can match the brain.

I’m thinking the time has already come. Here’s an example. A NYC broker asks Chat-GPT three questions about real estate investing in the city. And he instantly receives three answers that would be approved for publication in any general information magazine. Click here.

Yes, but… 

As amazing as the functionality of Chat-GPT seems to be, there is room for concern.

According to two reports I’ve read lately, the app is not designed to check facts against current data. So, apparently, it’s possible to generate fake news that is then stored for future retrieval.

For example…

* A corporate cautionary tale in the making saw Samsung employees leak confidential company info by feeding it into Chat-GPT on at least three separate occasions. Yikes!

* Also troubling: Brian Hood, mayor of Australia’s Hepburn Shire may sue over Chat-GPT, saying he went to prison for bribery. (He was the whistleblower in the case.) Chat-GPT also named a law professor in a sexual harassment scandal that never happened, citing a Washington Post article that didn’t exist.

Before Politics, There’s the World 

I introduced you to Freddie deBoer in the April 7 issue.He’s a self-proclaimed Marxist and public intellectual that I’ve begun to read because his ideas are original, as opposed to voicing a party line.

Here, he talks about an argument he had with someone about whether it is ever appropriate for a teacher or caretaker to engage physically with emotionally troubled children. De Boer explains, very convincingly, that it is not only appropriate but virtuous in some cases.