Trump said that warnings about the dangers to humanity of A.I. — which have been heard from countless top A.I. programmers, executives and experts — were coming from the “same group of people” who promoted what he called “the Russia hoax.” “We will only encourage super intelligence,” Trump said. “We’re going to encourage it, not rein it in.”
So he fully grasps the issues then.
He also said the warnings came from those he claimed had overstated the dangers of a warming planet. “The very same people who all said we’ll be dead in 12 years because of global warming — a name since reborn to climate change because the planet was cooling, not warming, and no one was dead — these are the same people saying A.I. is going to kill us all,” he said.
Nobody said that. Nobody said we’ll all be dead in 12 years. It’s the kind of thing he might say; it’s not the kind of thing reasonable people would say.
Trump claimed responsibility for the U.N.’s budget crisis, saying that he had slashed its budget by some 15 percent and that as a result the organization had to lay off 4,000 staff members. The U.S. is the top donor to the U.N., but Trump ’s budget cuts hit humanitarian programs. The United States has also withdrawn from multiple U.N. agencies, including from the World Health Organization and UNESCO, the cultural heritage agency.
Good good good. Who needs health? Who needs cultural heritage?
“To the victor belong the spoils,” Trump says as he celebrated the outcome of his military operation in Venezuela, speaking just a couple miles away from the prison where that country’s former president, Nicolás Maduro, is being held after the U.S. captured him in January. Since then, the United States has expanded access and control over Venezuela’s oil reserves.
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Trump’s boast that “To the victor belong the spoils” shatters yet another international norm. For generations, American leaders took pains to insist that U.S. foreign interventions were not motivated by material gain — especially control of foreign oil.
And then along came Mister Wouldn’t Recognize a Norm if it Bit Him on the Ass.
In a repeat of last year’s speech, Trump said, “While others have talked, I have acted.” He turned to Iran, which he called “the No. 1 sponsor of terror.”
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“I have a big decision to make,″ he said: to make a deal with Iran, or “annihilate the Islamic republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destory people and countries again.” It was a remarkable moment: a threat from the U.N. floor, by a world leader, to wipe out an entire nation.
It was jarring to hear the president of the United States openly threatening to annihilate a nation, considered a war crime, from the podium of the United Nations.
Yes, that is jarring. The reporter who wrote the first two paragraphs is David Sanger; the reporter who wrote the third is Farnaz Fassihi. Perhaps Trump would like to take her out while he’s at it.
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