A firm grasp of the obvious?
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/10/america-now-ally-russia/689066/
America
Is Now an Ally of Russia
In the past
week, the president of the United States has conclusively turned
America into an ally of the Russian Federation.
Donald Trump
has now abandoned pretense and is openly aiding the Kremlin in its
war against a friend and partner of the U.S. The American commander
in chief has abandoned the Western order, the most successful—and
powerful—security arrangement in human history. To judge from the
available evidence, he has not done so out of a cold calculation of
the national interest. Instead, he has based his decisions on his
own interests; his open admiration for Russia’s dictator; his
resentment of Ukraine’s democratically elected president; and quite
possibly other factors that so far have remained obscured from the
American public.
Interesting
article.
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/ai-and-the-knowledge-problem-in-higher-ed/
AI
and the Knowledge Problem in Higher Ed
A familiar bit
of bureaucratic reasoning, described as “politician’s
logic” in the British comedy Yes, Prime Minister, goes
something like this: Something must be done. This is something.
Therefore, we must do it.
I suspect some
of the rush
to create AI courses at colleges
and universities reflects
this sort of thinking. Universities recognize
that artificial intelligence is changing
the workplace. They want graduates to be prepared for those changes.
Creating a course,
or perhaps a sequence
of courses, seems like an obvious response.
But it isn’t
clear that creating an AI course will actually address the problem.
AI is already
changing accounting,
marketing,
finance,
nursing,
engineering,
economics,
and dozens of other fields. Universities are understandably
concerned about preparing students to use these tools. But what does
it mean to promise graduates a working knowledge of AI? And who is
qualified to teach it?
Good news and
bad news.
https://www.bespacific.com/uneven-intelligence-of-ai-in-comparative-constitutional-law/
The
(Currently) Uneven Intelligence of AI in Comparative Constitutional
Law
Chilton,
Adam, Langlois, Arthur, Dittmer, Jan-Ulrich; Versteeg, Mila:
The
(Currently) Uneven Intelligence of AI in Comparative Constitutional
Law: From Years of Research to a Single Prompt?, VerfBlog,
2026/10/14,
https://verfassungsblog.de/the-currently-uneven-intelligence-of-ai-in-comparative-constitutional-law/,
DOI: 10.59704/a3baf260ef374567.
This
potential has inspired numerous projects exploring how AI could help
scholarship on constitutional law. For example, there is research
using AI to interpret constitutions, apply constitutional principles,
and predict court rulings. Even the question of whether AI could
improve the process of constitution-making has been studied. AI’s
potential is particularly significant for comparative constitutional
research. Systematically comparing legal systems requires locating
sources from different jurisdictions, which are often difficult to
access and only available in local languages. The creation of
comparative legal datasets has thus involved considerable personnel,
time, and financial resources. AI can overcome many of these
obstacles. AI models can search for and translate foreign-language
sources, filter them, and convert the filtered information into a
dataset. In doing so, AI offers the prospect of datasets — which
previously required years of research and the efforts of numerous
experts and research assistants to compile — being just a prompt
away. However, whether AI models can generate comparative law
datasets that are qualitatively comparable to human-coded datasets
has not yet been addressed (although Guha et al provide an example
for a broader legal benchmarking exercise).5)
We
therefore conducted our own benchmarking study.6)
We
found evidence suggesting that recent AI
models may be able to code simple factual data, but they are likely
unreliable substitutes for expert human coders when conceptual or
interpretive judgment is required.
Attacks on
Ukrainian logistics in other countries.
https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/3086054/attempted-arson-at-lithuanian-firm-storing-starlink-equipment-pm-blames-russia
Attempted
arson at Lithuanian firm storing Starlink equipment, PM blames Russia
“Just after
midnight last night, there was another incident – an attempt was
made to set fire to a Lithuanian company where Starlink
communications equipment is stored. The authorities had warned the
company about possible attacks, security had been stepped up, and the
attempt failed,” Sinkevičius said in a post on Facebook.
