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- Perils of A.I., and Limits on Its Development
An image from a televised presidential debate in 2020.Credit…Damon Winter/The New York Times
To the Editor:
Re “The Presidential Rematch Nobody Wants,” by Pamela Paul (column, July 21):
Ms. Paul asks, “Have you met anyone truly excited about Joe Biden running for re-election?”
I am wildly enthusiastic about President Biden, who is the best president in my lifetime. His legislation to repair America’s infrastructure and bring back chip manufacturing are both huge accomplishments. Mr. Biden has done more to combat climate change, the existential issue of the day, than all the presidents who have gone before him.
Mr. Biden extracted us from the endless morass of Afghanistan. He has marshaled the free peoples of the world to stop the Russian takeover of Ukraine, giving dictators around the world pause.
Mr. Biden is the first president in a generation to really believe in unions and to emphasize the issues of working people, understanding how much jobs matter.
I might wish he were 20 years younger. I wish I were 20 years younger.
Most important, Joe Biden is an honorable man at a time when his biggest rivals do not know the meaning of the word. Being honorable is the essential virtue, without which youth or glibness do not matter.
I support his re-election with all my heart and soul.
Gregg Coodley
Portland, Ore.
To the Editor:
We endured (barely) four years of Donald Trump. Now we have Joe Biden, whose time has come and gone, and third party disrupters who know they cannot win but are looking for publicity.
Mr. Biden had his turn, and is exceedingly arrogant to believe that he is our best hope. His good sense and moral values won’t help if Donald Trump wins against him, which is eminently possible. The Democratic Party must nominate a powerfully charismatic candidate.
Mitchell Zuckerman
New Hope, Pa.
To the Editor:
I think Pamela Paul misses the point entirely. No, Biden supporters are not jumping up and down in a crazed frenzy like Trump supporters. That is actually a good thing. People like me who fully support President Biden’s re-election are sick and tired of the nonstop insanity that is Donald Trump. I’m very happy to have a sound, calm, upstanding president who actually gets things done for middle- and working-class Americans.
Excitement isn’t the answer to solving America’s problems. A president who gets things done is — like Joe Biden!
Sue Everett
Chattanooga, Tenn.
To the Editor:
Pamela Paul is spot on in her diagnosis of the depressing likelihood of Trump vs. Biden, Round 2.
The solution is money, as is true in all things in American politics. The Big Money donors in the Democratic Party should have a conference call with Team Biden and tell it, flat out, we’re not supporting the president’s re-election. It’s time for a younger generation of leaders.
Without their money, President Biden would realize that he cannot run a competitive campaign. But in a strange echo of how Republican leaders genuflect to Donald Trump and don’t confront him, the wealthy contributors to the Democratic Party do exactly the same with Mr. Biden.
Ethan Podell
Rutherford Island, Maine
To the Editor:
In an ideal world, few would want a presidential rematch. Donald Trump is a menace, and it would be nice to have a Democratic nominee who is young, charismatic and exciting. But in the real world, I favor a Trump-Biden rematch, if Mr. Trump is the Republican nominee.
Mr. Biden might shuffle like a senior, and mumble his words, but he is a decent man who loves our country and has delivered beyond expectations.
In leadership crises, Americans yearn for shiny new saviors riding into town on a stallion. I prefer an honest old shoe whom we can count on to get us through an election of a lifetime.
Jerome T. Murphy
Cambridge, Mass.
The writer is a retired Harvard professor and dean who taught courses on leadership.
To the Editor:
I am grateful to Pamela Paul for articulating and encapsulating how I, and probably many others, feel about the impending 2024 presidential race. I appreciate the stability that President Biden returned to the White House and our national politics. However, the future demands so much more than Mr. Biden or any other announced candidate can deliver.
Christine Cunha
Bolinas, Calif.
To the Editor:
Pamela Paul presents many reasons, in her view, why President Biden is a flawed candidate, including that Mr. Biden’s “old age is showing.” As an example, she writes that during an interview on MSNBC he appeared to wander off the set.
Fox News has been pushing this phony notion relentlessly, claiming that he walked off while the host was still talking. In fact, the interview was over, Mr. Biden shook hands with the host, they both said goodbye, and while Mr. Biden left the set, the host faced the camera and announced what was coming up next on her show.
Howard Ehrlichman
Huntington, N.Y.
Perils of A.I., and Limits on Its Development
To the Editor:
Re “New Worries That Chatbot Reads Faces” (Business, July 19):
The integration of facial surveillance and generative A.I. carries a warning: Without prohibitions on the use of certain A.I. techniques, the United States could easily construct a digital dystopia, adopting A.I. systems favored by authoritarian governments for social control.
Our report “Artificial Intelligence and Democratic Values” established that facial surveillance is among the most controversial A.I. deployments in the world. UNESCO urged countries to prohibit the use of A.I. for mass surveillance. The European Parliament proposes a ban in the pending E.U. Artificial Intelligence Act. And Clearview AI, the company that scraped images from websites, is now prohibited in many countries.
Earlier this year, we urged the Federal Trade Commission to open an investigation of OpenAI. We specifically asked the agency to prevent the deployment of future versions of ChatGPT, such as the technique that will make it possible to match facial images with data across the internet.
We now urge the F.T.C. to expedite the investigation and clearly prohibit the use of A.I. techniques for facial surveillance. Even the White House announcement of voluntary standards for the A.I. industry offers no guarantee of protection.
Legal standards, not industry assurances, are what is needed now.
Merve Hickok
Lorraine Kisselburgh
Marc Rotenberg
Washington
The writers are, respectively, the president, the chair and the executive director of the Center for A.I. and Digital Policy, an independent research organization. Ms. Hickok testified before Congress in March on the need to establish guardrails for A.I.
To the Editor:
Re “Pressed by Biden, Big Tech Agrees to A.I. Rules” (front page, July 22):
It is troubling that the Biden administration is jumping in and exacting “voluntary” limitations on the development of A.I. technologies. The government manifestly lacks the expertise and knowledge necessary to ascertain what guardrails might be appropriate, and the inevitable outcome will be to stifle innovation and reduce competition, the worst possible result.
Imagine what the internet would be today had the government played a similarly intrusive and heavy-handed role at its inception.
Kenneth A. Margolis
Chappaqua, N.Y.
