I wanted to share a few more thoughts with you about this roiling public debate about AI and the dangers of rogue, uncontrollable “agents.”

I start with the quite predictable conclusion that a lot of the contending theories we were talking about are true at the same time, at least to some degree. It is impossible not to see how a controlled deceleration of AI development serves financial purposes for the frontier AI labs. A regulatory pause sort of freezes their current lead in place, at least to a degree. It also allows them to focus on the massive returns of what we might call “meh” AI/LLMs while deprioritizing the kind of cutting edge research that costs a lot, has various risks and doesn’t have clear returns within the time horizon of your IPO. (The two top U.S. “frontier” labs are in their final preparations for going public.) It has also become increasingly clear to me that significant chunks of the AI world are in the thrall of a self-styled “rationalist” subculture which spends an inordinate amount of time postulating future human extinction events — dressed up in a lot of “rationalist” language but about which no one really has any idea — and then devising often quite sinister strategies for averting these imagined futures. (AI was a big focus of theirs before the last few years, but they have several storylines about future extinction events in the distant future.) It is finally the case that a lot of the people sounding these alarms have little acquaintance with how the world works outside of the computing domain and speak on issues of intelligence, sentience and self-awareness while knowing little or nothing about the scientific fields where these topics have been studied for decades or even centuries.

Needless to say, none of these facts inspire a lot of confidence.

Conventional wisdom holds that a midterm election only fully comes into focus after Labor Day. That’s when a critical slice of the electorate starts focusing on the election and the choices before them. More or less in line with that, we’ve had a spray of polls out in the last few days showing the congressional generic ballot shifting decisively in Democrats’ favor. Looking only at generic ballots fielded entirely in September by pollsters the New York Times rates as trusted we have D+7, D+9, D+9 and D+11. If that trend or average is representative, it shows Democrats opening a big lead on this measure where the earlier average had been in the 5-7 point range. As Ron Brownstein notes here, history also tells us that in the final weeks of a campaign, this generic ballot measure will bend toward the president’s approval number. That appears to be happening. One of those, from the Times itself, was released today (D+9) with an accompanying write-up which, simply because it’s the Times, will probably draw attention to this trend even though the Times poll is only one of several.

Polls and trends can of course be wrong. But these numbers are extremely bad for the GOP, and if anything in this ballpark is accurate Republicans will likely lose the Senate as well as the House. Indeed, the variability in possible outcomes may be even higher in the Senate since it’s not amenable to gerrymandering. Even the Times, usually eager to find possible downsides for Democrats, frames their poll with declarative statements like this: “Voters see Republicans broadly as more extreme, more elitist and more corrupt than Democrats, according to the poll. And while voters continue to have doubts about both parties, they aligned more with the Democratic Party on both cultural and economic matters than the Republican Party in the survey.”

ICYMI, TPM’s new reporter Chris Mathias just published a new investigation revealing that the Republican nominee for a seat in the Florida House of Representatives marched alongside neo-Nazis at the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Chris joined TPM publisher Joe Ragazzo on YouTube live this afternoon to talk about his piece, the modern GOP’s “never punch right attitude,” and “the screaming emergency” of having Charlottesville marchers take elected office.

Today is also Chris’ first official day on staff! So please follow him on Bluesky and X and welcome him to the TPM community.

In the final episode in Real Korean Cooking Stories, I have one last farewell dinner with my old friends.

I made a Korean dosirak (lunchbox) for my father made up of many traditional sidedishes. Here's a list of them all, plus recipes for each if you want to recreate what I made.

A lot of people in my late father's hometown of Namhae, South Korea remembered him well. I got them together and made spicy pork and a few side dishes for lunch.

I headed to Namhae, my father's hometown and where I had spent a lot of time when I was young. I was visited by my old friend Ms. Im for a seaside fresh fish lunch.

My Auntie in Yeosu taught me so many things about cooking and has been my role model for many years. She's always been there for me and my family so when I visited Yeosu I wanted to make her a special meal using local seafood.

After being away for years I revisited my hometown of Yeosu in South Korea. So much of what I love and remember is still there, including some of my family's favorite restaurants. And of course the traditional markets are all still there too!

This video is part two in my Real Korean Cooking Stories, a series of videos I filmed after finishing my first cookbook in 2015 when I traveled to Korea. This episode shows my visit to my friend Ji-hyun’s home, where we made a Hanwoo beef lunch together and enjoyed a wonderful time with her mom. […]

I traveled to Seoul and made kimchi for a potluck party with my readers! Here's how I did it, from buying ingredients and kitchenware in local markets to making fresh kimchi in my hotel room. Fun fun!

In our cheese and cocktail pairing project, I combine my cocktail know-how with the encyclopedic cheese knowledge of Jennifer Greco of Chez Loulou for a series of classic cocktails paired […]

The post October Cheese and cocktail pairing: Jack Rose and Bouton de Culotte appeared first on Paris • Cocktails • Bars.