ANDY KESSLER: The Summer of ‘My Bad’: We’ve seen a string of high-profile mea culpas the past few months. About time. Not much in the way of consequences, though.
“Mea culpa” translates to “through my fault” or “my mistake.” I much prefer the modern apology “my bad.” We’ve had a run of mea culpas lately. It’s about time.
Anthropic founder Dario Amodei said last year, “There’s a 25% chance that things go really, really badly” with artificial intelligence. In 2023 he worried about human extinction. But with trillion-dollar-valued initial public offerings in the air, he and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have sharply pivoted to AI optimism. Last week Mr. Amodei tweeted, “I think it will actually be possible to cure most human disease in ~5-10 years.” Cure us before it kills us, I guess. On the pending job apocalypse, Mr. Altman said, “I’m delighted to be wrong about that.” OK. . . .
In what should be a mea culpa for Democrats, but sadly won’t be, Rahm Emanuel summed up today’s collectivist fervor: “We’re the only country where you have to be rich enough to be a socialist.”
Until people in power have lost money, or freedom, or position, apologies don’t mean a whole lot.