HMM: OpenAI promised 20% of its computing power to combat the most dangerous kind of AI—but never delivered, sources say.

OpenAI’s Superalignment team had been set up under the leadership of Ilya Sutskever, the OpenAI cofounder and former chief scientist, whose departure from the company was announced last week. Jan Leike, a longtime OpenAI researcher, co-led the team. He announced his own resignation Friday, two days after Sutskever’s departure. The company then told the remaining employees on the team—which numbered about 25 people—that it was being disbanded and that they were being reassigned within the company.

It was a swift downfall for a team whose work OpenAI had positioned less than a year earlier as vital for the company and critical for the future of civilization. Superintelligence is the idea of a future, hypothetical AI system that would be smarter than all humans combined. It is a technology that would lie even beyond the company’s stated goal of creating artificial general intelligence, or AGI—a single AI system as smart as any person.

Superintelligence, the company said when announcing the team, could pose an existential risk to humanity by seeking to kill or enslave people. “We don’t have a solution for steering and controlling a potentially superintelligent AI, and preventing it from going rogue,” OpenAI said in its announcement. The Superalignment team was supposed to research those solutions.

It was a task so important that the company said in its announcement that it would commit “20% of the compute we’ve secured to date over the next four years” to the effort.

So either they decided the perceived threat will never materialize, management decided they don’t care if it does, or Skynet is already in charge of OpenAI.

KRUISER: Good Luck Chasing the Youth Vote Unicorn, Grandpa Joe. “The campaign strategy from Team Biden is the equivalent of watching a football team with homefield advantage throw nothing but Hail Mary passes to start the third quarter.”

KEEP DIGGING! WaPo Has a Plan to Get Out of the Hole It’s in, and It Involves More Digging. “What happens when a company’s brand is Orange Man Bad at a time when voters are deciding maybe Orange Man wasn’t so bad after all? If you’re the Washington Post, it means losing half of your readership in just four years — and a whopping $77 million just last year.”

SHE SAID THE QUIET PART OUT LOUD: AOC Admits Lawfare Is An ‘Ankle Bracelet’ Keeping Trump From Campaign Trail.

PAYBACK’S A… YOU KNOW: ‘Under Color of Law’: The Colorful Way Trump Could Prosecute His Tormenters.

HE DOESN’T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT AMERICAN LIVES OR INTERESTS: More Proof Biden Was Warned About Disastrous Afghanistan Withdrawal. “During recent testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Retired General Austin Scott Miller, who had been in charge of our Afghanistan forces at the time, told Congress that he had specifically warned the President what would happen if the pullout was conducted as it was being planned. He was ignored and the results speak for themselves.”

DON’T COME TO MEGYN’S SHOW UNPREPARED: Megyn Kelly Brutally Fact Checks Bill Maher’s Left Wing Talking Points to His Face.

OLD AND COLD: No one is transing kids.

The new hotness: Health Centers At Seattle Public Schools Offer ‘Gender-Affirming’ Hormone Therapy To Children.

GOODER AND HARDER: California Program Set to Pay Drivers for the Privilege of Even More Taxes in the Near Future.

WHY SHOULD REALITY GET IN THE WAY OF MAKING PEOPLE THINK TRUMP RAPED HIS WIFE? Hollywood Refuses to ‘Believe All Women’… Again.

THERE THEY (DON’T) GO AGAIN: Hey, How About Another Big Boeing Fail?

HMM: Democrats Beware: A Progressive DA Fights for His Job — in Hipster Portland.

With its ubiquitous hipster coffee and IPAs, enduring live-and-let-live ethos and a politics so deep blue that the homeless guy outside the Whole Foods in the Pearl District solicited patrons to buy him a beer by bearing a “Fuck Trump” cardboard sign, Portland is hardly ripe for a Republican takeover.

But on Tuesday, the voters of Multnomah County, the surrounding jurisdiction and a county that has not voted Republican for president since 1960, could replace their incumbent district attorney, Mike Schmidt, with a man who was in the GOP until after Donald Trump became president.

“What I hear when I’m knocking on doors, is ‘Hey, I consider myself very liberal but this is out of step — we’re not getting served well,’” said Nathan Vasquez, a longtime prosecutor in the county office and now unaffiliated voter who’s challenging his boss, adding: “People definitely want public safety. It doesn’t mean people are wholly abandoning the idea of criminal justice reform. They just want it delivered in a pragmatic, practical way.”

Should Vasquez prevail, it would represent more than the rejection of a progressive prosecutor. It would be the culmination of simmering local frustration with crime, homelessness and drug abuse and a resounding correction to the shift left on criminal justice that took place here and in so many cities in 2020.

It should also get the attention of Democratic lawmakers everywhere.

It will get their attention. Whether they have any intention of changing their ways after the election remains to be seen and isn’t to be trusted.

CATCH 22: McDonald’s Trapped Between Prices That Are Too High… and Too Low?

UNEXPECTED HEADLINES: North Dakota GOP congressional hopeful hires Dylan Mulvaney to troll opponent. “Becker, who is endorsed by the co-chairman of the Congressional Coal Caucus, posted the video featuring Mulvaney with a statement that blasted Fedorchak for ‘radical green energy proposals’ that hurt the coal industry in the Peace Garden State.”

HOW DARE SHE NOT BE INTERSECTIONAL: Caitlin Clark Shamed for Being ‘White, Straight, and From Iowa.’

OH: Rashida Tlaib has paid $435,000 to firm of anti-Israel activist for terrorism-tied groups. “Tlaib, who often faces criticism from both Republicans and Democrats for her anti-Israel rhetoric and defense of a phrase calling for the destruction of the Jewish state, has delivered more than $435,000 in payments earmarked for “fundraising consulting” since 2020 from her campaign and leadership PAC to Unbought Power, according to Federal Election Commission filings. The Florida-based limited liability corporation is operated by Rasha Mubarak, a close ally of Tlaib’s who recently held key roles for terrorism-tied organizations in the United States.”

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: The Democrats Are Everything They Say They Fear About Trump. “There has been a steady media diet of ‘Trump is Hitler’ from the people who are actually fomenting and excusing Nazi sentiments on college campuses. It’s a bit surreal even for those of us who are used to the Democrats and all of their projection.”

PUMP THE VOTE: Biden to sell off 1M barrels of gasoline held in reserve to keep prices low before election.

The fuel will be released from the Northeast Gasoline Supply Reserve, a component of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve that was established in 2014 after Superstorm Sandy disrupted gasoline supplies in the New York City area.

“The Biden-Harris Administration is laser focused on lowering prices at the pump for American families, especially as drivers hit the road for summer driving season,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement.

“By strategically releasing this reserve in between Memorial Day and July 4th, we are ensuring sufficient supply flows to the tri-state and northeast at a time hardworking Americans need it the most.”

Supplies are fine. It’s support for Biden that’s feeling the squeeze.

BIDEN HAS THE MERDE TOUCH: U.S.-Built Pier in Gaza an Epic Failure.

SEEMS LIKE A GREAT TIME TO GET SERIOUS AGAIN ABOUT SAFE, CLEAN, RELIABLE NUCLEAR POWER: Electricity grids creak as AI demands soar. “The world’s data centres are using ever more electricity. In 2022, they gobbled up 460 terawatt hours of electricity, and the International Energy Agency (IEA) expects this to double in just four years. Data centres could be using a total of 1,000 terawatts hours annually by 2026. ‘This demand is roughly equivalent to the electricity consumption of Japan,’ says the IEA. Japan has a population of 125 million people.”

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Local Judge Says He Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Federal Elections Law Expert to Mess Up His Trump Lynching.

LIVE RESULTS: Presidential Primaries in Kentucky and Oregon — and More.

HIGHER EDUCATION: ‘Semester From Hell’: How Anti-Semitic Harassment Derailed An Israeli Student’s Soccer Dreams.

His new life 6,000 miles away in Southfield, Michigan turned dark his sophomore year when he moved in with his teammate, Zavier Chimienti. Nedivi says Chimienti harassed him for four months beginning in September 2023, with anti-Jewish slurs, Nazi salutes, and full-on physical abuse.

But months after he reported the alleged abuse to both police and school officials, Nedivi is no longer on the soccer team. The school kicked both students off the team as it conducted its investigation, and, though court records show the police charged Chimienti, the investigation concluded that there was no discrimination.

An outside law firm, however, has concluded that the university mishandled its investigation. With a second external review of the evidence underway, records obtained by The Daily Wire appear to corroborate Nedivi’s allegations, including a teammate’s official witness statement to police, as well as text messages and pictures that document the claims.

Read the whole thing.

SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE HAS BEEN ORDERED TO A WELLNESS RETREAT FOR AN EXTENDED STAY: Biden May Already Be Plotting to Back Out of Debating Trump.

ANOTHER SAVAGE WIN FOR COMMUNITY NOTES:

Infamous for its starvation wages, Walmart just posted staggering first-quarter profits. The surge is a result of its strategic shift toward catering to affluent shoppers while its full-time workers continue to rely on Medicaid and food stamps. https://t.co/jScx1YdJ07

— Jacobin (@jacobin) May 20, 2024