Thanks for picking better excerpts. I struggled to figure out what was the best point of entry to the story.
While I somewhat accept some of the framing of "corporations are already a form of AI," I think this is a cop-out, morally. This "corp" was a creature of the Sacklers, and it is only our unwillingness to pierce the corporate veil, that allows them to use this sock-puppet to evade all culpability. And the same is true writ large all over the country, all over the world. Every executive officer pleads "I was only following the advice of our lawyers/analysts/finance people". Every lawyer pleads "I was just delivering legal advice". Etc.
The problem with corps isn't that they somehow produce results that no human could produce (which is the real bogey-man problem of AI): the problem is that they produce results that actual, individual humans direct -- actual individual humans in positions of responsibility and authority -- and yet we all smirk and just let it pass. And of course, a lot of the time when AI produces bad results, it also will be because humans in positions of authority and responsibility wanted those results, and were using AI as a useful beard to shirk culpability.
My community has been deeply affected by overdoses and so far the only opioid settlement money we've seen is about $7000 from McKinsey. That can pay for some Just Say No posters, I guess.
2.last: The great SF writer Ted Chiang's comment that "our fears or anxieties about technology are best understood as fears or anxiety about how capitalism will use technology against us" is relevant here. What if you had a paperclip-maximizing AI called "the Sackler family", only the paperclips were "money for the Sackler family" and the way you made the paperclips was turning humans into paperclips marketing your highly-addictive opiates to a generation of Americans as not addictive?
4 is a better way of saying the thought that I was wrestling with in the last paragraph of the OP.
I'm surprised that the venue-selection doesn't also work the other way: that no prosecutor anywhere in the US has filed criminal charges.
You can color me way less than impressed by the forum-shopping elements of the story here. First, of course corporate debtors forum shop. All plaintiffs with a choice forum shop. Whether a given failure to forum shop might fall below the standard of care I can't say, but there's enough difference in how big cases play out that you have to consider it. Second, I don't see any reason to think that the district judges in SDNY are shills or pushovers. Maybe they'll just let Judge Drain do whatever he wants, but that's not something you'd have as an unstated assumption. And, thirdly, even if the district judges are no damn good, you still end up with cases in the ED, SD, or D. Conn. (where Purdue is hq'd) all ending up in the same Court of Appeals. The decision to approve a plan immunizing the Sacklers is definitely going to be reviewed all the way up that chain, and with DOJ as an appellant, deference to the whims of Judge Drain isn't going to mean a whole lot.
The decision to approve a plan immunizing the Sacklers is definitely going to be reviewed all the way up that chain, and with DOJ as an appellant, deference to the whims of Judge Drain isn't going to mean a whole lot.
That's exactly the information I was hoping to get from one of the lawyers here. Here's what the NYT is currently saying:
Judge Robert Drain of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains, N.Y., approved the settlement, saying he wanted modest adjustments. The painstakingly negotiated plan will end thousands of lawsuits brought by state and local governments, tribes, hospitals and individuals to address a public health crisis that led to the deaths of more than 500,000 people nationwide.
The settlement terms have been harshly criticized for shielding the Sacklers. They are receiving protections that are typically given to companies that emerge from bankruptcy, but not necessarily to owners who, like the Sacklers, do not themselves file for bankruptcy.
Several states, including Connecticut and Washington State, have already said they intend to appeal the judge's ruling.
...
A majority of states and other plaintiffs support the plan, reasoning that it is the best to help pay for a problem that has only grown worse during the pandemic, with a record number of opioid overdose deaths last year.
What is the likelihood that appeals change anything? Is it possible for the review process to make changes to the approved settlement, while keeping it mostly in place, or would it mean going back to the negotiating table if it wasn't approved?
What is the likelihood that appeals change anything?
I don't know. It's going to depend on the law and the record. The objectors here are real players, so one would think they've made as good a record as they could.
The trouble with rights liberalism is that you get the rights you know how to get and that you can afford.
The trouble with rights liberalism is that you get the rights you know how to get and that you can afford.
You got me hooked on the Herman Caine.
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2019/12/artificial-intelligence-threat.html
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2019/12/artificial-intelligence-threat.html
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2019/12/artificial-intelligence-threat.html
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2019/12/artificial-intelligence-threat.html
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2019/12/artificial-intelligence-threat.html
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2019/12/artificial-intelligence-threat.html
I apologize for breaking the on topic rule, but I wanted to post this;
I think all the people calling him incorruptible must have been laughing in delight. He really was incorruptible, he was already as corrupt as you can be, you can't get no more. That was his main qualification obviously. I like that the article names some names. People and institutions which made lying job #1. Including of course the Atlantic Council, Foreign Policy, the World Bank, the BBC, TEDglobal, the Aspen Institute, the Institute for State Effectiveness is funded by a Who's Who of think tank financiers: Western governments (Britain, Germany, Australia, the Netherlands, Canada, Norway, and Denmark); elite international financial institutions (the World Bank and OECD); and Western intelligence-linked, billionaire-backed corporate foundations (the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Open Society Foundations, Paul Singer Foundation, and Carnegie Corporation of New York). Francis Fukuyama, Google, the Brookings Institute, the Washington Post, and the New Yorker.
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/09/02/afghanistan-ashraf-ghani-corrupt/