Thursday, October 8, 2026
1779 English engraver and poet William Blake began his studies at the Royal Academy in London
1927 "The Second Hundred Years" silent short film was released, starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, the first Laurel and Hardy film with them appearing as a team
1967 Kitty Clausen wed James Reck
1969 Sarah Catherine Clausen was born, nunc dimittis
1998 House of Representatives voted to begin impeachment hearings against Bill Clinton for lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky
2001 US President George W. Bush announced the establishment of the Office of Homeland Security
2009 Lilly was born
2025 Hundreds of Texas Military Forces troops arrived at a United States Army Reserve military base near Chicago, Illinois, ahead of a deployment to the city.
In bed about 8:30, up at 6:10; 0630 202.8 118/74/65 112; 49/42/66/48, mostly sunny
Morning meds at 7:15 a.m. Entresto at 7:10 a.m. and p.m.
Am I catastrophizing? I suppose so, but, as they say, even paranoids are sometimes followed. I'm mindful of my reference in yesterday's journal about Paul Christiano, [a member of OpenAI's board of directors and] one of the world's leading experts on AI safety, having said there's a meaningful chance of catastrophic and irreversible loss of control in the very near term. That comes on top of a now‑former Anthropic researcher, Jacob Coxon, publicly stating that many in the AI industry believe artificial intelligence could kill all humans by the end of the decade. Coxon, who had worked at both OpenAI and Anthropic over the past three years, said he quit because he believed the companies were “racing straight to self‑improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.” He stressed that this was not a marketing stunt, but that “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. He also noted that “no other human activity poses this level of danger.”
His warning was backed by Evan Hubinger, Anthropic’s alignment science lead, who agreed with Coxon and said he personally estimated the chance of AI wiping out humanity in the next decade as greater than 10%. Hubinger also admitted Anthropic has no plan to solve the alignment problem for superintelligence and is not on track to do so
Another former Anthropic staff member, Samuel Marks, who leads scalable oversight, also posted that senior AI developers are more concerned about these risks, and that “AI developers believe their technology could cause human extinction (or similarly bad outcomes); this could happen in the next few years.”
Bill Gates has said much the same thing, adding to warnings by Dario Amodai of Anthropic and others, all much more knowledgeable than I am. So if I'm catastrophizing, it's entirely based on the catastrophizing of experts.
What prompted these thoughts was opening up my laptop this morning to an online article in the current issue of The Atlantic titled How Long Until AI Hacks Everything? If only AI can save us from AI, the world is in trouble, by Matteo Wong. The article develops the idea briefly discussed by Ezra Klein and David Robinson that we need AI systems to protect us against other AI systems, or as Ezra puts it, "AI all the way down," alluding to the ancient theory that the world rested on the back of a giant turtle, who rested on the back of another turtle, and turtles all the way down. As the subheadline to Wong's article puts it, if only AI can save us from AI, the world is in trouble. But that is clearly where we are, aren't we?
Speaking of dependencies... Later this morning I'll drop off the laptop that I am now writing on to an authorized repair facility for Apple products at 5710 W. Vliet. I have an old MacBook in the basement that I hope will serve as a substitute for this one, but if it doesn't, how will I get along in life without my personal computer? Will I have to buy an iPad? Would that even work if it doesn't have all the apps and extensions of this one in the repair shop?
I went to the repair facility and was told the battery hardware is fine. I downloaded the new Tahoe software OS. I'm hoping that may help.
The drive to and from 57th & Vliet was wonderful, like travelling through time, so much of 'old Milwaukee' in the neighborhoods, so much new downtown. I got off I-43 at Fond du Lac/Walnut Street and took Walnut to 24th, 24th to Vliet, and Vliet out to 57th Street, almost to Milwaukee's border with Wauwatosa at 60th Street. I'm fascinated by all the old storefront businesses in these old neighborhoods, both on the North Side and the near South Side of the city. They always make me wonder how much income the businesses can produce, how many are hobby businesses, who owns them, and so on. The store next to the storefront Apple Authorized servicing facility I visited seemed to specialize in handmade macramé flower pot holders! Can someone support herself (or himself) on the income from such a business??? In the Black neighborhoods, one sees a large number of storefront churches, as well as some larger church MBE edifices that used to be Catholic churches. On 24th Street, however, I drove past St. Michael's Catholic Church at Cherry Street, just north of Vliet, still in business. I felt a little heartache as I passed it, remembering all the masses I attended there as a member of the tri-parish consortium of St. Mike's, St. Francis, and St. Rose at 32nd and Michigan, three poor inner-city parishes with mostly Black and Brown parishioners, except for a few like me and others. St. Mike's had a mixture of Black, Hmong, Hispanic, and some White folks. St. Francis was about 60% Black, 40% Puerto Rican, and some Whites, including me. St. Rose was mostly Hispanic of varying national origins, plus Blacks and White. On holy days, we rotated from one parish to the other, with a lot of bilingual or trilingual liturgy. It made for very long services. I still deeply miss the sense of fellowship and friendship, of community, that I had while a member of St. Francis and the 3 minority parishes. So much has changed since I came up from Chicago to Marquette in 1959. So much is gone, replaced, yet much of the architecture at least remains, and I enjoy seeing it. On the way home, I drove east on Vliet to Winnebago and the all-new (to me, at least) Deer District area, to 6th and Kilbourn, intending to get back on I-43 through the underpass. It was blocked, as was the one at 11th and Juneau, and the one at 6th and North, my next attempts. I ended up driving up 3rd Street, MLK Drive, to the southern terminus of Port Washington Road, which I took up to the Silver Spring entrance to I-43, which was, huzzah, open. A very enjoyable ride, in spite of and in part because of the frustrations of all the closed freeway entrances.
The photo shows St. Mike's and the rectory/parish house on 24th Street from the Vliet Street intersection. Out of the photo to the west is the old School Sisters of Notre Dame St. Mike's Grammar School which used to, and may still, house a food pantry sponsored by a United Church of Christ congregation. The UCC folks are perhaps the most liberal of Protestant congregations, a wonderful group.
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