Welcome to this Sunday’s Third Degree: Tough, Brief, Weekly Interrogations on matters public and private that force thinking and response. Today we target: AI

  • With our culturally appropriated (or it is appreciated) title, will we uncover the yin and yang of AI?
  • With AI, is definition critical along with the grasping, the understanding, of complicated, evolving, helpful, but likely harmful, applications if the “reasonable and prudent person” model is breeched?
  • For today, 2 July, and all the celebratory American yesterdays, but, Absolutely Important for all our tomorrows, is our AI focus on “Achieved Independence”?
  • When John Adams, in retrospect, off a bit , wrote his intellectual equal, wife Abigail, after the 2 July Continental Congress vote for American independence “The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival,” are our AI efforts a done deal or still a series of ongoing, primordial tasks?
  • Did formal adoption on 4 July 1776 of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (with editorial assistance from the Committee of Five) and the 56 signatories (but not till August) usher in national, yearly celebrations of individual and American Independence and freedoms?
  • Did the ensuing, eight year war of Independence rend the colonial fabric, but, with French help, end in victory and a Constitutional mending that ensures opportunity for cherished independence and imperfect domestic harmony that endures to this day?
  • Despite some state efforts, did it take 50 years with the deaths of Adams and Jefferson on July 4, 1826 to kindle remembrance of Independence Day?
  • Did it take the Congress to 1870, by resolution, to make July 4 a holiday with 1938 making it a paid federal holiday?
  • Over time, has Achieved American Independence been eroded or expanded?
  • Does the ebb and flow of always contentious history reflect the difficulty of primacy? Is that a necessary goal or objective of American Independence?
  • Is the process of always earning, Achieving, hence keeping, Independence, not a matter of winning or losing but staying in the game in favorable, if not dominant, position?
  • What does it take?
  • What replaces American Independence and attendant freedoms if we squander nearly 250 years of effort and example?
  • What forces threaten from within and/or without?
  • Does keeping American Independence require a great and Achieved American Interdependence, one to another, marked by respect, restraint, responsibility and duty?
  • “Ooh la la,” something to celebrate, despite inevitable, interspersed “Ai yai yai“ moments?

Socrates reminds: “The unexamined life is not worth living”. The answers and actions are yours. Happy 4th of July and more.