Ok, so I’m about to finally mail in my ballot. (That’s how we do things in the State of Oregon, remember?) No long lines at the polls. But maybe a little suspense waiting for all the ballots to arrive and get counted… at least for the local races.

It’s pretty much obvious who the best candidate is, and in fact I did some phone banking for her on Saturday morning. This is my moment to give some space for anyone here who may tempted to vote for the other side. Or more likely, vote for a third-party candidate or not vote at all.

First off, you have to admire the devotion of the Trump voters. There is nothing subtle about it. They really mean it. The white pickup truck that’s been parked on my block all week long, with a huge sign attached that says,

“God, Guns, and Trump.”

Now that is making a statement. Same with the house I saw when I was back visiting my parents in Connecticut, which had a Trump banner covering most of the second story. They were just down the road from Town Hall. And these are Blue states, mind you. It’s not like these views are popular!

You had to figure that these people don’t care what their neighbors think of them. I guess having guns and ammunition handy could help people perpetuate that worldview. Unfortunately, even in the Northeast, these people are not just an isolated fringe group. I remember hearing the words of this country music song playing on AM radio, while I was driving away from the post office in my hometown. It was all about how if anyone tried to take our guns away, they would be real sorry.

Anyway, I don’t own a gun and I don’t want one. There are plenty of other ways to defend yourself and fight for your beliefs. The most effective ones are always nonviolent. That is the only way you can win a measurable number of the other side to your worldview.

Nonviolence doesn’t always mean marching and carrying signs, though. Nor does it always mean civil disobedience. I was lucky enough to cover some protests of that type, but that was years ago. Nonviolence can be as simple as paid advertising. Only problem is, that requires money. And platforms that will take your money.

That is where I worry that progressive groupthink is really letting us down. There is an air of self-satisfaction that is prevalent amongst liberals (and I do consider myself one of them). But I prefer to question my assumptions, and draw information from a variety of sources. Bezos got it wrong when he forbid The Washington Post to endorse Kamala Harris. The question wasn’t whether Post readers would be swayed by that endorsement. It was more the “why” that becomes important — the content of those hypothetical paragraphs that would have accompanied her endorsement. People need to see reasons to be passionate and motivated about a cause.

I can tell you what I am passionate about and that is getting better healthcare. For me, personally, and for everyone. I found myself in the public system in Oregon after moving back here this spring. And what I learned is that it’s nearly impossible to see a doctor, or even a nurse practitioner. With a very few exceptions, we are not even allowed to pay for private appointments outside of the clinic system. This is really a problem when you experience constant pain.

The repetitive strain injury I live with hasn’t really gotten better, and at times (particularly after long drives) it’s been much worse. The question that I have been waiting three months to get an answer about is whether my physical therapy exercises are actually helping, or whether they might be exacerbating the injury.

In the meantime, I work for a few hours every day. I try to find workarounds that involve fewer mouse clicks and above all, less time on my phone. There is a really strong possibility that I meet the criteria for receiving disability, but I would rather not go that route. I’ve investigated the assistive technologies currently available, but they really seem to be designed for people who use one or two software productivity applications only — and not for people in management or creative roles, who are constantly toggling between a dozen or more open screens and tabs (many of them web apps). I may just to have to write my own. The irony is that the only way I would have time and funding to do so would be if I were on disability… and since the cost of housing is at an all-time high, and you need to drain nearly all of your savings to qualify, it strikes me as an extremely risky choice.

Some of us have a good safety net to fall back on. I really don’t. I did the math.

We won’t even talk about women’s health, or the complete lack of specialists or referrals in this area. I haven’t even been offered a mammogram screening. Forget about trying to schedule an appointment to discuss HRT, even if like me you are missing a uterus, constantly fatigued and run down, and concerned that menopause or perimenopause could catch you unawares.

Not sure yet what my long term plan is. Just hoping it’s not an endgame.

Really, really wishing that there was a better way to improve the quality of public healthcare in the place where I live. For me. And for all the people in the system who have even less in the way of choice or good information about the treatment options they have available. For good or ill, Medicaid-subsidized care public healthcare here in Oregon is “socialized medicine.” It covers a lot. Something like cradle-to-grave. The clinic system even has a public daycare. I have friends who use it.

But the appointments and the spaces aren’t necessarily there when you need them. Rationing is a fact of life.

Switching insurance providers is as giant a gamble as anything else. You never know which providers are going to drop out of a given private plan, or how long the wait will be to actually get in for an appointment with a primary care provider.

I don’t believe the solution is throwing more money at the problem. I believe the solution is better accountability. The profit system built into free markets does act, in some rough and almost always unintentional ways, as a way to measure performance. Take that out of the equation and you have every incentive for abuse and bloat.

We need greater transparency. And we need ways for consumers of public services (and yes, that means poor people) to make their viewpoints known without having to fill out a 15-minute survey. Most of us are working poor, and we don’t have those fifteen minutes to spare.

I was going to ask a VC that I knew whether he felt like a simple, universal AI-driven response and feedback measurement system could ever get adopted by the federal government. The process to become an approved federal vendor is laborious and time-consuming, and typically you can’t really “pitch” government organizations on tools that they might actually use internally. You can only go after grants, which are nearly always highly competitive and reserved for those on the inside track.

Which, ahem, I am not on. Not in the Biden administration, and certainly not in the administration that preceded it. Read the post below this one, and you may start to have an inkling as to why.

This article can also be found at pdxlocal.net and was originally published in 2022.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Surviving the Surveillance State

December 4, 2022
by Rose C.

Portland ranks among the Top 10 Most Surveilled U.S. Cities, according to Cybernews. Atlanta tops the list.

We live in a world where surveillance is a fact of life. Any encrypted software product may be backdoored, and even if it is not, you have no guarantee that the person on the other end does not have spyware such as keystroke monitoring or screen video capture running on their system. Encryption enthusiasts and amateur hackers, no matter how valiant, simply cannot compete with a nation-state in this game. Cf Pegasus.

Sneak and Peek, or “No Knock,” Warrants have been around since the Patriot Act was passed in 2001, but they receive scant attention from the media. What they mean is that you may have your home searched, and items removed from your home, without any official notice from law enforcement. Ditto for electronic files. If you file a FOIA request and the investigation in which you are named is still ongoing, you will not receive any confirmation that a warrant exists. (Pat Eddington, Cato Institute)

The most frightening aspect of these warrants is the potential for planting false evidence. The second most frightening aspect is the potential for planting surveillance devices for tracking and listening — as if cell phones were not effective enough.

“Nothing to Hide?”

Like roughly 2/3 of the U.S. population, I reside within the 100-mile “border zone” where Border Patrol agents are granted additional authorities and the Constitutional protections of the Fourth Amendment no longer apply. You may think all of this is irrelevant if you are a law-abiding citizen.

The problem is that who you know can get you put on a list. It can also make you a target. To put it another way, we all know somebody who has a cousin who is a drug dealer.

Laws in this country are changing, and not (in my opinion) for the better. Roe v. Wade is gone, and civil rights for gays and lesbians may soon disappear as this country takes a hard shift right. Remember ICE? Children in cages? Forced sterilizations?

Come 2024, they may all be back.

If you don’t feel like being a freedom fighter, if your first priority is keeping your family safe and saving for your children’s college tuition, I am not here to judge. Just remember that in a world where power rules in place of law, abuse of that power is an inevitable consequence.

Get in a traffic accident with somebody employed by the surveillance state? What if one of them rapes your daughter? Or your son? When a large class of individuals are above the law, nothing good will come of it. This is especially true when the same individuals fear consequences from their actions. They tend to lash out and do everything they can to harm and intimidate witnesses and injured parties.

I am not an America-hater. Far from it. The country I grew up in gave me 40+ years of freedom in its purest form: freedom to explore, to create, to love and befriend those I chose, to work as much or as little as I liked. Freedom to just be. I am a GenXer. I don’t mean to talk like a crusty old-timer, but I believe I’ve seen this nation at its absolute best.

Or maybe the best is yet to come.

Nothing is fixed. Nothing is certain.

The combined 2022 budget of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the 17 different United States spying agencies (of which CIA and NSA are only two) is over $150 billion. For comparison, that is roughly one fifth of the Department of Defense 2022 budget of $742B. But remember, the DOD budget covers submarines, fighter jets, aircraft carriers, helicopters, tanks, nuclear weapons, and anti-missile defense systems, not to mention an active network of bases around the world. That’s a lot of people and hardware.

What exactly are we paying for? This remains largely unclear. Marijuana is now legal in 19 out of 50 states, but the DEA’s funding continues to grow. If you were an officer monitoring wiretaps and running undercover operations in Colorado or Washington State, where and to what were you reassigned? And as far as truly terrifying threats to health and safety, the surveillance state could be doing a much better job. We read about mass shootings in the news practically every week. It failed to prevent the violent attempted coup at our nation’s capitol on January 6, 2021.

Your tax dollars at work, my friends.

Government salaries range from $20K (GS-1) to $147K(GS-15) — much less than the equivalent in the private sector. If we assume that wages (including benefits) average $100,000 per year, we would expect that the surveillance states employs as many as 1.5 million people in the United States. Keeping in mind, that is not accounting for slush funds to be distributed overseas, or James Bond style gadgetry, server space, or the cost of buildings and operations. But if we slash that number in half, that is still one federal domestic spy for every 440 U.S. citizens.

And that’s a lot.

Regarding terminology, “federal domestic spy” includes FBI informers, often recruited under duress or experiencing economic hardship. It does not include state or local police forces.

I am an extremely law-abiding citizen. That has protected me to some extent, but not completely. Somebody who has cheated on their taxes or who runs a warez server with their friends is at high risk of being “turned” and pressured by law enforcement to inform on others and further widen the surveillance network.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Got a free pass at the last moment to the AI Engineer World’s Fair in San Francisco, found a cheap flight and a cheaper Airbnb. So here I am. Snagged a spot on one of the couches in the Expo Hall… am waiting for the crowd to thin out before I head to the buffet line for dinner.

The fact that they made scholarships to the event available based on need convinced me it would be worthwhile to drop everything and go. But this is still very much an industry event. I’ve had the vendor conversations that I need to have. (And was gifted a pair of branded free smartwool socks!)

The nice thing about deciding to go on such short notice is that I’m not here to pitch. More just to observe and listen.

Does anyone really want or need a robot barista? Microsoft appears to think so.

What I am mostly observing is a bad case of tunnel vision. People outside Wall Street and the AI industry itself don’t really understand how much negativity and mistrust exists around these technologies. Activists tend to call for regulation — and while this is needed, it will also put these tools out of reach for independent developers and small startups like my own.

But it hasn’t happened yet.

I am tempted to just put my head down and use Claude Sonnet to build as much high-quality algorithmic generated code as I can, while the getting is good. In all likelihood, that is exactly what I will be doing for the rest of the summer. But I would also like to outline a few ways in which AI can be used to solve problems that are otherwise intractable.

I have identified six:

Accessibility, Community Moderation, Content Curation, Consensus Building, Education, and Employment

(A3C2E, if you need a really clunky acronym.)

• Accessibility. Voice recognition is almost to the point of being usable in place of keyboard and mouse, but not quite. As somebody who lives daily with constant physical pain from repetitive strain injury, the evolution of this technology to allow hands-free coding and web browsing on a range of devices would be night-and-day. It isn’t there yet. But it certainly could be.
• Community Moderation, Content Curation, and Consensus Building. We don’t need more generated artwork, writing, and music. We are drowning in high-quality information already. What we need are ways to make sense of the incredible richness of artistic output already available online, and connect creators with patrons and enthusiasts. Ditto for online communities of all types, and for any type of process that seeks to identify shared opinions and experiences — rather than upvoting the most extreme and polarizing opinions (something that social media algorithms appear to have encouraged, even before the advent of AI). Full disclosure: consensus building through textual analysis is what my recent work centers on.
• Employment and Education. We need AI that creates jobs, and not just for the most highly skilled echelon of engineers. LLM’s are at a really interesting phase in their evolution right now. The best of them are at a level where they can mimic the output of an actual human. That is to say, they can respond in real time to questions and unique inputs, and generating meaningful replies. But they make mistakes. Organizations have a choice: build oversight and review into their AI workflows, or relegate AI’s to low value interactions — users who can’t afford personalized support — and leave them to deal with the consequences. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Could job descriptions emerge along the lines of “AI Supervisor?” Would it be possible to build marketplaces and add-ons that specialize in matching human editors and graphic artists to put the finishing touches on generated AI content that is “almost but not quite” good enough?Yes, and yes. This is a different set of priorities than the current shibboleth of “AGI / Nobel Prize Level Intelligence” but it could be applied in practice with genuine and immediate results.

As remote learning becomes more commonplace, the most valuable role of AI may not be as a search engine that provides results in complete sentences. Rather than an “encyclopedia-on-demand,” correctly trained and tuned models could function as a source of input, guidance, and feedback for students working independently, particularly adult learners and those re-skilling. Yes, in an ideal world most of us would like a human tutor or mentor to work with us, but for people who cannot afford to take time off or take out many thousands of dollars in loans to pursue job training, one-on-one AI training could become a valuable counterpart to video lectures and online multiple-choice quizzes.

The challenge is that none of the six categories above are easily monetizable. We are talking about meeting needs that are currently going unmet — rather than using AI to slash costs (in other words, eliminate jobs).

Given the timetable and realities of grant-based funding, charities and the public sector are extremely unlikely to lead this charge.

So what is to be done? I would advocate that it’s time for the industry itself to step up and invest in social impact projects.

This is not an exhaustive list. Other people may be able to dream up further use cases that are equally valid. But it will take more than a hack-a-thon or a single afternoon to generate meaningful results. As a coder who hails from a UX background, I am a firm advocate of user research. Don’t build vanity projects. Instead, find partners and stakeholders.

Without visible evidence that AI is contributing something positive to our world, public retribution will be swift and absolute. Regulation won’t end inequity or violations of privacy from AI, although it may curtail the worst abuses. It will lead to something more like a guild economy, and render another sector of software (like cryptocurrency and healthcare before them) off-limits to those without professional degrees and licensure, as well as a budget that includes full-time legal counsel on staff.

In the United States, we still have a window of time to build things that are meaningful and cool.

I don’t know how long it will last. Maybe six months? Maybe one year?

I took two days off to take the pulse of the AI industry, and see what I could learn firsthand. Now it’s time to get back to work.

Last Sunday, I was chatting with other guests at a friend’s rooftop birthday gathering. One woman proudly told us she worked at a local hospital, adding “I am so glad it’s not a Christian hospital!”

I was floored.

People have all kinds of reasons to distrust Christianity. I get that. But a faith-based health organization, Adventist Health of Portland, together with my doctor and the electronic chart system that kept me in direct contact with my care team, was responsible for me being physically well enough to attend the event in the first place.

I was raised as a liberal Episcopalian and wrote a memoir exploring my relationship with Christianity in my early 30s. These days I am never entirely sure what I believe. One thing I can tell you is that part of following Jesus is a core belief that doing the right thing is more important than money.

The website for Adventist Health Portland includes an explicitly faith-based mission: “Living God’s love by inspiring health, wholeness and hope.”

Issues of fairness and equity in the U.S. healthcare are so widespread that it’s hard to know where to even begin to makes things better. I can’t tell you for sure whether faith-based values were part of the decision matrix that made my surgery possible, but it seems entirely consistent.

What I experienced personally can only be described as a “Room at the Inn” situation.

For several months, I had been getting weekly IV iron infusions for anemia. My iron levels were that low. The cause was fibroids with menorrhagia. Over six years, the condition progressed from minor annoyance to debilitating illness.  In the summer of 2022, I was too weak to ride my bike or go out jogging. I slept 12 hours a day. Once, I had been an avid devotee of the Portland music scene. Now having an active social life or dating was out of the question. It was all I could do to clock in to my remote job and cook and clean for myself.

I had already had one surgery (hysteroscopic myomectomy, unsuccessful) the previous fall. The six benign tumors in my uterus came right back, and the bleeding intensified. I was on a wait list through the Oregon Clinic for a second surgery, but had been told the backlog stretched six months or more. Then, right around the Labor Day holiday, things got worse.

I messaged my doctor via the Patient Portal to let her know:

I had my most severe hemorrhage since July 22 last night… There was blood all over the bathroom floor.

Sorry for the graphic detail but I hope you understand I am not exaggerating. I am taking 10 mg of Norethindrone daily. Up until now that has controlled the bleeding successfully.

I got an immediate reply, requesting that I come into her office for blood work. On that same visit, I was given a surgery date — less than two weeks away. My doctor had put in an emergency request for an operating space and Adventist Hospital had answered that call.

I scrambled to get the time off from my work and find a relative to help me through the recovery process. I got a full hysterectomy, but kept my ovaries. Remarkably, the laparoscopic procedure did not require an overnight stay. The hospital staff was caring and attentive, staying late until they were sure I was safe to leave. Within a week, the pain was mostly gone. Within three weeks, only faint scars were visible.

It took over six months for my hormonal balance to even out. But eventually, I got my life back.

The best analogy I can provide is a stained glass window in a cathedral. The procedure itself was a tangible and genuine miracle of modern science. The fact that different medical communications systems were able to connect to bring about a favorable outcome, just as much so.