Day: July 17, 2017

Just two weeks before an election to decide the delegates who will rewrite Venezuela’s national constitution, opposition activists held a symbolic vote of their own on Sunday. In the nonbinding referendum, roughly 98 percent of voters rejected President Nicolas Maduro’s plan to replace the constitution.

More than 7 million Venezuelans voted in the referendum, according to the local university administrators tasked with overseeing the vote. NPR’s Philip Reeves notes that number — which includes nearly 700,000 expatriots who voted overseas — constitutes about a third of Venezuela’s registered voters.

“It’s a way to show how many people are actually against the government, and to give support to people that are actually doing the protests and have been arrested,” expat Andrea de Lima, who participated in South Florida, tells reporter Keyvan Antonio Heydari.

Still, Maduro has vowed that Sunday’s referendum will do nothing to stall a July 30 election for delegates for a constituent assembly, which will be responsible for rewriting the country’s 18-year-old constitution. That rewrite would have the capacity to dissolve the National Assembly, an opposition-heavy body of lawmakers that has been a source of frustration for Maduro for years.

It was an earlier attempt to dissolve this legislature — an attempt made by the Supreme Court, then quickly reversed in early April — that set off more than 100 days of unrest in Venezuela. The anti-government protests, and their clashes with government security forces, have seen nearly 100 people killed and more than 1,500 injured in the three and a half months that followed.

The referendum Sunday was also marred by violence. A 61-year-old nurse was shot dead and three more were injured when men on motorbikes — described by the opposition as members of a “paramilitary” — opened fire on a polling place.

Maduro has positioned his proposed constitutional rewrite as a solution to this continuing unrest, calling Sunday’s vote “a meaningless internal exercise.”

But NPR’s Philip Reeves notes the unofficial referendum does send a message.

“It clearly states that Maduro is as deeply unpopular as he has long been thought to be, and it shows, as the polls have suggested, that Venezuelans are overwhelmingly against the idea of establishing a constitutional assembly,” Philip reports.

And NPR’s Greg Allen says that sentiment extends to Venezuelans living in the U.S. One expatriot, Mario Di Giovanni, tells Greg that while the vote isn’t official, the process is supported by Venezuela’s constitution.

“So for us it’s binding,” Di Giovanni says, “and we are following the constitution. “

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, speaking to U.S. governors this weekend, told the political leaders that artificial intelligence poses an “existential threat” to human civilization.

At the bipartisan National Governors Association in Rhode Island, Musk also spoke about energy sources, his own electric car company and space travel. But when Gov. Brian Sandoval of Nevada, grinning, asked if robots will take everyone’s jobs in the future — Musk wasn’t joking when he responded.

Yes, “robots will do everything better than us,” Musk said. But he’s worried about more than the job market.

“AI is a fundamental existential risk for human civilization, and I don’t think people fully appreciate that,” Musk said. He said he has access to cutting-edge AI technology, and that based on what he’s seen, AI is “the scariest problem.”

Musk told the governors that AI calls for precautionary, proactive government intervention: “I think by the time we are reactive in AI regulation, it’s too late,” he said.

He was clearly not thrilled to make that argument, calling regulation generally “not fun” and “irksome,” but he said that in the case of AI, the risks are too high to allow AI to develop unfettered.

“I think people should be really concerned about it,” Musk said. “I keep sounding the alarm bell.”

It’s true: For years, Musk has issued Cassandra-like cautions about the risks of artificial intelligence. In 2014, he likened AI developers to people summoning demons they think they can control. In 2015, he signed a letter warning of the risk of an AI arms race.

Musk has invested in a project designed to make AI tech open-source, which he asserts will prevent it from being controlled by one company. And earlier this year, Maureen Dowd wrote a lengthy piece for Vanity Fair about Musk’s “crusade to stop the A.I. apocalypse.” Dowd noted that some Silicon Valley leaders — including Google co-founder Larry Page — do not share Musk’s skepticism, and describe AI as a possible force for good.

Critics “argue that Musk is interested less in saving the world than in buffing his brand,” Dowd writes, and that his speeches on the threat of AI are part of a larger sales strategy.

Back at the governors’ conference, some politicians expressed skepticism about the wisdom of regulating a technology that’s still in development. Musk said the first step would be for the government to gain “insight” into the actual status of current research.

“Once there is awareness, people will be extremely afraid,” Musk said. “As they should be.”