Now they're killing people based on language models. It always cracks me up that the big worry with available AI is that people will somehow use it to manipulate other people on the internet; meanwhile, the government has turned it into an assassination tool.
While AI language models can emulate legal and judicial language, they are not sufficient substitutes for Due Process of Law because they have a comparably unacceptable wrongful conviction rate given that there are "hallucinations" and false citations.
This is not the "right" way to use AI to kill people.
AI lets you do sigint and treat it a lot more like humint. You can e.g. wiretap everybody a suspected terrorist has called in the last year, transcribe all their conversations and pass them through an AI model which flags anything "concerning."
Unlike traditional approaches, AI can distinguish between "bomb" in the context of playing counter strike, discussing a news report and planning an actual terrorist attack.
It can't do anything a human can't do, but it's orders of magnitude cheaper, especially if you can't outsource the human labor due to natsec concerns.
I’m aware of rumors about Israel using AI in war, but where are you hearing of it being used in legal and judicial settings? Besides a few lawyers getting caught and sanctioned, I don’t think it’s happening much.
> One Zignal pamphlet from this year advertises the company’s work with the Israeli military, saying its data analytics platform provides “tactical intelligence” to “operators on the ground” in Gaza. The pamphlet also highlights Zignal’s work with the US Marines and the State Department.
I don’t think this really answers the question, how is AI being used in legal and judicial contexts? Not military and executive agencies. State Department maybe overlaps a bit, but no detail is given about what contexts they are using it in.
So sad that the policies and actions implemented by the current "regime" can affect the views of people that are not living there, or perhaps you just haven't been paying attention to the news since February 2025...
Places are filled with people... 70 million of whom wanted this nonsense and another 90 million too apathetic to vote, so willing to accept whatever the incoming administration would be.
Sure - America is a beautiful country, and people that I had met while on vacations and business trips were all very nice - I have driven thousands of miles (to/from Las Vegas from AB, Florida from ON) and never had a bad experience. But - unfortunately, the current political and cultural climate down there is just a little too "hot" - I hope it works out for the average person, but I don't have high hopes.
Why would you want that? The last thing I'd want in a secure messenger is a permanent ledger that holds message content and associated metadata which anyone can analyze.
edit: I didn't downvote you and I don't think someone asking an honest question like this should be downvoted
The most limiting is our own imaginations.
For the nuts and bolts: a class of really engaged and brilliant students at UofT recently documented the tools and methodology to go about characterizing Obelisks [https://github.com/ababaian/VIRUSxDISCVRY].
Here are some paradigm-shifting questions and their answers, grounded in the repository's evidence:
1. "Are we looking at Obelisks the wrong way by trying to classify them within existing frameworks?"
Looking at the repository structure and tools developed (AlphaFold3.md, RNAfold.md, etc.), we're primarily using methods designed for known biological entities. The fact that specialized tools were needed suggests we might be forcing Obelisks into existing paradigms rather than understanding them on their own terms.
Perhaps instead of asking "what kind of virus is this?", we should ask "what kind of biological phenomenon are we observing?"
2. "What if Obelisks aren't entities but processes?"
The repository shows:
- Complex regulatory elements
- Stable host relationships
- System-level effects
- Consistent patterns across environments
This suggests we might be misconceptualizing Obelisks by thinking of them as discrete entities rather than as processes or systems that emerge from biological information flow.
3. "Are we asking the right questions about biological information?"
The unusual combination of:
- Highly structured RNA elements
- Complex regulatory patterns
- Stable host relationships
- Modular organization
Suggests we might need to fundamentally rethink how biological information is maintained and transmitted. Obelisks might represent a different paradigm of biological information organization.
4. "What if our concept of host and virus is too binary?"
The evidence shows:
- Deep host integration
- Stable relationships
- Complex interactions
- System-level effects
This suggests we might need to move beyond the binary host-virus paradigm toward understanding biological systems as networks of interacting information processes.
5. "Are we witnessing biology we don't yet have the framework to understand?"
The need for:
- New detection methods
- Specialized analysis tools
- Novel classification systems
- Complex structural analyses
Suggests we might be encountering biological phenomena that our current scientific frameworks aren't equipped to fully comprehend.
6. "What if Obelisks aren't unusual - what if our other classifications are too narrow?"
The widespread presence but previous lack of detection suggests:
- Our detection methods might be biased
- Current classifications might be too restrictive
- We might be missing other similar phenomena
- Our understanding of biological diversity might be too limited
7. "Should we be studying Obelisks' absence rather than their presence?"
The repository shows:
- Consistent presence in some environments
- Absence in others
- Stable host relationships
- System-level effects
Perhaps studying where and why Obelisks are absent could tell us more about their nature than studying where they're present.
8. "Are we confusing structure with function?"
The focus on:
- Structural analyses
- Sequence comparisons
- Protein predictions
- RNA folding
Might be causing us to miss the fundamental nature of what Obelisks do rather than what they are.
Had to look that up.