Is there a scandal on the Supreme Court? There are to be hearings today in the Senate, but will there be any witnesses? We have four scandals: There is Clarence Thomas’ getting expensive luxury vacations from Harlan Crowe, as well as his selling properties to Harlan Crowe. There is Clarence Thomas’ wife working with all of the right wing organizations that appear before the Court or take strong positions on cases before the Court. There is Neil Gorsuch, who, along with family members, sold an expensive property to the managing partner of Greenberg Trauig, a law firm with business before the Court. And there is Chief Justice Roberts himself, whose wife works for several important law firms who have regular business before the Court. Is there any surprise that Roberts does not want to testify at the hearings?

Who needs Supreme Court justices anyway. Why can’t Artificial Intelligence do the job? You submit your briefs and memoranda and Artificial Intelligence, which has at its command all American law precedent, British common law precedent, and more common sense than any Supreme Court justice, churns out the decision.

(By the way, you see in the paragraph above that I said “at its command”. I said this in a reflexive manner – I really don’t know Artificial Intelligence’s preferred pronouns. I will at this to my list of things to ask it/him/her/?????)

I was looking at the New York Times this morning. There are all sorts of issues discussed – matters of importance for the future of humanity, micro and macro matters. Can’t AI solve them all?

For example. It appears that New Orleans is a mess – “an exhausting history of inefficient bureaucracies, deep seated political corruption, entrenched poverty and a water system so decrepit that city officials regularly issue boil water orders.” And it has the nation’s high murder rate, terrible problems with car thefts, lagging basic city services, not to mention an unbalanced economy too reliant on tourists and, oh yes, climate change. What to do? AI will know.

And the same must be true with the looming staff shortages at U.S. prisons. What do we need to do to attract proper staffing? And how should current staffing be organized? And do we have too many prisons, or too few? And can’t our prisons be better designed and operated? All these questions – just right for AI.

If you go to the Arts section of the paper, you will find a review for a new novel, “Death of an Author”. This is the first novel reviewed in the Times written by AI. It’s a murder mystery with some unique twists and, apparently, not the most gripping writing. But nevertheless……

The facts were fed into three different AI apps by a presumably real man named Stephan Marche, who is a writer himself. The primary character in the novel is also an author, and she is murdered. But, somehow, she comes back to life (or not) to help solve her own murder.

OK, I am not a lawyer anymore, but tell me this? If a novel is written by AI, based on questions posed by a human being, and if three AI apps are used, who owns the work? Who can get a copyright? What a contentious issue this may be – it may be challenged all the way up to the Supreme Court, where the AI justices will have to decide.

Now go to the Business section of the Times. Here is exciting article is “A.I. to Read Your Mind Is Up Next”. Yes, in Texas, they have developed an AI system that can read your thoughts and translate it into text. Not perfected yet, but it probably will be by next Tuesday. Can’t quite remember that dream? Wait until your Smart Watch records the dream and prints it out, so you can see it first thing in the morning. Of course, it may also send the printout, or at least the text, to your “friends” or your “mental health A.I. assistant”, or your “government monitor”. Who knows? So exciting.

All of this explains (going back to Page 1 of the today’s Times) why Geoffrey Hinton, the Canadian scientist who perhaps has had more influence into the development of A.I. than anyone else, has quit his high level position at Google. He says that he “now regrets his life’s work”, and can console himself only by saying that if he had not developed this new branch of science or technology, someone else would have. But, as the Times says, he has gone from “groundbreaker to doomsayer”.

This blog post only reflects what I have seen this morning. Had I written it yesterday, it would have been different. It would have talked about how much better AI is than doctors in diagnosing disease and appropriate treatments, for example. Every day now brings something new, something that shows that human society is either in danger or superfluous.

No joke.