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The US has reached a dark and sad place when nobody believes a word that comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth.
At the Tunnel to Towers Foundation’s Sept. 8 event at the White House, Trump said he led a crew of 100 construction workers to downtown Manhattan to assist in the clean-up efforts following the attack on the World Trade Center.
How implausible is that? What would the pay-off be for Trump? Everybody knows he’s a guy who only does things that benefit him and his family financially. Trump believes civic responsibility is for losers.
Richard Alles, a retired New York City Fire Department battalion chief debunked the Trump as hero story in 2019.
He told PolitiFact that he was not aware of Trump being at the site, and that there would be a record about the 100 construction workers clearing the site.
What Trump did do on 9/11 was to call WWOR-TV to note that his 40 Wall Street property was now the tallest building in the financial district in the aftermath of the collapse of the WTC. It was a good marketing opportunity.
That’s more in Trump’s style. WWOR analyst Alan Marcus later said his conversation with Trump was just an example of “Donald being Donald.” He nailed that.
But Trump just uttered another lie because 70 Pine Street (then known as the American International Building) is 25 feet taller than 40 Wall.
How does Trump lackey Howard Lutnick feel about the president’s tall tales regarding 9/11. His firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, lost 658 people on 9/11. That death toll included Lutnick’s younger brother, Gary. Is he offended by Trump thrusting himself into the nation's worst tragedy?
Trump won’t be attending the WTC commemoration in New York. He’s jetting off to Ireland to attend the Irish Open that will be held at Trump International Golf Links & Hotel in Doonberg, County Clare.
The president has his priorities and remembering the victims and the families of 9/11 is not high on his list.
Slacking off. More than three quarters (77 percent) of communicators fear that the use of AI tools is going to make them lazier while on the job. That’s a finding of a survey of 500 pros conducted by the Institute for Public Relations and The Grossman Group.
A solid majority (71 percent) believe AI will eliminate jobs but they seem impervious to their own personal risk. Only a little more than a quarter (27 percent) expect AI to replace “my job” specifically.
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Wisdom comes with age. More than half (54 percent) of experienced staffers (21-years plus) expect AI to replace them while only 17 percent of staffers with zero to five years of experience fear AI will take away their jobs.
There’s a sense that PR will “lose its identity” due to the rise of AI. Half of the respondents say the “communications profession will lose core competencies” due to AI and 44 percent agree that AI will trigger a “loss of reasoning skills.”
That makes for a bleak future for PR.
PR worries about AI are all for naught. While communicators assess the impact that AI will have on their profession, the word from researchers is to “chill.”
“We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans,” posted Anthropic alignment lead Evan Hubiner on X. “I personally think it is >10% within the next decade. I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to.” Yikes!
Jacob Coxon, a researcher who resigned form Anthropic, said his former colleagues earnestly believe AI could kill us all by the end of the decade.
He posted: “This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible—but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger.”
In response, Anthropic noted that it is working very hard to improve AI safety and alignment. Please try harder.
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