Summaries of Vermont Legislative and Floor Sessions Added to GoldenDomeVT.com

All 2,600 meetings from 2025 session now available as both summaries and SmartTranscripts

Since January an increasing number of reporters, advocates, bloggers and interested citizens have been visiting https://goldendomevt.com for SmartTranscripts of the 2,600 committee and floor meetings of the Vermont legislature which have occurred so far this year. SmartTranscripts combine the searchability and skimmability of text with the depth of video and audio.

However, with more than 50 new meetings posted each legislative day, even skimming through transcripts can take too long – especially for those who want to engage with committees in time to influence legislation. By the time a bill leaves committee, the range of possible solutions to the issue it addresses has usually been drastically narrowed.

Smarter Search, Faster Insights

The most requested features from GoldenDomeVT users were:

1. Concise summaries of each meeting.
2. A way to search the entire archive of SmartTranscripts, now housing 2,600 (and counting) documents.

Now, both SmartSearch and AI-generated summaries are available on the site. GoldenDomeVT is free, non-commercial, and non-partisan—it does not require registration or collect personal data.

In just a few days since launching the summaries, site traffic from Vermont has increased by nearly 25%.

User comments on summaries:

“This is so helpful! Thanks for doing this.”

”Woot woot!!!!!!”

“How great, thank you for letting me know.”

“What an Elegant and fine feature. Thank you so much. “

“This is super helpful! I’ll take it for a spin. A year from now we’ll wonder how we got along without a tool like this.”

“FANNNNTASTIC!!!! Thank you, Tom!” 

“Wow! This is incredible and I bet there is a great deal of positive feedback.”

An abundance of information

Since Covid, all Vermont legislative meetings have been available as YouTube videos. These recordings are valuable for reviewing what actually happened and why. However, finding the right meeting or learning in time that something significant has happened to a bill has been nearly impossible.

I initially developed SmartTranscripts to help our Vermont’s very small press corps  better cover the all-important committee meetings. But the user base has grown far beyond the formal press corps, and users told me that even having textual transcripts to skim and search individually didn’t let them find what they needed quickly enough.

 So, with the able assistance of ChatGPT, which did most of the new coding, I added SmartSearch and summaries to make the growing collection of data more accessible.

Results:

• Summaries are now more popular than full SmartTranscripts.
• Summaries often get more views than the official YouTube recordings they’re based on.
• Total hits on SmartTranscripts have also increased—people can now quickly find the meetings they need to examine in detail.

But what about hallucination?

Both SmartTranscripts and the summaries are generated by AI. Neither are checked by humans. SmartTranscripts are only slightly more accurate than closed captioning and speaker identification is sometimes incorrect. However since SmartTranscripts link directly to clips in the official video, anything important can and should be checked. Hallucination, the tendency of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT to make stuff up, is not a significant problem with summaries so long as the LLM is instructed properly to make the summary only from the data in the transcript and not from what it thinks it knows about the world beyond.

See also:

2/26/2025 Beyond the Web: Tom Evslin (a talk I gave at Indiana State University on GoldenDomeVT and the technology behind it)

The 2025 Vermont Legislative Session is Being SmartTranscribed

The first three days of 2025 legislature are now history – and SmartTranscripts for committee and floor discussions are all on https://goldendomevt.com.

Unlike video, SmartTranscripts enable keyword and speaker-specific searches, allowing users to quickly find relevant content. By highlighting text in a transcript, users can instantly view the corresponding video clip. This combination of text and video ensures accuracy and adds valuable context through body language and facial expressions.

Early users include reporters pleased to find an immediate transcript of Governor Scott’s inaugural address, bloggers watching the newly reconstituted committees closely, and state employees tracking the committees whose actions affect them.

See also:

WCAX coverage

WAMC coverage

 

Here's the press release:

For Immediate Release

Contact: Tom Evslin

Phone: (802) 798 8069

Email: [email protected]

GoldenDomeVT.com Launches with SmartTranscripts for 2025 Vermont Legislature Meetings

Unique SmartTranscripts Empower Vermonters to Affect Legislative Action at the Committee Level

Stowe, VT – January 9, 2025

GoldenDomeVT.com introduces a groundbreaking way for Vermonters to engage with their legislature. For the first time, anyone can access free, searchable SmartTranscripts of House and Senate floor meetings and committee sessions, transforming how citizens, reporters, and officials stay informed and involved.

The first SmartTranscripts for this year were posted yesterday following floor meetings of the House and Senate.

Unlike video, SmartTranscripts enable keyword and speaker-specific searches, allowing users to quickly find relevant content. By highlighting text in a transcript, users can instantly view the corresponding video clip. This combination of text and video ensures accuracy and adds valuable context through body language and facial expressions.

The website https://www.goldendomevt.com is now in open Beta mode with SmartTranscripts of meetings from the first three days of the current legislative session, as well as a selection of SmartTranscripts from the end of the 2024 session. New meetings are added as soon as their videos are posted—usually immediately after the meetings end.

User feedback during this Beta phase will help refine the platform and make it more useful. Feedback, including bug reports and suggestions for improvement, can be sent to [email protected].

GoldenDomeVT.com is a free service requiring no registration, is free of advertising, and does not request or collect personal information. The code used to create SmartTranscripts and the website will be released as shareware on GitHub, enabling others to build on the platform or adapt it for their local use.

Technical Details

• The website is hosted on AWS (Amazon Web Services).
• SmartTranscripts are created using Deepgram's machine-learning transcription technology.
• Speaker identification leverages OpenAI's ChatGPT.
• Meeting videos, hosted on the Vermont Legislature's YouTube channel, are linked to but not modified.

About Tom Evslin

Tom Evslin is a retired high-tech entrepreneur,  former Board Member of both the Vermont Jornalism Trust (VTDigger) and Vermont Public as well as a former Vermont Secretary of Transportation and stimulus czar. He currently develops shareware to aid in local news reporting.

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WCAX Coverage of GoldenDomeVT.com Website

Click here to watch the video.

Click here to visit GoldenDomeVT.com and see SmartTranscripts of Vermont legislative committee meetings (just a sample for 2024 now. 2025 meetings will be posted once they start happening.

Click here for more detail on GoldenDomeVT.com and SmartTranscripts.

and here for the press release,

I'm hoping it'll be useful in press coverage and more transparency in general for what happens (or doesn't happen) in the 25 cstanding committees during the upcoming crucial legislative session. So far there has been a lot of traffic to the site checking it out and already good suggestions for enhancements.

My new gig - SmartTrancripts of VT legislative committee meetings

GoldenDomeVT.com Website To Offer Free SmartTranscripts of 2025 Legislative Committee Meetings

Searchable SmartTranscripts Help Reporters and Citizens Track Actions in 25 Standing Committees

Stowe, VT – December 16, 2024

For the first time, reporters, state and local officials, bloggers, lobbyists, and others can access free, searchable SmartTranscripts of legislative committee meetings immediately after videos are posted. SmartTranscripts provide text extracted from committee meeting videos, linked directly to the relevant video clips.

Unlike video, SmartTranscripts enable keyword and speaker-specific searches and allow users to skim content quickly. By highlighting text in the transcript, users can instantly view and hear the corresponding video clip, which adds context through body language and facial expressions while assuring the accuracy of quotes.

Anne Galloway, founder of VTDigger, calls GoldenDomeVT.com “a great service to reporters and people who follow the legislature.”

“There are far fewer reporters covering the State House than there used to be,” said Tom Evslin, developer of GoldenDomeVT.com. “Yet the 2025 session will be crucial for Vermont’s future. Reporters have told me they often don’t know until after the fact which committee meetings will feature key testimony or amendments. GoldenDomeVT is a tool designed to make legislative proceedings accessible in time for informed citizens to have the opportunity to influence their legislators.”

The website  https://www.goldendomevt.com is currently in alpha mode with a selection of SmartTranscripts from the end of the 2024 legislative session. The plan is to add committee meetings from the upcoming 2025 session as soon as the videos are posted – usually just hours after the meetings end. Feedback including bug reports and suggestions for improvement can be sent to [email protected].

GoldenDomeVT.com is a free service requiring no registration, free of advertising, and does not request or collect personal information. The code used to create SmartTranscripts and the website will be released as shareware on GitHub, enabling others to build on the platform or adapt it for their local use.

Technical Details

The site is hosted on AWS (Amazon). Transcribing is done by the commercial service Deepgram using machine-learning technology. Speaker identification is done using OpenAI's ChatGPT. Videos clips are displayed with YouTube's viewer. The videos of the meetings are posted on YouTube by the legislature. They are linked to by SmartTranscripts but not copied or modified in any way.

About Tom Evslin

Tom Evslin is a retired high-tech entrepreneur,  former Board Member of both the Vermont Jornalism Trust (VTDigger) and Vermont Public as well as a former Vermont Secretary of Transportation and stimulus czar. He currently develops shareware to aid in local news reporting.

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Love and Omerta in Sicily

“The Turks had conquered Sicily,” our waitress says. We’re in the vaulted crypt of a church in Noto, Sicily at a table next to the wine cellar. There’s a mustachioed head on our table which Mary has asked about.

“One of the Turkish soldiers fell in love with a beautiful Sicilian girl whose husband had recently died (the story or at least the waitress doesn’t say how). The time had come for the Turk to leave; she thought she would go home with him. But she learned that he had a wife and children back in Turkey.

“However, they spent a wonderful night together,” our waitress continues. “In the morning, she reached back to her shoulder, pulled out a…” the waitress pauses for effect and to find the right English word.

“Dagger,” I supply.

“Yes, a dagger.”

“And stabs him?” asks Mary,

“Cuts off his head. In the morning people see the bloody head on the balcony of their room. She put it there as a warning that no man should ever do anything like that again to a Sicilian woman.”

“That’s quite a story,” I say. “What was her name?”

“My name is xxxxx,” the waitress says,

“No, her name.”

“I don’t know… I’ll ask my colleague who knows much about stories.” After a few minutes she comes back. “No one knows her name.”

Of course not.

Vermonters Should Vote for John Rodgers for Lieutenant Governor

For many of us, the Lieutenant Governor race is the only place our vote will make a difference this Fall. Unfortunately, it is our only seriously contested statewide race; we know who is going to get Vermont’s three presidential electoral votes; and, in too many districts there aren’t even local contests (although the contested districts certainly deserve voter scrutiny).

Like Phil Scott, John Rodgers is a reasonable moderate Republican. Unlike Phil, John was a Democrat when he was in the Vermont legislature. “The Democratic Party, when I first entered politics in 2003, looked after working class and poor people,” Rodgers said. “And they don’t do that anymore.”

Many of us who usually vote Republican feel that our national party has also moved away from us, especially at the Presidential level. In the Republican primary this summer Rogers ran against Gregory Thayer, who, according to VTDigger, said “…that he was ‘proud’ to have attended the Stop the Steal rally in Washington, D.C., that preceded the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He has maintained that he did not, however, enter the capitol building during the riot”.  Rodgers said: “I would never vote for Trump.” Rogers won the Republican primary and helped set the future of both parties in Vermont with 56% of the vote.

Did people who usually vote in the Democratic primary crossover and vote for Rodgers? Almost certainly. Is that a bad thing? Hell, no! I hope those crossovers will stay Republican and, along with Scott and Rogers, help rebuild a two-party system in Vermont. Notably, although more moderate people ran in some of the local Democratic primaries, they did not succeed in unseating even the most extreme progressives. Hopefully their supporters will vote for Rodgers and for moderate candidates in those local races which are contested.

Rodgers’ website says: “John will strongly advocate for policies that will stem unsustainable government spending and fight against the unnecessary increases in property taxes, home heating costs, electricity rates, transportation fees, and health insurance premiums. 

“John is deeply committed to the working Vermonters who work too hard for too little in a state that costs too much to live in. Vermonters deserve to be able to afford to live in Vermont and Governor Scott needs an ally in Montpelier….

“Rodgers believes strongly in an individual’s bodily autonomy and personal and property rights for all Vermonters.”

A vote for Rodgers is not only a vote for some sanity in Montpelier; it is also a vote against the extreme partisans on both sides of the aisle who serve us so poorly.

I Was a Haley Co-Chair in Vermont. A Strong Foreign Policy Would Clinch My Vote for Harris.

I was a Co-Chair of the Haley Vermont State Leadership Team. Haley’s only victory over Trump was here in the Green Mountain State.   

I am often a Republican but always an American. I voted for Trump in 2016 to a large degree because he wasn’t Hillary Clinton and voted for Biden in 2020 because he wasn’t Trump. Although I disagree with her on many domestic issues, I will be happy to vote FOR Harris if she consistently articulates a strong foreign policy.

I appreciated Kamala Harris’s foreign policy speech at the Democratic National Convention supporting the United States world-leadership role.

But she can do more — specifically on Iran. Vice President Harris can help both the world at large and her own electoral chances by announcing that Iran’s worldwide war by proxy will no longer be tolerated. Here are a few of my recommendations for what she could propose:

1. Iranian ships will not be allowed in international waters so long as the Iranian-backed Houthis are attacking shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. The same goes for shipping to and from Iran.
2. Iranian targets, starting with its offshore oil rigs, will be destroyed whenever there is an attack on U.S. forces or U.S. allies by Iranian-backed militias or with Iranian-supplied weapons.
3. Iran’s nuclear facilities will be destroyed if there are any significant attacks by Iran on the U.S. or its allies or further progress towards building a nuclear weapon or if Iran does not immediately cooperate with UN weapons inspectors.
4. The United States will stop funding any UN human rights organization which has Iran as a member state until Iran’s treatment of its own women substantially improves.
5. The United States will do everything possible in accord with international law to help suppressed and oppressed groups in Iran including both women and Kurds.

Iran is the head of the snake whose venom poisons much of the world. Both Gazans and Israelis are suffering because Iran trained, supplied, and encouraged Hamas. Both Lebanese and Israelis are suffering because Iran supplies and supports Hezbollah. Syrians have Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia to thank for the continued bloodthirsty reign of Bashar al-Assad. 

Ukrainians are being attacked by Russia with Iranian weapons. Yemenis, world trade, and the environment are all suffering from Iranian support of the Houthis. Iran’s own citizens are victims of its government, especially women. Punishing the proxies like Hamas, the Houthis, and Hezbollah helps Iran because it further incites hatred. It’s time to cut off the head of the snake.

Vice President Harris has the benefit of knowing that the Biden administration’s well-intended policy towards Iran didn’t work. Learning from experience and changing policy as necessary are both qualities the next president should have. It will help, not hurt Harris if she sees the world as it is and is willing to pivot to meet a real and present danger.

Harris is a strong supporter of a woman’s right to control what happens to her body and has campaigned effectively as a champion of women. It is just past the two-year anniversary of the murder of Mahsa Amimi by the Iranian morality police because some of her hair was showing. It is absolutely consistent with Harris’ principles to show support for women like her who fall vulnerable to evil, authoritarian regimes. Standing for women’s rights around the world would speak volumes to persuadable Republicans stateside.

My ballot won’t change Vermont’s three electoral votes, but many of the Haley voters I speak to in swing states feel the same way. As a member of the Haley Voters Working Group, I directly told the Biden campaign that after seeing January 6th, I couldn’t vote for President Trump again and that, after seeing the debate on June 27th, I couldn’t vote for President Biden either. 

American elections aren’t usually decided based on foreign policy. However, this year the election may well be decided by independents and former Haley supporters. Many of us supported Haley because of her experienced tough foreign policy. Many of us would like to cast a positive vote for Harris. A strong specific foreign policy statement will go a long way to winning our vote.

I Was a Haley Co-Chair in Vermont. A Strong Foreign Policy Would Clinch My Vote for Harris.

I was a Co-Chair of the Haley Vermont State Leadership Team. Haley’s only victory over Trump was here in the Green Mountain State.   

I am often a Republican but always an American. I voted for Trump in 2016 to a large degree because he wasn’t Hillary Clinton and voted for Biden in 2020 because he wasn’t Trump. Although I disagree with her on many domestic issues, I will be happy to vote FOR Harris if she consistently articulates a strong foreign policy.

I appreciated Kamala Harris’s foreign policy speech at the Democratic National Convention supporting the United States world-leadership role.

But she can do more — specifically on Iran. Vice President Harris can help both the world at large and her own electoral chances by announcing that Iran’s worldwide war by proxy will no longer be tolerated. Here are a few of my recommendations for what she could propose:

1. Iranian ships will not be allowed in international waters so long as the Iranian-backed Houthis are attacking shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. The same goes for shipping to and from Iran.
2. Iranian targets, starting with its offshore oil rigs, will be destroyed whenever there is an attack on U.S. forces or U.S. allies by Iranian-backed militias or with Iranian-supplied weapons.
3. Iran’s nuclear facilities will be destroyed if there are any significant attacks by Iran on the U.S. or its allies or further progress towards building a nuclear weapon or if Iran does not immediately cooperate with UN weapons inspectors.
4. The United States will stop funding any UN human rights organization which has Iran as a member state until Iran’s treatment of its own women substantially improves.
5. The United States will do everything possible in accord with international law to help suppressed and oppressed groups in Iran including both women and Kurds.

Iran is the head of the snake whose venom poisons much of the world. Both Gazans and Israelis are suffering because Iran trained, supplied, and encouraged Hamas. Both Lebanese and Israelis are suffering because Iran supplies and supports Hezbollah. Syrians have Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia to thank for the continued bloodthirsty reign of Bashar al-Assad. 

Ukrainians are being attacked by Russia with Iranian weapons. Yemenis, world trade, and the environment are all suffering from Iranian support of the Houthis. Iran’s own citizens are victims of its government, especially women. Punishing the proxies like Hamas, the Houthis, and Hezbollah helps Iran because it further incites hatred. It’s time to cut off the head of the snake.

Vice President Harris has the benefit of knowing that the Biden administration’s well-intended policy towards Iran didn’t work. Learning from experience and changing policy as necessary are both qualities the next president should have. It will help, not hurt Harris if she sees the world as it is and is willing to pivot to meet a real and present danger.

Harris is a strong supporter of a woman’s right to control what happens to her body and has campaigned effectively as a champion of women. It is just past the two-year anniversary of the murder of Mahsa Amimi by the Iranian morality police because some of her hair was showing. It is absolutely consistent with Harris’ principles to show support for women like her who fall vulnerable to evil, authoritarian regimes. Standing for women’s rights around the world would speak volumes to persuadable Republicans stateside.

My ballot won’t change Vermont’s three electoral votes, but many of the Haley voters I speak to in swing states feel the same way. As a member of the Haley Voters Working Group, I directly told the Biden campaign that after seeing January 6th, I couldn’t vote for President Trump again and that, after seeing the debate on June 27th, I couldn’t vote for President Biden either. 

American elections aren’t usually decided based on foreign policy. However, this year the election may well be decided by independents and former Haley supporters. Many of us supported Haley because of her experienced tough foreign policy. Many of us would like to cast a positive vote for Harris. A strong specific foreign policy statement will go a long way to winning our vote.

Artificial Intelligence and Real Information

Example 3: Logic Checking

Can AI be used to increase the amount of false and misleading information? Of course. Will it be used that way? Already is. More interesting and more important, can AI be used to improve the quality of information? Absolutely, so long as we know how to use it that way.

There was an article in The New York Times headlined Surprising New Research Links Infant Mortality to Crashing Bat Populations. “Bats eat insects. When a fatal disease hit bats, farmers used more pesticides to protect crops. And that, according to a new study, led to an increase in infant mortality.”

Whether and to what extent various agricultural chemicals affect human health is an important and debated question. The answer is obviously of much more than academic interest, but most experiments to rigorously test these effects would be ethically unacceptable. The Times article says that the article from Science it describes drew its conclusions from a rigorous study of an unintentional experiment staged by nature, the decline in bat populations due to white-nose syndrome, a fungus. Less bats mean more bugs. More bugs mean farmers use more insecticides. In the places where the bat die-off is significant, there is also an increase in infant mortality due to causes other than accidents or murders. According to The Times “The new study tested various alternatives to see if something else could have driven the increase: Unemployment or drug overdoses, for example. Nothing else was found to cause it.”

We all know better than to put much faith in a reporter’s interpretation of a scientific paper, but the article does link to the actual study: “The economic impacts of ecosystem disruptions: Costs from substituting biological pest control”. Because I would like to know what the health effects of various insecticides are, I read the original article. Although I didn’t find any errors in the math nor the general methodology (both of which are well-presented in the article), the article doesn’t present any direct cause and effect relationship between the use of insecticides and infant mortality but rather relies on the assertion that there doesn’t seem to be any other credible explanation. “I demonstrate how declines in insect-eating bat population levels induce farmers to substitute with insecticides, consequently [emphasis mine] resulting in a negative health shock to infant mortality,” the author asserts.

But are there other credible explanations which should be explored? I asked ChatGPT: “https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg0344 the linked-to article hypothesizes that increased insecticide use due to an increase in insects due to a decline in the bat population because of white-nose disease is the cause of increased infant mortality in the areas where white-nose disease is prevalent. Accepting as fact that there are increased insect populations where white-nose disease is prevalent and that there is also an increase in infant mortality in those areas, what could be causes of the increase in infant mortality other than or in addition to the insecticide use.”

ChatGPT’s conclusion (full answer below): “Increased insecticide use might be a contributing factor to the rise in infant mortality in areas affected by white-nose syndrome in bats, but it is likely not the only cause. Other factors, such as disease transmission from insects, environmental degradation, crop damage, malnutrition, and healthcare access, could all play a role in the observed increase in infant mortality. These factors may interact in complex ways, making it necessary to consider a broad range of potential causes when examining changes in infant health outcomes.”

I then asked: “does the referenced article consider that these other factors may be leading to increased infant mortality?”

ChatGPT: “The article in question, which explores the connection between bat population decline due to white-nose syndrome (WNS), increased insecticide use, and a rise in infant mortality, primarily focuses on the hypothesis that increased pesticide usage is the key factor driving higher infant mortality in affected areas. The researchers argue that the collapse of bat populations, which naturally control insect populations, led to a surge in insecticide use by farmers. This increased use of chemicals is linked to a significant rise in infant deaths, particularly in rural areas where bats previously played a crucial role in pest management.

“However, the study does not deeply explore alternative factors that might also contribute to the increased infant mortality, such as the potential for higher disease transmission from the increased insect populations or environmental factors like water contamination. The authors focus mainly on the economic and health costs of increased insecticide usage, but the broader ecological disruptions caused by declining bat populations, including impacts on food security or increased exposure to vector-borne diseases, are not central in the discussion​( ScienceDaily, Phys.org).

“Thus, while the study strongly emphasizes the pesticide-infant mortality link, other factors like food security, disease transmission, and environmental degradation could also contribute to increased infant mortality in these areas and merit further investigation.”

Why does this matter?

If we uncritically accept the results of the study, we might reasonably lower the use of insecticides even at the cost of decreased food production. But what if the insects and not the insecticides are mainly to blame for the increase in infant mortality. Less insecticides then might lead to even more infant mortality, hardly a desirable outcome. Back in plague days some experts convinced people in some towns that cats caused the plague. They killed the cats. The rats, which carry the fleas which transmit the disease, multiplied. Whoops.

None of this proves that insecticides are not the cause of excess deaths. The article makes a convincing case that there are many bad consequences from the bat die-off including health effects. The statistics do show that the health effects of insecticides need further study; insecticides are not convicted, but they’re not exonerated either.

I know next to nothing about the health effects of insecticides, a highly debated and important subject. I do know that AI can help us lay people evaluate evidence on which we have to make decisions. AI can help us know what we know... and what we don’t know. AI, properly used (and, in this case, easily), will help us make better decisions. Education for us adults and out children must include how to use AI to improve the quality of information.

 See also:

Example #2: Fact or Fiction, the GPT.

Example #1: How To Get Useful Answers with ChatGPT Plus

Full text of AI “thoughts” on possible cause of infant mortality related to bat die-off (tl;dr)

Q: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg0344the linked-to article hypothesizes that increased insecticide use due to an increase in insects due to a decline in the bat population because of white-nose disease is the cause of increased infant mortality in the areas where white-nose disease is prevalent. Accepting as fact that there are increased insect populations where white-nose disease is prevalent and that there is also an increase in infant mortality in those areas, what could be causes of the increase in infant mortality other than or in addition to the insecticide use.

 A:

1. If we accept that both increased insect populations and increased infant mortality are observed in areas affected by white-nose syndrome (WNS) in bats, there are several potential causes of the rise in infant mortality beyond or in addition to increased insecticide use. These potential factors could be environmental, ecological, or public health-related, and might interact in complex ways with the decline in bat populations and the subsequent insect surges.
2. Increased Disease Transmission from Insects:Vector-borne diseases: An increase in insect populations, particularly mosquitoes, could lead to a rise in diseases transmitted by insects, such as malaria, dengue fever, or West Nile virus. Insect-borne diseases can affect infants directly, contributing to higher mortality rates, especially in areas with poor healthcare infrastructure.

• Pathogen amplification: Insects can carry and transmit various pathogens, including bacteria, viruses, and parasites. With increased insect populations, the transmission rates of these pathogens might rise, affecting vulnerable populations like infants. T

2. Nutritional Impacts:

• Crop damage due to increased insects: With the decline in insect-eating bats, there could be more crop damage from insects like locusts or beetles. This might result in reduced agricultural yields, leading to food shortages or reduced food quality, which in turn could affect infant nutrition, leading to malnutrition or food insecurity.

• Increased reliance on processed foods: If local crops are more prone to insect damage, communities may turn to cheaper, processed foods with lower nutritional value, further impacting infant health and development. 

3. Environmental Degradation:

• Water contamination: Increased insecticide use or environmental runoff from farmlands due to higher insect populations could contaminate local water sources. Contaminated water can lead to waterborne diseases such as diarrhea, cholera, and other infections that are particularly dangerous for infants.
• Air pollution: Spraying insecticides could also increase air pollution, particularly if chemicals are aerosolized. Poor air quality may exacerbate respiratory issues in infants, who are more vulnerable to air pollutants. These are both due to pesticides

4. Immune System Impacts:

• Immune stress from environmental toxins: Insecticides, even in low concentrations, may cause stress to the immune systems of infants, either directly or through the mother's exposure during pregnancy. This immune stress could make infants more susceptible to infections or other health complications.
• Endocrine disruption: Many pesticides are known to be endocrine disruptors, which can affect infant development and overall health, potentially contributing to conditions such as developmental delays or birth defects. These are all due to pesticides and the evidence is rapidly accumulating Due to pesticides

5. Socioeconomic Factors:

• Increased healthcare burden: Areas dealing with both ecological changes (increased insects) and increased pesticide use may also face economic strain, reducing the capacity of public health systems to adequately care for infants. This can lead to poorer healthcare access, delayed treatment, or inadequate maternal and infant care.
• Economic disruption: Increases in insecticide use and crop damage could lead to economic downturns in agricultural areas, reducing household incomes. This can affect access to healthcare, clean water, and nutritious food, all of which are crucial for infant survival. There is little doubt that the cause is complicated and multifactorial

6. Displacement of Predator Species:

• Imbalance in the ecosystem: The loss of bats could lead to broader ecological imbalances. Other insect predators, such as birds, frogs, or small mammals, may also be affected by declining insect prey or habitat changes, leading to more drastic fluctuations in the insect population. This broader ecological disruption could have indirect consequences on food security, disease ecology, or water contamination, all of which may affect infant mortality rates.
  

7. Secondary Effects of Bat Population Decline:

• Altered ecological services: Bats play a critical role in pollination and seed dispersal in some ecosystems. Their decline could affect local flora and agricultural ecosystems, possibly reducing biodiversity or changing the availability of certain crops that support community nutrition.
• Impact on zoonotic diseases: The decline of bat populations might disrupt ecological checks on certain pathogens. Bats play a role in managing insect populations that may carry zoonotic diseases, and their absence could lead to increased transmission of diseases that indirectly affect infant health.

8. Climate Change or Environmental Stressors:

• Amplifying effects of climate change: If climate change is contributing to the increase in insects, either through warmer temperatures or altered precipitation patterns, it could create a feedback loop that worsens infant mortality. Climate change may also exacerbate other stressors, such as food security or disease transmission.

Conclusion:

Increased insecticide use might be a contributing factor to the rise in infant mortality in areas affected by white-nose syndrome in bats, but it is likely not the only cause. Other factors, such as disease transmission from insects, environmental degradation, crop damage, malnutrition, and healthcare access, could all play a role in the observed increase in infant mortality. These factors may interact in complex ways, making it necessary to consider a broad range of potential causes when examining changes in infant health outcomes.

Republicans Fell for Democrat’s Brilliant (Unintentional) Head Fake

Now Rs have the wrong player at bat.

Year-ago polls said that lots of Republican could beat Biden but that Biden had his best chance if Trump was his opponent. Also looked like Trump’s best chance was against Biden. The Ds decided to anoint Biden, who had moved to the Bernie-left on many issues, and did all they could to spare him the effort, risk, and exposures of a competitive primary. Legal moves against Trump, some clearly political, were a win-win for the Ds because they strengthened Trump in the Republican primaries while potentially weakening him in the general election. Rs, angered by the lawfare and the arrogance of the woke left, took the bait and nominated Trump, believing that his opponent would be beatable Biden.

And then there was the debate. Ds hadn’t had their convention so they still had time for a roster change. Joe, thank you for your service in the last four innings. Unfortunately the bases are loaded and we can’t risk you giving up the big one. We’re bringing in Kamala from the bullpen.

Trump twists himself in a pretzel trying to hit her first pitch. Predictably, he disputes the umpire’s call. She looks a lot better than when she came up from the minor leagues four years ago. She’s grinning at him from the plate and he’s frowning furiously back. Kamala then throws ball one to the left of the plate because she feels she needs support from the left of her party.

The game has changed but it’s hardly over. Neither candidate has made a solid move to the reasonable center although Trump has changed on abortion and Kamala has said she won’t ban fracking or cut off arms to Israel. Rs don’t have any path to changing their batter.  Kamala, especially after her concession to the left, has room to move solidly towards the center.  She could:

1. Make clear that border enforcement is necessary and a goal.
2. Support relatively clean American extraction of fossil fuels (including pipelines) to bloodlessly crush the petro economies of Russia and Iran and aid the economies of the US and our European allies.
3. Praise the necessary Ukrainian incursion into Russia with American weapons; “wars are over when the good guys win”. Trump is vulnerable on Putinphilia.
4. Give a harsh warning to Iran that they will be attacked when their proxies attack US troops or Israel.

I’m not voting until election day. The game is changing too fast.

Interview with SearchGPT

Is it a Google killer?

OpenAI has released SearchGPT to a limited number of beta testers including me. According to OpenAI:

We’re testing SearchGPT, a prototype of new search features designed to combine the strength of our AI models with information from the web to give you fast and timely answers with clear and relevant sources. We’re launching to a small group of users and publishers to get feedback. While this prototype is temporary, we plan to integrate the best of these features directly into ChatGPT in the future. If you’re interested in trying the prototype, sign up  for the waitlist.

A new way to search

Getting answers on the web can take a lot of effort, often requiring multiple attempts to get relevant results. We believe that by enhancing the conversational capabilities of our models with real-time information from the web, finding what you’re looking for can be faster and easier.

Although SearchGPT does search the web for uptodate answers like Google, it has a conversational interface like ChatGPT and gives the impression of carrying on a conversation. Although SearchGPT has a conversational interface like ChatGPT, it cites sources for its answers and gives links to them by default rather than producing answers from its opaque training. At least for the next week or so, I’m using SearchGPT in place of both Google search and ChatGPT; I’ll report results when interesting. Below I asked SearchGPT why someone would use it rather than Google, why someone would use Google rather than SearchGPT, and what the SearchGPT business model is (it currently has no ads).

why would someone use searchgpt instead of google?

Reasons to Use SearchGPT Over Google

There are several reasons why someone might choose to use SearchGPT instead of Google Search:

1. 1. Conversational Search: SearchGPT allows users to ask questions in natural language and engage in follow-up interactions, making the search experience more interactive and personalized. This is a significant shift from Google's traditional keyword-based search (DataCamp, OpenAI Help Center).
   2. Direct Answers: SearchGPT provides direct answers to user queries, summarizing information from multiple sources and citing those sources clearly. This can save time by presenting the most relevant information upfront, whereas Google typically provides a list of links that users must sift through (DataCamp, OpenAI Help Center).
   3. Real-Time Information: SearchGPT aims to provide up-to-date information by using real-time data from the web. This ensures that the answers are current and relevant, which can be particularly useful for time-sensitive queries (OpenAI Help Center, New York Post).
   4. Clear Source Attribution: SearchGPT includes clear citations and links to the original sources, ensuring transparency and allowing users to verify the information. This can be more reliable than Google's search results, which may not always provide direct links to the sources (OpenAI Help Center, New York Post).
   5. Integration with ChatGPT: OpenAI plans to integrate the best features of SearchGPT into ChatGPT, enhancing its capabilities with real-time information and contextual responses. This could make ChatGPT a more powerful tool for users who already rely on it for various tasks (OpenAI Help Center, New York Post).
   6. No Ads (Initially): At launch, SearchGPT does not include ads, which can provide a cleaner and less distracting search experience compared to Google. However, OpenAI will need to develop monetization strategies in the future, which could include ads or premium features (New York Post, OpenAI Help Center).
   7. Collaboration with Publishers: OpenAI has partnered with various publishers to ensure that their content is properly attributed and linked in SearchGPT's results. This collaboration aims to protect intellectual property and provide accurate, up-to-date information (OpenAI Help Center, New York Post).

Overall, SearchGPT offers a more conversational, direct, and transparent search experience, which could be appealing to users looking for a more efficient and user-friendly alternative to Google.

why would someone use google instead of searchgpt?

Why Users Might Choose Google Over SearchGPT

There are several reasons why someone might choose to use Google instead of SearchGPT:

1. 1. Market Dominance: Google holds a significant market share in the search engine space, with over 90% of users relying on it. This dominance means that many people are accustomed to using Google and may be reluctant to switch to a new platform (ZDNet, Reuters).
   2. Familiarity and Trust: Users have been using Google for years and have developed a level of trust and familiarity with its interface and results. This trust can be a strong factor in their decision to continue using Google (ZDNet).
   3. Comprehensive Results: Google provides a wide range of results, including links to a vast number of websites, images, videos, and more. This comprehensive approach ensures that users can find a variety of information on any given topic (ZDNet).
   4. AI Integration: Google has integrated AI features, such as AI-generated summaries and overviews, which can provide quick and relevant information. Despite some initial controversies and errors, these features are continuously being improved (Wikipedia, ZDNet).
   5. Advertising and Revenue: Google's search results are often accompanied by ads, which can be a source of revenue for publishers and content creators. This advertising model helps support the free content available on the web (ZDNet).
   6. Local and Commerce Information: Google excels in providing local information and commerce-related results, which are crucial for many users. This includes detailed information about businesses, products, and services in specific locations (ZDNet).
   7. Integration with Other Services: Google is integrated with a wide range of other services, such as Google Maps, Google Drive, and YouTube, which can enhance the overall user experience (ZDNet).
   8. Accuracy and Reliability: While Google has faced criticism for some AI-generated errors, it generally provides accurate and reliable information. Users may prefer Google for its perceived reliability and the ability to cross-reference multiple sources (ZDNet, Wikipedia).

In summary, while SearchGPT offers innovative features and a new approach to search, Google's established presence, comprehensive results, and continuous improvements in AI integration make it a preferred choice for many users.

what is the business model for searchgpt?

SearchGPT's Business Model and Revenue Strategies

The business model for SearchGPT, OpenAI's new AI-powered search engine, involves several key components:

1. 1. Partnerships with Publishers: OpenAI has partnered with various publishers to ensure that their content is properly attributed and linked in SearchGPT's results. This collaboration aims to protect intellectual property and provide accurate, up-to-date information. Publishers can manage how their content appears in SearchGPT and opt out of having their content used for training OpenAI's generative AI models (New York Post, The Verge).
   2. Revenue Sharing: OpenAI is exploring revenue-sharing models with data providers. This approach could transform the current relationship between AI tools and copyrighted data owners into a collaborative and mutually beneficial one. The revenue-sharing model would be based on a prompt-based scoring system to measure data engagement (arXiv)..
   3. Monetization Strategies: While SearchGPT is currently in a prototype stage and free to use, OpenAI will need to devise monetization strategies in the future. This could include integrating ads or offering premium features for a fee. The company is also considering how to balance the need for revenue with the goal of providing a user-friendly and efficient search experience (New York Post, The Verge).
   4. Integration with ChatGPT: OpenAI plans to integrate the best features of SearchGPT into ChatGPT. This integration aims to enhance ChatGPT's capabilities by providing real-time information and contextual responses, making it a more powerful tool for users (OpenAI, OpenAI Help Center).
   5. Competition with Google: SearchGPT is positioned as a direct competitor to Google's search engine. By offering conversational and interactive search results with clear attributions, SearchGPT aims to challenge Google's dominance in the search market. This competition could drive innovation and improvements in both companies' search capabilities (New York Post, The Verge).

Overall, SearchGPT's business model focuses on collaboration with publishers, revenue sharing, and integration with ChatGPT, while positioning itself as a significant competitor to Google in the search engine market.

Biden Can't Win

If I had seen yesterdays' press conference and not the debate, I'd still be a likely Biden voter. But, at 80 myself, I know that cognitive decline is episodic but irreversible. You try to take a tiring pitcher out of the game BEFORE they give up the losing home run. Not fair to Biden that now he can't win or prove himself fit; but the future of the country is more important than being fair to Joe

Every good argument Biden and his surrogates give for why Trump shouldn't be president again is an argument against Biden staying in the race and probably losing it.

Asking Biden to withdraw is the right thing to do

My brief email to Senator Welch.

I can't forget Jan 6 and won't vote for Trump. I can't forget the debate and can no longer vote for Biden. The slim path of hope is the one you've recommended; we need a candidate who can both do the job and beat Trump.

Thank you for being a leader.

Live on WDEV - School choice should replace Vermont's ineffectual, inequitable, and unconstitutional ed funding formula

Today’s Common Sense call-in radio show with Bill Sayre on WDEV will be "school choice should replace Vermont's ineffectual, inequitable, and unconstitutional ed funding formula”, The show is at 11AM on FM 96.1, 96.5, 101.9, and AM 550 and Live Streaming from https://www.radio.net/s/wdevfm.  I’ll be Bill’s guest but all are more than welcome to call in with their opinions: 802 244 1777.

See also:

Equal Educational Opportunity in Vermont Requires School Choice

Equal Educational Opportunity in Vermont Requires School Choice

The current educational funding formula is not constitutional, effective, or equitable.

Unconstitutional

“Children who live in property-poor districts and children who live in property-rich districts should be afforded a substantially equal opportunity to have access to similar educational revenues,” ruled the Vermont Court in its 1997 Brigham decision. Next year the State will fund expenditures of over $40,000 per student in Winooski and about $20,000 per student in the Elmore-Morristown district!

The Court also said “In the funding of what our Constitution places at the core of a successful democracy, the children of Vermont are entitled to a reasonably equal share.“ They were concerned that property-poor towns were in some case spending only half as much per student as property-rich towns. Now, thanks to the Vermont legislature, Elmore-Morristown will be able to spend only half as much per student as Winooski. This is not “a reasonably equal share”. To add insult to injury, estimates are that educational property taxes on primary residences (which go into a statewide fund) will go up this year 5% in Morristown and 11% in Elmore while going down in Winooski!

The legislature justified these disparities in funding by creating the fictional “equalized pupil”.  For example, a student from a non-English-speaking poor family counts for more than 4 times as many “equalized pupils” as a student from a wealthier English-speaking family. If you want the math and details of this, I posted them here. Winooski has about the same number of actual students as Elmore-Morristown; but it has almost twice as many “equalized pupils”. “Equalized” has the same meaning in this context as the famous line in George Orwell’s Animal Farm that all animals are equal but some are more equal than others.

The Brigham decision said that the revenues available per student must be reasonably equal. It did not say per equalized pupil.

Ineffectual

Ironically, the extra money Winooski has gotten in past years (although not as wildly disproportionate) has not resulted in better results. Winooski students in every grade perform under the state average in standardized testing for proficiency in every grade and in every subject; students in the Elmore-Morristown district in all grades perform better on proficiency tests for math and English competency than the state average. School funding doesn’t depend on results. Even though Vermont spends more per actual student than any other state, our results on standardized tests are only in the middle of the pack.

Inequitable

It’s not only the funding which is inequitable; so is the quality of education in different schools in different districts. Some are able to offer a wealth of courses; some can’t. Some districts have better leadership. Pockets of poverty and/or rural isolation add to the burden of some districts. Students whose parents cannot afford tuition must, in most districts, go to their local schools no matter how poor their education will be.

School choice

School choice will lead to effective equitable results and may be constitutionally required. The Brigham decision said that educational opportunity must be equitable but left the mechanism for achieving equity to the legislature. So far the legislature has only created new inequities in funding and done nothing about access to equal quality. If all students in Vermont can go to any public school in the state which their parents choose, there will literally be equal opportunity within the limits of geography.

School funding will be very simple. The state allocates a certain sufficient amount per student and the money goes to whichever school the student attends. Today, the Stowe district allows a limited number of students to attend from other districts; but the money for those students stays in the districts where the students live assuming those districts have schools. Since Stowe can’t afford to let in a large number of students for which it is not compensated, the scarce slots are allocated by lottery. If the money came with the students, the receiving schools, the schools where parents choose to send their kids, will have the money to add students and staff. The under-achieving schools will shrink and some will disappear.

Since our school population is continuing to decline, we must close some schools. School choice means that the best schools will thrive as will their students. Districts should be free to spend more than the state-provided funds on their schools, perhaps as an investment in attracting more students. This extra spending will NOT cause inequity since the benefits will be available to students from anywhere in the state.

It will not be easy to transition to school choice. The various educational unions hate the idea. No school can immediately grow to accommodate all the students who may want to go there. School construction funding must be part of the solution as well as creative use of temporary classrooms. Transportation is a problem which must be solved. There must be a transition plan for students at schools which are closing.

School choice means better education. That’s why it is needed.

See also:

Tale of Two Districts

The Magical Mythical Equalized Pupil

Custom GPTs Are the Apps of AI

Now you can use them free.

A Custom GPT as provided by OpenAI (the company behind ChatGPT) is a version of the GPT 4o model which has been packaged for some special purpose such as doing research, playing games, teaching you bridge, making trip plans, or providing support for a specific product – to name a few. When you access either the paid or free version of ChatGPT 4o with your browser, you’ll now see “Explore GPTs” in the left sidebar. If you’ve used any Custom GPTs recently, they’ll show here as well.

If you click on “Explore GPTs”, you’ll be in the main menu of Custom GPT land. It’s OpenAI’s equivalent of the app store with the important difference that anyone can immediately create and add a GPT to the library (they can be taken down after the fact for guideline violations).

Even though access to Custom GPTs was initially limited to those who had a paid GPT Plus subscription, more than a million of them already exist. Now that anyone can access them free, the audience for custom GPTs has exploded and so will the number of Custom GPTs available. It is incredibly easy to write a Custom GPT, harder to write one that is more useful than just ChatGPT by itself. Like apps for your smartphone, most Custom GPTs are junk; but a few can be surprisingly helpful. There are already a number of Custom GPTs for finding Custom GPTs. Type “Find GPTs” in the “Search GPTs” box above and they’ll come gushing out.

Every Custom GPT includes custom instructions to ChatGPT (which is used to generate much of the answer). The value of the custom instructions, if they’re done well, is that you don’t have be a prompt expert or have a long discussion with ChatGPT to get the answers you need. Some Custom GPTs have their own data which supplements the training of ChatGPT; some access external services to bring in other data or capabilities.

You never have to pay for initial access to a Custom GPT.  Custom GPTs can’t be imbedded in smartphone apps or websites but they can be the front-end to a service which may be free or which you do need to pay for or which sells you things like travel reservations.

Featured Custom GPTs

I don’t know how the Featured GPTs got featured but I’ve tried out the ones that are shown here.

I asked Math Solver “how do you integrate a quadratic equation?”, something I used to know but have forgotten and you may not care about at all. It gave me an impressively good tutorial (here). I asked the same question to ChatGPT 4o and got the correct answer but no tutorial. If I asked, though, I would have gotten a tutorial.

SQL Expert did prove useful, especially for optimization and complex uses of SQL. Too nerdy so I won’t go into that here. It promoted a related commercial product: AskYourDatabase.com.

I asked Adobe Express to write a blog with the same topic as this post. Judge it for yourself.  I’m going with my version. I asked for an illustration, which Adobe should’ve been good at; it consulted express.adobe.io after asking for permission (Custom GPTs must ask before accessing other services) and suggested I use Adobe’s product for editing the picture. The picture options, which disappeared in the copied transcript I linked to, were dull but the words in their labels weren’t misspelled as almost always happens when ChatGPT generates an image.

A few others

Python is much, much better at writing Python code than 4o by itself. Granddaughter Lily and I have been working on an environmental simulation. 4o often coded bugs for us. When we asked it to fix the bugs, it often forgot its original instructions and left off features we had asked for. The GPT Python asked us questions when our spec was unclear and could recapitulate the whole spec and amendments at any point. So far it hasn’t hatched any bugs for us. It’s not surprising that this Custom GPT is rated #2 by users among English-language programming aids.

DeepGame is fun. Its blurb says “Play any story as a character. You decide what to do next. Type '/visualize' to get an image of the current moment of the story.” I wanted to play an historical game and it made me a junior delegate at Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence was being debated. Pretty soon we were into the tricky issue of slavery and Thomas Jefferson was explaining, not very well, why, despite his love of freedom, it wasn’t quite time to free his slaves. I appreciated that the game didn’t feel compelled to be gratuitously politically correct, even on this issue. A lot of PCness has been built into ChatGPT. My history as a delegate and the chat with TJ are here.

Scholar GPT, ranked #1 for English-language Research and Analysis, IS politically correct. Its blurb says: “Enhance research with 200M+ resources and built-in critical reading skills. Access Google Scholar, PubMed, JSTOR, Arxiv, and more, effortlessly.” I asked “what are the range of forecasts for global warming by 2100 in the latest UN IPCC report?” It couldn’t access the report but answered from its training (not good because answers may be out-of-date). When I pressed it for sources which posit that there are significant factors for present day climate change in addition to burning fossil fuels, it couldn’t bring itself to find anything except more and more on how important it is to decarbonize. That’s not how research is supposed to work. With some prompting, it managed to admit that Covid may have originated in a lab in Wuhan; but it seems not to have gotten the message that it is now socially OK to concede that possibility.

Framework Finder is by Ethan Mollick, the Co-director of the Generative AI Lab at Wharton Business School and author of the excellent AI blog One Useful Thing. He insists his students write GPTs as an essential part of their course work. Framework Finder says it “Helps locate and apply frameworks to your problem”.

I asked what frameworks are and it said “Frameworks are structured approaches or models that help organize and analyze information, identify problems, and develop solutions. They provide a systematic way to break down complex issues into manageable parts, enabling clearer thinking and more effective decision-making.” It listed a bunch of examples such as SWOT Analysis, Porter’s Five Forces, Root cause Analysis, Pestle Analysis, and Smart Goals. We ended up having an interesting chat about how I can best promote my own Custom GPTs seeing they have no business model. The advice was pretty good. Professor Mollick would be displeased but not surprised to hear that, in a later chat, Framework Finder hallucinated that it had documentation on a website somewhere and gave me a non-existent URL for the site.

Speaking of my Custom GPTs

I’ve already blogged about Fact or Fiction which provides verification with live links of assertions, documents, or web pages. A new capability in GPT 4o allows Custom GPTs to be invoked in the middle of a conversation by typing”@” in the chat window. If you do this and select Fact or Fiction, you can have it check whatever the last answer GPT 4o or another Custom GPT gave you as in this example. Double checking is a very good way to avoid hallucinations.

Also blogged about Meeting-Reporter, a human-in-the-loop application which use ChatGPT (but is not a Custom GPT) to collaboratively create news reports, summaries, or minutes from transcripts of meetings. You need a paid OpenAI API key to use this application. However, I’ve now created a Custom GPT version, collaborative meeting reporter, which anyone with either a free or a GPT Plus account can use free. Sample session here.

Who Killed Kenny? is for my grandson Leo who taught me the game. I don’t know how to whittle toys from wood but I can write Custom GPTs.

Predictions

Within a year, use of Custom GPTs will be as natural and becoming as prevalent as use of apps on smartphones. Organizations from stores to news outlets to clubs to social media providers will have their own Custom GPTs just as they have their own websites and apps today. Today Custom GPTs are accessible only through ChatGPT and use ChatGPT as their underlying intelligence. Other AI vendors – especially Google – will add a similar capability, probably called something else, and a store of their own. A few Custom GPTs will be standout hits for the functionality they provide; often that capability will then find its way into the underlying AI service. Some Custom GPTs will be used for fraud – look out! Most will be forgotten almost as soon as they’re written.

Oh, yeah. Someone will become a billionaire by figuring out how to make money from Custom GPTs.

See also: More posts on AI

Why You Want to Use Free ChatGPT-4o Instead of Search

The best artificial intelligence tool is now free! That changes everything.

I googled “what's the most convenient option for an overnight stay at Heathrow when arriving in the evening and leaving in the morning on Iberia”.

Google answered, as we’ve come to expect, with four ads. I asked ChatGPT-4o the same question. It gave the right answer.

Would’ve been better if ChatGPT Sofitel included a link to Sofitel (it’s inconsistent; sometimes it gives the link).

I asked Google “how do I get from United to the Sofitel in the evening”. It doesn’t remember previous questions so didn’t know I was talking about terminals at Heathrow.

Same question to ChatGPT which remembers my previous question so knows I’m talking about Heathrow.

Two weeks ago, OpenAI announced that ChatGPT-4o, their highest quality large language model (LLM), is available free to everyone. By this time next year, you may have stopped using plain old search completely in favor of talking with chatbots. I mean “talking” literally since GPT-4o, the version announced recently, is fluent in many spoken languages. Much coverage of the announcement has concentrated on cool features like emotion detection and the ability to look at images with a user – these all add to usability and broaden the audience for AI.

Although Google sometimes adds useful summaries to answers, it clearly didn’t in this case. Google is certainly working on using AI to improve search; OpenAI, as you can see, has embedded search in its large language model. Google could’ve been a pioneer in introducing AI through LLMs; but it wasn’t. My guess is that the search giant was not eager to torpedo the paid placement model in search results which is the source of much of their income. They are trapped by what Clay Christainson described as “The Innovator’s Dilemma”: large, successful companies are usually not prepared to capitalize on disruptive technologies. They focus on innovations that directly satisfy their existing customers and lower costs rather than adopting new technologies or business models that will meet their customers' future needs, especially if these new technologies make their current offerings obsolete. Without a reboot, Google is likely to fade quickly. All the more reason to try free ChatGPT now. If you tried the former free version of ChatGPT 3.5 and weren’t impressed, give free 4o a try; it’s much better and is automatically available now in the account you set up.

There are lots more reasons than just ad-free, context-aware, and more relevant answers to go to Openai.com and get a free subscription to ChatGPT 4o. I’ll write about them in the weeks to come.

Despite my boostership, I have no business relationship with OpenAI other than as a customer nor with Microsoft, who own just shy of a majority share of the company, except that I worked at Microsoft three decades ago and use its products as well. I was going to recommend Perplexity as a new gen replacement for traditional search but its free version is built on OpenAI’s ChatGPT 3.5 which is far inferior to 4o. BTW, the “o” in 4o stands for “omni” since this version has audio, vision, and imaging built in.

Tale of Two Districts

What has the legislature done?

Several years ago the Vermont legislature passed now notorious Act 127 which made major changes in how state funding for education is raised and allocated. The act didn’t come into effect until this budget year (FY 2025) and its effective date coincided with both high inflation and an end to federal COVID relief dollars for education. The terms of Act 127 encouraged districts to maintain positions added during the pandemic and to increase other expenditures. Some districts (see Winooski below) received huge bumps in per student funding. The only source of extra money for the ed fund under current law is property taxes and it looked like they were going to go up as much as 20%, enough to make even tax-accustomed Vermonters think about electing new legislators (I hope). The legislature has tried to disguise the immediate property tax pain by raising other taxes and short-term gimmicks. It passed a bill which will make the average educational tax increase only about 14%. It did nothing about the long-term problem of extraordinarily high education expenses and substandard educational results in Vermont except to set up a study committee which won’t even report back in time to make a difference in school budgeting for next year. Governor Scott will almost certainly veto that bill and the legislature will come back on June 23 for a veto override session.

It is up to us between now and June 23 to try to convince our legislators to compromise with the Governor on a bill which both lowers the burden this year and starts to solve our long-term problem of over-funded and under-performing schools. In the meantime, we should be looking for legislative candidates for November who demonstrate an understanding of the problems and a willingness to address them. Doesn’t matter what party they come from. Does matter that they understand that our education funding and delivery system is badly broken.

For the sake of these discussions, consider the examples of the Winooski and Elmore-Morristown districts below. Winooski easily passed a hugely increased budget which will not increase local taxes. Their schools achieve relatively poor results despite consistently high funding. Elmore-Morristown, whose schools achieve better results than the statewide average, has so far turned down two relatively moderate budgets and will be voting on a third attempt with more drastic cuts tomorrow (May 21).

Winooski Expenditures

The slide below is from the Winooski School District budget presentation to voters. Caution: as the footnotes explain, almost none of the numbers are real.

The top line number is real. Thanks to a state aid formula which hugely tipped in its favor, Winooski is planning to increase its school budget by a whopping 26%!

The next line is nonsense. Winooski is not adding 1267 students this year. Its student population is declining to an estimated 783 actual students. The “weighted pupil” is a mythical construct of the legislature used to disguise the huge disparity in education funding awarded to various districts and also to obscure how much more Vermont spends per student than the rest of the country in order to achieve at best mediocre educational results.

The spending per pupil, since it is arrived at by dividing the mythical number of pupils (2167) into the real budget ($31,970,907), is also fantasy. Winooski spending per actual student (remember there are only 783 of them) is over $40,000! It isn’t declining from 2024 (as the footnote partially explains); it is going up more than 26%. For comparison, statewide Vermont is planning to spend $22,769 per actual publicly-educated precollege student. Winooski will be spending almost twice as much. US average spending last year is estimated at $15,633 per student.

Did Winooski voters approve this huge increase? You betcha. The fourth line above exaggerates the tax decrease they are going to see thanks to the further mysteries of appraisal and the common level of adjustment (too much detail for this post); but most Winooski homeowners will see their property tax go down despite the huge budget increase. The burden will be borne by property taxpayers in other districts.

According to the Winooski budget presentation:

According to an article in Seven Days:

“The district's seven multilingual liaisons provide a critical bridge between home and school — assisting refugee families with interpretation services, helping them fill out paperwork, and accompanying them to appointments or grocery shopping….”

“At the heart of the district's newly renovated K-12 campus is a spacious atrium with a community health center and the Necessity Store, where students and their families [emphasis mine] can pick up free food, clothing and toiletries. The building boasts modernized classrooms, sleek common spaces, and a new performing arts center and gymnasium. The upgrades were funded by a $57.8-million bond that voters approved in 2019. In the bond proposal to the community, the school district pointed to projections that enrollment would grow by 15.2 percent in the next decade. [nb: the school budget pays back these bonds].

“But since then, the district has lost approximately 100 students, and projections now indicate Winooski will likely lose upwards of 100 more in the next decade…”

The Winooski school district does need (and has gotten) extra money to deal with the educational needs of a relatively large immigrant population for whom English is a second language. However, it appears that the huge amount of educational support the district receives from the state is being used to cover welfare and housing needs far removed from what an educational budget should contain. Why not, from Winooski’s PoV, these expenses are being paid for by all the property taxpayers in the state.

 Winooski results

According to the school budget report, Winooski students in every grade perform well under the state average in standardized testing for proficiency in every grade and in every subject! You could argue that means even more money is needed; some will. Or you could argue that a flood of money without accountability and without cost to locals is not effective in helping Winooski students gain the skills they need. Maybe the multilingual liaisons should concentrate on teaching English and other subjects to the students, for example.

Elmore-Morristown Expenditures (3d budget vote)

The partial slide below is from the presentation by the Elmore-Morristown school district to its voters. The district has about the same number of actual students as Winooski.

Line 3, with its total of $15,523,902 and a 4.18% increase from last year, is comparable to Winooski’s total of $31,970,907 with a 26% increase.

The equalized pupil line is the legislature’s fantasy number. Elmore-Moristown has 772 actual students.

Spending per equalized student is also a fantasy number. The district is proposing to spend $20,109 per actual student, about half as much as Winooski does. If this budget passes, residential property taxes in Morristown will go up about 5% and 11% in Elmore. Note that their taxes will go up by more than the amount of the budget increase because they are paying into the statewide property tax to support bigger increase in other districts.

According to the presentation, if this budget passes there will be the following reductions in staffing from FY24:

- 1.0 FTE Literacy Coach

- 1.0 FTE English

- 1.0 FTE Spanish

- 1.0 FTE Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA)

- 1.0 FTE Literacy Coach

- 1.0 FTE Math Coach

Clearly voter sentiment is forcing the district back toward the pre-pandemic level of funding. New expenses are not being added into the education budget.

Elmore-Morristown Results

Elmore-Morristown parents and taxpayers have more reason to be happy with their schools’ past results than their neighbors in Winooski. Students in this district in all grades perform better on proficiency tests for Math and English competency than the state average.

Legislative Report Card

A funding and educational system which results in such a huge disconnect between costs and results is broken. Our children deserve better results. Our taxpayers deserve lower costs and greater accountability. This legislature deserved Fs for both results and effort.

See also: The Magical Mythical Equalized Pupil

The Magical Mythical Equalized Pupil

The Vermont legislature is playing an expensive shell game… and planning worse. The “equalized pupil” is the shell under which the pea is hidden.

OK. We all know there is a property tax crisis in Vermont. The average amount Vermonters pay in educational property tax is going to go up at least 15% this year. Residents of some districts will see a much greater increase. Educational quality continues to decline according to national standards although we pay more for education per student than most states and have a greater ratio of staff to students than any state. People are voting down their local educational budgets in record numbers, often saying they are trying to send a message to Montpelier. If there are good candidates to run against them (not at all a sure thing!), many legislators will lose their seats in November. The possibility of not getting reelected does get the attention of legislators, so much so that they are planning to appoint a study committee that will report back in eighteen months. How’s that for action?

There are only two ways to avoid gargantuan increases in property tax

1. Raising other taxes and creating new taxes to support education. Problem with more taxing is that there are many claimants for new revenue (need I mention the endless temporary housing program?) and very few people who want to pay new taxes just so they will have a slightly smaller increase in property taxes this year and in years to come.
2. Reduce spending on education. Legislators say they can’t do that because school budgets are set locally and Vermonters cherish local control. It is literally true that we vote on our school budgets locally. However, the odds are stacked by statute against local thrift. Because of the way the current property tax system works, all the gain of an extra dollar spent is local and the pain of paying that extra dollar is spread over all the property taxpayers in the state. Looked at the other way, the pain of a dollar saved is local and the gain is spread across the state. How can a responsible local school board ever cut a program?

How do we change incentives so that local school districts become thrifty?

We can’t go back to just having each town use its own tax base to pay for whatever education it wants to provide. In 1997 the Vermont Supreme Court ruled:

“…we decide that the current system for funding public education in Vermont, with its substantial dependence on local property taxes and resultant wide disparities in revenues available to local school districts, deprives children of an equal educational opportunity in violation of the Vermont Constitution…   The remedy at this juncture properly lies with the Legislature.”

We don’t want to perpetuate pockets of poverty. It’s acceptable, to me at least, that it is a state responsibility (meaning all of us) to give each student an opportunity for a good education. Let’s assume, for the moment, that those dollars will largely come from property taxes and be assessed (as they are now) so the burden is apportioned strictly by the value of individual real estate. A half-million-dollar residence pays the same rate for education no matter what town it’s in.

At the extreme (and it might be a good idea), the state could allocate so many dollars to each student and they could take those dollars and go to whatever accredited school, public or private, their parents chose. The budget of each school would be determined by how many students it attracted, which would also encourage excellence.

But that’s not going to happen, at least not right away. A more moderate suggestion, which preserves some local control, is that the legislature determines the cost per student for a quality education and gives that much money from the state-wide property tax fund to each local school district along with standards the district must meet. A district which wants to spend more per student can vote to do so; but the district must raise the extra money locally. Note there is no perverse incentive to spend more as there is in the current plan.

If you don’t listen closely, it sounds like many legislators are proposing exactly this system. But most are not! You have to look for the fine print: it’s the word “equalized” before the word “pupil”. This little modifier makes all the difference.

So what’s an equalized pupil?

Vermont has 84,000 actual students; it has 132,100 equalized students! Stowe and Winooski both have about the same number of actual students; Winooski has almost twice as many equalized pupils as Stowe. The concept of equalized pupil started out reasonably to account for the higher cost of educating a high schooler than a kindergartener. Then small adjustments were added for the local poverty rate and the number of students for whom English is a second language on the theory that these students are also more costly to educate. With Act 127, whose implementation caused this year’s chaos, the legislature completed the process of making these weightings into a full-fledged although hidden welfare system. They declared, with the help of consultants, that it costs more than twice as much to educate a student from a family living below 185% of the Federal Poverty Level as it does a student from a wealthier family. According to the legislature and its consultants, it costs two and a half times as much to educate a student who is not a native English speaker. The result: one actual student who comes from a poor immigrant family counts as 4.52 equalized pupils when doling out funds from the statewide property tax pool.

Let’s say for example, that the cost for a good education in Vermont is $20,000 per actual student. If each district receives this much per actual live student and has to tax itself to spend more, no student is denied the chance of a good education and each district has an incentive to save but none have an incentive to spend less (they would not be allowed to put unspent money to other town uses and would be responsible for meeting standards). Stowe receives $15,400,000 for 770 students and Winooski receives $15,720,000 to educate 786 students.

However, as legislators know very well, that’s not what will happen if the money is allocated per equalized pupil. $20,000 per actual student is $1.68 billion statewide ($20,000 x 84,000 students). The legislature will instead divide the $1.68 billion by the 132,100 equalized pupils and declare a cost of $12,718 per equalized pupil. Stowe then gets $12,921,488 for its 1016 equalized pupils and Winooski gets $25,715,796 for its 2022 equalized pupils. This allocation means Stowe receives only $16,781 per actual student and has no choice but to tax itself to even reach the $20,000/student cost of a decent education in Vermont. To add insult to injury, most legislative proposals and current state law (temporarily suspended) assess a penalty on districts which elect to spend more than the declared statewide cost per student. Meanwhile Winooski has $32,717 to spend on each one of its actual students and no incentive at all to be frugal nor any requirement to deliver good results with this windfall.

You may say “yeah but Stowe is rich and Winooski is poor; Stowe can afford to pay more.” It is hard to feel sorry for Stowe (where I live); but, remember, the tax is already levied on a statewide basis. Stowe has more valuable property than Winooski and will and should contribute much, much more to the statewide fund than Winooski no matter how the money is allocated. But, if property taxes are higher in Stowe than Winooski per dollar of assessed valuation because Stowe must make up for a shortfall in educational funding, it means that someone in Stowe in a $500,000 house (good luck finding one) pays more than someone in Winooski in a house with the same value.

It does cost somewhat more to educate students for whom English is a second language. It arguably costs more to educate students living in poverty (although evidence that the extra money is spent well is thin). If state education dollars are allocated per actual rather than per equalized student, it may be necessary to make some extra allocation to districts with many such students but that should be by honest appropriation rather than the shell game of the equalized pupil and outcomes must be monitored to make sure extra money really results in better-educated students.

A thought experiment

If it now costs 4.5x more to educate some students than others and it costs $20,000 on the average to educate a student in Vermont, shouldn’t we just offer say $40,000 to any qualified public or private school which demonstrates better outcomes for these more needy students and relieve the local school districts of the burden (and the extra equalized pupils)? $40,000 is much less than the $80,000 or so per doubly disadvantaged student we’re giving to the districts which now have the responsibility for educating them.

Two things to remember in November (even if legislators hope you won’t)

1. Look for the magic word “equalized” in any proposal to fund education equally across the state. In this context, “equalized” means highly inequal.
2. We won’t have any choice in November if reasonable people, regardless of party, don’t run against legislators who won’t or can’t deal with the hash they’ve made of education and education funding in Vermont.

Our Daughter and Family Doing What's Right

At Ohio State University as at many other campuses around the country, Jewish students are being harassed and worse. Our daughter Kate, who lives in Columbus, went with husband Hugh and daughter Lil to the campus today to offer "Jewish mother" protection to any student who needed someone to walk with them. Kate hates confrontation but felt she had to do this. I'm enormously proud of them.

 

Kate's Facebook post is here.