Numlock News: March 4, 2025 • Canada, Kazakhstan, Hallucinations
By Walt Hickey
Hallucinations
Judges are beginning to hand down fines and penalties to attorneys who are found to rely on AI to write their legal briefs, saving particular scorn for those filing briefs where the AI has simply made up case law that never actually happened. Last week, a judge revoked one attorney’s pro hac vice administration which allowed him to practice in a jurisdiction where he was not licensed, and also fined three other attorneys on the case $1,000 to $3,000 for submitting court documents containing eight non-existent cases supplied by AI. In another case in Indiana, an attorney has been sanctioned $15,000 for citing cases that didn’t exist in at least three cases.
North Korea
The hermit kingdom and international pariah state of North Korea is once again welcoming Western tourists. This first wave is particularly heavy with completionists bent on making it to every country in the world. Either way, it signals the end of a pandemic era in which North Korea managed to be even more isolated than usual. In 2019, North Korea welcomed 350,000 foreign travelers, with 90 percent of them from China. Only last year did North Korea begin welcoming Russians in tour groups, and in February access opened up to more countries. So far, only the city of Rason is open to non-Russian travelers, but Westerners can get on the tour for about $725.
Timothy W. Martin and Soobin Kim, The Wall Street Journal
Driverless
A new record has been set for the fastest an autonomous vehicle can go. A driverless Maserati MC20 Coupe hit 197.7 miles per hour at Kennedy Space Center last week, operating self-driving software from Politecnico de Milano, an Italian technological university. It was achieved on a 2.8-mile runway and beat the previous record of 192.2 miles per hour set by an IAC AV-21 in 2022. The particular challenge with this kind of work is designing algorithms that can move fast enough to keep up with the car. Self-driving can be computationally intensive, and the faster the vehicle is going, the speedier the algorithm needs to be.
Fly Low
Most satellites fly at an altitude between 400 and 800 kilometers up, but it is possible to fly them well lower, in very low-Earth orbit (VLEO). If you can get past challenges like atmospheric drag, you can actually get some pretty significant advantages like great communications and clear views of the planet. Albedo has raised over $100 million to work in the VLEO space, hoping to offer imagery at the kind of clarity only available from drones or planes. Next week, their Transporter-13 mission will take off on a Falcon 9 to deposit their first satellite, Clarity-1, in an orbit 500 kilometers to 600 kilometers above the planet, at which point it’ll lower to an operational orbit of 274 kilometers up. They hope it lasts five years.
Reciprocity
It appears that Americans underestimate how ticked off Canadians are at them right now. A new poll taken in mid-February found that 82 percent of Americans consider Canada to be a friend or ally, while just 33 percent of Canadians say the same about the United States. Indeed, while only 5 percent of U.S. respondents said that Canada was unfriendly to them, fully 36 percent of Canadians said that the U.S. was unfriendly, and another 14 percent went even further and said that the U.S. was an enemy to Canada. Overall, 65 percent of Canadians said they planned to research whether the companies they shop at are Canadian-owned, and 53 percent have started a boycott of American companies.
Middle School
It is a commonality across the country that kids in middle school tend to be less happy than kids in elementary school, and that the transition from the last year of elementary school (fifth grade) to the first year of middle school or junior high (sixth grade) tends to be a pretty rough adjustment. For instance, while 68 percent of 5th graders in elementary school said they felt a sense of belonging in school, that sentiment is shared by only 46 percent of 6th graders in middle school. 7th graders did even worse, with just 38 percent feeling a sense of belonging. Similar declines in self-reported well-being are seen when asked about their relationship with teachers, their school climate and their positive feelings. Some of this is probably unavoidable since early adolescence is a pretty rough time in general, but nailing this transition has been an issue for educators for years. Most 6th graders attend “middle school” from 6th to 8th, but some 6th graders are in an elementary school and go to “junior high” for 7th and 8th. Others stay in one big school from kindergarten through 8th. The ideal course isn’t entirely known, and there are tradeoffs; for instance, while 7th and 8th graders are happier in K-8 schools, there’s evidence it’s harder on the 4th and 5th graders.
Kazakhstan
On Monday a New York-based mining investor announced a new joint venture with Qazgeology, the state-owned mining company of Kazakhstan. This is a pretty big deal as China controls most of the global supply of lithium and rare-earth elements. Two years after the U.S. cut a minerals deal with five Central Asian nations, the goal of diversifying suppliers of critical minerals has begun to bear fruit. Cove Capital owns 75 percent of the joint venture and the Kazakh government only 25 percent. The goal is to mine a site believed to contain at least 380,000 tons of rare earth metals, including neodymium and praseodymium. One appeal to the Kazakhs is that China tends to take the raw ore home for processing, but the U.S. agreed to set up local processing in the countries, offering additional economic independence and allowing the country to engage in more lucrative and higher-margin parts of the value chain.
Alexander C. Kaufman, Field Notes
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Last week I got an emailed survey asking about my child’s transition from elementary to middle (he is now in 8th grade). FWIW, he got hella happier in middle school. It won’t shock me if that trend continues—kids grow up faster now and 5th graders are vicious.
Small typo:
"Last week, a judge revoked one attorney’s pro hac vice administration"
Admission, not administration.