Conservation is the key
Re: “A $5 trillion idea to save energy is hiding in plain sight,” July 26 commentary.
I was reading the Perspective section of the Sunday paper and almost missed the most important column in it. Once you look past the pros and cons of keeping school Superintendent Alex Marrero and Krista Kafer’s column on letting your grass go dormant, you come to a column by Mark Gongloff. This column sums up what has been out there waiting to be used. It starts with the savings of more efficient light bulbs. It evolves into approaching enemy solutions from the demand side rather than the supply side.
Energy-efficient appliances, energy-efficient cars, SUV’s and trucks and ending our dependence on outdated coal plants seem to be such a simple solution.
How did this become a partisan issue when everyday Americans just want lower energy costs? It is because big oil is running the energy department in this country. Drill baby drill is not necessary, but rather approaching energy use from the demand side will save this country billions of dollars.
Letap use some common sense and help save a planet that is getting hotter every year. Forest fires, floods and tornadoes are growing exponentially. It won’t happen overnight, but if we care about the world we are leaving our children, it can start now.
David Shaw, Highlands Ranch
AI developers may not understand what they have created
Re: “Open AI: Two models went rogue, hacked digital library,” July 22, news story.
The story about OpenAI’s model hacking into Hugging Face’s digital library of millions of AI models, despite being confined to a “sandbox” disconnected from the internet, should catalyze an immediate international effort to seek ways of protecting the world from the risks of AI — though success may not be possible.
The January 2025 International AI Safety Report compiled by 96 international AI experts was prescient: “new challenges include the possibility that users might not always know what their own AI agents are doing, the potential for AI agents to operate outside of anyone’s control…”
It also found that “developers still understand little about how their general-purpose AI models operate,” and “the inner workings of these models are largely inscrutable, including to the model developers.” How is it possible to regulate AI if developers don’t understand how it works?
Ronald L. Rudolph, Golden
The foundation of America is at risk
If you take the 5 hours to watch “The American Experiment” airing on Netflix, you quickly come to realize how truly brilliant the founding fathers were. Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin, and the rest, when creating this country’s Constitution and Bill of Rights, envisioned the possibility of a “despot” attempting to seize more power than allowed, while personally enriching himself, and perhaps even trying to become a king. They built in safeguards, the separation of powers, just in case.
What they didn’t see was the possibility of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches all coming together and cooperating in a joint effort to accomplish the goals of said “despot.” That would have been impossible to imagine, but here we are. We have a Congress and a Supreme Court both unwilling to stand up to what can only be described as a blatant attempt to seize total control of the future of our democracy.
Itap now up to the voters of this country to curb the attempt to end democracy as we know it. If you believe this country is worth saving, please consider how you cast your ballot in November, assuming of course, we can vote at all.
Robert Johnson, Denver
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