Latest news with #competence
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Video: Karine Jean Pierre insists Biden is competent in resurfaced videos
Take a look at all the times Karine Jean-Pierre suggested Joe Biden was physically and mentally competent to serve as President of the United States. The former White House Press Secretary has penned a tell-all book taking on his political rivals and revealed she is leaving the Democratic Party.
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
Trump opens bombshell investigation into whether Joe Biden was mentally competent when he signed pardons
Donald Trump has opened an investigation into whether Joe Biden 'was competent ' when he used an autopen to issue pardons to family members and death row inmates. Ed Martin - Trump's ultra-MAGA pardon attorney - said the Justice Department has been directed to investigate clemency granted by Biden in the waning days of his presidency, including the December pardon of his troubled son Hunter. Martin's unprecedented probe was revealed in a Monday email to staffers that was obtained by Reuters. The attorney said the investigation involves whether Biden 'was competent and whether others were taking advantage of him through use of autopen or other means.' An autopen is a device used to automatically affix a signature to a document. Hunter Biden, who was convicted last year of three felonies over an illegal gun, and the former First Lady Jill Biden have been accused of wielding significant power over the president in his final days. The prodigal son was treated 'like a chief of staff' despite being 'provably, demonstrably unethical, sleazy and prone to horrible decisions,' CNN's Jake Tapper said in a recent interview about the behind-the-scenes health cover-up. Trump and his supporters have made a variety of claims that Biden's use of autopen invalidated his actions because he was unaware of the orders he was signing. It is not known whether Biden used an autopen for pardons. In March, Trump declared his predecessor's last-minute pardons 'void, vacant and of no further force or effect.' He also warned that members of the House committee investigating the January 6 riots could now face prosecution. The email stated that Martin's investigation is focused on preemptive pardons Biden issued to several members of his family and clemency that spared 37 federal inmates from the death penalty, converting their sentences to life in prison. Just before he relinquished the presidency to Trump on January 20, Biden pardoned five members of his family, saying he wanted to protect them from future politically motivated investigations. The pardons went to Biden's siblings James Biden, Frank Biden and Valerie Biden Owens as well as their spouses, John Owens and Sara Biden. Biden on December 1 pardoned his son Hunter Biden, who had pleaded guilty to tax violations and was convicted on firearms-related charges. Hunter faced up to 25 years in prison for the offenses, although was expected to receive a much lighter punishment as his first offense. He had a scheduled sentencing date for the charges, but the pardon rendered that court date moot. Martin's email did not specify which of the Biden family members pardons were being investigated. It also did not make clear who directed Martin to launch the investigation. has reached out to the White House and the Department of Justice for comment. The Constitution gives the president broad power to issue pardons to wipe away federal criminal convictions or commutations to modify sentences. Trump himself has made extensive use of executive clemency. For instance, he granted clemency on January 20 to all of the nearly 1,600 of his supporters who faced criminal charges in connection with January 6, 2021, which was a failed attempt to prevent congressional certification of Biden's 2020 election victory over Trump. Martin told reporters last month that he viewed the presidential pardon power as 'plenary,' meaning it is absolute. 'If you use the autopen for pardon power, I don't think that that's necessarily a problem,' Martin said during a May 13 press conference, adding that he still felt the Biden pardons warranted scrutiny. The investigation appears designed to use the Justice Department to amplify questions about Biden's health and mental acuity, a conversation that has intensified in recent weeks following his cancer diagnosis and a new book revealing Democratic concerns last year about Biden's condition. Questions have since arisen about whether Biden actually signed many of the orders under his administration amid his noticeable cognitive decline after it was revealed they were signed with an autopen. The mechanical device signs documents rather than an individual. It has been used by presidents and lawmakers for decades. The Oversight Project in March 'gathered every document we could find with Biden's signature over the course of his presidency'. 'All used the same autopen signature except for the announcement that the former President was dropping out of the race last year.' It went on to share two examples from documents that it claimed showed the use of the autopen including a document from August 2022 as well as one from December 2024 with what appear to be identical signatures. The group also posted an image of Biden's signature as a comparison from when he announced he was dropping out of the race. That image shows a slight variation from the other shared documents. also examined more than 25 Biden executive orders documented on the Federal Register's office between 2021 and 2025. It found the same signature on each. A separate examination of 25 Trump signatures on orders on the Federal Register's website from his first and second administrations also found the signatures were all the same. The Oversight Project now says investigators must determine 'who controlled the autopen and what checks there were in place' to determine whether Biden actually made any of the orders. Still, it questioned if that was something that could be determined in the 'correct legal process.' Biden, who is 82, last year dropped his reelection bid amid questions about his mental acuity after a disastrous presidential debate performance. Biden was the oldest person to serve as U.S. president, and Trump is the second oldest. The former president's closest aides have dismissed those concerns, saying Biden was fully capable of making important decisions. No evidence has emerged to suggest that Biden did not intend to issue the pardons. In addition, a Justice Department memo from 2005 found it was legitimate for a subordinate to use an autopen for the president's signature.
CNET
29-05-2025
- Business
- CNET
Use AI at Work? Your Coworkers May Be Judging You
Bosses everywhere are saying generative AI is the future. The signals emanating from the C-suites of corporations big and small are clear: If artificial intelligence doesn't take your job, it will at least change it significantly. The catch: If you use AI at work, your coworkers and maybe even your managers may think you're lazy. That is if you can get hired in the first place. This is the finding of a new study by researchers at Duke University published this month in the journal PNAS. Across four studies, the researchers examined whether people who used AI at work worried others would see them as lazy or incompetent and whether those fears were valid. "We found there was this universal social evaluation penalty where people described as using AI are evaluated as being less competent, less diligent, lazier than people who are described as receiving help from all sorts of other searches," Jessica Reif, a Ph.D. candidate at the Duke University Fuqua School of Business and lead author of the study, told me. The study highlights the difference between the hype over AI at work and the reality on the ground. Although business leaders and AI companies can't stop themselves from envisioning a utopian AI future in which autonomous agents do most of the work and humans focus on truly creative tasks, workers are skeptical. That skepticism — only 23% of American adults said they expect AI will improve how people do their jobs in a recent survey by Pew — affects how people view coworkers who use these tools. People worry they are judged for using AI The Duke University team first looked at whether employees would hesitate to admit they use an AI tool relative to a non-AI tool. The first of four studies found the 500 online participants were more likely to believe they would be judged by a manager or colleague as being lazy, replaceable or less competent if they said they use a generative AI tool versus a non-AI tool. The second test confirmed it. The 1,215 participants read a paragraph about an employee and rated how lazy, competent, diligent, ambitious, independent, self-assured or dominant they perceived the person to be. The people being rated were described as either receiving help from generative AI (like a lawyer using a tool to summarize information) or non-AI sources (like a paralegal) or were in a control group with no statement about help. People who received AI help were seen as more lazy, less competent, less diligent, less independent and less self-assured than either the control group or those receiving non-AI help. The case of a lawyer getting help from AI versus a paralegal is just one example. The researchers used 384 different scenarios, with different jobs and types of help. "What we found is that this was pretty consistent across all the occupations we queried," Reif said. In their third study, the researchers had 1,718 participants serve as "managers" to hire someone for a task. Some of the "candidates" were reported as using AI regularly, and some were people who never use AI. The managers were also asked about their own AI use. Managers who use AI regularly were more likely to see candidates who use AI as a good fit, while those who don't usually preferred candidates who don't. The third study was unclear about whether AI would actually be helpful for the task, so in the final study, participants were asked to imagine they were hiring a gig worker for a task. They were then asked to evaluate workers who either used AI tools or non-AI tools and rate how they would perceive them for manual tasks or digital tasks. The results found that while people who used AI were seen as more lazy, that perception is reduced if the evaluator uses AI or if AI is clearly useful for the task. But just because there isn't a penalty doesn't mean there's an advantage, perception-wise, for AI users in that last study, according to Richard Larrick, one of the authors and a professor of management at Duke University. "The people themselves who are heavy AI users don't actually kind of give any particular benefit or reward, in terms of their perceptions, to the AI user," Larrick said. "So it isn't like there's some boost in perceptions when high AI users think about another AI user. It's just that you wipe out for them the laziness perception." Your CEO may think AI is the future Ever since large language models like ChatGPT burst onto the scene in 2022, management consultants and corporate executives have been touting generative AI as the next big thing in the workplace. Workplace apps from companies like Google and Microsoft seem more packed each day with new AI functions and prompts. As the technology has matured a bit and more useful applications have arisen, that perception has only gotten stronger for many companies. Shopify and Duolingo, for instance, both recently announced they would prioritize AI-driven work and try to see if an AI can do a job before hiring a new employee or contractor. A commandment from a CEO to be AI-first is one thing. Actually changing the culture in your workplace and among the people you work around is entirely different. "I think there are cases where, when the rubber meets the road implementing tools like generative AI, there are challenges," Reif said. "What we're showing is just one such challenge of many." She speculated as more employers, especially tech-savvy ones, prioritize AI use and skills, the social costs will drop eventually. "I think it's going to take a while for this penalty to really go away," she said. Larrick said that even if general perceptions around AI users change, the social penalty may only disappear for certain tasks. For some work, using generative AI will be more acceptable. For others, it won't. How to avoid judgment from coworkers One way not to be judged at work is not to use AI on the job. And that may be what people are doing already, just based on the simple fact that people will judge you, as the researchers found in their first study. "As long as my choice of adopting AI is based on my theory of what others will think, even as what other people think changes, if my theory doesn't change fast enough, I still might be reluctant to use it and to reveal it," Larrick said. Another way to deal with the perception of laziness is to point out whether AI is saving you time and whether the time you save is being used well, Reif said. Perceived laziness isn't the only problem with using generative AI at work. There are concerns about whether the work you ask it to do is accurate or competent. So be sure you're checking your work and show that you are, in fact, using skills that can't be easily replaced, said Jack Soll, one of the authors and a professor of management at Duke University. "The more that employees can make their peers and their bosses understand that it takes skill and knowledge in order to use it appropriately, I think others can then appreciate their AI use," he said.
