Licensing

Motors make a difference.

Here’s a question you may not have thought about: Can you lose your driver’s license if you get busted for jaywalking.

You don’t need a license to walk. Suspending a driving license for doing something that isn’t driving makes no sense – right?

Right?

The California Department of Motor Vehicles may not agree. That’s why it spent years litigating a similar issue.

For now, at least until the next appeal, an electric bicycle is not a motor vehicle in California.

A moped might be one, but an e-bike is not.

A California appellate panel has ruled that a guy should not have had his driver’s license suspended for a year after his DUI arrest for operating an e-bike. The arrest occurred in August 2022. A trial court issued a ruling against the rider (driver?) in 2024. The appellate reversal arrived this month.

For the moment at least, you can’t have your motor vehicle license suspended for driving something without a regular motor.

The key to the ruling was the fact that you don’t need a license to ride an e-bike and a California code section that says “an electric bicycle is a bicycle.”

Noted the ruling: “While it may well be the case that electric bicycles in some ways resemble mopeds more than they resemble non-electric bicycles, and that the use of electric bicycles potentially raises greater public safety concerns than the use of non-electric bicycles, it is not up to the court to disregard the current statutory scheme in favor of public policy arguments from the DMV.”

The ball is now in your court, California State Legislature.

Meanwhile, bike riders, don’t be reckless — you can still be fined $250 for bike riding drunk.

Spiritual thoughts. Now that the Pope has weighed in on artificial intelligence it’s obviously time for me to do the same. I know you’ve been waiting for my thoughts.

I have several of them.

The first is that there is a way to stop AI development in its tracks. All we (that is, people who know how to program stuff) need to do is develop AI that does everything a CEO does. Or at least threaten to do that.

If a public company (or even a private one with investors) can eliminate the jobs of top management because that’s what’s best for the bottom line, top management may decide to go in a different direction. AI will suddenly be intelligent enough as it is.

My next thought is, maybe we don’t need to worry about this. AI is not a monolith. It’s being developed by competing companies and competing countries.

You know what that means: Each AI will be intent on destroying the other AIs — just like humanity, but more quickly. They’ll kill each other off and we can all relax because we won’t be able to use computers any more.

If that doesn’t happen, AI will become pointless. If computers and robots can create all the products and services we need without human help, no one will be able to buy any of those products and services since no one will have a job. AI companies will go bankrupt and the market for human labor will flourish again.

There is hope for the future.

Finally, those of you worried about AI scooping up all your information and algorithms shaping your life can stop worrying. There are two simple solutions: starvation and misdirection.

You don’t have to feed the beast.

Your Facebook friends and Instagram followers don’t have to know where you went on vacation or the identity of your first-born. Pay cash for stuff. Call restaurants for takeout. Go to a store.

Alternatively — or additionally — you can confuse the heck out of the computers. You can’t be inserted into an algorithm if your x’s and y’s have no definite value.

Whenever doing anything on the Internet, create multiple permutations of your real goal.

Download Lordi, Gregorian chants and Morgan Wallen. You don’t have to listen to any of them.

Visit military-grade weaponry, Quaker, AOC, Ken Paxton, Goop and REI websites. You don’t need to read them —just leave tabs open for a while.

Purchase a sex doll and a Bible. You don’t have to use either one.

Subscribe to The American Conservative and Jacobin. You don’t have to read either one.

You’ll end up with a well-rounded Internet experience.