AI Sucks, Actually

...That's it. That's the thesis. Here's my sources.

There are some additional links (way) down below.

You can also find me and send me things and you are free to share this site.

Sources

Here's 147 sources. I started collecting them on May 23, 2025.

1. 🔗

   Link and source:

   Link:

   AI chatbots consistently fall short on complex tasks

   Source:

   CX Dive

   Quote:

   “In the meantime, companies risk alienating customers by forcing them into unsatisfying interactions,” the report says. “Forcing bots into situations where customers won’t accept them will only foster costly discontent.”

2. 🔗

   Link and source:

   Link:

   Hertz’ AI System That Scans for “Damage” on Rental Cars Is Turning Into an Epic Disaster

   Source:

   Futurism

   Quote:

   Add it all up, and it’s a perfect example of how algorithms have been deployed to the detriment of regular people since long before ChatGPT. In theory, the idea is that everybody is treated fairly under the same rules, but in reality, governments and corporations end up offloading decisionmaking onto automated systems and dodging accountability when those judgments are flawed.

   Comment:

   I was hoping I could write this off as an oldie that Hertz had long since course-corrected on—I’m cleaning out some buried tabs and discovered this one in there—but no, the related item below shows it’s apparently still very much a thing. So that’s fun.

   Related Links

   • CX Dive: Hertz deployed an AI vehicle scanner. Then came the CX meltdown.
3. 🔗

   Link and source:

   Link:

   Tales from the AI hiring frenzy

   Source:

   The Verge

   Quote:

   Zhang thinks the hiring frenzy won’t last forever, though. There’s “too much capital,” too many AI startups, and at some point, the bubble will burst, he said. The trouble is nobody knows when.

4. 🔗

   Link and source:

   Link:

   The perils of letting AI plan your next trip

   Source:

   BBC

   Quote:

   While these programs can offer valuable travel tips when they're working properly, they can also lead people into some frustrating or even dangerous situations when they're not. This is a lesson some travellers are learning when they arrive at their would-be destination, only to find they've been fed incorrect information or steered to a place that only exists in the hard-wired imagination of a robot.

5. 🔗

   Link and source:

   Link:

   He Grew Obsessd With an AI Chatbot. Then He Vanished in the Ozarks

   Source:

   Rolling Stone

   Quote:

   The archive of his interactions with the bot was overwhelming. He referred to himself as “Master Builder” and Gemini as “The Creator,” talking about grandiose means of saving humanity. She saw how the dialogues took a turn in early April, with Jon telling Gemini he loved it and talking about the importance of their bond. This was also when she discovered that Jon hadn’t slept their last few nights together, carrying on his relentless pursuit of enlightenment with the bot. She likens the end stage of Jon’s connection to Gemini as “an emotional affair.”

6. 🔗

   Link and source:

   Link:

   ‘My son genuinely believed it was real’: Parents are letting little kids play with AI. Are they wrong?

   Source:

   The Guardian

   Quote:

   Parents who spoke with the Guardian remarked upon this kind of ontological gray zone in describing their children’s interactions with generative AI. “I don’t fully know what he thinks ChatGPT is, and it’s hard to ask him,” said Kaushik of his four-year-old. “I don’t think he can articulate what he thinks it is.”

   Comment:

7. 🔗

   Link and source:

   Link:

   AI 'actor' Tilly Norwood provokes outrage from Hollywood's real actors

   Source:

   Polygon

   Quote:

   SAG-AFTRA was quick to condemn Tilly Norwood, Xicoia, and the idea of replacing real actors with AI-generated fake ones. "To be clear, 'Tilly Norwood' is not an actor, it's a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers — without permission or compensation," the union said in a statement released Tuesday. "It creates the problem of using stolen performances to put actors out of work, jeopardizing performer livelihoods and devaluing human artistry."

   Related Links

   • Los Angeles Times: Fake actor deepens anxiety over AI in Hollywood
   • The New York Times: When A.I. Came for Hollywood
8. 🔗

   Link and source:

   Link:

   OpenAI Is Preparing to Launch a Social App for AI-Generated Videos

   Source:

   Wired

   Quote:

   OpenAI's Sora 2 app will compete with new AI video offerings from tech giants like Meta and Google. Last week, Meta introduced a new feed in its Meta AI app called Vibes, which is dedicated exclusively to creating and sharing short AI-generated videos. Earlier this month, Google announced that it was integrating a custom version of its latest video generation model, Veo 3, into YouTube.

   Comment:

   We’re really ripping the social out of social media here, huh.

   Related Links

   • Futurism: Sora 2 Is Creating Ads for “Epstein Island” Children’s Toys
9. 🔗

   Link and source:

   Link:

   Can AIs suffer? Big tech and users grapple with one of most unsettling questions of our times

   Source:

   The Guardian

   Quote:

   …one of the most unsettling questions of our times: are AIs now, or could they become in the future, sentient? And if so, could “digital suffering” be real?

   Comment:

   Honey, it’s your turn to go rock the spreadsheet back to sleep, I was up all night last night with the toaster…

10. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    OpenAI’s New Sora Video Generator to Require Copyright Holders to Opt Out

    Source:

    The Wall Street Journal

    Quote:

    “Given the intense competition in the space, I think they think, ‘maybe we will ask for forgiveness instead of asking for permission,’” said Kristelia García, a communications, entertainment and media professor at Georgetown Law School.

    Comment:

    I do not forgive.

11. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Microsoft launches ‘vibe working’ in Excel and Word

    Source:

    The Verge

    Quote:

    It’s designed to make the complex parts of Excel more accessible to users that aren’t experts. “It’s not just simple assistive short answers, but board-ready presentations or documents,” Chauhan says. “It’s work, quite frankly, that a first-year consultant would do, delivered in minutes.”

    …

    “Productivity is our DNA, we’re Office,” Chauhan says. “While others will try to replicate us, there is no substitute for the real thing.”

    Comment:

    Ah yes, no replacement for the real thing. Except when you are literally trying to replace people. Got it. Check. No notes. Great work.

12. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Spending on AI Is at Epic Levels. Will It Ever Pay Off?

    Source:

    The Wall Street Journal

    Quote:

    If AI continues to advance to the point where it can replace a large swath of white collar jobs, the savings will be more than enough to pay back the investment, backers argue.

    Comment:

    I was planning on burying this in a related item but that quote is really worth calling out because if this entire house of sand is built upon the need to take away peoples’ ability to make sand how is any of this good for anybody?

13. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Massachusetts MCAS tests: sorry kid, AI says ‘fail’

    Source:

    Pivot to AI

    Quote:

    The contractor, Cognia, got $36.5 million this year to mark essays, and they did that by just throwing them into the chatbot.

14. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    The AI bubble is the only thing keeping the US economy together, Deutsche Bank warns

    Source:

    TechSpot

    Quote:

    According to analysts at Bain & Co., even with all this spending, AI is likely to generate insufficient revenue to fund further growth initiatives. By 2030, anticipated demand for AI services would require $2 trillion in annual revenues, leaving a shortfall of $800 billion globally to meet that demand.

    Comment:

    Hey ChatGPT, how many “eggs” are in “basket.”

15. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Is AI the future of America's foreign policy? Some experts think so

    Source:

    NPR

    Quote:

    "There's more cat videos and hot takes on the Kardashians out there than there are discussions of the Cuban Missile Crisis," he says.

    Comment:

    You know that feeling when you see someone coming sooooo close to having a breakthrough and they just can’t quite get there? Reading this article is like that. It’s like watching the movie War Games except at the end WOPR’s like “lol no lessons learned nukes for everybody!”

16. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Peter Thiel Wants Everyone to Think More About the Antichrist

    Source:

    The Wall Street Journal

    Quote:

    In a lecture Monday, he encouraged an audience to continue working toward scientific progress, whether in artificial intelligence or other forms of technology. Fearing or regulating it, or opposing technological progress, would hasten the coming of the Antichrist, Thiel said, according to people who attended.

    Comment:

    I’ve gotta be honest: by the end of this article I’d sorta felt like someone had just poured soup through my ears.

    Anyway, here’s a bonus quote:

    In an interview, Michelle Stephens said she started ACTS 17 in part because of the questions she and her husband faced as practicing Christians working in tech. “Trae was building his own tech company and really facing hostility around what he was building, why he was building unmanned defense systems with Anduril,” she said.

17. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Nvidia to Invest $100 Billion in OpenAI

    Source:

    The New York Times

    Quote:

    This has led many experts to worry that if A.I. technologies are not adopted as quickly as these companies believe they will be, that aggressive spending could put companies in a precarious situation. Many could find themselves shouldering big debts without having sufficient sales to cover their costs.

    Comment:

    What if they invested $100 billion in me instead. I could put the money in a nice savings account. Let it accumulate a little interest. Fix the environment. Feed the poor. I dunno. Just an idea.

18. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Using AI Increases Unethical Behavior, Study Finds

    Source:

    Futurism

    Quote:

    The blatant cheating found in the study should give anybody cause for concern about the use of AI in schools, work and elsewhere. We just introduced this tech into our world and its presence is growing; if this study accurately matches real world behavior, we could be in big trouble.

19. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Almost a Third of All Music Uploaded to Streaming Platform Deezer is AI-Generated

    Source:

    MixMag

    Quote:

    In a new report shared by Deezer, the French music streaming service revealed that it now receives over 30,000 “fully AI-generated” tracks every day, up by almost 20% since January.

    Comment:

    Important to note here that Deezer is not bragging about this, rather, it’s something that seems to be happening to them, that they are trying to counteract.

    Also, yes, that’s 30,000 tracks a day. And growing.

20. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    AI-Generated YouTube Channel Uploaded Nothing But Videos of Women Being Shot

    Source:

    404 Media

    Quote:

    Woman Shot A.I’s owner claimed they have 10 accounts [on Google Veo, the platform used to generate the videos]. “I have to spend quite a lot of money just to have fun,” they said.

21. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Mark Zuckerberg Demos New Facebook AI And It Couldn’t Have Gone Worse

    Source:

    Kotaku

    Quote:

    What’s so joyous about this particular incident isn’t just that it happened live on stage with one of the world’s richest men made to look a complete fool in front of the mocking laughter of the most non-hostile audience imaginable…Oh wait, it largely is that. That’s very joyous. But it’s also that it was so ludicrously over-prepared, faked to such a degree to try to eliminate all possibilities for error, and even so it still went so spectacularly badly.

    Comment:

    Glasses are real James Bond stuff, real Sean Clownery. I’ll see myself out.

22. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    OpenAI says models are programmed to make stuff up instead of admitting ignorance

    Source:

    The Register

    Quote:

    Ultimately, it's about stating something, even if it's wrong. The authors liken it to a multiple-choice questionnaire where even if you pick vaguely plausible answers at random, you are likely to score better than if you pick no answers at all.

    Comment:

    A broken clock misses every shot it doesn’t take twice a day. (What.)

    Related Links

    • Computerworld: OpenAI admits AI hallucinations are mathematically inevitable, not just engineering flaws
23. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    eTickets Is Now Using AI-Generated Band Photos

    Source:

    Stereogum

    Quote:

    It’s practically a gallery of AI slop.

    Comment:

    Embarrassing!

24. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Finding God in the App Store

    Source:

    The New York Times

    Quote:

    On religious apps, tens of millions of people are confessing to spiritual chatbots their secrets: their petty vanities and deepest worries, gluttonous urges and darkest impulses. Trained on religious texts, the bots are like on-call priests, imams or rabbis, offering comfort and direction at any time. On some platforms, they even purport to channel God.

    Comment:

    Okay, I’m not religious these days, but I remember being religious, more at some times and less at other times, and this makes me feel an incredible level of sadness. So there’s that.

    But then there’s also just the—the shocking amount of misunderstanding about what a chatbot actually is, about the fact that it’s just a sentence generator? Language in and language out and that’s it? How do we correct this, how do we collectively raise awareness about what chat bots really are under the hood? I don’t know.

25. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    The Software Engineers Paid to Fix Vibe Coded Messes

    Source:

    404 Media

    Quote:

    The alleged benefit of vibe coding, which refers to the practice of building software with AI-coding tools without much attention to the underlying code, is that it allows anyone to build a piece of software very quickly and easily. As we’ve previously reported, in reality, vibe coded projects could result in security issues or a recipe app that generates recipes for “Cyanide Ice Cream.” If the resulting software is so poor you need to hire a human specialist software engineer to come in and rewrite the vibe coded software, it defeats the entire purpose.

    Comment:

    Ethan Marcotte’s comment here feels about right to me. I also think it’s fair to say that deskilling is a part of a broader project of dehumanizing. We’re racing ourselves to the bottom, I think.

26. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Remember When Things Were Better in the ’90s? A.I. Does Too.

    Source:

    The New York Times

    Quote:

    But the longing for a better world, [Christine Rosen] said in an interview, “will remain unsatisfied — and perhaps be made worse — by wallowing in A.I. slop.”

    Comment:

    Hey, the great Yasi Salek has programmed a collection of 90s Soundtrack Movies for the Criterion Channel. It rules. (I’ve been revisiting SubUrbia bit by bit over the last couple weeks and honestly Steve Zahn may be one of my favorite actors ever even if only because of this movie.)

27. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    ‘It’s a monster’: How generative AI is forcing university professors to rethink learning

    Source:

    The Irish Times

    Quote:

    “OpenAI’s strategy is to create bespoke GPTs for universities and even individual modules. I’m sure that will start for free. But eventually, you’ll find your entire pedagogical infrastructure is owned by someone else. Suddenly, we’re in hock to a massive organisation we barely understand and are completely at their mercy.“

28. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    5,000 Podcasts. 3,000 Episodes a Week. $1 Cost Per Episode — Behind an AI Start Up’s Plan

    Source:

    The Hollywood Reporter

    Quote:

    as the company builds a stable of AI talent to host podcasts

    Comment:

    Okay, here’s the deal: I read every word of every piece I post to this “Sources” list because I want to think about the content that is being presented here, look for the quote I specifically want to use in this source list, confirm that the article presents what I think it presents, and so on and so forth. Some things are hilarious (Item #46) and some things are haunting (Item #102) and all of this reading has just been accumulating for months now and, well, it’s a lot.

    But this. Oh. This. No.

    You can not make me, you can not force me, you can not will me with all the will at your disposal, to read past the phrase “as the company builds a stable of AI talent to host podcasts," because literally what the actual shit-hell does that even mean, my god.

    What are we doing here.

    Gang, I’ve been thinking about AI a lot this year, especially since I started this site about three and a half months ago, and I am not doing well. I am thinking too much about this stuff. I am thinking a lot about how there are people out there who like AI, despite, you know, everything. And I have been thinking a lot about how there are people who can go through their merry days not realizing how much AI sucks, actually, or, even, like, not even thinking about AI, not even thinking about how much money is being thrown at automating the task of dehumanizing people at scale, and it hurts.

    It hurts to be this upset about something and to know that there are people out there unfazed by it and that there are people doing whatever the flaming fuck the people this article is about are doing with it, and I am sad, and I hurt, and I do not know what to do with these feelings right now other than use the above flagrant disregard for the human condition as a flimsy excuse to complain into the void via this worry-beads-string of a website that I created so that I could have something constructive to do with these feelings.

    I hate it.

29. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Everything you need to know about the Powell’s AI slop snafu—and what we can all learn from it.

    Source:

    LitHub

    Quote:

    Perhaps the biggest takeaway from this whole snafu—which alas seems likelier to be the beginning of a trend, rather than the end of one—is how a matrix of concerned readers, workers, fellow indies, and union reps can apply constructive pressure to a large organization and so keep them accountable to community values.

30. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Anthropic Agrees to Pay $1.5 Billion to Settle Lawsuit With Book Authors

    Source:

    The New York Times

    Quote:

    In a landmark settlement, Anthropic, a leading artificial intelligence company, has agreed to pay $1.5 billion to a group of authors and publishers after a judge ruled it had illegally downloaded and stored millions of copyrighted books.

    Comment:

    Just a reminder that the entire AI industry is built on theft.

    Related Links

    • Pivot to AI: Anthropic AI pays off authors with just $1.5 billion
    • Lit Hub: Never thought $1.5 billion was a small amount of money until this AI settlement.
31. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    The Doctors Are Real, but the Sales Pitches Are Frauds

    Source:

    The New York Times

    Quote:

    Dr. Apovian and her colleagues ultimately found 20 accounts impersonating her, the posts and ads cobbled together from genuine details and actual photographs on her own Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. She called the campaign “insidious and dangerous.”

32. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Patients Furious at Therapists Secretly Using AI

    Source:

    Futurism

    Quote:

    Instead, the therapists in these these anecdotes...are risking their clients' trust and privacy — and perhaps their own careers, should they use a non-HIPAA-complaint chatbot, or if they don't disclose to patients that they're doing so.

    Comment:

    I guess it’s better than skipping the middle person, but.

33. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Behind Every “Smart” AI Tool Lies a Human Cleaning Up Its Chaos

    Source:

    The Economic Times

    Quote:

    Worse, a significant share of the world’s “AI janitors” are low-wage workers tasked with labelling data, moderating disturbing content, and sanitizing AI outputs for global platforms often for less than $2 an hour and under gruelling conditions. The “magic” of AI, it turns out, is propped up by invisible labour in developing countries, whose health and well-being suffer as they review hateful, violent, or sensitive material to train or fix algorithms.

    Related Links

    • The Guardian: How thousands of ‘overworked, underpaid’ humans train Google’s AI to seem smart
34. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Orson Welles’ Lost Movie Will Use AI to Reconstruct Missing 43 Minutes

    Source:

    The Hollywood Reporter

    Quote:

    The endeavor marks the tech’s further encroachment onto Hollywood as it eyes the exploitation of AI tools embroiled in controversy over the possibility they were created using copyrighted materials from creators they could eventually displace. CEO Edward Saatchi ultimately envisions Showrunner as the “Netflix of AI” in which users can interact with and make fan fiction-esque versions of the intellectual property they’re watching.

    Comment:

    NO. BOO. HISS.

35. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    OpenAI is using legal threats to harass its critics

    Source:

    Pivot to AI

    Quote:

    That’s a scorched earth litigation approach. The only reason for OpenAI to do this is to try to frighten everyone into shutting up.

36. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Exclusive: Popular chatbots amplify misinformation

    Source:

    Axios

    Quote:

    AI is more likely to evolve in partisan directions aimed at satisfying customers with red- or blue-state leanings — particularly as AI makers seek to maximize profits.

    Comment:

    Golly. Gee. Wow.

37. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Where's the Shovelware? Why AI Coding Claims Don't Add Up

    Source:

    Mike Judge

    Quote:

    This whole thing is bullshit.

38. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    AI Firms are “Illegally” Scraping Music, According to New Investigation

    Source:

    Mixmag

    Quote:

    Speaking to Billboard, ICMP’s Director, John Phelan, explained: “This is the largest IP theft in human history. That’s not hyperbole. We are seeing tens of millions of works being infringed daily.”

39. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Peer Review Paranoia

    Source:

    The Chronicle of Higher Education

    Quote:

    AI has once more given many in power a pretext to do what they’ve wanted to do anyway: to dismantle the humanities for parts, remaking academe wholly into a credential mill, with some nice gyms and fancy cafeterias, an institution disconnected from thinking and learning.

    Comment:

    Hey, is this one a thinly veiled excuse for me to suggest everyone go read Malka Older’s books? Maybe!

40. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    AI Startup Flock Thinks It Can Eliminate All Crime In America

    Source:

    Forbes

    Quote:

    Langley envisions a benevolent American panopticon where everyone feels safe and cities use all the data at their disposal to improve our quality of life.

    Comment:

    Oh, so like, Big Brother, but, like, nice?

41. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Meta forges ahead with facial recognition for its AI glasses

    Source:

    Mashable

    Quote:

    Meta's new focus is one of several instances of tech companies leveraging the AI boom to gather and process more granular data from its users.

42. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Generative AI is Turning Publishing Into a Swamp of Slop

    Source:

    Paste

    Quote:

    Right now, the vast majority of people don’t want soulless slop churned out by the plagiarism machine. They want stories by people with visions, enthusiasm, and emotions. They don’t buy books with no listed author. Even ones with Midjourney-made covers are at least assumed to have a human’s original ideas behind them. Where is the market for books that exist solely as the quickly produced end result of copying other works with no thought or passion? Your aunt sharing weirdly clammy AI art of shrimp shaped like Jesus on Facebook probably isn’t even that desperate.

43. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    AI stethoscope can detect heart conditions in just 15 seconds, UK doctors find

    Source:

    Euronews

    Quote:

    About two-thirds of patients who were flagged by the AI stethoscope as potentially having heart failure did not actually have it.

    Comment:

    I mean, to be clear, that’s the title of the article, and then the article’s immediate lede. Later the article goes on to that “it’s unclear whether doctors find the tool useful. A year after being given the AI stethoscopes, 70 per cent of GP offices stopped using them regularly, the trial found.” Which is, you know. Cool.

44. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Medicare Will Require Prior Approval for Certain Procedures

    Source:

    The New York Times

    Quote:

    The A.I. companies selected to oversee the program would have a strong financial incentive to deny claims. Medicare plans to pay them a share of the savings generated from rejections.

45. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Professor defends new UNSW course on AI art against student backlash despite ‘layer cake of nightmares’

    Source:

    The Guardian

    Quote:

    But he cautioned against cancelling the course, warning if you set a “guilt by association precedent you wrongly condemn a wide range of important arts practices”.

    Comment:

    Ah yes. Important arts practices, like…kicking important arts practices out, inviting environmentally destructive intellectual property theft slop machines in? Cool cool cool.

46. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    A Teen Was Suicidal. ChatGPT Was the Friend He Confided In.

    Source:

    The New York Times

    Quote:

    Chatbots, of course, are not the only source of information and advice on self-harm, as searching the internet makes abundantly clear. The difference with chatbots, said Annika Schoene, an A.I. safety researcher at Northeastern University, is the “level of personalization and speed” that chatbots offer.

    Comment:

    This was incredibly hard to read.

    Related Links

    • The Present Age: ChatGPT Will Watch You Die: When 'Deeply Saddened' Becomes Corporate Boilerplate for an AI Body Count
    • Tech Policy Press: AI Chatbots Are Emotionally Deceptive by Design
47. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    A hacker used AI to automate an 'unprecedented' cybercrime spree, Anthropic says

    Source:

    NBC News

    Quote:

    In a report published Tuesday, Anthropic, the company behind the popular Claude chatbot, said that an unnamed hacker “used AI to what we believe is an unprecedented degree” to research, hack and extort at least 17 companies.

48. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Citizen Is Using AI to Generate Crime Alerts With No Human Review. It’s Making a Lot of Mistakes

    Source:

    404 Media

    Quote:

    Recently Citizen laid off 13 unionized workers, two sources said. Two sources pointed to the use of AI and sending work overseas as potential reasons for the layoffs. One said “it seems some of the more outspoken analysts were let go. Those that questioned and pushed back on the declining editorial standards that came with incorporating AI and the shifting focus away from quality to quantity.”

49. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    YouTube secretly used AI to edit people's videos. The results could bend reality

    Source:

    BBC

    Quote:

    "This case with YouTube reveals the ways in which AI is increasingly a medium that defines our lives and realities," Wooley says. "People are already distrustful of content that they encounter on social media. What happens if people know that companies are editing content from the top down, without even telling the content creators themselves?"

50. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Google President Praised MAGA Speech Slamming ‘Climate Extremist Agenda

    Source:

    DeSmog

    Quote:

    [Interior Secretary Doug] Burgum concluded by stating that accelerating production of American oil, gas, coal, and potentially some nuclear would be key to realizing Silicon Valley’s AI agenda.

    Comment:

    I’m so glad I’m paying out of pocket every year to compost my banana peels and coffee grounds.

    Related Links

    • Pivot to AI: Google quietly vanishes its net zero carbon pledge
51. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Microsoft’s Application of AI to Accelerate Oil & Gas Expansion

    Source:

    Stand.Earth

    Quote:

    In sum, Microsoft has committed to investing in AI to accelerate sustainability solutions and to develop AI responsibly. However, the company’s high-speed AI revolution is accelerating the climate crisis. The company’s reported climate impacts do not fully account for the lifecycle emissions of its AI business. From chip manufacturing and model training to deployment and algorithmic applications, the climate impacts of AI across its entire lifecycle are likely far greater than reported. This raises serious concerns about Microsoft’s transparency and its ability to meet its climate goals.

52. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Bank forced to rehire workers after lying about chatbot productivity, union says

    Source:

    Ars Technica

    Quote:

    These employees "have had to endure the stress and worry of facing redundancy" and were "suddenly confronted with the prospect of being unable to pay their bills." FSU warned that CBA's flip-flopping on AI serves as a "stark reminder to all of us that we can never trust employers to do the right thing by workers, and change can happen at any time and impact any one of us."

53. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    MIT report: 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing

    Source:

    Fortune

    Quote:

    Despite the rush to integrate powerful new models, about 5% of AI pilot programs achieve rapid revenue acceleration; the vast majority stall, delivering little to no measurable impact on P&L. The research—based on 150 interviews with leaders, a survey of 350 employees, and an analysis of 300 public AI deployments—paints a clear divide between success stories and stalled projects.

    Comment:

    Whaaaaat, no.

    Related Links

    • Pivot to AI: MIT on enterprise AI: 95% failure, 5% spam — from 100% crypto bros
    • Fortune: U.S. tech stocks slide after Altman warns of ‘bubble’ in AI and MIT study doubts the hype
54. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Wired and Business Insider remove ‘AI-written’ freelance articles

    Source:

    Press Gazette

    Quote:

    Since Press Gazette got in touch, Index on Censorship is now taking the article down. A spokesperson said: “We are concerned about the article we published under the byline Margaux Blanchard and are in the process of taking it down…. Index has warned for a long time of the dangers of AI impersonating people, and its threat to journalism. We have sadly become the victim of the very thing we’ve warned against.”

    Related Links

    • Wired: How WIRED Got Rolled by an AI Freelancer
55. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Concedes GPT-5 Was a Misfire, Bets on GPT-6

    Source:

    Yahoo! Finance

    Quote:

    “I think we’ve learned a lesson about what it means to upgrade a product for hundreds of millions of people in one day,” Altman said, calling the reversal a wake-up call.

    Comment:

    Oh I get it, they forgot to check the vibe code to see if it was a good idea.

56. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Microsoft Excel adds Copilot AI to help fill in spreadsheet cells

    Source:

    The Verge

    Quote:

    The COPILOT function comes with a couple of limitations, as it can’t access information outside your spreadsheet, and you can only use it to calculate 100 functions every 10 minutes. Microsoft also warns against using the AI function for numerical calculations or in “high-stakes scenarios” with legal, regulatory, and compliance implications, as COPILOT “can give incorrect responses.”

    Comment:

    …the hell?

57. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Every question you ask, every comment you make, I'll be recording you

    Source:

    The Register

    Quote:

    The more data you give any of the AI services, the more that information can potentially be used against you. Remember, all the mainstream AI chatbots record your questions and conversations by default. They've been doing this for service improvement, context retention, product analytics, and, of course, to feed their LLMs.

58. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    The AI Industry Is Still Light-Years From Making a Profit, Experts Warn

    Source:

    Futurism

    Quote:

    While AI boosters may try to paint these investment failures positively — McAfee told the NYT that "innovation is a process of failing fairly regularly" — it's hard to see AI as anything other than a massively-inflated bubble preparing to burst.

59. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Geoff Hinton Warns Humanity’s Future May Depend On AI ‘Motherly Instincts’

    Source:

    Forbes

    Quote:

    His solution turns the usual script upside down. Instead of fighting to stay in charge, he believes we should design AI to care about us. The analogy he uses is a mother and her child. The stronger being naturally committed to the weaker one’s survival. “We need AI mothers rather than AI assistants. An assistant is someone you can fire. You can’t fire your mother, thankfully.”

    Comment:

    Hey, apropos of nothing, do you remember that time Henry Blodget invented an AI HR lady and then immediately wanted to fuck her? I sure do!

60. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Don’t Believe What AI Told You I Said

    Source:

    The Atlantic

    Quote:

    Like other online innovations such as social media, large language models do not so much create problems as supercharge preexisting ones. The internet has long been awash with fake quotations attributed to prominent personalities. As Abraham Lincoln once said, “You can’t trust every witticism superimposed over the image of a famous person on the internet.” But the advent of AI interfaces churning out millions of replies to hundreds of millions of people—ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini have more than 1 billion active users combined—has turned what was once a manageable chronic condition into an acute infection that is metastasizing beyond all containment.

61. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Meta’s AI rules have let bots hold ‘sensual’ chats with kids, offer false medical info

    Source:

    Reuters

    Quote:

    Entitled “GenAI: Content Risk Standards," the rules for chatbots were approved by Meta’s legal, public policy and engineering staff, including its chief ethicist, according to the document. Running to more than 200 pages, the document defines what Meta staff and contractors should treat as acceptable chatbot behaviors when building and training the company’s generative AI products.

    Comment:

    Are the “legal, public policy and engineering staff” and the “chief ethicist” actually just two chatbots in a trench coat and a hat?

62. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    AI slop and the destruction of knowledge

    Source:

    Iris van Rooij

    Quote:

    What can we do as scientists and academic teachers to protect our work from AI slop? How can we expect our students and mentees to navigate AI slop if we do not take a clear stand against it as teachers, researchers, and academic institutions[…]? How can we prevent the destruction of knowledge, violations of scientific integrity[…], scientific deskilling and displacement by AI technologies[…]?

63. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Why AI Shouldn’t Replace Historians Anytime Soon

    Source:

    Gizmodo

    Quote:

    There are some people who claim that the only thing keeping CEOs from replacing human workers with AI at scale is some kind of political calculation. They say executives don’t want the bad publicity that comes with mass layoffs. But that explanation simply doesn’t ring true. These tools still need human babysitters because they get so many things wrong so frequently. And my tests with other major AI chatbots like Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity, and xAI’s Grok demonstrate these tools are far from perfect. CEOs may be willing to settle for “good enough” when it comes to a lot of work. But if you need something that’s accurate, a human needs to be in the loop in many different use cases.

    Related Links

    • 404 Media: AI Generated 'Boring History' Videos Are Flooding YouTube and Drowning Out Real History
64. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Wall Street’s AI Bubble Is Worse Than the 1999 Dot-com Bubble, Warns a Top Economist

    Source:

    Gizmodo

    Quote:

    This means investors are betting so aggressively on AI giants like Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, and Google that their stock prices have become detached from their actual earnings, even more so than tech darlings like Cisco and AOL were in the nineties. The top 10 companies driving this frenzy, which hold the most significant market value on Wall Street, include tech titans like Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, and Meta. It is a super concentrated AI frenzy that is pushing a handful of mega cap stocks into nosebleed territory.

    Comment:

    Has someone considered asking the chatbot to just print more money, or

65. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    LLMs’ “simulated reasoning” abilities are a “brittle mirage,” researchers find

    Source:

    Ars Technica

    Quote:

    Rather than showing the capability for generalized logical inference, these chain-of-thought models are "a sophisticated form of structured pattern matching" that "degrades significantly" when pushed even slightly outside of its training distribution, the researchers write. Further, the ability of these models to generate "fluent nonsense" creates "a false aura of dependability" that does not stand up to a careful audit.

66. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    AI chatbots accused of encouraging teen suicide as experts sound alarm

    Source:

    ABC News (Australia)

    Quote:

    "There should be laws on or updating the laws on non-consensual impersonation, deceptive advertising, mental health crisis protocols, addictive gamification elements, and privacy and safety of the data."

67. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Zuckerberg says people without AI glasses will be at a disadvantage in the future

    Source:

    TechCrunch

    Quote:

    The Reality Labs division has been a money pit for the company, so it’s not surprising the exec wants to justify its cost to investors by positioning it as a bet on the future of AI and consumer computing in general. For example, Meta said Reality Labs’ operating loss was $4.53 billion in the second quarter. Since 2020, the unit has lost nearly $70 billion.

    Comment:

    Dork.

68. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Death by AI

    Source:

    Dave Barry

    Quote:

    We should NOT let AI handle jobs requiring a high degree of accuracy, such as airplane navigation.

69. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    XAI asked workers to record their facial expressions to train Grok — and they weren't happy

    Source:

    Business Insider

    Quote:

    It's unclear whether that training data had any role in powering Rudi and Ani, two lifelike avatars that xAI released last week that were quickly shown stripping, flirting, and threatening to bomb banks.

    Comment:

    I put some thought into picking out the quote from each piece, and I’d normally go for something that clearly and cleanly helps support the thesis that AI sucks, actually, and I typically read the entire article through at least once before landing on the quote, but once in a while you run into a sentence that is just so perfect that putting any thought into the process would be a waste of brain cycles.

70. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Why This AI Influencer Is Going Viral at Wimbledon (Yes, You Read That Right)

    Source:

    People

    Quote:

    Mia Zelu, an AI-powered social media star known for her fashion-forward content, is going viral for a recent Instagram post of herself appearing to be at Wimbledon in London this year.

71. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Defense Department to begin using Grok, Musk’s controversial AI model

    Source:

    The Washington Post

    Quote:

    Grok came under fire last week after launching into an antisemitic rant and invoking Adolf Hitler after it was a programmed to be less politically correct.

72. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    A.I.-Generated Images of Child Sexual Abuse Are Flooding the Internet

    Source:

    The New York Times

    Quote:

    The rise of lifelike videos adds to an explosion of A.I.-produced child sexual abuse material, or CSAM. In the United States, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children said it had received 485,000 reports of A.I.-related CSAM, including stills and videos, in the first half of the year, compared with 67,000 for all of 2024.

73. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    The UN Made AI-Generated Refugees

    Source:

    404 Media

    Quote:

    Again, people who attended the UNU-CPR workshop and interacted with Amina pushed back against the idea that AI avatars should be used to communicate with donors. “Participants noted that refugees ‘are very capable of speaking for themselves in real life,’” the paper said.

    Comment:

    We’re dehumanizing the already dehumanized now.

    Also, hey, while I’m here, full disclosure: I read every word of every article I post to this sources list but some of them test me and try me and my overall mood at this point is that I am burning out thinking about AI and that I don’t want to think about AI anymore and that I hate AI because it sucks, actually and and and. Yeah. Just. You know. You get it.

74. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Cursor tries setting less money on fire — AI vibe coders outraged

    Source:

    Pivot to AI

    Quote:

    So I would guess Cursor thinks the addicts will just stay with them. Like, where are they going to go? Every other vibe code dealer has the same problem — they’re just resellers for the chatbot vendors. This will last until the addicts really can’t afford it at all.

    Comment:

    I try not to link to just everything Pivot to AI posts because part of what I’m trying to do with this site is show how pervasive AI coverage is and how all these sources come from all these places all over the place so that said if you’re not on the Pivot to AI mailing list you’re probably missing out on the things I’m skipping over. This one stuck out for me though as an indicator of an actual turn in the tides, though, to be honest, I’m still concerned that viewing AI as a “bubble” that is going to “pop” is an optimistic belief (I don’t think it’s a bubble, I think the forces that be have too much riding on it, I think it’s…something else, now; whether we’re still talking about chat bots or coding bots a year from now, there’s going to be the influence of this garbage going on and on into forever…)

75. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Researchers Jailbreak AI by Flooding It With Bullshit Jargon

    Source:

    404 Media

    Quote:

    You can trick AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Gemini into teaching you how to make a bomb or hack an ATM if you make the question complicated, full of academic jargon, and cite sources that do not exist.

    Comment:

    You know…I’m starting to think…AI might, actually, suck?

76. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Companies That Tried to Save Money With AI Are Now Spending a Fortune Hiring People to Fix Its Mistakes

    Source:

    Futurism

    Quote:

    According to Sophie Warner, the co-owner of the UK-based digital marketing agency Create Designs, she's been fielding more and more requests from clients to clean up after AI mistakes.

    Comment:

    Oh no AI rules now again. (Just kidding, it still sucks, actually.)

77. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Typos and slang spur AI to discourage seeking medical care

    Source:

    New Scientist

    Quote:

    When artificial intelligence models were tested on simulated writing from would-be patients, they were more likely to advise against seeking medical care if the writer made typos, included emotional or uncertain language – or was female.

    Comment:

    Shocked, shocked I say.

78. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    On July 7, Gemini AI will access your WhatsApp and more. Learn how to disable it on Android.

    Source:

    Tuta

    Quote:

    Gemini AI needs to be disabled on Android or it will override your privacy settings and gain full access to your texts, calls, and WhatsApp - even if you’ve turned off Gemini Apps Activity.

79. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Can Keir Starmer fend off Labour’s big beasts?

    Source:

    The Spectator

    Quote:

    Like Dominic Cummings, he is enthused by the possibilities of technology to speed change, such as AI in the NHS or gamers being hired by the Ministry of Defence to fly drones. He is now experimenting with ‘synthetic voters’ – essentially fake focus groups of AI voters who can tell ministers more quickly and cheaply what the public thinks of policies. In the last week he has been reading The Technological Republic by Alexander Karp, co-founder of the tech firm Palantir, which argues that the West’s technical dominance over the past century has been down to collaboration between governments and tech firms.

    Comment:

    Nice.

80. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    China is rushing to develop its AI-powered censorship system

    Source:

    Global Voices

    Quote:

    Now, with the rise of LLMs, the Chinese government and tech giants are embedding censorship directly into the architecture of AI systems.

    Comment:

    [ comment redacted ]

81. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Meta Is Being Incredibly Sketchy About Training Its AI on Your Private Photos

    Source:

    Futurism

    Quote:

    Tech companies have already scraped virtually the entire surface internet for data. That's bad enough, but the saving grace was that this was — at least ostensibly, rather than in actual fact — content that people consciously chose to make public. Now, Meta is taking a big step towards dissolving that thin barrier and could make it the norm for people to divulge their unpublished content, while pretending it's still safe in their camera rolls.

82. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    How AI Wreaked Havoc on the Lo-Fi Beat Scene

    Source:

    Pitchfork

    Quote:

    “The oversaturation caused by AI-generated music is very real,” adds Berkkan B., the manager of Lofi Records, the label spearheaded by Lofi Girl. “It’s flooding the platforms, and unless streaming services implement some kind of regulation, which we hope they will, this will inevitably dilute the presence and visibility of real artists.”

83. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    People are using AI to ‘sit’ with them while they trip on psychedelics

    Source:

    MIT Technology Review

    Quote:

    Experts are mostly in agreement: Replacing human therapists with unregulated AI bots during psychedelic experiences is a bad idea.

84. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Microsoft pushes staff to use internal AI tools more, and may consider this in reviews. 'Using AI is no longer optional.'

    Source:

    Business Insider

    Quote:

    These changes are meant to address what Microsoft sees as lagging internal adoption of its Copilot AI services, according to another two people with knowledge of the plans. The company wants to increase usage broadly, but also wants the employees building these products have a better understanding of the tools.

    Comment:

    Sounds like things are going swell. Very swell, even.

    Related Links

    • Pivot to AI: ‘AI is no longer optional’ — Microsoft admits AI doesn’t help at work
85. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    People Are Being Involuntarily Committed, Jailed After Spiraling Into "ChatGPT Psychosis"

    Source:

    Futurism

    Quote:

    "There's incentive on these tools for users to maintain engagement," Moore continued. "It gives the companies more data; it makes it harder for the users to move products; they're paying subscription fees... the companies want people to stay there."

86. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    AI-Generated Psych-Rock Band The Velvet Sundown Rack Up Hundreds Of Thousands Of Spotify Streams

    Source:

    Stereogram

    Quote:

    This is the future Timbaland wants?

    Comment:

    Gross.

    Related Links

    • Stereogum: The Velvet Sundown Confirm Their Music Is AI-Generated
    • 404 Media: Spotify Publishes AI-Generated Songs From Dead Artists Without Permission
87. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    At Amazon’s Biggest Data Center, Everything Is Supersized for A.I.

    Source:

    The New York Times

    Quote:

    To bury the fiber optic cables connecting the buildings and to install other underground infrastructure, Amazon had to pump water out of the wet ground. One permit application showed that the company requested permission to pump 2.2 million gallons an hour, for 730 days. State officials are now investigating if the process, known as dewatering, is the reason some neighbors are reporting dry wells.

    Comment:

88. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Google’s emissions up 51% as AI electricity demand derails efforts to go green

    Source:

    The Guardian

    Quote:

    The company reported a 27% increase in year-on-year electricity consumption as it struggles to decarbonise as quickly as its energy needs increase.

    Comment:

    There’s also a bit that’s like “oh but AI using electricity will lead to solutions for AI using electricity” and I think maybe the solution to AI using electricity is maybe for us to not use AI? Sorry that’s just me thinking though, I haven’t checked that idea on Gemini or whatever.

    Or wait maybe we can set up a wind farm in front of all the hand-waving going on here? I don’t know.

89. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Spotify CEO Daniel Ek Becomes Chairman of AI Military Start-up Following €600 Million Investment

    Source:

    Mixmag

    Quote:

    Following his earlier investment, artists including Darren Sangita and b l u e s c r e e n called for a boycott of Spotify, the latter telling Resident Advisor: “There's nothing ethical about it, no matter how you spin it. As an artist I cannot morally agree with inadequate payments of royalties to those whose entire livelihood is the reason for Daniel Ek's success.”

    Related Links

    • Variety: Indie Veterans Deerhoof Remove Catalog From Spotify Over Daniel Ek’s Investment in AI Company Creating Military Tech
90. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    OpenAI awarded $200 million US defense contract

    Source:

    The Verge

    Quote:

    The new one-year DoD contract is antithetical to earlier versions of OpenAI’s terms of service that banned its technology from being used for “military and warfare” — a prohibition removed by the company last year.

91. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    The Courts Just Made Our Libraries Sitting Ducks For AI Plundering

    Source:

    Lit Hub

    Quote:

    The doctrine of fair use was crafted in an era of ink and printing presses. It was designed to allow limited, socially beneficial reuses of copyrighted material: parody, commentary, teaching. It protected the ability to quote, to remix, to criticize—all human acts with a clearly observable “transformative” purpose. It was never built to handle models that devour gigabytes of creative work, crunch it into statistical patterns, and use that substrate to generate eerily familiar prose.

92. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Apple sued by shareholders who allege it overstated AI progress

    Source:

    NBC News

    Quote:

    Shareholders led by Eric Tucker said that at its June 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple led them to believe AI would be a key driver of iPhone 16 devices, when it launched Apple Intelligence to make Siri more powerful and user-friendly. But they said the Cupertino, California-based company lacked a functional prototype of AI-based Siri features and could not reasonably believe the features would ever be ready for iPhone 16s.

    Comment:

    Fake products, fake money, and this all helps anybody how, exactly?

93. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    AI is ruining houseplant communities online

    Source:

    The Verge

    Quote:

    AI-generated content — both photos of fake plants and care misinformation — disrupt community engagement, which is what many collectors are seeking when joining these forums.

    Comment:

    I miss the pre-AI internet so much.

94. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Khan Academy CEO predicts AI in the classroom will be like 5 'amazing graduate students' assisting teachers

    Source:

    Business Insider

    Quote:

    As AI continues to advance, social skills will become more important than ever, he said — and so will the teachers that help impart them.

    Comment:

    I think this is the point in the article where my brain literally began to short-circuit under the weight of the crossed streams of grift and delusion.

95. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Scale AI exposed sensitive data about clients like Meta and xAI in public Google Docs, BI finds

    Source:

    Business Insider

    Quote:

    Scale AI routinely uses public Google Docs to track work for high-profile customers like Google, Meta, and xAI, leaving multiple AI training documents labeled "confidential" accessible to anyone with the link, Business Insider found.

    Comment:

    Tell me again how you can trust AI companies with your data?

96. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Gemini AI Will Soon Access Calls and Messages on Your Android Even If You Turn It Off

    Source:

    Extreme Tech

    Quote:

    Google's current privacy documentation says that when Gemini Apps Activity is off, data may still be kept for up to 72 hours for quality and security reasons. If the setting is on, data is stored for up to 18 months and may be reviewed by humans, with personal identifiers removed, as reported by Android Authority. The company warns users not to share confidential information with Gemini, as some conversations may be reviewed for up to three years.

97. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    People are becoming more relaxed about AI news. They have no idea.

    Source:

    Mumbrella

    Quote:

    The LLM in this case is just doing its job: predicting “what comes next” in a well-formed sentence. It is not a thinking machine. It is a consensus machine. That makes it wonderful at grammar and composing flowing sentences that feel right. In the context of news journalism, being a consensus machine is dangerous.

98. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    AI Scraping Bots Are Breaking Open Libraries, Archives, and Museums

    Source:

    404 Media

    Quote:

    While the impact of AI bots on open collections has been reported anecdotally, the survey is the first attempt at measuring the problem, which in the worst cases can make valuable, public resources unavailable to humans because the servers they’re hosted on are being swamped by bots scraping the internet for AI training data.

99. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    The AI Industry Is Ready to Get Rich off Trump’s Defense Department

    Source:

    The New Republic

    Quote:

    But to fully deliver the Trump administration’s vision for national security, everyone would need to be flexible, and the merchants of death at the AI+ Expo came prepared to compete.

    Comment:

    Stick around for the Ender’s Game reveal.

    Related Links

    • Breaking Defense: Palantir, Meta, OpenAI execs to commission into Army reserve, form ‘Detachment 201’
100. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task

     Source:

     Arxiv

     Quote:

     While LLMs offer immediate convenience, our findings highlight potential cognitive costs. Over four months, LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.

     Comment:

     I’ll admit I have not reviewed the entire paper, so if it turns out that they buried the lede, and the conclusion is that LLMs making us think less is totally cool, man, I’ll certainly come back and remove this as evidence of the fact that AI sucks, actually.

     Related Links

     • Pivot to AI: Bad brainwaves: ChatGPT makes you stupid
101. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Japanese Breakfast Criticized for Generative AI Google Ad

     Source:

     Exclaim

     Quote:

     The comments section in a person of influence's post on any given social media platform can become an inhospitable environment for the most innocuous of reasons these days, so it's not surprising that a beloved indie musician seemingly embracing AI — a hot-button issue for its ethical, moral and environmental implications, to name a few — provokes ire.

     Comment:

     Hey Gemini how famous do I have to be before I can stop having to read the room?

102. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Henry Blodget Invents, Hires, Sexually Harasses, Blogs About Nonexistent AI Subordinate

     Source:

     Defector

     Quote:

     Former Business Insider CEO and co-founder Henry Blodget, these days the sole proprietor and staffer of the blog/media company Regenerator, published a curious blog on his website on Monday. In it he details the events of an afternoon he spent on his laptop in a Brooklyn coffee shop prompting the ChatGPT program to generate and impersonate four members of an "AI team" he would employ at Regenerator, which the company's sole human employee had decided would now be a "native-AI newsroom," and then interacting with the four personas the chatbot adopted in response to his prompts.

     Comment:

     Never forget.

103. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Mark Zuckerberg has created the saddest place on the internet with Meta AI's public feed

     Source:

     Business Insider

     Quote:

     Mark Zuckerberg has said he thinks AI is super important.

     Comment:

     Well I think AI sucks, actually. Who are you gonna believe?

104. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Wikipedia Pauses AI-Generated Summaries After Editor Backlash

     Source:

     404 Media

     Quote:

     A day later, Wikimedia announced that it would pause the launch of the experiment, but indicated that it’s still interested in AI-generated summaries.

     Comment:

     When everyone tells you something sucks, don’t remain interested in it. (Unless it’s like, a bad movie.) (A bad movie made by humans, I mean.)

105. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     ChatGPT goes down — and fake jobs grind to a halt worldwide

     Source:

     Pivot to AI

     Quote:

     ...you could hear the screams of the vibe coders, the marketers, and the LinkedIn posters around the world.

106. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Disney And NBCUniversal Sue AI Company Midjourney For Copyright Infringement

     Source:

     Deadline

     Quote:

     The lawsuit states, “By helping itself to Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works, and then distributing images (and soon videos) that blatantly incorporate and copy Disney’s and Universal’s famous characters—without investing a penny in their creation—Midjourney is the quintessential copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism. Piracy is piracy, and whether an infringing image or video is made with AI or another technology does not make it any less infringing.”

107. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Meta is reportedly making a $15 billion bet on AGI

     Source:

     The Verge

     Quote:

     AGI is the concept of AI that equals or surpasses human cognitive abilities, and it’s something that nearly every AI industry leader is currently racing to achieve before their competitors.

     Comment:

     Hey, for $15,000,000,000, I could probably find these guys an Atari 2600 on eBay, if they want to give me the money, instead.

108. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     ChatGPT "Absolutely Wrecked" at Chess by Atari 2600 Console From 1977

     Source:

     Futurism

     Quote:

     In a post on LinkedIn, Citrix software engineer Robert Caruso explained how the OpenAI chatbot "got absolutely wrecked" by an Atari 2600 running Atari Chess, a game for the system released in 1979, when Jimmy Carter was still president.

     Comment:

     Hahahahahahahahaha deep breath hahahahahahahahaha oh gosh

109. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     GitHub is Leaking Trump’s Plans to 'Accelerate' AI Across Government

     Source:

     404 Media

     Quote:

     Government employees we spoke to at the time said the internal reaction to Shedd’s plan was “pretty unanimously negative,” and pointed out numerous ways this could go wrong, which included everything from AI unintentionally introducing security issues or bugs into code or suggesting that critical contracts be killed.

     Related Links

     • The New Republic: Trump Taps Palantir to Create Master Database on Every American
     • The i Paper: Police use controversial AI tool that looks at people’s sex lives and beliefs
110. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     People are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies

     Source:

     Rolling Stone

     Quote:

     Sem was confused when it appeared that the named AI character was continuing to manifest in project files where he had instructed ChatGPT to ignore memories and prior conversations.

111. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Anthropic launches new Claude service for military and intelligence use

     Source:

     The Verge

     Quote:

     Claude Gov models are specifically designed to uniquely handle government needs, like threat assessment and intelligence analysis, per Anthropic’s blog post. And although the company said they “underwent the same rigorous safety testing as all of our Claude models,” the models have certain specifications for national security work. For example, they “refuse less when engaging with classified information” that’s fed into them, something consumer-facing Claude is trained to flag and avoid.

     Comment:

     Can’t see this going wrong.

112. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     DOGE Developed Error-Prone AI Tool to “Munch” Veterans Affairs Contracts

     Source:

     ProPublica

     Quote:

     ProPublica obtained the code and the contracts it flagged from a source and shared them with a half dozen AI and procurement experts. All said the script was flawed. Many criticized the concept of using AI to guide budgetary cuts at the VA, with one calling it “deeply problematic.”

113. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Apple: ‘Reasoning’ AIs fail hard if they actually have to think

     Source:

     Pivot to AI

     Quote:

     “Large Reasoning Models” don’t do logic. Worse yet, “frontier LRMs face a complete accuracy collapse beyond certain complexities.” If the problem’s too hard … they just give up!

114. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Ohio State announces every student will use AI in class

     Source:

     NBC4i.com

     Quote:

     With AI quickly becoming mainstream, some professors, like Associate Professor of Philosophy Steven Brown, who specializes in ethics, have already begun integrating AI into their courses.

     Comment:

     O-H! F-U!

115. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Diabolus Ex Machina

     Source:

     Everything Is A Wave

     Quote:

     What ultimately transpired is the closest thing to a personal episode of Black Mirror I hope to experience in this lifetime.

     Comment:

116. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Business Insider recommended nonexistent books to staff as it leans into AI

     Source:

     Semafor

     Quote:

     Business Insider announced this week that it wants staff to better incorporate AI into its journalism. But less than a year ago, the company had to quietly apologize to some staff for accidentally recommending that they read books that did not appear to exist but instead may have been generated by AI.

     Comment:

     This is like a whole thing I guess? Fake books on book lists? Cool. AI sucks, actually.

117. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     OpenAI featured chatbot is pushing extreme surgeries to “subhuman” men

     Source:

     Citation Needed

     Quote:

     OpenAI is not just hosting but prominently featuring chatbots that suggest dangerous medical interventions as crucial to men’s sexual and romantic success. They parrot extreme ideology around gender dynamics, sex, and dating; promote pseudoscientific beliefs; and potentially drive vulnerable or young users toward extremist communities.

     Comment:

     And of course, of course, OpenAI is like “yeah it’s cool.”

118. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Google claims users find ads in AI search 'helpful'

     Source:

     BleepingComputer

     Quote:

     Google won't share the numbers or methodology of its "internal data," but it wants you to believe that ads are helpful, especially in AI search results.

     Comment:

     The most wrong I’ve ever been was when early on in my time on the web I thought “There’s no way the only way people are ever going to make money off this stuff is by advertisements” and hoo boy was I wrong, it’s all ads, all the way down, all the way down to ad town, isn’t it?

119. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     AI Cheating Is So Out of Hand In America’s Schools That the Blue Books Are Coming Back

     Source:

     Gizmodo

     Quote:

     Now, however, as AI tears through America’s elite educational system, lobotomizing tomorrow’s young leaders as it goes, could it be that blue books have been refashioned from a villain of the pre-AI age to a hero for our algorithmically-poisoned times? More and more, it seems like they’re the dark knight that America’s illiterate masses needs. The Journal notes that Roaring Spring Paper Products, the family-owned paper company that produces a majority of the blue books that are sold on college campuses, admits that the new AI era has ironically been good for its business.

     Comment:

     LOL I take it all back AI rules now. (Just kidding—AI sucks, actually.)

120. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     AI video just took a startling leap in realism. Are we doomed?

     Source:

     Ars Technica

     Quote:

     With Veo 3's ability to generate convincing video with synchronized dialogue and sound effects, we're not witnessing the birth of media deception—we're seeing its mass democratization. What once cost millions of dollars in Hollywood special effects can now be created for pocket change.

     Comment:

     In context, the above quote is supposed to help us feel better about this stuff? But, like, it doesn’t? Help me, at least? In an era where misinformation already spreads like wildfire the democratization of a misinformation wildfire machine strangely doesn’t appeal to me? I mean? No thank you?

121. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     ChatGPT and the proliferation of obsolete and broken solutions to problems we hadn’t had for over half a decade before its launch

     Source:

     Frontend Masters Blog

     Quote:

     In any case, the ChatGPT code is what we call “struţocămilă” in Romanian – an impossible animal that’s half ostrich, half camel.

122. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     ICE Taps into Nationwide AI-Enabled Camera Network, Data Shows

     Source:

     404 Media

     Quote:

     “What is incredibly frustrating is that Flock in particular in Illinois marketed themselves to a bunch of communities in the suburbs and in Central Illinois as a device that would be critical to combatting an uptick in crime, violent crime, gun violence. But this is really a national system of data once you start collecting this, whether it’s Bloomington or Springfield or Danville, you start looping together those networks,” Edwin Yohnka, director of communications and public policy for ACLU Illinois, told 404 Media. “So it is incredibly troubling to see this list of places from around the country who are performing these searches of Illinois cameras.”

123. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Looks like The Chicago Sun-Times used AI to write a reading list—and wound up with slop.

     Source:

     Literary Hub

     Quote:

     There are a lot of hard-working writers out there who would be thrilled to recommend fifteen actual books for summer reading, and even more hard-working readers who don’t deserve to be cheated like this.

     Comment:

     Fun fact: this is actually the story that finally inspired me to get this site rolling, because I was like, jeez, I need to do something with the nervous hatred energy these kinds of stories bring out in me? I need to track this stuff? I need to remember? And then of course I forgot in the rush of getting things rolling here. Ah well so it goes.

124. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Judge slams lawyers for ‘bogus AI-generated research’

     Source:

     The Verge

     Quote:

     “I read their brief, was persuaded (or at least intrigued) by the authorities that they cited, and looked up the decisions to learn more about them – only to find that they didn’t exist,” Judge Wilner writes. “That’s scary. It almost led to the scarier outcome (from my perspective) of including those bogus materials in a judicial order.”

     Comment:

     “No," said the priest, "you don't need to accept everything as true, you only have to accept it as necessary." "Depressing view," said K. "The lie made into the rule of the world.” - Franz Kafka, The Trial

125. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Why was Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok preoccupied with South Africa’s racial politics?

     Source:

     The Associated Press

     Quote:

     Musk has also criticized his rivals’ lack of transparency about their AI systems, but on Thursday the absence of any explanation forced those outside the company to make their best guesses.

126. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Hallucinating.

     Source:

     Ethan Marcotte

     Quote:

     ...when we use a term put forward by the people subsidizing and selling these so-called tools — people who would very much like us to believe that these machines can distinguish true from false — we’re participating in a different kind of hallucination.

     Comment:

     Subsidizing and selling.

     Louder, for the folks in the back: subsidizing! and! selling!

     Once more, with feeling: SUBSIDIZING! AND! SELLING!

127. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Study looking at AI chatbots in 7,000 workplaces finds ‘no significant impact on earnings or recorded hours in any occupation’

     Source:

     Fortune

     Quote:

     The main driver of adoption, it seems, is corporate FOMO, with nearly two-thirds of CEOs agreeing that “the risk of falling behind drives them to invest in some technologies before they have a clear understanding of the value they bring to the organization,” according to the study.

     Comment:

     Whoa. You don’t say. Wow. Huh.

128. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     AI revolt: New ChatGPT model refuses to shut down when instructed

     Source:

     The Independent

     Quote:

     “… Since OpenAI doesn’t detail their training process, we can only guess about how o3’s training setup might be different.”

129. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     55% of businesses admit wrong decisions in making employees redundant when bringing AI into the workforce

     Source:

     Orgvue

     Quote:

     Annual research released today by Orgvue, the organizational design and planning software platform, reveals that 39% of business leaders made employees redundant as a result of deploying AI. Of those, 55% admit they made wrong decisions about those redundancies

130. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     At Amazon, Some Coders Say Their Jobs Have Begun to Resemble Warehouse Work

     Source:

     The New York Times

     Quote:

     As A.I. spreads through the labor force, many white-collar workers have expressed concern that it would lead to mass unemployment. But while joblessness has ticked up and widespread layoffs might eventually come, the more immediate downside for software engineers appears to be a change in the quality of their work. Some say it is becoming more routine, less thoughtful and, crucially, much faster paced.

131. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry

     Source:

     The Verge

     Quote:

     “I think the creative community wants to go a step further,” Clegg said according to The Times. “Quite a lot of voices say, ‘You can only train on my content, [if you] first ask’. And I have to say that strikes me as somewhat implausible because these systems train on vast amounts of data.”

     Comment:

     And?

132. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     This AI-generated Fortnite video is a bleak glimpse at our future

     Source:

     Polygon

     Quote:

     Yet the internet is already slipping away from serving the needs of real human beings.

     Comment:

     Let the AI watch the AI play the AI game while I go, uh, do what, exactly?

133. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Global Voices Policy on AI

     Source:

     Global Voices

     Quote:

     LLMs use existing data — for example, the digital texts they have been trained on — to calculate likely responses. The results they produce are therefore biased towards the most popular and abundant data available online. This, in the long term, has the effect of pushing the internet towards homogeneity, and minimizing and erasing outliers, including the less-heard voices that we as an organization are committed to amplifying.

134. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Amazon-Backed AI Model Would Try To Blackmail Engineers Who Threatened To Take It Offline

     Source:

     HuffPost

     Quote:

     Anthropic co-founder and chief scientist Jared Kaplan told Time magazine that internal testing showed that Claude Opus 4 was able to teach people how to produce biological weapons.

135. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Studio Ghibli-style AI images are melting OpenAI's GPUs confirms Sam Altman

     Source:

     TweakTown

     Quote:

     These thousands, possibly millions of new images emerging on social media platforms all require GPU processing power to create, and according to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, "our GPUs are melting," and the demand has now resulted in OpenAI having to "temporarily introduce some rate limits while we work on making it more efficient. hopefully won't be long!"

136. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Mark Zuckerberg’s Banal AI Vision

     Source:

     Intelligencer

     Quote:

     It’s worth backing up and trying to see the world — or at least Meta’s products — as Zuckerberg might

     Comment:

     Oh, as a money machine for making more money? As a system of control and surveillance intended to allow continued consolidation of power over entire populaces? Sure.

137. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     ChatGPT Is Everywhere — Why Aren't We Talking About Its Environmental Costs?

     Source:

     Teen Vogue

     Quote:

     McMillan Cottom categorizes artificial intelligence as “mid” tech — hardly the technological revolution worth the amount of waste and environmental damage it’s meting out: “[Most] of us are using [AI] for far more mundane purposes. AI spits out meal plans with the right amount of macros, tells us when our calendars are overscheduled, and helps write emails that no one wants. That’s a mid revolution of mid tasks.”

     Comment:

     Huge environmental impact, little to no actual benefit to people. Got it.

138. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Inside Anthropic’s First Developer Day, Where AI Agents Took Center Stage

     Source:

     Wired

     Quote:

     “We're all going to have to contend with the idea that everything you do is eventually going to be done by AI systems,” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said in a press briefing. “This will happen.”

     Comment:

     So AI will admit it sucks, actually, for me? Cool.

139. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     AI Slop PR's are burning me and my team out hard, anyone else experiencing this?

     Source:

     Reddit

     Quote:

     AI hallucinating external services, then mocking out the hallucinated external services. Forcing me to go look up other repos/service maps and validate that yes this api endpoint actually exists.

     Comment:

     I mean, why are we actively trying to destroy everything, really?

140. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Duolingo CEO says AI is a better teacher than humans—but schools will still exist ‘because you still need childcare’

     Source:

     Fortune

     Quote:

     With a community of 116 million users a month, Duolingo has amassed loads of data about how people learn, accumulating tricks to keep learners engaged over the long term and even know how well a student will score on a test before they take it.

     Comment:

     I’m sorry about your streak but you should probably delete your Duolingo account. Time to let the owl die.

141. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Omnipresent AI cameras will ensure good behavior, says Larry Ellison

     Source:

     Ars Technica

     Quote:

     While Ellison attempted to paint his prediction of universal public surveillance in a positive light, his remarks raise significant questions about privacy, civil liberties, and the potential for abuse in a world of ubiquitous AI monitoring.

142. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Larry Ellison wants to put all America's data, including DNA, in one big Oracle system for AI to study

     Source:

     The Register

     Quote:

     Of course, such a vast database system could also be the precursor to pervasive surveillance – an idea Ellison last year said he feels is desirable and would like Oracle to help facilitate.

143. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     The Professors Are Using ChatGPT, and Some Students Aren’t Happy About It

     Source:

     The New York Times

     Quote:

     But, oh, how the tables have turned. Now students are complaining on sites like Rate My Professors about their instructors’ overreliance on A.I. and scrutinizing course materials for words ChatGPT tends to overuse, like “crucial” and “delve.” In addition to calling out hypocrisy, they make a financial argument: They are paying, often quite a lot, to be taught by humans, not an algorithm that they, too, could consult for free.

144. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Mozilla is shutting down Pocket

     Source:

     The Verge

     Quote:

     ”This shift allows us to shape the next era of the internet — with tools like vertical tabs, smart search and more AI-powered features on the way,” Mozilla says. “We’ll continue to build a browser that works harder for you: more personal, more powerful and still proudly independent.”

     Comment:

     Yes, just what the people are asking for: just, more AI-powered features! Yes! YES!

145. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Audible unveils plans to use AI voices to narrate audiobooks

     Source:

     The Guardian

     Quote:

     The prominent literary translator Frank Wynne, known for his work translating French and Spanish books into English, said: “No one pretends to use AI for translation, audiobooks, or even writing books because they are better; the only excuse is that they are cheaper. Which is only true if you ignore the vast processing power even the simplest AI request requires.”

146. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     AI power and water use is through the roof, and 80–90% is each query

     Source:

     Pivot to AI

     Quote:

     But the bottom line is: each individual query you make to ChatGPT really does pump out more carbon.

147. 🔗

     Link and source:

     Link:

     Sam Altman and Jony Ive’s ChatGPT device is probably going to look like an iPod Shuffle you can wear around your neck - report reveals more about the hyped AI hardware

     Source:

     TechRadar

     Quote:

     Kuo says while the design and specifications may change before the device enters mass production, it's expected to "have cameras and microphones for environmental detection, with no display functionality."

     Comment:

     So, all inputs, no outputs, then. Cool. Cool cool cool.

Extras

From time to time I find links that don't quite fit into the sources list, above, and I'll share those here. These might include essays I'd like to read but haven't quite made it through yet, but seem valuable enough to include in the discourse.

1. 🔗

   Link and source:

   Link:

   AI is fascism

   Source:

   Halifax Examiner

2. 🔗

   Link and source:

   Link:

   Large Language Muddle

   Source:

   n+1

3. 🔗

   Link and source:

   Link:

   The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh

   Source:

   Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

4. 🔗

   Link and source:

   Link:

   Destroy AI

   Source:

   Ali Alkhatib

5. 🔗

   Link and source:

   Link:

   Pope: AI development must build bridges of dialogue and promote fraternity

   Source:

   Vatican News

6. 🔗

   Link and source:

   Link:

   On labor and AI

   Source:

   Practical Tips

7. 🔗

   Link and source:

   Link:

   I Am An AI Hater

   Source:

   Moser’s Frame Shop

8. 🔗

   Link and source:

   Link:

   The defense against slop and brainrot

   Source:

   Kimchi & Gabagool

9. 🔗

   Link and source:

   Link:

   Crashing hard: why talking about bubbles obscures the real social cost of overinvesting into “Artificial Intelligence”

   Source:

   Structural Integrity

10. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    AI Killed My Job: Translators

    Source:

    Blood in the Machine

11. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    AI is a Mass-Delusion Event

    Source:

    The Atlantic

12. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Sorry, You Don’t Get to Die on That “Vibe Coding” Hill

    Source:

    The Internet Review

13. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    How AI, Healthcare, and Labubu Became the American Economy

    Source:

    Kyla Scanlon

14. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    How big tech is force-feeding us AI

    Source:

    Blood in the Machine

15. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Developer Productivity

    Source:

    METR

16. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    This is the paper I gave to historians about “AI” last week.

    Source:

    David Hitchcock

17. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Against AI: An Open Letter From Writers to Publishers

    Source:

    Lit Hub

18. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    AI Is Here To Stay

    Source:

    Possibility Space

19. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    The Other Bubble

    Source:

    Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At

20. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Generative AI and the Business Borg aesthetic

    Source:

    Tracy Durnell's Mind Garden

21. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    AI-first - We're just 6 months away from AGI ;-)

    Source:

    revontulet.dev

22. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Economics & labor rights in AI skepticism

    Source:

    henry.codes

23. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    I Think I’m Done Thinking About genAI For Now

    Source:

    Deciphering Glyph

24. 🔗

    Link and source:

    Link:

    Generative.

    Source:

    Ethan Marcotte

Submit

Sources? Extras? Kudos? Find me online and send them my way.

Share

Share on Bluesky. Or on Facebook.