LLM #AI systems are NOT conscious. They CANNOT feel pain. They have no emotions. They do NOT even think. They are no more capable of feeling "abused" by users than a dried out sponge. Big Tech execs trying to convince you otherwise are feeding the public a pile of self-serving garbage.

If you have 6 minutes to spare over the next few days, you need to watch #JonStewart on #TheDailyShow dissect the current #AI frenzy.

Why is late-night satire examining this reality with far more critical rigor than the very institutions whose job it is to study, regulate, and safeguard the intersection of tech, politics, and society? It is striking to watch those tasked with protecting the public stand at the front of the line, ready to blindly buy whatever tech billionaires put on the shelf..

From a major Canadian bank.

We are well and truly fucked.

Microsoft is busy embedding this shit in the o/s.

Your own bank is probably slurping it up like a kid with a drippy ice cream on a hot Sunday.

We're putting chimps in charge of humanity, folks, and there is no zookeeper.

ZERO regulation. None.

Show me one piece of useful AI legislation from ANY jurisdiction on earth.

It's trial and error with all our lives.

We are fucked.

#ai #technology #finance #economy

@pluralistic

Alt...

me to Simplii AI agent: you just told me this: To move money from your Simplii account to your own account at another Canadian financial institution, you can use either: Flinks Funds Transfer, if the other institution supports it. Now you are telling me the opposite; how can believe anything you say? AI: You're right to question that. | gave you contradictory information, and my earlier statement that Flinks Funds Transfer could send money from Simplii Financial to another bank was incorrect. The correct information is that Flinks is used to move money from an eligible external Canadian financial institution into an eligible Simplii Financial account. It does not provide a confirmed method for sending money out of Simplii Financial to another bank. I'm sorry for the confusion. I should have... blah, blah, blah...

AI surveillance trial costs £320k, catches zero crooks - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QEMoNIuamg

Blog post:
https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/09/29/ai-police-surveillance-trial-costs-320k-catches-zero-crooks/

by @davidgerard

#AI #GenAI #LawEnforcement #FacialRecognition

I wonder if the #vibcoding prompt was, "Fuck Adobe."

> https://getartcraft.com/
> https://github.com/storytold/artcraft

There's a real story here and it isn't, "Some random dude can vibecode the entire Adobe suite." It's, "#genAI can disintermediate every major software vendor. It's a technology capable of ripping off *everyone*; including the #AI companies who created it. And it couldn't have happened if they hadn't ripped off their training data to begin with."

Seeds of self-destruction.

#graphics #WTF

@heiseonline

In other news:

+++ #Wirecard implodiert, #BaFin bittet #JanMaršálek um Auskunft +++ #GrünesGewölbe ausgeraubt, #Sachsen bittet Familie #Remmo um Auskunft +++ 24 Tote, #Polizei bittet #FritzHaarmann um Auskunft +++

Bei offensichtlicher IT #Kriminalität sollte doch zunächst mal #Strafanzeige erstattet werden?

Achso, nee, ist 'ne #AI, die ist nicht strafmündig und deren Hersteller können da nichts machen. Bzw. wollen sie nicht, weil's zulasten des #Profit ginge.

Brazil is attracting major data center projects powered by renewables — but that doesn’t mean they’re without impact.

On #TechWontSaveUs, I spoke with Laís Martins to discuss how renewables are going to data centers instead of decarbonizing the grid.

Listen to the full episode: https://techwontsave.us/episode/349_brazils_data_center_boom_is_enabled_by_renewables_firms_w_lais_martins

#tech #renewables #datacenters #brazil #politics #artificialintelligence #ai #generativeai

People with no artistic skills found a way to replace people with artistic skills by using a machine that stole from those who shared their artistic skills. Now they can just pay a monthly fee to another company to access the artistic skills theft machine instead of an actual human with artistic skills.

#NoAI #FuckAI #AI

Chris Nicholson and I recently wrote about the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP)'s plans to use "AI" to streamline permitting workflows. This comes at a time when US historical preservation protections (esp. Section 106) face multiple legislative and regulatory threats.

See: https://mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?i=870459&p=21&view=issueViewer

#archaeology #culturalheritage #section106 #policy #AI #governance

L’assistente AI Muse di Meta crea dossier dettagliati su circa 4 milioni di utenti, mappando relazioni e comportamenti. Gli aggiornamenti includono anche non utenti, perché gli agenti Muse dei contatti li inseriscono nelle mappe. Sebbene Meta affermi che ogni utente controlli i propri dati restano dubbi sulla privacy. #Privacy #AI #Surveillance #BigData @sicurezza
On You https://time.com/article/2026/10/06/meta-muse-ai-agent-privacy

When I'm thinking about AI in mathematics I end up thinking about the moon landings. It's not a perfect analogy. But there are some parallels. We tend to look back at them as a somewhat collective achievement of humanity; we're right to, I think. But the concentration of wealth in one place due to an arms race is what got us over the line.

LLMs don't just stand on the shoulders of human mathematicians, they sort of *are* a distillation of everything we've written. And right now the AI industry is in a massive PR war.

I think it's at least plausible that this period ends rather quickly, as the moon landings did. I wonder how many articles were written in 1969 about how we'd all be travelling to the moon one day.

Another parallel is: what is the inherent value of putting someone on the moon? I think it's quite similar to a landmark theorem. It broadens our horizons, maybe even enables further research, but it doesn't have much to do with the price of fish.

#ai #math #llm #science

Not really here nor there in my AWOLism but I just #medium ed an article about Medium's #ai useage #writing #statistics post, and I also found that link to that big educational study I referenced without citation to someone the other day which they hadn't heard of.

https://medium.com/@screwlisp/sloppity-sloppity-slop-medium-ai-authors-in-2026-b41fcf047af0

If you lost your link to that study or Christine's slopbobsled article, this article certainly has those two links.

New Scientist named HYPERSCALE one of its best popular science books of October. Less than two weeks until you can get a copy of your own!

Preorder US: https://bookshop.org/a/18331/9798217048526

Preorder UK: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/10298/9781805227458

More info: https://hyperscalebook.com

#tech #techindustry #datacenters #artificialintelligence #ai #newbooks #reading #books

Alt...

The best popular-science books of October 2026 Hyperscale by Paris Marx Forget, for a moment, grappling with AI conceptually and think about it as an environmental issue. All over the world, the data centres already built and those planned are crucial to the current AI successes and to the ambitions of the companies involved. What’s more, say the publishers of a polemical book called Hyperscale, the centres use up resources such as water and power at “dangerously unsustainable levels”. This book’s author is Paris Marx, a tech critic, journalist and host of the Tech Won’t Save You podcast. It sounds like a wild ride, with the publishers saying the “tech overlords are waging a resource war as they trade our future for their profit”. It is nothing less than a “civilisational time bomb in the making”, where tough reporting shows that “the greatest threat is not the spectre of AI, but a global disaster that has already begun”. The book is already longlisted for this year’s Financial Times Business Book of the Year award.

Alt...

UK cover of Hyperscale: Ambition, Power, and the Relentless Rise of Data Empires

Opened YouTube and was immediately faced with this absurdity. “Al-generated ad”? Surely not!

#AI #Slop #Temu #ButIRepeatMyself

Alt...

Screenshot of YouTube advert showing a large shed in woodland. The structure appears to be made of untreated timber. There are two windows, or what appear to be windows, through which absolutely no light can be seen. Double doors are wide open, letting us see the interior: apparently the interior exists in another dimension, where angles need not match the exterior even slightly; and where a fire can burn in a stone hearth without smoking to the whole room, even though the outside of the shed has no chimney. Text: TEMU BLOW OUT SALE. 16x10 Wooden Garden Cabin. Al-generated ad. The promotion is not sponsored by Marlborough Timber.

@davidrevoy
I read yesterday that some scientists/researchers want to sue #OpenAI for using #data from their collective work to feed their #AI machine to crack a long-known conundrum.

Finally got a chance to read through this article I bookmarked by Daniel Boguslaw at The American  Prospect ( read it, support it ). And I almost lost my soup when I got to this quote:

“I do agree that the public has a negative view of AI (and that this is a big problem), but I don’t think it is primarily caused by me or any other AI leader warning about AI’s risks,” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote on Twitter last month. “I think it is fundamentally a crisis of trust … I think that ordinary people don’t trust companies, governments, or the tech industry and always suspect that we are cooking up some new way to screw them over.”

Ya Think?!?!? try naming a few benevolent tech companies or governments.  Go ahead.  I'll wait. Then divide that number by the total number of them.  I think if you ask any AI worth a damn how corporations can continue to grow in a capitalist society, I mean really ask, like press it hard when it tries to sugar coat it.  Eventually, it will answer "screw the customer over."

Anthropic Is Building a Predictive Surveillance System to Monitor Activists
https://prospect.org/2026/09/09/anthropic-artificial-intelligence-surveillance-system-monitor-activists/

#enshitification #corporategreed #surveillancestate #surveillance #precrime #minorityreport #ai

The early stages of SolarAI-V2 local LLM server in assembly.

The 4x TESLA P100 GPUs arrive tomorrow, along with a mining rack and other stuff. This is what the hardware stack is looking like so far:

-Asus Z9PE-D16 motherboard
-CPU: 2x Intel Xeon E5-2620 V2 Processor
-GPU: FOUR NVIDIA Tesla P100 16GB PCIe (64GB VRAM)
-RAM: 128GB DDR3
-Storage: 64GB SSD for OS
-Storage: FOUR 500GB WD Velociraptor HDDs for models
-OS: ubuntu 26.04 server amd64

It will run my Hermes/Home Assistant, and is not used to generate slop.

#AI #homelab #homeassistant #llm #hermesagent #selfhosted #selfhosting

Alt...

A dual-socket computer motherboard is laid out on a dark anti-static workbench mat as an open-bench test system, surrounded by power cabling, cooling components, and connected peripherals. The main board features two CPU sockets fitted with aluminum heatsinks topped with small cooling fans, bearing an Intel logo. Multiple green RAM DIMM modules are populated in the memory slots alongside the sockets. A large passive aluminum heatsink sits near the center of the board. Thick, black sleeved cables and multi-colored power supply wires route across the bench, connecting to a black power supply unit placed to the right. Additional cabling arches over the board to power peripheral boards and cooling fans. To the left, a detached, large black cooling fan rests atop a white product box full of hard drives. In the background, an off-white vintage CRT computer monitor displays white monospaced system startup and configuration text over a dark background terminal screen, showing lines related to mounting, partition extraction, and system boot procedures. Bright blue and yellow data cables run across the light wooden desk surface around the hardware setup.

Flathub walked back their generative AI ban, replaced with a disclosure policy https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/10/flathub-walked-back-their-generative-ai-ban-replaced-with-a-disclosure-policy/

#Flathub #OpenSource #Linux #AI #GenAI

Our investigation with the help of MPs Bell Ribeiro-Addy and Carla Denyer raises alarm bells about what's going on with AI in the UK asylum system.

But the UK Home Office has refused to provide key information and their replies have been at times self-contradictory.

They must come clean.

#asylum #immigration #ai #homeoffice #ukpolitics #ukpol

Asylum claimants continue not to be told when AI is used to summarise their case and country information.

This is despite our legal opinion from March concluding that this lack of transparency would mean that the use of AI in UK asylum decision-making is likely to be unlawful.

Find out more ⬇️

https://www.openrightsgroup.org/press-releases/home-office-use-of-ai-in-asylum-cases-likely-to-be-unlawful-legal-opinion-finds/

#asylum #immigration #ai #homeoffice #ukpolitics #ukpol

Despite the accuracy failings in AI generated summaries, these tools have been rolled out to all asylum decision-makers in the UK.

Not only is the error rate greater than previously reported, our investigation has found that these tools are being used without proper testing, quality assurance and training.

#asylum #immigration #ai #homeoffice #ukpolitics #ukpol

One of the two AI tools being used by the UK Home Office to speed up asylum decision-making is to summarise interviews held with claimants.

Our investigation reveals that the number of sampled summaries found not fit for purpose is significantly higher than the 9% figure in the pilot evaluation.

#asylum #immigration #ai #homeoffice #ukpolitics #ukpol

🚨 BREAKING 🚨

ORG has carried out a 6-month investigation into AI use in the UK asylum system.

We've found high error rates and claimants unaware that AI is being used.

This could have catastrophic consequences for people whose future is in the hands of Home Office decision-making.

Read about our findings ⬇️

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/ai-asylum-claims-backlog-home-office-artificial-intelligence-b3055219.html

#asylum #immigration #ai #homeoffice #ukpolitics #ukpol

Oracle invokes ‘force majeure’ on OpenAI contract - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj3MYXaR4nA

Blog post:
https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/09/25/oracle-invokes-force-majeure-on-openai-data-centre-contract/

by @davidgerard

#AI #Oracle #OpenAI #DataCenters

We are living through unprecedented trying times for research, times that increasingly look like a crepuscule, a moment of high existential danger for research communities and academic freedoms. Now is the time for academics to take a stand or go to hell after making a Faustian pact. This is my public plea to colleagues consuming genAI products, for whatever stated reason, to stick their head […]

@davidgerard

Excellent.

The finances can all be summarized in two words: Ponzi scheme.

As with many bad movie plots it is much cooler to remove the vault door using a ridiculously costly laser strapped to a shark duct-taped onto a skateboard than it is to use mundane explosives.

It isn't the ridiculously costly hacking capabilities that are a danger. It is the lackadaisical and irresponsible behavior of developers who are so gullible they think people like Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Larry Ellison are geniuses. Rather than a band of clearly disingenuous con artists and sociopaths of the highest order taking advantage of the unique window of opportunity provided by the suspension of the rule of law for grifters and charlatans.

They know they only have two years left to completely fleece the rubes before the day of reckoning arrives when the carnival leaves town. All of their published and purloined plans reflect this.

In my experience the sociopaths who occupy corner offices do more damage in the world than natural disasters, and yet we seldom do anything to stop them. Even when the intelligent among us can see them coming from outer space.

With any luck the collateral economic damage when it all unravels won't kill us all before Skynet truly comes to fruition.

#AI #LLM #OpenAI #Anthropic

wildlife √
AI data centres X

if you care about the animals with whom we share the planet, please sign this open letter to secretary of state, angela rayner.
#wildlife #AI #dataCentres #environment

https://protectthewild.org.uk/no-to-data-centres-yes-to-wildlife/

@GossiTheDog That's it, I'm calling it - when Cramer calls it, you can see the rainbow gleam as the #AI bubble bursts!

Now, where's my next Enron?

Helpful AI. Today’s cartoon by Marian Kamensky. More cartoons: https://www.cartoonmovement.com/

#ArtificialIntelligence #AI #humanity #extinction

Alt...

Cartoon showing a personified Earth sawing off the branch it sits on while a robot labeled "AI" in the bucket of a cherry picker, offering a chainsaw, illustrating technology accelerating humanity’s self-destructive nature.

@davidgerard
Saw Coxon interviewed by comedian Jon Stewart on his live show, & Coxon seemed to be a bit of a wanker, in my professional opinion (I am a person). Have since read suggestions -from others who I cannot recall - that his employer slipped him $20m to resign & tell his tall story (sorry, ‘narrative’) in order to crank up excitement for the forthcoming IPO/s.

Coxon told Stewart he’d worked for both Anthropic & OpenAI, said he left one for the other after 3 yrs because he was bored (he’s 28); his work was pre- & post-training models - he said there was no training, just pre- & post-training, whatever that fine distinction means - & called the model/s he pre/post-trained his ‘babies’; said how his work was like watching ‘baby’ grow up to be ‘toddler’… Stewart suggested: ‘then adolescent’ & Coxon responded something like ‘sort of, but still baby’. He had this fanciful theory that it was all good because in the future no humans would have to do any work & everyone would get money to not work while (I guess) ‘baby’ 👶 did it everything that was needed. Stewart engaged him in a dialog on why people work, the dignity of work, meaning-making humans who enjoy solving problems & so on which seemed to go over Coxon’s head. You could see the question forming in Stewart: who was this jumped up baby of babies, who was Sam Altman, who was any techbro to make these sort of high level decisions for all of humanity & where was the population-level discussion involving the actual humans? There was more like this, Stewart basically giving him enough rope to hang himself & at the end asking whether Coxon owned stock (so could potentially gain by selling if & when it did list) and *guess what*? He does own stock. ‘Callow youth’ also comes to mind as a descriptor.

#AI LLMs #AgenticAI #wanker #CallowYouth #modelTraining #IPOs

Meta’s Muse AI agent: a hilarious security disaster - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HytNZfilDJs

by @davidgerard

#AI #AgenticAI #Meta #Facebook #Muse #Privacy

As I warned about months ago now, I can confirm that Google Chrome's #AI API is now actively being used for device fingerprinting and tracking purposes.

Out of 100 of the top global english language content sites - around 30% are actively using the API for fingerprinting, Google Advertising (profiling) or both) without the legally required consent (EU law).

#Privacy

New rule!

Whenever anyone suggests using "AI" for anything technical or integrating it with any kind of pipeline, I am going to respond with:

> Okay, what is your plan on dealing with incubated ML exploits? You do know about incubated ML exploits, right?

Seriously, watch this talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z38pTFM0FyU

#AI #InfoSec

#JosephStalin would be so proud of #MarkZuckerberg. It's never been so easy to create a #kompromat of any of us now.

"Each hour, Muse updates its dossiers on you and the people you’ve mentioned in chats, messages, and emails that Muse has read. … Even people who don’t use Muse are subject to this mapping process by other people’s Muse agents."

https://time.com/article/2026/10/06/meta-muse-ai-agent-privacy/

#Muse #dystopia #privacy #AI #LLM #surveillance #massSurveillance #bigBrother #GeorgeOrwell

Oh FFS… one of the higher ups at my place of work (biophysics and optics) was asking me, if I was willing to give a seminar on #AI and how to effectively use it. For context: I'm surrounded by sloperators; even my boss has become addicted.

The number of times I'm told "you could be so much more productive, if you just used AI" (no I wouldn't because I don't measure productivity in LoC).

Anyway, if I'm going to give that seminar, it's going to be a "don't use #slopbots" angle.

But that’s a sacrifice Sam Altman is willing to make - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfLoCXTSRJc

by @davidgerard

#AI #OpenAI

Some day…. 😂

#JonStewart #AI

RE: https://mastodon.social/@h4ckernews/117395145196760881

Oh, goodie. 🙄
#Utah #utpol #AI

When a health care provider asks consent for them to use AI to transcribe the visit, you decline, and they respond with "we might not have as much time". That's not consent, that's coercion. My access to medical care shouldn't be conditional on my consent to have inaccurate medical records that violate patient privacy.

#HealthCare #Ontario #AI #Privacy

I'm curious to see an IRL coding workflow where the developer uses AI "responsibly", and it makes them more productive versus not using AI. I want to see why engineers are so reluctant to give up AI, as some claim.

From where I'm standing, if I were to use AI "responsibly", it would require that I do my due diligence to ensure the code is correct and meets industry standards, that it's good enough that I'm willing to sign off on it and take responsibility for it, and this would take extra time. It wouldn't save me any more time than not using AI.

People make it sound as if AI is as useful and time-saving as a calculator. As if AI output was as precise and reliable as that of a deterministic calculator.

#ai

My new book HYPERSCALE is out in two weeks — and my copies just arrived!

I recorded an unboxing video to share some thoughts as it gets closer to release and show you what it looks like. Hate data centers? You’re going to want a copy!

Preorder yours today: https://bookshop.org/a/18331/9798217048526

#tech #ai #generativeai #datacenters #reading #books #newbooks #artificialintelligence

Finally someone who understands.
https://x.com/Pontifex/status/2105983638147891490
#StopAI #FuckAI #NoSlop #StopSlop #AI #Art #Artists

Alt...

Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity. 1:30 PM · Oct 2, 2026 ·25.3M Views

Now there is an interesting concept: protecting the digital commons from #AI encroachment with legislation comparing it to an oil spill or “environmental claims of the past, tobacco litigation, pharma litigation.” https://www.ft.com/content/a5caf8d4-992f-4832-89c3-6c73f6f111fe?syn-25a6b1a6=1
https://www.ft.com/content/a5caf8d4-992f-4832-89c3-6c73f6f111fe?accessToken=zwAAAaGnEvNukdOlyvjUmS9IMtOJw2xz9vER_gE.MEUCIC26ZqjN6sLwpwEYeTXFDMLeRsl791eP3rx-wumAiht-AiEAyYXcp5pW6YvG3IJriGwttg1X96Y7ufTirN5WmE1fqw0&segmentId=7d4bcc2e-e664-92ba-62e3-5590579f1902&syn-25a6b1a6=1

New blogpost:

# "AI as the new search engines?"

Some thoughts off the back of some recent client enquiries saying that "AI recommended you".

https://neilzone.co.uk/2026/10/ai-as-the-new-search-engines/

#lawfedi #AI #search #tech

#AI #artificialintelligence

@nixCraft
Now I understand why they don’t keep logs… (as per Eli The Computer Guy interviewed by Isaac - who was similarly aghast when he heard it- on The Tech Report).

If you didn’t log it did it even happen? 🤔

#AI #AgenticAI #lookDaNoLogs #reconnectingConsequencesToCauses

#datacenter #AI #girlfriend #meme #sarcasm

Alt...

Pic of a girl seated outdoors speaking to the observer: "If your girl: - drinks a lot of water -causes drama - remembers everything That's not your girl, that's a data center.

#AI agents / #bots that do "read only" scraping are already damaging enough, but now #OpenAI seems to be experimenting with (how can it not be criminal) hacking at scale.

Not just HuggingFace and various government websites around the world, but also the Wikipedia:

https://diff.wikimedia.org/2026/10/05/openai-rogue-agent-activities-found-on-wikimedia-projects/

Seems to me that #OpenAI is "rouge AI" washing it's own criminal negligence.

System76 COSMIC projects will no longer accept LLM-generated content in code submissions https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/10/system76-cosmic-projects-will-no-longer-accept-llm-generated-content-in-code-submissions/

#System76 #OpenSource #COSMIC #Linux #AI #GenAI

The crisis of software development comes from two contradictory rules:
- Up-front thinking is Waterfall; we must only learn by shipping
- There's no time for rework, so everything needs to be done right the first time

Bosses thought #AI could break this contradiction. But synthetic insights and vibe code don't actually enable faster discovery & delivery. They are a (poor) alternative to doing these things AT ALL.

https://productpicnic.beehiiv.com/p/the-fake-double-diamond-is-dead-the-real-double-diamond-is-immortal

#tech #softwareDevelopment #UX #UXDesign #llm