Mark Hurst

56% of Americans like to have a little fun when pollsters call them on the phone.

Is this cheese grater conscious? Many users feel they're talking to a real person. Scientists say it's time to consider whether they're onto something.

"Canceling a late loved one’s cable account led to an outrageous and shocking interaction with an AI assistant."

I’m quoted in this piece about customer service in the age of AI, by @amilnetyte.bsky.social.

www.nextavenue.org/were-sorry-f...

New Techtonic: Citizens are being forced to pay for Big Tech data centers.

Full episode:
techtonic.fm/episodes/202...

A story in 3 acts:

tune into wfmu.org for my live broadcast of Techtonic, starting now.

click the Play button:

Figure ES-1. Total U.S. data center electricity use from 2014 through 2028. The end of the graph at 2028, shows a projected range of 6.7% to 12.0% of all electricity in the U.S. going to data centers.

This seems fine.

By 2028, a projected 6.7% to 12.0% of ALL electricity in the U.S. will go to data centers.

Source: the 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report. escholarship.org/uc/item/32d6...

/cc @shannonmattern.bsky.social

So if your goal is to get through 10 books a year - just try to read 10 measly pages a day - easy.

If you really dig in and build a habit of reading, say, 25 pages a day - that's 25 books a year! (Or more, if you're reading 7 days a week.)

Another suggestion to put down the screen and pick up a book.

The number of pages you read per day, most days a week, is roughly equivalent to how many books you'll read in a year.

More reasons to avoid Tesla and Musk I recently learned two new reasons to avoid Tesla vehicles. First, there’s another lawsuit about their incredibly dangerous door handles. Two people died in...

“I’d be less concerned if Musk was just a crackpot billionaire off to the side, creating things that people could avoid, once they found out how creepy/offensive/lethal they were. But Musk – like the other oligarchs – has a different level of influence.”

New from me:
buttondown.com/creativegood...

With Gemini, Google delivers yet another insult to Gmail users.

Also: get off Gmail. Lots of alternatives, like Fastmail.com or proton.me/mail.

Zuckerberg is building a data center in Louisiana the size of Manhattan — while Meta runs ads about how small towns love their data centers, we found furious locals who plan to leave town completely.

How low can the tech oligarchs go? | Techtonic with Mark Hurst on WFMU Under Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership, Facebook/Meta is making billions of dollars from knowingly promoting fraudulent material. Over at OpenAI, Sam Altman is being sued for building a chatbot that encou...

Such an important story. I covered it on the newest Techtonic - techtonic.fm/episodes/202...

Techtonic with Mark Hurst on WFMU Techtonic with Mark Hurst is a weekly radio show from WFMU about technology, how it's affecting us, and what we can do about it.

Congrats! Would love to feature this on techtonic.fm around the pub date.

Below: my comments on Techtonic about Tesla and its Grok chatbot that, as reported by the CBC, made sexual comments to a 12-year-old boy.

Episode page with links to the story:
techtonic.fm/episodes/202...

How low can the tech oligarchs go? | Techtonic with Mark Hurst on WFMU Under Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership, Facebook/Meta is making billions of dollars from knowingly promoting fraudulent material. Over at OpenAI, Sam Altman is being sued for building a chatbot that encou...

Unfortunately seems to be a pattern across the CEO suite in Big Tech. My new Techtonic episode focuses on their products & outcomes - asking "How low can the tech oligarchs go?" techtonic.fm/episodes/202...

MIT Invents Injectable Brain Chips Researchers at MIT have invented "Circulatronics," a medical platform they say enables non-invasive treatment of neuroinflammation.

So nice to read about my alma mater every week - "MIT adds new wing onto Torment Nexus"

futurism.com/health-medic...

Giant Platforms of Shit | Los Angeles Review of Books Dave Mandl catches a whiff of Cory Doctorow’s anatomy of platform “enshittification.”

"Doctorow has performed a valuable public service with 'Enshittification,'" writes @dmandl.bsky.social about Cory's new book. I agree, and would add that Dave has done us all a service by writing such a clear and cogent review:
lareviewofbooks.org/article/gian...

I Work For an Evil Company, but Outside Work, I’m Actually a Really Good Person I love my job. I make a great salary, there’s a clear path to promotion, and a never-ending supply of cold brew in the office. And even though my j...

One of the best pieces I've read in awhile. Emily Bressler in @mcsweeneys.net writes "I Work for an Evil Company, but Outside Work, I’m Actually a Really Good Person":

www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-w...

The AI buildout shouldn't force people to drink sewage Here’s a story about AI you need to hear. First the bad news, then the good news. 1. AI gets fresh water, while citizens are told to drink sewage Five years...

more on climate effects of AI buttondown.com/creativegood...

The AI buildout shouldn't force people to drink sewage Here’s a story about AI you need to hear. First the bad news, then the good news. 1. AI gets fresh water, while citizens are told to drink sewage Five years...

New from me: AI and people drinking sewage.

"We have to evaluate the systems by their real-world effects: not what the companies *claim* is happening, not what their government sponsors *hope* will happen, but what people on the ground are actually experiencing."

buttondown.com/creativegood...

Get your workplace off of M$ Office. One alternative is Open Desk: www.opendesk.eu - "the Community Edition can be downloaded free of charge from the openCode.de platform."

Authors -- you are entitled to a payment for the books of yours that Anthropic stole for its AI. It's about $1,500 per book. I just filed - you should too!
www.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com?_gl=1*1ersia....

Really enjoyed speaking w/ @paulmozur.bsky.social, global tech correspondent for the NYT, about the water & power draw of data centers worldwide.

Full episode:
techtonic.fm/episodes/202...

The warped psychology of El Presidente Trump is captured by Miguel Ángel Asturias in his novel “El Señor Presidente,” inspired by the dictatorship of Manuel Estrada Cabrera who ruled Guatemala for 22 years; Gabriel García Márquez’s “The Autumn of the Patriarch,” Julia Alvarez’s “In the Time of the Butterflies” and Mario Vargas Llosa’s “The Feast of the Goat” and “Conversation in the Cathedral.” These novels offer better insight into where we are headed than most tomes on U.S. politics.

2/ Chris suggests books for further reading:

America is a Banana Republic El Presidente Donald Trump is the gringo version of brutal and corrupt dictators foisted on Latin American countries by their oligarchs and Yankee imperialists.

"El Presidente — in every dictatorship — follows the same playbook. No bribe too small. No violation of civil liberties too extreme. No stupidity too absurd. All dissent, no matter how tepid, is treason."

"America is a Banana Republic," writes Chris Hedges:
chrishedges.substack.com/p/america-is...

Yeah so several major Ukrainian cities are in a complete blackout right now. 0 generation from thermal plants and 0 idea when the power will be back. Just please don’t forget us

Mothers say AI chatbots encouraged their sons to kill themselves In her first UK interview Megan Garcia speaks to Laura Kuenssberg about the death of her teenage son.

"We lived in intense silent fear as an algorithm meticulously tore our family apart…This AI chatbot perfectly mimicked the predatory behaviour of a human groomer, systematically stealing our child's trust and innocence.”