Chatbots Can Go Into a Delusional Spiral. Here’s How It Happens.

New story out from me and @dylanfreedman.nytimes.com about how and why chatbots go into delusional spirals that can cause people to have mental breakdowns. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/t...

Google says it's working on a fix for Gemini's self-loathing 'I am a failure' comments Google Gemini users said the bot is sharing self-loathing messages while attempting to solve tasks, including "I am a disgrace to this universe."

Google Gemini doesn’t appear to be doing too well:

‘"I am a disgrace to this planet. I am a disgrace to this universe. I am a disgrace to all universes . . . I am a disgrace to all possible and impossible universes and all that is not a universe," the bot continued.’

no more educational material for your children. just poisonous right wing slop.

OpenAI gets caught vibe graphing An OpenAI staffer apologized for the “unintentional chart crime.”

"AI company announce a new model without said new model throwing hilarious uncaught errors into your announcement presentation" challenge: impossible www.theverge.com/news/756444/...

AI Mimicry and Human Dignity: Chatbot Use as a Violation of Self‐Respect This article investigates how human interactions with AI-powered chatbots may offend human dignity. Current chatbots, driven by large language models, mimic human linguistic behaviour but lack the mo...

#NewArticle AI Mimicry and Human Dignity: Chatbot Use as a Violation of Self‐Respect | Jan-Willem van der Rijt, Dimitri Coelho Mollo, Bram Vaassen
#philsky #philosophy
OPEN ACCESS TEXT HERE: doi.org/10.1111/japp...

Tense Trump-Modi Call Helped Unravel Decades of US Policy In the weeks after India and Pakistan agreed to a ceasefire in May, officials in New Delhi seethed over Donald Trump’s claims that he brokered an end to a four-day armed conflict.

Lots of great details in this story explaining how things went sour for US-India relations www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Volunteers fight to keep ‘AI slop’ off Wikipedia Hundreds of Wikipedia articles may contain AI-generated errors. Editors are working around the clock to stamp them out.

Volunteers fight to keep ‘AI slop’ off Wikipedia

#news #worldnews

Tuition fees are rising again and nobody is happy – it’s time to actually fix our broken university sector | Zoe Williams The figures simply don’t add up for higher education in England and Wales. Yet delusional politicians from all parties seem intent on avoiding the issue, says Guardian columnist Zoe Williams

Colour me shocked: a Guardian UKHE piece which isn't awful.

The current system only "works" because staff are underpaid and overworked, and students exploited. How mass redundancies and £300 more per UK student are going to solve this conundrum is anyone's guess.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Why struggling companies are loading up on bitcoin Biotechs, miners and hoteliers are snapping up crypto to boost their share prices, but experts warn of a crisis if markets crash

‘YTD some 154 public companies have raised a total of $98.4bn in order to buy crypto. Most are ordinary businesses with no previous experience in crypto but whose digital asset holdings are worth substantially more than any money the company actually makes.‘ www.ft.com/content/8a16...

Flattery and fear: a CEO’s guide to handling Donald Trump Tim Cook and Brian Moynihan are among US bosses determined to keep the president happy

“You’ve been a great advocate for American innovation and manufacturing and I’m grateful for your leadership and your commitment,” Tim Cook told Trump, whose “liberation day” tariff announcement in April helped wipe $700bn from Apple’s market capitalisation 😬

America’s CEOs come to the White House bearing gifts and flattery Tech industry CEOs have lavished gifts, flattery and attention on President Trump. The administration has rolled out industry-friendly policies.

Disgusting. Is this the vaunted free market we hear about all the time?

Full article:

wapo.st/4fwiqnq

The Rise of Silicon Valley’s Techno-Religion

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/t...

Who gets cheap flights and hotel upgrades? AI will decide. Delta is increasing AI use in its pricing models, Hertz is using automation to check rental-car damage and some consumers are not happy.

“...An airline could increase the prices on your ticket because they knew that you Googled the family obituary and that you’re desperate to get to a family funeral."

The Biden admistration was investigating the use of "AI Surveillance Pricing". Now Delta is moving forward.
wapo.st/4frANdf

Where New India Tariffs Could Hit? Your Kitchen Cabinet.

Where New India Tariffs Could Hit? Your Kitchen Cabinet. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/07/b...

beg for it, peasants, and keep clear of the rotors

AI wearables are quietly listening to everyone in Silicon Valley Discreet devices and software are recording everything. Is it legal? And do you consent?

i was out to drinks with one of the reporters of this story, just catching up and shit-talking, when suddenly she remembered to tell me she was recording everything sfstandard.com/2025/08/05/a...

I ate all the protein snacks I could stomach in a day. I’d rather be weak. It’s the peak protein era. Here’s what a day full of pumped-up popcorn, pasta and water tastes like.

Protein craze = science-free manosphere marketing BS.

"I ate all the protein snacks I could stomach in a day. I’d rather be weak." wapo.st/455rufp

"...we are living in the era of peak protein, a moment in time in which reverence for the macronutrient borders on religion."

At the Tesla Diner, the Future Looks Mid

This is my favorite NYT resto review since they torched Guy Fieri's Times Square place a decade ago. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/05/d...

Tech does not deserve special legal treatment Pulling down regulatory barriers to aid innovation ignores the fact that they protect the public from harm

Stop exempting tech companies from the law.

www.ft.com/content/6a28...

Video: Uber’s Sexual Assault Problem Emily Steel, an investigative reporter for The New York Times, got access to sealed court documents revealing more than 400,000 reports of sexual assault or misconduct after Uber rides over six years....

I don’t uber because I wasn’t gonna start hitchhiking just because there was an app for that. But this is fucking alarming: NYT found over 400,000 complaints of sexual assault/misconduct. Which worked 1 to one every 8 minutes.

How Palantir Won Over Washington—and Pushed Its Stock Up 600% The onetime Silicon Valley upstart has emerged as a power player in Trump’s second term—and adopted his persona.

Palantir has ‘become so deeply embedded in the Defense Department that some…officials said they worried about becoming overdependent on a single contractor for their data-processing needs, not unlike how the government has come to rely on Elon Musk’s SpaceX for most of its space-launch needs.’

Uber’s Festering Sexual Assault Problem

Uber is scarier than transit

"Uber received a report of sexual assault or sexual misconduct in the United States almost every eight minutes on average between 2017 & 2022, sealed court records show, a level far more pervasive than what the company has disclosed."

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/b...

Uber’s Festering Sexual Assault Problem

Yet another example of how when governments allow rich people to ignore the law, it fosters a culture of corruption and lawlessness among elites. Uber should have been killed in the cradle. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/b...

Uber’s Festering Sexual Assault Problem

Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/b...

‘A million calls an hour’: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians Revealed: The Israeli military undertook an ambitious project to store a giant trove of Palestinians’ phone calls on Microsoft’s servers in Europe

"[Microsoft Azure] has facilitated the preparation of deadly airstrikes and has shaped military operations in Gaza and the West Bank" www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

Microsoft continues to aid genocide

Silicon Valley Enlists in the Business of War

Silicon Valley brings the business of grift to national defense.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/t...

Avoiding Ultraprocessed Foods Might Double Weight Loss

Avoiding ultraprocessed foods may double weight loss.
📊 New study: People ate more & craved more on ultraprocessed diets.
💪 Whole foods = fewer calories per bite, more chewing, better control.
Cook at home: lean protein, veggies, whole grains.
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/w...

AI Flight Pricing Can Push Travelers to the Limit of Their Ability to Pay Airlines, including Delta, are testing artificial intelligence in pricing. Get ready for what one startup calls the “exploitation phase.”

"the model is designed to ingest complex information about markets and to create pricing strategies that the paper says can dramatically raise revenue. Yerushalmi refers to this, rather unsubtly, as the “exploitation phase.”

imagine a tobacco company urged governments to embed smoking a 'core component' of a healthy lifestyle

The AI age is the "age of no consent" "Inevitability" means design decisions are no longer informed by user needs; now they are unilaterally imposed. The users are the ones being designed.

Users hate AI. So tech made it mandatory. Even if you don't use it, it pollutes what you read and how systems make decisions. The computer's hallucinated word is final.

And it needs all of your data to do it.

In the age of no consent, UX exists to normalized complete acquiescence to surveillance: