Science … weird science!

The title should be sung to the tune of the Oingo Boingo song, of course.

What could be weirder than the deranged conviction artificial intelligence is the way, the truth and the light? Never mind the environmental damage, the wrong answers, the countless other problems, Silicon Valley wants it to be the next game-changing technology. And it is, but not in a way that improves things.

“A user on X complained that Grok’s answers were too progressive after it said violence from right-wing Americans tended to be deadlier than violence from left-wing Americans — a conclusion matching findings from various studies and data from the Global Terrorism Database.” So Elon Musk tweaked it to be more conservative.

HHS employees have been ordered to use chatbots in their jobs.

“A book collection steeped in 19th century thought could also be “immensely critical” for the tech industry’s efforts to build AI agents that can plan and reason as well as humans, Leppert said.” At this point AI looks more like the flop tech of the past — jetpacks, nuclear powered vacuum cleaners — than anything approaching human.

“She said librarians report being treated like robots over library reference chat, and patrons getting defensive over the veracity of recommendations they’ve received from an AI-powered chatbot. Essentially, like more people trust their preferred LLM over their human librarian.”

AI is spreading into areas it shouldn’t, like therapists secretly using chatbots to tell them what to say to clients. Seriously, what kind of hack therapist can’t think of what to say when a patient’s dog dies?

“The whole tech industry is once again facing questions over the casual way it sometimes turns unassuming people into lab rats, especially as more tech companies wade into health-related services.” And people don’t know because it turns out the Turing test — if we think a computer is intelligent, we should assume it is — is dead wrong.

Podcasts are (I think) what blogs were 20 years ago. So naturally an AI company plans to flood the zone with tons of AI-hosted podcasts. High point: “We believe that in the near future half the people on the planet will be AI, and we are the company that’s bringing those people to life,”said CEO Jeanine Wright. Um, no, but I get that her financial model probably depends on bullshit like that.

“I’m working every day on using AI to figure out how to cure cancer or launch fusion energy or understand dark matter. Our Defense Department is trying to figure out how to keep America safe. God bless the First Lady. She of course is wiser than all of us.” — Felon Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Yeah, I’m sure he’s lying but why would he even pretend he’s spending his work day to figure out dark matter?

If you’re wondering about his First Lady tongue-bathing, Melania’s calling on schools to train kids in using AI. I’m sure that will be more profitable for tech companies than learning anything valuable.

“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.The “faith tech” industry is booming.”

“When asked “How many Ds are in DEEPSEEK?” the DeepSeek-V3 model with 600 billion parameters “returned ‘2’ or ‘3’ in ten independent trials” while Meta AI and Claude 3.7 Sonnet performed similarly, “including answers as large as ‘6’ and ‘7.’” — from an excellent look at how AI hallucinations may be inevitable.

“Many of the students have completely surrendered to letting AI do their homework, badly, I might add. How do you fix this?” — Roxane Gay. One solution discussed in the thread: handwritten assignments.

Ted Chiang (quoted in the same thread): “The task that generative A.I. has been most successful at is lowering our expectations, both of the things we read and of ourselves when we write […]. It is a fundamentally dehumanizing technology because it treats us as less than what we are: creators and apprehenders of meaning.”

Now some non-AI links:

Stuff we post to the Internet doesn’t last forever.

The Toddler of the United States’ new $1,000 fee for HB-1 visas will undermine our tech industry (plus the option to waive the rules is an invitation to corruption).

A solar storm could wreak havoc on our electrical systems. It’s something we can prepare for, but I have a lot less faith in either government or corporate leaders doing so than I used to.

The Toddler claims one in 10 boys is born with autism, which is a lie, and that they get 80 different vaccines pumped into them in infancy, which is another lie. Surprisingly, RFK claims a definite link (spoiler: another lie!) to women taking Tylenol, and his anti-vax worshippers are furious (though he’s still anti-vax — I don’t know what his beef with Tylenol is). Though Newsmax’s fascist toadies are happily embracing the lie. So is ever-idiotic Senator Ron Johnson. And Politico sanewashes the Felon by explaining he’s really compassionate and wants to “solve the autism problem.”

Oh, RFK Junior’s also lying about the Amish not getting vaccinated and therefore not having autism.

I’ll wrap up with a comment from someone online elsewhere: “RFK Jr. seems to walk through life like it was always 20 minutes after he smoked his first joint in ninth grade.”

Remember, every Senate Republican voted for him, knowing he was a hardcore anti-vaxxer. Including the ones now pretending they’re shocked, shocked that he’s an anti-vaxxer.