TechTakes

Somebody on bsky talking about various Ben Goertzel Epstein file emails.

OT: Declan Chidlow ran across product activation codes for some old Adobe products.

The only useful one's for Flash MX 2004 IMO, but its still cool to have them.

Look at the fresh garbage LinkedIn served to me today: https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/managing-ai-is-the-next-gen-skill-7655601/

(Why am I still on that godforsaken hellsite)

Scott Shambaugh mulls about an AI alignment issue following his run-in with a bot last week

A longread on AI greenwashing begins thusly:

The expansion of data centres - which is driven in large part by AI growth - is creating a shocking new demand for fossil fuels. The tech companies driving AI expansion try to downplay AI’s proven climate impacts by claiming that AI will eventually help solve climate change. Our analysis of these claims suggests that rather than relying on credible and substantiated data, these companies are writing themselves a blank cheque to pollute on the empty promise of future salvation. While the current negative effects of AI on the climate are clear, proven and growing, the promise of large-scale solutions is often based on wishful thinking, and almost always presented with scant evidence.

(Via.)

Im pretty sure most of this has already been posted to this thread (I know the “AI published a hit piece on me” thing was)but more Moltbook/Openclaw/whatever-it’s-called nonsense

nasb, video from a climate scientist going over the claims by promptfondler ceos

https://github.com/bluesky-social/social-app/pull/9726/commits/d562412076feba45e9fdff8a10d2afc955cc1216 🥀

OT: I tried switching away from my instance to quokk.au because it becomes harder and harder to justify being on a pro-ai instance, but it seems that your posts stopped federating recently. Which makes that a bit harder to do. Any clue why?

https://old.reddit.com/r/indieheads/comments/1r6x1ix/fresh_failure_the_air_is_on_fire_from_location/

I looked it up, and this one is credited to Glen Wexler, who is an actual artist with a pretty distinct style and yes, he's been incorporating AI into his process lately, and I guess he did use it here (those windows on those buildings are sus as hell, and the overall sharpness of the image just screams AI).

So it's not outright slop, but still pretty disappointing and incongruous coming from this band. Their last two records were examining our society's alienation through technology, at times to the point of "phone bad!" level nagging, but using the most literally destructive technology of them all is fine, as long as it helps keep the costs down, I guess?

And it just doesn't look good, but come to think of it, most of their albums have bad cover art, it's almost like they do it on purpose. Love the music, though.

It's too bad if true, I can't unsee it now. for reference: https://failureband.bandcamp.com/album/location-lost

also this video by 80,000 Hours on timeline increases in 2025 https://youtu.be/YeRS4TbtZWA