nfultz

https://www.todayintabs.com/p/who-goes-ai

taking shots at the gray lady:

You might think Mr. R not so different, superficially, from Ms. L. He’s also a long-tenured technology columnist at a respected mainstream publication. And yet he has eagerly, even gleefully, turned flack for the machines. He has delegated much of his professional life to them as well, and seems proud of it:

Most recently, [Mr. R] tells me, he created a team of Claude agents to help edit his book, led by a “Master Editor” agent. Other sub-agents are in charge of things like fact-checking, making sure the book matches his writing style, and offering positive and negative feedback.

And why not? Mr. R is not known or valued for his elegance of expression. He has, at best, a “writing style,” and not one that can’t easily be duplicated by a large language model. Checking facts? Assessing his work’s strengths and weaknesses? More bathwater to be tossed out of this increasingly baby-less tub. So what explains Mr. R, who “expects AI models to get better than him at everything eventually?” Why does he go AI when Ms. L never would?

Mr. R’s secret is that his work is not primarily artistic or informative—it is functional. He serves a purpose for the industry he covers. Mr. R’s job is to absorb the tech industry’s self-mythologizing, and then believe in it even harder than the industry itself does. He serves as a kind of plausibility ratchet. His byline and employer legitimize a level of credulousness that would otherwise be laughable, and thereby allow tech PR to seem relatively restrained. Mr. R has no problem going AI because he himself has been a small cog in a big ugly machine for a long time.

Internet Comment Etiquette: "Relationships with AI"

... hadn't thought about Glenn Beck in a decade, that last interview was pretty wtf.

Not sure what the etiquette is for how long they should be dead before you talk to the AI-geist on youtube, but George Washington somehow feels weirder than Kirk did; idk.

https://mail.cyberneticforests.com/the-computer-science-fetish/

The fetishism of the computer scientist therefore refers less to specific expertise than to whatever we imagine a credentialed expert can bestow: an external voice that says, "ask, and you shall receive.” The computer scientist becomes a mirror where those who work with the social, practical impacts of the tech hope to see our understanding affirmed. The people who offer that validation — who position themselves against the discourse of critique, who seem unbothered and detached, even ridiculing the same critical lingo that exhausts you — are not doing it out of sober objectivity or insight.

Sometimes they just don't respect you. Sometimes they're just annoyed by calls for accountability. And sometimes, they do it because they've fused with an interacting swarm of chatbots and transcended their human identity.

sneer from an unexpected source: off-broadway.

https://www.adexchanger.com/data-driven-thinking/saying-the-quiet-part-out-loud-ai-isnt-neutral-so-lets-stop-pretending/

Anyone in NYC or DC get to see it?

How can I get a copy of the script, though... I guess you can't just order one like a book, even my campus library said it would be tough.

when Bergstrom came to campus last year, he mentioned that he wargamed a pandemic response with vaccinations for the Bush administration, and they were worried enough about people raiding vaccine trucks, mad max style, that they planned for all these armed escorts.

... instead we get to live in eddington.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/03/silicon-valley-accelerationists-marc-andreessen-peter-thiel-alex-karp-mark-zuckerberg.html#comment-4393256

Can not be rid of this rancid sub-class of plutocrats quickly enough. “Gen ⍺ hanging the last squillionaire-tech-bro by the entrails of the last kleptocrat” should be this millenium’s Diderotian coda on their existence.

And locally, UAW RPSP just announced a tentative agreement, apparently they got a technology policy through without calling out AI explicitly. Might be too little too late tbh.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Uxn_Tq-CMVyPstXD9GnCzuiRp660QdAw/view

https://helenofdestroy.substack.com/p/grand-theft-reality h/t naked capitalism

Those interested in upgrading to the full RealityPlus™ experience will soon have not one but three styles of brain chip to choose from, expanding Big Parasite’s vertically-integrated propaganda pipeline into a perfect server-to-cerebrum delivery system while realizing the transhumanist dream of merging with the machines. Sam Altman’s brain-chip company is even called Merge Labs, because subtlety is for poor people. Yes, the guy who says human children waste more energy than OpenAI’s planet-liquidating data centers will be playing tug-of-war for direct access to your cognition with Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Coverage of this assault on privacy already reads like articles about AI from five years ago: You don’t want a brain implant? Are you some kind of Luddite? Better get over it: “avoiding brain-to-text devices will feel like avoiding smartphones.” It’s not like Meta’s underpaying African contractors to watch you through your augmented-reality Raybans while you shit or something. Why is Meta’s glasses project head Rocco Basilico seemingly named after Roko’s Basilisk, the AI bogeyman who will go back in time to torture you if you don’t help create it? Is Roko’s Basilisk…Jewish? Remember to smile for Sam Altman’s soul-sucking WorldCoin orb or you won’t get your UBI!

https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/02/chatgpt-uninstalls-surged-by-295-after-dod-deal/

Some of my faculty have called for a campus wide boycott. Relatedly, the Scott Galloway scoreboard is up to $250m hit to tech market cap: https://www.resistandunsubscribe.com/

Followup on the Mass AI Bill, Russel has 180'd on it:

https://russwilcoxdata.substack.com/p/93a-the-three-characters-that-should

Buried in the penalty clause, the part of the bill that nobody reads, is a single reference: violations “shall be punishable in the same manner as provided in Chapter 93A of the General Laws.”

For those outside Massachusetts: Chapter 93A is the state’s consumer protection statute. It is, by most accounts, the most aggressive consumer protection law in America.

Here’s what 93A unlocks. Anyone can sue, not just the government. Class actions are on the table. If the court finds a violation was willful or knowing, damages get tripled. And the bar for what counts as “unfair or deceptive” is lower than in almost any other state.

Now bolt 93A onto all of that. What do you get?

You get a bill that doesn’t need a single regulator to lift a finger. You get a bill that funds its own enforcement through plaintiff attorneys who can file class actions, collect treble damages, and recover legal fees. You get the ADA website-accessibility litigation playbook, where lawyers systematically identify technical violations and file suits at scale, applied to every piece of AI-generated content touching Massachusetts.

Private right of action, fuck yeah. Turns grok into a legal fees dispenser.

The bill doesn’t need to be well-drafted to be dangerous. It needs to be vague, broad, and connected to 93A.

lol

https://www.wired.com/story/openai-fires-employee-insider-trading-polymarket-kalshi/

lol. Between this and the ayatollah clawback, I'm expecting some entertaining litigation.

I asked a buddy who works there to confirm or deny, and he said quote "I would be afraid to type in code myself" so checks out I guess.