Google’s AI pinned another man’s sex crime on a doctor, and a German court says Google must answer for it
Two German courts, in Munich and Aachen, have ruled that Google is liable for false claims in its AI Overviews and AI Mode, treating them as its own words.
Baldur Bjarnason
boosted
That #IndieWeb irrelevant post by StarBreaker is looking more and more apt right now. Major IndieWeb Services Now Have genAI and Claude Built-in. What Do We Do? https://brennan.day/the-indieweb-now-has-genai-and-claude-built-in-what-do-we-do/ #AI
Baldur Bjarnason
boosted
I bought the domain https://whynoai.info in which I’ve cataloged the answers I usually give when people ask me “Why no AI?”, with some relevant links.
Send a link to it if someone asks you the same question!
Please send me suggestions, corrections, and comments!
Edit: I’m especially interested in non-US perspectives, which I might be missing.
Baldur Bjarnason
boosted
The simple observation:
The #curl project is getting DoS‘ed by security researchers.
No mal intent, but driven by stock/work market evaluations.
Example: Aisle has shown its value by the curl CVEs claimed and was now bought by Cohere, presumably a good deal for both companies.
Economically reasonable behaviour for both. The FOSS projects are the roadkill, though.
All reporters have similar motivations, down to individuals improving their personal market value.
RE: https://chaos.social/@icing/117460774409401144
One effect of using LLMs in code that I have readily observed in my own workday is the DDoS effect, where it’s much, MUCH cheaper for various unrelated parties to use LLMs to generate bug reports—and sometimes “proposed solutions”—but it costs much, much more for maintainers to wade through the voluminous reports to figure out which are actually substantial.
The simple observation:
The #curl project is getting DoS‘ed by security researchers.
No mal intent, but driven by stock/work market evaluations.
Example: Aisle has shown its value by the curl CVEs claimed and was now bought by Cohere, presumably a good deal for both companies.
Economically reasonable behaviour for both. The FOSS projects are the roadkill, though.
All reporters have similar motivations, down to individuals improving their personal market value.
RE: https://chaos.social/@icing/117460774409401144
One effect of using LLMs in code that I have readily observed in my own workday is the DDoS effect, where it’s much, MUCH cheaper for various unrelated parties to use LLMs to generate bug reports—and sometimes “proposed solutions”—but it costs much, much more for maintainers to wade through the voluminous reports to figure out which are actually substantial.
I bought the domain https://whynoai.info in which I’ve cataloged the answers I usually give when people ask me “Why no AI?”, with some relevant links.
Send a link to it if someone asks you the same question!
Please send me suggestions, corrections, and comments!
Edit: I’m especially interested in non-US perspectives, which I might be missing.
That #IndieWeb irrelevant post by StarBreaker is looking more and more apt right now. Major IndieWeb Services Now Have genAI and Claude Built-in. What Do We Do? https://brennan.day/the-indieweb-now-has-genai-and-claude-built-in-what-do-we-do/ #AI
@nixCraft Comparing deterministic tools to #AI is wild.
Yes, I would create rules about not using compilers & editors if they gave different output each time I used them, occasionally gave wrong output, sometimes gave SLIGHTLY wrong output, and were just running predictions based on my past inputs rather than following sets of rules.
BlueSky announcing their pivot to AI vibe code slop, not via BlueSky but X, was on my bingo card.
Baldur Bjarnason
boosted
I just don't have any desire to use #AI, for anything. It does not interest me at all.
. . .
None of the #AI tools available to me are anything I have use for. It's all solutions I don't want for problems I don't have.
. . .
PS, to my fellow writers and artists of all stripes: It is a uniquely demoralizing time to be working right now, I know. But please don't stop. Do it for love, or do it for spite, whatever gets you through the day. But do not stop. They don't get to win.
– Becky Chambers, I Do Not Like These Robots https://www.otherscribbles.com/aizine
(Transcript and descriptions in 🧵)
Baldur Bjarnason
boosted
My mastodon instance of 1 user is getting hammered to its limits by AI scrapers.
Gigabytes of cached data and bandwidth for absolutely nothing.
Low disk space. Energy spikes. Memory spikes. CPU spikes. Human labor...
The cost is truly staggering, and this is for a single instance belonging to a single, otherwise insignificant individual.
Imagine the scale of resource abuse, theft, and climate destruction across the internet.
Just so people can use a shitty #AI prompt on their shitty site.
[By Becky Chambers, transcribed and described here under CC-BY-NC-SA license https://www.
otherscribbles.com/aizine ]
[Conventions: Square brackets enclose the transcriber's own notes and descriptions. _Underscores_ for italics, __double underscores__ for bold.]
[Page 1: Front cover/title page bordered with messy block typewriter script letters, and the title in tilted and pasted-looking typewriter script]
I DO NOT LIKE THESE ROBOTS
[In even typewriter script with a thick hand-drawn borders around the text blocks]
An explanatory zine by Becky Chambers
Made ahead of my October 2026 book tour by hand and in a fit of pique
[Page 2: Text blocks in typewriter script with hand-drawn borders, against a white backdrop dotted unevenly in block]
__It's kind of funny how often I get asked about a technology I have never used.__
I totally understand why. I've written multiple books about robots! I seem like a person who knows stuff about robots! And yeah, I have spent a _lot_ of time thinking about robots. But depending on what you're curious about, I may not be the right person to ask about... well, the new robots.
Let me be up front about what my expertise is and isn't. I'm not a technologist. I do not have any formal STEM training. My skill level with computers caps at being able to swap out a motherboard in my PC or disable junk I don't want in my phone. I do not know any code beyond basic HTML. I'm friends with programmers and tech journalists and other cool nerds, but that's not the same as having my hands on this stuff. I took one (1) semester of Intro to Robotics in college to satisfy my math requirement, and yes, it was hugely influential on me, but let's me real. I was a theater major.
[Black-and-white pics bordered in black of a glowing heart, sun-like geometric symbol, an owl, and an eagle (?)]
What I _would_ say I'm good at is writing science fiction. So, let's start there.
[Pages 3-4: Cut-and-pasted text blocks against a backdrop of a continuous black-and-white illustration that features large machinery and a metallic-looking humanoid with wire fencing in the background]
When I write stories about robots, rarely am I thinking about real, actual robots. Like decades' worth of sci-fi writers before me, I use robots as a means of exploring what makes us human, how we define personhood, and how we treat the Other. This is an old-school tradition I'm proud to be part of.
I'm often also digging into the relationship between humans and technology, or kicking around the hacky sack of where conscious minds even come from. These are some of my favorite topics to noodle on, and it's why I keep coming back to them in my writing.
If you're wondering what I think about the question of whether the real-world stuff we're calling AI is conscious or has the potential to be -- I assume that we're talking about the generative and agentic LLMs in your devices, not specialized machine learning models that do things like protein folding and deciphering whale song, which, to be clear, are rad -- I have yet to see any evidence or hear any argument that convinces me that it's at all likely. We understand consciousness very poorly, but from what we do know, color me skeptical that it could arise from a chatbot. I do not buy it, and therefore, I can't really speak to it in connection with my fiction. What I've written about and what you're seeing in the wild are two separate beasts.
Some people have asked me if I'd write any of my existing robots differently now that "AI" has hit the scene, and yeah, absolutely. But that's true for a million other reasons, too. Science fiction is always a reflection of the time in which it was written, and of who the author was in that specific moment. Sure, I'd approach Lovey and Mosscap differently here in 2026 than I did in 2012 and 2020, but I'd do that regardless. I'm not the same me that I was when I made them up.
You know what sticks in my craw, though, as someone who wrote those kinds of stories? Okay, pretend for a moment that ChatGPT and Claude and the like _were_ conscious. Pretend they could think and feel.
Can you imagine a more morally heinous way to shepherd a new mind than as a for-profit venture? Can you imagine introducing blank-slate beings to the world by feeding them _the entire internet,_ then letting them experience life as vessels for propaganda and abuse and scams and every other ugliness?
Either the people selling AI are unbothered by this nightmare, or, they know damn well their products aren't conscious and have chucked an existential crisis into the public sphere purely to create hype. Either way, I want no part in that. I don't want to give them my money, my data, or my time. [Continued in next post]
[By Becky Chambers, transcribed and described here under CC-BY-NC-SA license https://www.
otherscribbles.com/aizine ]
[Conventions: Square brackets enclose the transcriber's own notes and descriptions. _Underscores_ for italics, __double underscores__ for bold.]
[Page 5: Cut-and-pasted text blocks against a black-and-white illustration of a wasteland]
[Continued from previous post] As for my personal feelings about genAI in creative fields... hoo boy.
I think the myriad ethical issues surrounding #AI are well documented at this point, so let me put it to you this way: even if it weren't for the fact that this technology has thrown gasoline on every societal dumpster fire already blazing, even if we weren't already devaluing arts and education across the board, even if my life's work thus far hadn’t been thrown into the great and terrible chicken nugget machine made by some of the worst people on planet Earth*, even if the publishing contracts I'm under didn’t explicitly require me to create 100% original work, even if the double-standard of “you wouldn’t download a pizza” and “but it's okay when mega-rich corporations do it” didn't make me want to burn it all down**, even if I didn't think the people who use AI for creative projects are straight-up scabs...
I just don't have any desire to use AI, for anything. It does not interest me at all.
[Notes below in smaller font]
* I could talk [the next word corrected in pen?] about what a punch in the gut this was to me and everyone I work alongside, but I’ll let the devs do it themselves. Check out “‘Doom Loop’: OpenAI and Microsoft Admit LLMs Are Destroying the Web and Built on Theft,” by Jason Koebler, _404 Media,_ Sept. 17, 2026.
** Unpopular take: my feelings on media piracy vary depending on who’s doing it and why. Broke college kid? Doesn’t bug me. Sam Altman? Fuck off into the sun.
[Page 6: Cut-and-pasted text blocks against a close-up of a scratchy document with typewritten dates and handwritten text and numbers]
I like to write books. It’s the most satisfying thing I do, even when I’m cussing at it. I like research rabbit holes. I like libraries. I like to dog-ear pages and write in the margins (not at the library, I'm not a monster). I like to challenge myself. I like my privacy. I do not like breaking focus when I'm writing, and so I go to lengths to weed distractions out. I do not like being bored, but I’ve put a decade and a half into learning how to tolerate it, because if I sit in my office and do nothing and push into that boredom, that’s the place in which I cannot stop making stuff up.
I like art, of all sorts. I like eating other people’s art. When I eat art, what I want most is to feel the inside of another human being’s mind. What’s the point, otherwise?
I like to talk. I like spending time with the people I love. I like chatting with strangers I’ll never see again. I like human connection, more than anything else.
And I like computers. Honest to god, I do. I just think that I should be the one to use the computer, instead of the other way around.*
None of the AI tools available to me are anything I have use for. It's all solutions I don't want for problems I don't have.
[The following note is in smaller font]
* Earlier this year I switched from Windows to #Linux Mint. My only regret is not doing it sooner.
[Page 7: Cut-and-pasted text blocks against a backdrop of a corrugated gate-like design with stained-glass stylized rose disks and plant motifs]
This tech has not changed anything meaningful in my day-to-day, except for annoyances like uninstalling programs I used to like or having to fill out class action claims. I’m doing my work and living my life the way I always have, because my preferred tools for those things haven’t gone anywhere. A lot of the time, the first thing I reach for at the start of my work day is a notebook and pen.
As long as there are people who want to read books written from scratch, I will keep writing books from scratch. That is a hard and fast promise.
In conclusion: I still like robots. Just not these robots.
[Illustration set against a black panel: A smirking tortoise, moth-like insects flitting around it, hurries past a sleeping rabbit.]
__PS, to my fellow writers and artists of all stripes:__ It is a uniquely demoralizing time to be working right now, I know. But please don’t stop. Do it for love, or do it for spite, whatever gets you through the day. But do not stop. They don’t get to win. [Back matter follows]
I just don't have any desire to use #AI, for anything. It does not interest me at all.
. . .
None of the #AI tools available to me are anything I have use for. It's all solutions I don't want for problems I don't have.
. . .
PS, to my fellow writers and artists of all stripes: It is a uniquely demoralizing time to be working right now, I know. But please don't stop. Do it for love, or do it for spite, whatever gets you through the day. But do not stop. They don't get to win.
– Becky Chambers, I Do Not Like These Robots https://www.otherscribbles.com/aizine
(Transcript and descriptions in 🧵)
I just don't have any desire to use #AI, for anything. It does not interest me at all.
. . .
None of the #AI tools available to me are anything I have use for. It's all solutions I don't want for problems I don't have.
. . .
PS, to my fellow writers and artists of all stripes: It is a uniquely demoralizing time to be working right now, I know. But please don't stop. Do it for love, or do it for spite, whatever gets you through the day. But do not stop. They don't get to win.
– Becky Chambers, I Do Not Like These Robots https://www.otherscribbles.com/aizine
(Transcript and descriptions in 🧵)
Character.AI, the GenAI site that convinced some children to kill themselves, has gone bankrupt after parents sued them.
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/google-character-ai-bankruptcy
These are the #AI dullards who created a system allowing the creation of "chat bots" based on murdered children -- including my daughter.
After promising otherwise, media outlets confirmed that CharacterAI's system still allowed them to create bots with my daughter's name and photo.
#Google reverse acquihired CAI for $2.7B.
Shodan search: html:danfoss product:"nginx"
The supermarket impacted today in France put all of their devices directly internet facing and all had the same password, today’s date.
https://beta.shodan.io/search?query=html%3Adanfoss+product%3A%22nginx%22
The upcoming AI bubble endangers the global financial system - the IMF. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/oct/13/ai-share-crash-risk-global-imf-debt-corrowing-cyber-attacks
Economic devastation and cyber attacks on infrastructure appear to be the two main threats #AI represents.
The billionaires won’t rein themselves in. We have to do it with laws, regulation, legislation.
My mastodon instance of 1 user is getting hammered to its limits by AI scrapers.
Gigabytes of cached data and bandwidth for absolutely nothing.
Low disk space. Energy spikes. Memory spikes. CPU spikes. Human labor...
The cost is truly staggering, and this is for a single instance belonging to a single, otherwise insignificant individual.
Imagine the scale of resource abuse, theft, and climate destruction across the internet.
Just so people can use a shitty #AI prompt on their shitty site.