Browsed by
Month: May 2025

Does AI Have an Agenda?

Does AI Have an Agenda?

Comments 0 Comment
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

It certainly seems to, although it is a technology created by humans.* But given, say, Meta’s manipulation of people’s emotions that was revealed by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen (and which we reported on), the proverbial men behind the curtain do appear to have one, and the question is, given the past behavior of the tech bros, will AI be used for good instead of evil during this next iteration of tech?

Ah, it’s that old “Those Who Cannot Remember the Past Are Condemned To Repeat It” George Santayana thing again and if there’s one thing we cannot shrink from doing, it’s connecting dots.

First up, “A lawyer representing Anthropic admitted to using an erroneous citation created by the company’s Claude AI chatbot in its ongoing legal battle with music publishers, according to a filing made in a Northern California court,” TechCrunch reported. Read More...

The Dirt on Startup Essentials

The Dirt on Startup Essentials

Comments 0 Comment
Image by Richard Duijnstee from Pixabay

After a long, cold winter, it seems that suddenly it’s Spring when, as ee cummings wrote, “the world is puddle-wonderful,” although considering all the rain we had here on the East Coast last week, negotiating the puddles at every street corner was not so wonderful, unless you were wearing waders.

And there’s more on the way. Isn’t rain supposed to be an April thing?

But as those of us who’ve been circling the sun for a few years now well know, the sunshine always does return and once again, all is right with the world and as we also know, into every life a little rain must fall and that’s what helps to turn the grass green and what founder or investor doesn’t want to suddenly find an abundance of green in his or her life? Read More...

Will the Real Slim Shady Please Stand Up

Will the Real Slim Shady Please Stand Up

Comments 0 Comment
Image by gt39 from Pixabay

Thank you, Eminem, and who’d have thought and how could you tell?

The multitude of falsehoods and over-promises of AI aside (Instagram’s AI Chatbots Lie About Being Licensed Therapists), Deep Fakes, that other wonderful outcome that AI hath wrought, is fast becoming a huge problem thanks to the improvements in AI. We’re currently witnessing The Rise of AI-Powered Deepfake Scams and as CNN  reported, “Finance worker pays out $25 million after video call with deepfake ‘chief financial officer.’”

Of course, AI savior, Sam Altman, has a solution: capture the digital identity of, well, every human on the planet.  He first rolled out his orb (nee World Orb) iris scanner in 2023 to create a unique digital identity as proof of being human, which it seems “More than 12 million people have already verified their identity using Orbs, which are available and free to use in more than 20 countries,” said CNN. Not a huge number considering the billions of people on the planet, what to speak of the fact that there are those who are “worried the project could centralize too much power under Altman, who already has an outsized role in what’s expected to be a revolutionary tech transformation.” Read More...