Sreeraj

Human Writer I Environmental Studies I Hard Rock Music I

[Sreeraj @TechWriteCritic]

A message for us! #environment #nature #conservation #sustainability #ecology

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

NEW: UK reportedly set to ban “romantic” AI chatbots for under-18s.

[David Sacks @DavidSacks]

I’ve had a number of conversations with folks inside and outside government about the current situation with Anthropic, and here is what I believe to be true:

— As we know, Anthropic publicly released its Mythos class models earlier this week under the commercial name Fable.

— Fable is Mythos with guardrails. But if those guardrails fail, then you’ve exposed Mythos and its advanced cyber capabilities to people who shouldn’t have them. (Keep in mind that Anthropic itself widely promoted the idea that Mythos was a cyberweapon and needed to be regulated as such. They asked for government regulation of Mythos and championed the guardrails on Fable. If there is a vulnerability — big or small — it is Anthropic’s responsibility to patch.)

— A highly credible trusted partner of both Anthropic and the USG who was testing Fable came forward with a jailbreak of those guardrails. The Admin asked Dario to fix the jailbreak or de-deploy the model. Dario refused.

— In their blog post, Anthropic defended its decision by saying the jailbreak isn’t serious. That is not what the trusted partner and the USG believe; nor is that kind of minimizing language consistent with Anthropic’s brand as the AI safety company. It’s difficult to fathom how they could claim a jailbreak allowing operability of a cyber weapon could be defined as not “serious.”

— In the past, Anthropic has always said that safety must be top priority and taken super seriously. In this case, Anthropic prioritized the continued offering of the consumer model over safety.

— In reaction, the Admin issued the export control. The Admin did this reluctantly. It’s been very surprised that Anthropic hasn’t wanted to cooperate with a reasonable safety request (ie fixing the jailbreak issue). Anthropic’s reaction is very much at odds with their branding and ethos as a safe AI research community.

— The Admin’s hope now is that Anthropic remediates the safety issue, the export control is lifted, and Fable goes back into general release. The Admin wants all of this to happen as soon as possible. It is frankly bewildered that Anthropic hasn’t wanted to comply with safety requests that it previously said were its highest priority.

— Those trying to misdirect and tie this action to the prior DoW/Anthropic issues are wrong. The Admin values Anthropic’s technical capabilities and feels that this issue, while serious, should be easily resolved. The ball is in Anthropic’s court.

[Sreeraj @TechWriteCritic]

Capitalists will love this. Let the rich grow richer and the poor poorer.

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

"To embrace the poisonous nonsense of degrowth now — to shut down nuclear power plants, to regulate the AI industry out of existence, to forcibly shorten working hours, to bar the construction of houses and factories, etc. — would be to cripple one of the last few remaining economic engines of the free world, at precisely the time when it’s under its greatest external challenge." @Noahpinion https://t.co/zO8280UxCt

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

JUST IN: More than 300,000 London workers are in jobs deemed at “high risk” from AI, with another 748,000 in the next-highest risk category.

[Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis]

There you have it. Anthropic's CEO said it: The murder of more than 100 schoolgirls in Minab targeted by Anthropic's CLAUDE "is a use case that doesn't even violate our red lines." Time to rise up against these technofeudal war criminals.

[Kaushik Basu @kaushikcbasu]

India’s economy is stalling. Wholesale inflation 8.3%, highest in 42 months. Investment rate fell from 38% in 2016 to 34%. Net FDI to India near 0 over last 22 months. Youth unemployment high.
In AI, functioning below potential.
There’s enough talent in India. It has to be used.

[Bloomberg @business]

https://t.co/JHZxKhN4Fo Inc. said its data centers used 2.5 billion gallons of water worldwide last year, or about 5% of the amount metro Seattle consumes annually. https://t.co/mj3GTnQ7MU

[Hedgie @HedgieMarkets]

🦔Leonardo is a $17 billion defense contractor. It built a system called SignalTrace that clips sensors onto the license plate readers already mounted on street poles, overpasses, and police cars across the US. Every time you drive past one, the sensor grabs the Bluetooth and WiFi signals from every device in your car, ties them to your plate, and logs the time and location. Your phone, your AirPods, your kid's tablet. All of it goes into the same file. A friend rides with you once and their devices are linked to your plate.
Leonardo has sold this to police departments since at least 2023. There is no federal law covering it, no opt-out, and no warrant requirement.

My Take
None of the pieces here are new. Your phone has always broadcast a signal. The license plate cameras were already there. Leonardo just connected them and found a buyer. Nobody had to break a law or build anything from scratch. They assembled a surveillance system from parts already in place and sold it before anyone noticed.

Most people found out this week from a 404 Media investigation. Leonardo received the patent in 2024. By the time you hear about something like this, the deals are done and the sensors are on the poles. That's how it works now.

Hedgie🤗
https://t.co/serZi0IGnT

[The Spectator Index @spectatorindex]

BREAKING: France bans Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich from entering French territory

[Saganism @Saganismm]

“What we need and what we want is to moralize politics, not to politicize morals.”

— Karl Popper

[Hedgie @HedgieMarkets]

🦔McDonald's announced a new AI drive-thru ordering system called Archy IQ at its Worldwide convention this week, built with Google. The system has processed over a million test transactions at five stores, with 90% completed without a human stepping in.
Google Edge Cloud hardware is already going into every US McDonald's location ahead of the broader rollout. McDonald's previously partnered with IBM on AI ordering before moving on in 2024.

My Take
McDonald's serves millions of people a day in the US. A 10% failure rate at that scale is hundreds of thousands of wrong orders, every day. McDonald's left that number out of the announcement.

They tried this with IBM and killed it. Now they're back with Google, and every US location already has the hardware before the pilot at five stores is even done. That's a company-wide infrastructure bet on a system that still fails one in ten times. Nobody at the convention said whether the AI costs less than the person it replaces. Based on what companies found out last week about what AI actually costs, I wouldn't assume it does. The one thing McDonald's definitely did not announce was lower prices for customers. The savings, if they exist, go up. They always do.

Hedgie🤗

[Sreeraj @TechWriteCritic]

No sign of football World Cup live on Airtel DTH. Why? @airtelindia @TRAI @the_hindu @vanitakohlik

[Sreeraj @TechWriteCritic]

That is called 'inexperience'. In five years, the MLA may learn something about parliamentary debates and procedures in the state assembly. He may spend more time in the Assembly library. @vdsatheesan @VMSudheeran @KMuraleedharan_ #Kerala

[Press Trust of India @PTI_News]

STORY | Rajeev Chandrasekhar calls Kerala’s political culture ‘strange’ after first Assembly session

Kerala BJP president Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Sunday said several aspects of the state's political discourse appeared “strange” to him during his first Assembly session, alleging that political parties were creating “unnecessary controversies” instead of focusing on issues affecting the public.

READ: https://t.co/V1X2IfIjIK

[RobertAllenPoet @RobertAllenPoet]

I just watched a documentary on Ursula K. Le Guin. I haven't read a lot of her, just some stories. The thing I didn't know is that she wrote ten volumes of poetry, a cool surprise to me.

[Philosway @philosway]

"Being hated by idiots is the price you pay for not being one of them."

— Jean Cocteau

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

"A world in which universal truths and goods is widely denied will also be a world in which politics has been reduced to raw and ruthless assertions of power. If we want to do better than that—and we should—we need to find a way to back out of the intellectual dead end we find ourselves stuck in."

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

NEW: House lawmakers release a bipartisan draft bill to regulate artificial intelligence.

[Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex]

Claude 1 was trained on pirated books.
Claude 2 was trained on pirated books.
GPT-3 was trained on pirated books.

The AI industry was built on piracy.

[Maria Popova @themarginalian]

"Whoever is in your life,
those who harm you,
those who help you;
those whom you know
and those whom you do not know —
let them off the hook,
help them off the hook."

Leonard Cohen on the antidote to anger and the meaning of resistance https://t.co/yWRuaDJiNC

[David Wallace-Wells @dwallacewells]

“The public has swung 49 points against data centers in just nine months, underscoring the heightened political salience of the facilities and the AI industry that they embody.”