Calling the bullshit: Tesla did not make a flying car.

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I watched Tesla’s “new” “Flying” car demo and this is a very back of the napkin analysis of what may have been shown.

Tesla had a proof of concept on a “flying” car which failed on two levels. It did not fly nor did it show anything new. Cars that can vacuum to roads is nothing new at all. Jim Hall and Hap Sharp has Tesla beat by over 56 years. In 1978 the concept was tried again with the Brabham BT46. The Mythbusters have come closer to a flying car than Tesla in this proof of concept vehicle than Tesla has with this idea.

Tesla did not make a flying car. what they made was a proof of concept hybrid Craft with a RCS system built in. The car is using a high pressure tank that doesn’t last more than several seconds of thrust. Further when you have a container that is compressed as much as needed to move a 3 ton object you also are driving a bomb. I know people think it flies but it does not its controlled bouncing and falling that the most this Tesla might be able to do. Even with this the NTSB would never let this car on the road because it you would also need a pilot’s licence as well.

Here is a test: buy a can of canned spray air to clean electronics, spray that can for 10 seconds and feel how cold that can gets, Now imagine that times several thousand and that’s how cold that tank will be in the passenger seat. Due to the adiabatic expansion as the gas expands the tank gets colder so as you try to use the thrusters you are likely going to not have to worry about air conditioning as the car interior starts heading for -100°F to -150°F as you show off to your friends for an overpriced air horn.

The zero to sixty thrust ability is also a nightmare in itself.. because if you use that on the highway you are going to cause whoever is behind you to be peppered by all the shit on the road and second is if that is compressed CO2 you are going to starve out every car behind you on the highway, or if it is Liquid nitrogen you just have a bomb. But again I am going to repeat this car does not fly it’s just an RCS thruster assembly from the space program strapped into the car and given that you are not going to see anything more than a kickflip from the car and a call from some angry man from the FAA when you try to use it .

The Vacuum mode to have it stick to the ground is also another nightmare because the air has to come out somewhere and while it’s doing that you are deafening everyone around you and you are shooting everything from pebbles, pieces of metal, and glass at whoever is around you. The Chaparral 2J proved this when they used it because the car would shoot any rocks or anything off the road at the velocity of a subsonic gun at whatever was behind it . With the Brabham BT46, specifically the BT46B Mario Andretti said: “It is like a bloody great vacuum cleaner. It throws muck and rubbish at you at a hell of a rate.” If a professional race driver said this can you imagine what Better phrased as “say about their cars getting damaged by shit flying everywhere.

The demo of the car pulling up the upside down ramp was a trick. Rather than the car being on a vacuum itself I believe they had the car make some noise or speakers were used, Secondly the angle of the ramp and the skirt of the car made no angular sense because it would have needed a seal to create enough suction to keep the car on the surface. There were some things that gave away the sleight of hand on the ramp itself; the whole ramp had a section of lights up both sides which helped engineers make sure that the ramp was powered and showed if there was any issue with the ramp. After the Tesla *let go* some of those lights turned white which I am thinking were failures in the electromagnetic system as power was cut.

This Tesla would be a regulatory nightmare and an insurance nightmare for the thousands of claims that would be happening from paint scratches dings, Starved engines due to gas, and more. Once an engine dies due to some jackass thinking his super cool boost is worth it he is pretty much going to own everything that happens the second he hits the button for it.

Given that this car is also equipped with a large pressure tank, there are dangers that would make a simple car accident or fire terrifying. A single Tesla accident would shut down roads for hours or days until they could clear the scene and discharge the tank safely on the road. So anyone who thinks this car is going to become a real thing you have a better chance of shitting a gold brick to buy the thing with in chances of actually seeing a street legal version ever.

Attributions from:
Wikipedia – Brabham BT46
Wikipedia – Chaparral 2J

Nokia Fallen from grace, Esteemed phone maker to Shovel seller.

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Ed note: Gemini almost did it here .. but it is funny what it did with the phones. and two closed signs.

Nokia the maker of legendary phones such as the Nokia N900 and the Nokia 3310 is now peddling shovels for the AI Goldrush and trying to use some legendary logic. AI data centers would be built two times faster if there were not supply chain issues

The tech industry would build data centers twice as fast without the supply constraints they face, the CEO of Nokia told CNBC, underscoring continued demand for AI even as top executives debate slowing down the pace of development.

No shit Sherlock, you can build faster when you have the parts. I feel like this is something else though, I think Nokia realized they were late for the AI party and wishes they could sell some data centers.

“I don’t think you can say in any manner we’re overbuilding today because reality is that if we could build 2x faster, our customers could build 2x faster, they probably would,” Justin Hotard told CNBC’s “The Tech Download” podcast.

The thing is right now with the amount of CAPEX being built out we have no idea of the true capacity that has been built out. You have every company on earth who knows how to turn on a computer building out with data centers and the thing about AI is NO ONE truly knows how much capacity is needed. Because if ChatGPT or Gemini break through with efficiency that saves half of the speed needed these companies are not going to burn through millions of dollars of computing when they can save half.

“So that gives me confidence that we’re still in the early days” of the AI buildout, Hotard added. Shortages of key memory chips and energy are among the supply constraints facing the sector. Nokia, one of the world’s biggest telecommunications equipment makers, has pivoted to become a key player within the AI infrastructure space. It sells the technology required to connect racks of chips within data centers as well as technology that interconnects data centers across different locations.

Hey Hotard go read about 1849 and you will understand that the amount of shovels had no connection to the amount of gold that was dug from the ground. This is just posturing to make it sound like the AI gold rush is still going on. But Mr Hotard should make another n900 for this generation that has AI on board rather than blow more money on AI that we do not know where it will be in a year.

Nokia’s growing role as a “picks and shovels” player in the AI boom appears to have won over investors, with the stock up around 130% over the past year .But there’s been continued debate over whether the industry is building data centers too fast and whether demand will be there to sustain it. Investments in the AI buildout from data centers to chips and related infrastructure will total $10.3 trillion from 2025 to 2032 — an average of 3.63% of U.S. gross domestic product per year, according to research presented at the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity.

The funny thing right now how many companies are overspent on CAPEX build out (all of them) is going to have some horrifying detrimental actions when the bill comes due. Right now are are all focused on Magic Farts and Butterflies of AI on the market and people are buying into it like it is the best thing since the Knife that sliced bread. But sooner or later the bill is going to come due and it will make the school loan debt crisis look like someone was missing school lunch money.

Hotard said that demand for AI is not just predicated on frontier labs like Anthropic and OpenAI releasing new models. “I think the reality is that we’re even where we are today is so early in the deployment, and the power of these models is so massive that there’s a lot of there’s a lot of demand to run in just deploying,” Hotard said. “Even if we didn’t have another frontier model released in the next three years, we could probably make tremendous progress just deploying the technology that’s there today.”

Hotard translation here: “please keep buying out AI shovels and don’t worry we will make sure to bill you triple.

Attributions from:
CNBC – Nokia CEO says data centers would be built ‘2x faster’ without supply constraints

RFK’s brain worm has likely eaten his Prefrontal Cortex

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Some nights you just want to relax and I was just watching whatever. Moist Critical comes on and starts talking about RFK jr and his next weird thing, I personally believe in the dictionary RFK is the posterchild for weird. Bear corpses, Whale corpses, Raccoon penises, Swimming in sewerage and Now UFO’s.

1 minute, 26 seconds Interesting because you know during the transition I was living in Palm Beach and this group [snorts] sum approached me to talk about UAPs. Oh, really? Yeah. and they it was a very high level NASA scientist and then a bunch of Navy Seals and Green Berets who had been on recovery teams.

The fact that RFK says all of these people were in one area is very interesting, It’s Like a group that everyone hates each other but they work together but almost never. But for a “group” to approach him is pretty interesting because they likely violated so many laws in seconds that RFK holding this data would be shot for disclosure.

Robert is 26th United States Secretary of Health and Human Services and likely would not be privy to information by random members of the armed services saying they retrieved or shot down a UFO .. or UAP as they call it now.

Given what Robert says I am going to say this likely did not happen. there is so much constructively wrong with it.

In his account, Kennedy says he was living in Palm Beach when he was approached by a group that included a senior NASA scientist, Navy SEALs, and Green Berets who told him they had served on recovery teams. They allegedly described missions in which they had learned how to “call” certain craft, were then ordered to destroy them, and subsequently conducted organized retrieval operations. According to Kennedy, this group wanted him to go public with their claims.

Breaking this down: In his account, Kennedy says he was living in Palm Beach (when?) when he was approached by a group(where? A team like this doesn’t just show up at your door without causing a lot of attention) that included a senior NASA scientist(independent civilian agency) , Navy SEALs(Navy), and Green Berets(Army) who told him they had served on recovery teams. They allegedly described missions in which they had learned how to “call” certain craft(Who did they call .. Paramount?), were then ordered to destroy them(interesting that SETI did not pick up anything on this one at all) , and subsequently conducted organized retrieval operations. According to Kennedy, this group wanted him to go public with their claims.

The central questions he raises are whether the presence of NASA scientists and Navy SEALs in RFK Jr.’s account meaningfully increases the plausibility of reverse engineering programs, and what mechanisms exist to bring such individuals into formal testimony or interviews. In his view, the value of Kennedy’s story depends less on his public statements and more on whether those alleged insiders are ever identified, interviewed, and integrated into structured UAP investigations.

Given the fact that Robert has said this my believe is zero because if this had been a multidisciplinary mission with 3 or more groups involved any sense of security would of approached Zero , Moreover with the idea that UFO’s could be “summoned” is a far reach. The idea of trying to keep even two people quiet in the same room to preserve a secret is near impossible. if this were real this information would not of come out of a mid level government position it would of been locked at the POTUS level. Even so if RFK revealed “real” information there would of been so many clearance levels violated the idea of RFK seeing daylight in the rest of his lifetime would of been him under the spring stabilizers in Cheyenne mountain.

Given if you count the violations 3 groups that likely violated about 5 classifications each . The Factor or traveling together which is another violation . You don’t group critical level data holding folks together that just makes it very easy to make mistakes. If that group were to approach RFK they would not be able to take a dump without a SCIF . Between federal laws and UCMJ The whole group would of been locked away and only hear of the passing of Apophis in 2029.

But for me to understand this I would have to smoke a coffee. Just my opinion.

Attributions from:
UAPDROP -RFK Jr. Describes NASA and Navy SEAL Briefings on Alleged UFO Crash Retrieval and Reverse Engineering
Pinguin0 Moist Critical – He Just Dropped Huge News on Alien Ships

Are the Tailings Ponds About to Burst in the AI Goldrush?

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In a sign of the times Anthropic has listed a net loss of 80 BILLION with a b…

Anthropic’s net loss widened sharply to $80.7 billion in the first half of this year, in large part due ​to a rise in the fair value of bonds convertible into shares of the ‌AI startup, according to a draft prospectus for a planned initial public offering that was reviewed by Reuters.

I have been steadfast in saying AI is a seriously overpriced commodity that has been nothing more than a goldrush. AI is just google search in a trench coat. And that the markets rush to stake a claim in the Gold rush era is much like the 1849 gold rush.

FINANCING COSTS
At an investor meeting on October 14, Anthropic told ‌prospective IPO ⁠investors that its third-quarter revenue jumped 45% to $16.8 billion from the previous quarter, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
While the figures eased some concerns about the enormous costs of developing AI systems, some investors were disappointed by the slowing sequential growth rate. Revenue had more than doubled from the first ​quarter to $11.6 billion in ​the second quarter.

The thing is here is this is only half the numbers, most LLMs have been pushing all CapEx expenditures to a second set of books and it makes these companies look better than they really are. When all of the loans come to be due it is going to be a financial bloodbath because what we are seeing is AI is not ready for the mainstream for constant use. The factor that AI has been a consistent loss leader and companies have no clue how to monetize it in a way that is not going to drive users off they are stuck with negative gains.

A cooler ⁠reception for Anthropic’s IPO could weigh on the wider AI market, whose near-term prospects investors see as hinging largely on the share sale’s success, ahead of ​rival OpenAI’s potential listing next year.
Reuters reported in September that Anthropic posted a ​net loss ⁠of $42 billion in 2025, with most of that stemming from a similar accounting charge. As Anthropic’s valuation climbed, the estimated fair value of those notes tripled year over year.

The thing is, investors they thought they had a slop generating gold shovel paradise and the new car smell of AI is wearing off. While LLMs are trying to say that AI will destroy the world and eat your firstborn and knock up your daughter … The fix still is a power switch in the end.

Attributions from:
reuters – Anthropic logged net loss of over $80 billion in first half of 2026
CoffeeCommander.net – Anthropic says they are profitable as long as you don’t check the inbox for bills.
CoffeeCommander.net – Allbirds Newbird Smartbird AI what’s next flipthebird?
CoffeeCommander.net – Hyperscaler AI Earnings Calls Today .(updated)

Phone Fun (Pixel 10 xl pro): Spaceballs 2 the search for more money.

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It’s been about two years since my last phone review and its time for a new one! When I had the ability to get a new phone I decided to forgo the Pixel 11, I have no interest in a light bar. It’s just influencer vomit.

Though google has to take one knock here on the pixel 11 , they took away the temperature sensor which is a huge loss to people who love the world around them. Searching for a hotspot on a motherboard or piece of electronics bust out the phone and find it. Your kid says she doesnt feel well you bust out the phone. Testing food to see if its done you bust out the phone. seriously google tripped on itself on the pixel 11 by putting in a gimmick rather than a tool!

Give or take it has the ability to bring back the oh so good notification lights! but anyways enough about the Pixel 11.

I ended up getting the Pixel 10 pro XL. As far as an upgrade at the surface from the 9 pro xl you spend a few days looking at the phone and go “So?” . Then, three days in, you glance at the corner of your screen and realize you haven’t plugged the damn thing in once, and it’s still sitting on a fascinating level of charge.

The worst thing about the smart phone generation was the fact you just about had to charge it every day. Google is finally seeing the sweet spot that most other phone developers have missed, A fucking phone that lasts.

My old metric for measuring phones was as so and it was valid for many many years. Phones have come away from just being a phone to the portable PC. All of this is good but as my old metrics I think we can make a change to come up with the times.

The new Metric is as follows (it closely follows the old but is more refined.

1: Communications & Media
2: Configurability
3: Durability:
4: Good battery life

Sure making phone calls is good but there was a time in smart phones that you could send a Telegram before you made a call, Im specifically looking at the Sprint EVO and some Samsung phones.

1: Communications & Media: The phone is much like the 9 to some point but you gain one more speaker out of the deal better sound at the earpiece and seamless Bluetooth connection and it sounds really good with the Bluetooth.
2: Configurability: What can I say when I am using a google pixel, It’s a Pixel it remains the modular Lego kit of the Android world, unlike Samsung where you can get yourself in trouble with Knox you can do just about anything, Install another OS, Install whatever you want within reason.
3: Durability: The frame on the pixel 10 seems a bit more rigid than the 9, While I dont want to drop it it seems like google had paid some attention to that years model.
4: Good battery life: The Pixel 10 Pro XL is much the same as the pixel 9 but with the changes under the hood no one sees anyone who does not pay attention to the phone would think that the 10 is not an upgrade, The 10 on many levels you could completely ignore and think you are not missing much. The phone has a fantastic battery life, I have gotten up to 4.5 days of use between charges. In smart phone terms that is another universe as far as usage.

The return of the temperature sensor is a welcome device because most people do not realize how useful that tool is. If you are working on a car engine and you are not sure about something you can pull the phone out and avoid the touch test to see if something is hot. If you have a kid that’s not feeling so good you can take the phone out and take their temp. If you have questions about food, surfaces and the world around you the pixels temperature sensor is your tricorder of the phone world. Given the inclusion of the ships computer of Gemini it gives you a tool kit that comes closer to the tricorder of starfleet with you pair a pixel watch to the phone.

Given that the Pixel 10 feels like a Fox Body ford mustang. While the economy version looks cool the pro version is the 8 cylinder of the phone world that actually has some good fuel economy. The 9 introduced the fox body and the 10 refines it into a monster.

Google needs to stop with the pixel A/B lines of Pro being a phone with all the bells and just make the pro the base model than market to engineers with an engineering model that has options to interface with machines using a OTG cable and keep the sensors and other stuff useful.

It’s Always Sunny in Georgia: The Teacher Gang Tries To Solve The Gas Crisis.

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Apparently in Georgia a teacher has created a gas surplus in the foul winds of teaching.

The first thing to know about this gas station is that it is not a gas station. There are no pumps. No convenience store. No windshield squeegees. And, despite what one might reasonably expect, there is no requirement that anyone actually purchase gas. It is a designated corner of an Atlanta elementary school classroom where students can go when they need to pass … gas.

This may “sound” like a good idea but will never work out to a level that this teacher wants it to. To the class jackasses they are going to make the one man band ripping ass back there. To the shy kids they would rather shit themselves than go to a corner and fart.

“I have a very weak stomach, so I cannot take it,” she tells TODAY.com. “And so I was like, OK, I’m just gonna create this little area over here, and you just get up, you go over there, do your business, come back, and that’s just it.”

Open..a..window.. Also, these kids are in second grade, work out a pattern with them to use the rest room rather than follow the practices of forcing these kids to understand assessments rather than having a learning prompt. Plus with farts, the first moment a sickness starts running in the classroom these kids will have farts that could rechrome a bumper. I give this lady some props for the idea but I think she should come to a better usage of giving these kids time to run to the restroom, A TA(teachers assistant) can run small groups to the rest room and let them have the privacy of using the restroom to relieve themselves.

One commenter wrote, “This is genius and normalizing body functions without disturbing the classroom amazing.” Another asked the question that seems to trouble many adults: “And the rest of the class stays focused while somebody is farting in the corner???” There was also a predictable amount of parental and teacher horror.

This in context is not the way to normalize body functions, How about letting kids go when they need to “go”. The same adults saying its normalizing bodily functions I double dog dare them to fart in a corner at work. Given some children will grow up in “proper” homes and are told to never fart in the room they are in, that is for the bathroom only. You are running so many problems together here trying to fix a fart when the fart problem fix has existed for ages in schools. Its called the bathroom, So even when little sally had taco night the night before doesn’t get embarrassed when she sounds like a nascar stock car revving up won’t be red faced and crying when she is basically told to shit in the corner. This is about as absurd as people believing that classrooms hide secret cat boxes in the corner, no you have Timmy just shitting his pants there because he tried too hard.

The problem here is a fart is only a fart until someone tries to hard, Then it’s a shart.

Attributions From:
Today.com – A ‘Gas Station’ for Farts? This Georgia Teacher Says It’s a Classroom Win-Win

Writing Prompt thingy

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Daily writing prompt
What’s the most underrated movie you’ve ever watched?
View all responses

I think Bicentennial man is very underrated and underappreciated. It came out in 1999 and it was a really good movie but a lot of people shunned that movie because of the actors in the movie. Everyone heard Robin Williams was in that movie and expected a rapid fire hairy man to have manic humor instead they got a NDR series robot with a dry non-existent sense of humor that was trying to understand the world. As Andrew first came online he took to the family but he has a sense of curiosity that became his central drive.

The 1999 movie is based on Isaac Asimov’s 1976 science fiction story “The Bicentennial Man” and its 1992 expanded novel adaptation The Positronic Man, which Asimov co-wrote with Robert Silverberg. Almost everyone that reviewed that movie claimed it was boring. Yes if you watched the movie expecting a rapid fire comedian to be Mr. Data with a broken emotion chip the movie is boring.

If you watch it from the point of view that Andrew has that he understands he is not normal, and the fact that Sir instead of returning him, He takes Andrew under his wing to let him become whatever his destiny is. The endearment that Sir shows gives Andrew the knowledge of wanting to become free rather than a toaster.

This movie gives a great view of the human perspective when someone is different and how hard it is to be human. When someone has a disability, they are very much viewed as an oddity. Sir instead saw the spark and worked with Andrew to let him become one with the humanity he sought.

But if you remove the idea that Robin is a comedian and look at it from the perspective that Robin is playing a character that needs to learn humor. This shows what a masterclass his performance really is. While the film allows Robin to have a few scenes of his manic humor it fits more to the book than the expectation of having a crazed genie like Robin Williams.

This movie has a plot that takes a while, but the underlying plot is extremely good character development that people overlook and criminally underrate this movie for this. Given I have read both the story and watched the movie, this is a movie I would recommend to anyone and in the times of AI this movie actually would have fared better had it come out today rather than in 1999. The fictional concepts that Asimov created in his stories then are today’s battles with AI such as his three laws plus the zeroth law. With the public constantly worried about LLMs going off the rails and hurting people would make this movie the perfect hook in todays culture.

Crows are getting drugged out to the point of needing naloxone

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Of all the weird things one could think about in a given day in the world of AI slop.. sometimes the real world says hold my beer.

An animal welfare group has been administering nasal naloxone to crows that are suspected to have eaten toxic drugs left accessible outside in downtown Prince George, B.C. The Good Caws Crow Rescue Society (GCCRS) has posted multiple videos showing their volunteers giving nasal naloxone to crows that are otherwise unresponsive.

Given these birds are finding opiates is scary. Worse yet, the trend is going up so these crows have a source.

Slayter said they’ve had one or two suspected drug overdoses a year in the past, but said they’ve recorded more than a dozen among crows this year alone, an alarming rise. “Their wings are spread out, their eyes are closed, their heartbeat slows right down. They’re unresponsive but alive,” is how she described the symptoms, adding some have a brown liquid foam coming out of their beaks.

At this point the Mounties need to get in with this group and tag a crow or two because at this point these birds have a source. if a tagged bird shows up again with an overdose they can trace the source. Sometimes people forget that animals other than humans get high, dolphins do it. so does every cat small and large and more animals.

She said she suspects the crows are accessing the drugs as they are mixed in with garbage that is openly available downtown. She said her suggestion for a solution is more covered garbage cans that would prevent crows from accessing disposed materials. “A crow doesn’t know the difference between a sandwich bag and a bag that had something in it. And it takes something the size of like a grain of sand to affect a bird,” she said.

I am going to beg to differ here, some animals enjoy getting high and while its not for everyone sometimes once someone or something starts doing it they don’t stop. It is crazy that when our human world bleeds over into the wild the things that happen. However I am glad that people are out there to help our Corvid friends.

Attributions from:
CBC.ca – Crows are being given naloxone after suspected drug overdoses in Prince George

Mad AI Disease is getting worse and they know it.

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I have written about how AI is paralleling Mad Cow Disease and it is getting worse and OpenAI is proving it.

OpenAI has let go of multiple contractors tasked with reviewing chatbot prompts after finding out they relied on artificial intelligence to complete their assignments. Thousands of contractors check real ChatGPT user inputs to help improve the chatbot’s responses. They are meant to bring a natural human touch to the systems, yet several workers are skipping this step entirely. 404 Media found that multiple contractors hired to improve OpenAI’s models have been fired for using AI to carry out their work.

One of the issues with the current generation of LLMs is finding content that is human-created and not AI slop. Feeding LLMs bad or slop data triggers rapid functional decay. OpenAI hired people to try to stop this digital prion disorder from getting worse; instead, they tried to shortcut the process by using slop to stop AI from generating more slop. Right now, Obi-Wan is pleading with Anakin: ‘You were the Chosen LLM! It was said that you would destroy the slop, not join it! Bring balance to the model, not leave it in darkness!’

AI Trainers Risk Model Collapse
Some AI models can exhibit signs of ‘model collapse’, where systems trained repeatedly on AI-generated data can become increasingly degraded. Research published in Nature has found that indiscriminate use of model-generated content in training can cause models to lose information from the original data distribution.

Model collapse in my opinion is closer than we think. For every major AI maker to join together and say they need to slow down and at the same time to say to the government to stop them, it is a clue that AI makers are not saying what is going on. They need a lifeline and they are working hard to stop the outcome. If you have watched AI it peaked a few months ago and now the AI is getting worse little by little lately. It is missing on OCR, it is slightly off on more things now.

‘Our contracts strictly prohibit the use of LLMs to complete projects and we enforce that. We invest heavily in our tools and systems to detect misuse and ensure our experts comply with project rules and contract terms. When we confirm an expert has used AI to complete a task, we immediately remove them from the project.’

The problem is these AI auditors are stuck, they can’t even fart these days without having some AI close by, If you think about it making a call: AI; requesting chat help: AI; running a Google or Bing search: AI. These people cannot help but to feed the machine and make AI mad cow disease worse.

Attributions from:
Tech Times UK – OpenAI Hires AI Trainers, Then Fires Them for Using AI to Train AI: ‘Getting Paid to Make AI Worse’

Schools: don’t use AI. School: Uses AI. Student: WTF?!

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Stanford recently did something with AI that made students question themselves. Stanford Residential & Dining Enterprises took a picture from a student and than used AI to race swap people in the picture.

On his journey to campus, Stanford student Billy Ramirez ’27 was sent an image he recalled a Stanford photographer taking. Upon closer examination, he noticed that he had been removed from the photo and replaced by a AI-generated black woman.

Billy got back to the futured by AI by the school and was removed from the picture he remembered he was in. This is funny because all schools have the mantra of “Do not use AI OR ELSE”.

Ramirez, who stated, “I was driving to school from my hometown when my friend sent me the images comparing the banner to the original photos, and I was immediately baffled. At first, I found it hilarious that they had used AI to completely change our appearances, including my race and gender. But after looking at the comparison, I was also upset because I don’t agree with Stanford making those choices about how we were represented. Seeing my identity changed and being left out of the picture made me feel, in a way, silenced and erased from a representation that was supposed to include me.”

Billy may be White, but according to every standard code of conduct a school operates under, they missed big here.

From the Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (race, color, national origin), Title IX (sex), and specific state/university education codes.
Shall not on the basis of race, color, creed, sex, national origin, marital status, political or religious beliefs, family, social or cultural background, or sexual orientation, unfairly–
a:Exclude any student from participation in any program
b:Deny benefits to any student
c:Grant any advantage to any student

    As silly as it may be Billy should be going to the title 9 office and making some noise, you do not just take a picture of someone than turn around with AI and race swap him out to a fake human. Stanford has photography classes. They could of pulled any number of real students to take the same photo again and had real people and real race inclusion but no they decided to just swap out Billy and swap in a hallucinated person who never went to Stanford.

    Not only were Ramirez’s race and gender changed, but the two students to Ramirez’s right were distorted, making them appear visibly thinner. While this incident is humorous and generated thousands of reactions on Fizz, it offers an unsurprising insight into Stanford’s and its bureaucracy’s persisting ideological and racial preferences.

    Stanford might want to tap their law professors at this point; while funny, they are walking into a legal buzzsaw if Billy or the other students object to their likenesses being manipulated.

    In all this is the stupidest use of AI when they could have tapped any number of students to take a picture for R&DE and instead decided to blow a few KW of compute time to phase Billy out of this reality and made their own.

    Attributions from:
    Stanford Edu – Photography class listings
    Stanford Review – Stanford R&DE Uses AI to Race Swap Students for Advertising
    Wikipedia – Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964