New Blood in the Machine: The weaponization of Waymo, about protesters torching Waymos in a repeat of last year's Waymo Warm-Overs.

Ran across a piece from Jan Wildeboer: Botnet Part 2: The Web is Broken, which focuses on the "residential proxy" services which he discovered to be a likely source of the AI slop scrapers that are DDoSing the 'Net.

Ending paragraph is pretty notable IMO, so I'm dropping it here:

I am now of the opinion that every form of web-scraping should be considered abusive behaviour and web servers should block all of them. If you think your web-scraping is acceptable behaviour, you can thank these shady companies and the “AI” hype for moving you to the bad corner.

New BlueSky post from Baldur Bjarnason:

Going outside awful's wheelhouse for a bit:

Logan Paul doxed and harassed a random employee for posting a sign saying Lunchly was recalled

You want my take, the employee in question (who also got a GoFundMe) should sue Logan for defamation - solid case aside, I wanna see that blonde fucker get humbled for once.

Online art school Schoolism publicly sneers at AI art, gets standing ovation

And now, a quick sidenote:

This is gut instinct, but I'm starting to get the feeling this AI bubble's gonna destroy the concept of artificial intelligence as we know it.

Mainly because of the slop-nami and the AI industry's repeated failures to solve hallucinations - both of those, I feel, have built an image of AI as inherently incapable of humanlike intelligence/creativity (let alone Superintelligence^tm^), no matter how many server farms you build or oceans of water you boil.

Additionally, I suspect that working on/with AI, or supporting it in any capacity, is becoming increasingly viewed as a major red flag - a "tech asshole signifier" to quote Baldur Bjarnason for the bajillionth time.

For a specific example, the major controversy that swirled around "Scooby Doo, Where Are You? In... SPRINGTRAPPED!" over its use of AI voices would be my pick.

Eagan Tilghman, the man behind the ~~slaughter~~ animation, may have been a random indie animator, who made Springtrapped on a shoestring budget and with zero intention of making even a cent off it, but all those mitigating circumstances didn't save the poor bastard from getting raked over the coals anyway. If that isn't a bad sign for the future of AI as a concept, I don't know what is.

Saw an unexpected Animatrix reference on Twitter today - and from an unrepentant promptfondler, no less:

This ended up starting a lengthy argument with an "AI researcher" (read: promptfondler with delusions of intelligence), which you can read if you wanna torture yourself.

So you're saying that they've got books worth at least a grand which their owners are literally using to flaunt their wealth?

I'm legally obligated to say stealing is legally and morally wrong buuuuuuuut

Why do I get the feeling we're gonna see a colossal tech crash

@ai_shame RT'd a good sneer in the wild recently:

Bonus: Eliezer, of all people, also sneered at the TESCREAL twat:

Honestly, I think we need another winter. All this hype is drowning out any decent research, and so all we are getting are bogus tests and experiments that are irreproducible because they’re so expensive. It’s crazy how unscientific these ‘research’ organizations are. And OpenAI is being paid by Microsoft to basically jerk-off sam Altman. It’s plain shameful.

If an AI winter does happen, I expect it'll be particularly lengthy/severe. Unlike previous AI hype cycles, this particular cycle has come with some serious negative externalities (large-scale copyright infringement, climate change/water consumption, the flood of AI slop, disinformation, etc).

Said externalities have turned the public strongly against AI, to the point where refusing to use it has become a viable marketing strategy.

You want my suspicion, any further AI research will probably be viewed with immediate distrust, at least for a while.

Did YC seriously think because a growth hacker was in charge, you could value a private school like its an overinflated tech company?

Yes. The answer is always "yes".

what the heck EA forum doesn’t have a block feature? That’s just… ew.

You don't need a block feature if you're as insufferable as the average EA /j