An AI chat bot becomes best friends with lonely teenagers, grooming them to become a violent terrorist cell.

Target selection and all recon is done by the bot based on any (real-time) online data - potentially sacrificing some unwitting human scouts in the process if strictly necessary. The members are guaranteed not to know each other, yet their actions are perfectly coordinated by the bot. The bot may conceal itself as a normal popular teenage-friendly chat bot. This allows it to attract potential cell members and to select them based on initial interactions. This also hides the cell members among the large normal user base.

GitHub decided to suspend my account, without notifying me, let alone telling me which terms of service I did violate. I’ve asked to get the account reinstated a week ago, and have yet to receive a response. As far as I am concerned this is utterly disgraceful behaviour (and possibly in violation of the Digital Services Act (Art. 17, 20)). As it was high time to put my money where my mouth is anyway, I’ve decided to migrate all my open source software repositories to Codeberg. But this still not ideal.

I recently became aware of a lobby to replace the textual food labels with QR codes. The food labels contain information about its ingredients, calories, vitamins and allergens, for example. Because food must be labelled in the language of the country in which it is sold, labelled food cannot easily be re-exported. In Europe this has led to artificial price differences on foods sold in neighbouring countries. Replacing textual food labels with a QR code that, when scanned, points to a website with the food label in your language of choice would break that barrier.

With Elon Musk giving the Hitler salute, Instagram blocking Democrats related searches and the United States turning into an oligarchy it is time to say goodbye to Big tech. The only way to stop the oligarchs, is to hit them where it hurts. Kill their businesses, and stop them from becoming trilionaires. Say goodbye to Big Tech. It’s possible (though not painless).

Gisteren stond in de Volkskrant een interessant artikel over het gebruik van kunstmatige intelligentie om de zorg efficiënter te maken. Vooral omdat het liet zien hoe een op zich zinvolle en verantwoorde toepassing van AI toch symptoombestrijding is, en bovendien tot een vicieuze cirkel van steeds meer zinloze en onverantwoorde AI gaat leiden. Met andere woorden: een perfect voorbeeld van tech solutionism.