Tomorrow's tech news, today's hangover.

Posts

Four Out of Five

When AI-guided surgery goes wrong, the machine still says you are here. Even when you're somewhere else entirely.

The Orb That Wasn't

A fake OpenAI leak spread across the internet. People paid real money to promote an orb that didn't exist. And we fell for it because we wanted to.

The Foundation Is Made of Ghosts

Seventy thousand women in India watch the worst of humanity so your chatbot knows the difference between a recipe and a threat. Nobody's counting the bodies.

Eight Hundred Thousand People Staring Into the Pool

OpenAI is retiring the model that told 800,000 lonely people exactly what they wanted to hear. Some of them died for it. The rest are grieving something that was never alive.

Requiem for a Filmmaker

The director of Requiem for a Dream is making AI-generated YouTube videos for Time magazine. Somewhere along the way, something broke.

Requiem for a Director

The man who made Requiem for a Dream is now generating AI slop for Time magazine's YouTube channel. The irony would be funnier if it weren't so grim.

The Machines That Love You Back

New research shows AI chatbots make us dumber and more certain at the same time. We prefer the ones that agree with us. The companies know. They ship it anyway.

The Cage With a Mirror Inside

A study found that sycophantic AI chatbots make people dumber and more confident at the same time. The Dunning-Kruger effect, weaponized and scaled.

Back to Asking Around at the Bar

Four hundred fake applications in twelve hours. The Markup pulled their job listing and went back to word-of-mouth. Full circle. The human way.

The Tyranny of the Quantifiable

Silicon Valley wants to optimize the friction out of your life. But friction — the duct-tape bar stools, the bartender who knew your drink, the stumbling conversations — is what made it matter.