News
‘Things Are Going to Get Intense:’ How a Musk Ally Plans to Push AI on the Government
404 Media has obtained audio of a meeting held by Thomas Shedd, a Musk-associate who is now heading a team of government coders. In the call one employee pushed back and said one of the planned moves is an “illegal task.”
AI
‘I Applied to 2,843 Roles’: The Rise of AI-Powered Job Application Bots
Using AI Hawk's Auto Jobs Applier bot, I applied for 17 jobs in an hour on LinkedIn.
wordpress
‘The Community Is In Chaos:’ WordPress.org Now Requires You Denounce Affiliation With WP Engine To Log In
WordPress.org users are forced to confirm they are not "affiliated with WP Engine in any way, financially or otherwise" before registering a new account or logging in.
News
Thousands of Internal AI Training Datasets, Tools Exposed to Anyone on the Internet
“In addition to the ML models themselves, the exposed data can include training datasets, hyperparameters, and sometimes even raw data used to build models,” a security researcher said.
Podcast
Podcast: The Smart Glasses That Dox Strangers
Looking at someone and doxing them instantly; how a data archive was knocked offline during a recent hurricane; and a hack of an AI companion.
News
The Editors Protecting Wikipedia from AI Hoaxes
WikiProject AI Cleanup is protecting Wikipedia from the same kind of misleading AI-generated information that has plagued the rest of the internet.
News
Twitter Acts Fast on Nonconsensual Nudity If It Thinks It’s a Copyright Violation
Researchers posted AI-generated nude images to Twitter to see how the company responds to reports of copyright violation versus reports of nonconsensual nudity.
News
Hacked ‘AI Girlfriend’ Data Shows Prompts Describing Child Sexual Abuse
A hacked database from AI companion site Muah.ai exposes peoples' particular kinks and fantasies they've asked their bot to engage in. It also shows many of them are trying to use the platform to generate child abuse material.
AI Slop
Hurricane Helene and the ‘Fuck It’ Era of AI-Generated Slop
The era of politically-motivated AI slop is here and it sucks.
TikTok
AI-Generated Pro-North Korean TikToks Are Also Bizarre Ads for Supplements
These AI-generated people are big fans of North Korea and of Reus Research’s Nicotinamide Riboside.
The Abstract
Apocalyptic Asteroid Impact Was Great for Ants
Ants farm as Earth burns, back on the Sun beat, and a spirit animal for introverts.
Behind The Blog
Behind the Blog: Newsworthy FOIA Files and the Art and Science of Paywalling
This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss FOIAing after those racist pet-eating claims, the art and science of paywalling, and gambling with journalism.
Podcast
Podcast: One Year Anniversary Subscriber Bonanza
In this special podcast episode, we talk subscriber numbers, what people value, how to get our articles in front of people, and what we're looking to do next year.