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#grift

4 posts4 participants0 posts today
Public
Niklas Pivic

GPT-5 is a joke. Will it matter? - by Brian Merchant bloodinthemachine.com/p/gpt-5-

'I don’t think the GPT-5 flop ultimately matters all that much to most folks, and it can certainly be papered over well enough by a skilled salesman in an enterprise pitch meeting. Again, all this is clarifying: OpenAI is again centering workplace automation, while retreating from messianic AGI talk. Here’s NBC, in a story about how Altman has apparently and rather suddenly (once again) changed his stance on AGI:

“I think it’s not a super useful term,” Altman told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” last week, when asked whether the company’s latest GPT-5 model moves the world any closer to achieving AGI.

Remember, just last February Altman published an essay on his personal blog that opened with the line “Our mission is to ensure that AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) benefits all of humanity.” Suddenly it’s not a super useful term? Another bad joke, surely. If anything, it’s clear that Altman knows just what a super useful term AGI is, at least when it comes to attracting investment capital. But Altman tends to announce AGI is near when OpenAI is pursuing funding, and shrink from the term when the company is at a point of vulnerability.'

Blood in the Machine · GPT-5 is a joke. Will it matter?By Brian Merchant
#ArtificialIntelligence#BrianMerchant#OpenAI
Public
DrBob, Neurologist, 🧠Mechanic

Grifter-in-Chief

Many payments now flowing to Trump, his wife, and his children and their spouses would be unimaginable without his Presidencies

- Two-billion-dollar investment from a fund controlled by the Saudi crown prince

- Luxury jet from the Emir of Qatar

- Profits from at least five different ventures peddling crypto

- Fees from an exclusive club stocked with Cabinet officials and named Executive Branch

Fred Wertheimer, dean of ethics-reform advocates, said “when it comes to using his public office to amass personal profits, #Trump is a unicorn—no one else even comes close.”

#grift #graft
newyorker.com/magazine/2025/08

Public
Niklas Pivic

sherwood.news/tech/gpt-5-a-leg

Imagine this: you prepare a presentation to showcase your great new product version that's cost a billion USD to make. You prepare your presentation for ages. The result?

You show bullshit charts where bars that represent 30% and 58% are equally high; you wheel in pictures of bicycles that have three wheels; you show zebras with five legs...

You'd be sacked for doing that. Actually, OpenAI did that during their presentation of Chat-GPT 5 a short while back.

To quote Gary Marcus:

'By rights, Altman’s reputation should by now be completely burned. This is a man who joked in September 2023 that “AGI has been achieved internally”, told us in January of this year in his blog that “We are now confident we know how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood it”. Just two days ago he hold us that as quoted above) interacting with GPT-5 we “like talking to … legitimate PhD level expert in anything”. In hindsight, that was all bullshit.And the worst part? Altman brought it all on himself. Had he not kept hinting at the moon, people might have been fine with just another incremental update.' - garymarcus.substack.com/p/gpt-

If this was all described as a “technical preview,” these kinds of mistakes might be understandable. But this is a real product from a company that’s pulling in $1 billion per month. OpenAI’s models are being sold to schools, hospitals, law firms, and government agencies, including for national security and defense.
#ArtificialIntelligence#GaryMarcus#OpenAI
Public *
Dave Sanderson 🇨🇦🍁

“Marisa Breeze, press secretary to Finance Minister Nate Horner, said in a statement that the changes were made to ‘improve government operations and reduce red tape,’ and to bring Alberta's policies into alignment with other provinces.”

cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/al

Here’s the Ontario website that lists the expenses of Cabinet Ministers, Parliamentary Assistants, political staff and senior government employees going back to 2009:

ontario.ca/page/travel-meal-an

One example is Lauren Broten, Minister for Children and Youth Services, claimed $11.17 for a breakfast meeting with a representative of the Toronto United Way in November 2009.

CBCAlberta government changes expense disclosure policy, removes eight years of records | CBC NewsKey changes to Alberta’s expense disclosure policy mean that the receipts of senior government officials, including the premier, will no longer be public.
#ABPoli#Coverup#Grift
Public
Niklas Pivic

AI stands for “Artificial Inanity”: lambdaland.org/posts/2025-08-0

This short post recants my own feelings about reading AI-generated text: it's exhausting, simply because it's text created without human intent and care. Probability is not thinking; probability is not care; popular AI systems that generate text are just probability engines trained on old text.

Texts that are generated by popular AI systems often feel *off*, which is highly important to humans.

When I read something I know came out of a computer’s probabilistic sampling of a token-space, I have read knowing that every statement might be some hallucinated slop or incidental filler. I cannot trust that the human operator’s intent is expressed by the machine. In fact, I am confident that it is often not, but I have to waste tremendous effort trying to find that gap. Reading slop text when I think I’m reading real text is exhausting: since I am not on the alert for hallucinations or irrelevancies, every turn of phrase that seems out of place causes me to wonder why that phrase it there and what am I missing when in reality, such questions are ill formed: that was just a phrase composed by accident that sounds good but actually is devoid of much intent at all. Intent is the core thing: the lack of intent is what makes reading AI-slop so revolting. There needs to be a human intent—human will and human care—behind everything that is demanded of our care and attention. Even if you agree with Rolland Barthes’ views on literary criticism, the fact that there is an author who put care and intent into a work imbues that work with infinitely more meaning than if it were spat out by a machine.
#ArtificialIntelligence#AI#reading
Public
DrBob, Neurologist, 🧠Mechanic

Our ‘elected’ officials? Grifting continues

Senate confirms Emil Bove to appeals court despite #whistleblower complaints, controversy, launching President #Trump’s former personal lawyer to a lifetime appointment on the bench amid a series of whistleblower complaints about his conduct.

#Bove, currently in the No. 3 role at the Justice Department, is the subject of three different complaints in recent weeks, with two alleging he suggested violating court orders and a third saying he reportedly misled Congress on the dropping of bribery charges against New York Mayor #EricAdams (D).
#grift
thehill.com/homenews/senate/54

Text Shot: His nomination was confirmed with a 50-49 vote, with Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine) crossing the aisle to join all Democrats in opposing his nomination. “They reward a man, credibly accused of wanting to lie to judges, with a black robe and gavel of his own,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the floor after the vote. “And they’re confirming him for one reason only: Mr. Bove is loyal to Donald Trump, therefore Donald Trump wants him on the bench. The calculus is as simple as that.” Democrats were quick to point out the speed of Bove’s consideration as his nomination was scheduled for a Tuesday night vote. “What will come out next about Bove? That’s precisely the problem with this disaster of a nominee. And why Senate Republicans are rushing through his nomination. Before more disqualifying information can come out,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said in a Tuesday post on X.
Public
Dave Rahardja

Conservatives will literally do everything except tax rich people.

This part is pretty funny though:

“Axios ran an informal trial Venmo payment on the debt gift site, going all the way through the process except for the final "submit" click.

It clocked in at 1 minute, 20 seconds, during which time the national debt would have increased about $4.4 million.

As the Venmo form caps donations at $999,999.99, that means any gift a user gives wouldn't be sufficient to cover the increase in the debt incurred while they were donating.

In fact, you'd have to make that maximum donation in 18 seconds or less just to keep up with the debt.”

#grift #kakistocracy

“Venmo the Treasury to help pay Uncle Sam's debt? You can, if you really want”

axios.com/2025/07/24/venmo-gif

Axios · Venmo the Treasury to help pay Uncle Sam's debt? You can, if you really wantBy Ben Berkowitz
Public
aburtch

I need some hashtags that make it obvious because I keep seeing these stories that expose the grift. #PrisonIndustrialComplex #Grift

For my full point written out see: triangletoot.party/@aburtch/11 mastodon.social/@austinkocher/

Triangle Toot Party!aburtch (@aburtch@triangletoot.party)I’ve said it before and here’s another article on the topic. This administration’s focus on deporting / jailing people is yet another grift. It costs a HUGE amount of money for the policing manpower, to build and maintain facilities, feeding detainees, etc. All of this goes to private corporations owned by the same #oligarchs who funded Trump and benefit from his tax breaks. Now they are syphoning OUR money to get even richer doing things detrimental to society. https://mastodon.social/@RealJournalism/114926499124228626
Public
Toni Aittoniemi

As expected, generative AI gives us scams and grifts, because that's all it's good for.

In Finland there is now a systematic campaign of #deepfake videos advertising fake health product, with fake faces and voices of national health officials delivering fake reports that the product was supposedly authorised. (even though no such announcements are ever made even for real)

And what'd ya know, huh? The snake oil salesmen are first out the gate

thl.fi/-/thl-ja-fimea-varoitta
#genai #grift #scam #health

THL · THL ja Fimea varoittavat: Verkossa leviää nyt runsaasti huijausmainoksia
Public
Orange Mussolini

Always doing official duties as president. Your tax dollars at work. Working hard for America. Going to Scotland to play golf. They love me there.
media.tech.lgbt/media_attachme
Have I made America great yet? #golf #rich #money #tarrifs #maga #liar #tariff Jails are filling up! #Criminal #ice #1stFelon #USA pease talks are happening now #Israel #middleEastWar #russia #ukraine #Trump #American #fascism #fascist #taxes I need another airplane #Qatar #plane #grift Epstein is dead. Why talk about Epstein?

Public
RedwoodSec

Avelo Airlines took millions in subsidies from Oregon & California—then ditched service to run ICE deportation flights for profit. This is corporate welfare turned human rights abuse. No more taxpayer money for companies aiding mass deportation. CEO: Andrew Levy
🔗 oregonlive.com/business/2025/0 #uspol #ice #iceblock #immigration #corporatewelfare #grift

oregonlive · Budget airline that took ICE contract pulls out of OregonBy Kristine de Leon | The Oregonian/OregonLive
Public
Rich Stein (he/him)

apnews.com/article/trump-confl
#Grift. Grift. Grift. #Bribery. #Corruption.

AP News · Takeaways from the AP's reporting on Trump's business dealsFrom crypto coins to bibles, overseas development deals to an upcoming line of cellphones, President Donald Trump’s family businesses have raked in hundreds of millions of dollars since his election. That flood of money — from billionaires, foreign governments and cryptocurrency tycoons, often with interests before the federal government — has permitted the president to leverage the power of his office for personal gain unlike any of his predecessors. The sums collected are far greater than those made by the family during Trump’s first term, when patronage of his hotels and other properties was de rigueur to curry favor with the famously transactional commander-in-chief.
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