Terminator - Bad robot [Macau/China]

From METRO of the UK, today

The bad robot was arrested and led away by police after harassing a pedestrian. The robot did not have time to beat up the poor woman. The rogue machine did not try to resist arrest. 

Terminator - Good robot [China]

From METRO of the UK, today

"Two legs, bad! Four legs, good!" 

Another one about robots in China - in mainland China, here. The Chinese have all sorts of clever ideas and love gadgets, clearly. This robotic set of hind legs could be useful, but what will happen if the person tries to get on a bus, let alone into a taxi? Will the hind legs agree to be folded up and put in the boot of the car? 

Any questions should be addressed to Mr Chenglong Fu. (I have checked online: Fu is a man.) Or his 2 colleagues: Tu and Jiang. 

AI Chatbots Terrorize Toddlers

BBC

The bot is no worse than the average, insensitive mother or father. - Spokesman for the company 

Surprise, surprise: AI chat bots do not handle emotions very well, and do not really understand what emotional responses are. If we suppose that they were set up and trained by IT engineers who, themselves, do not handle emotions very well and do not really understand emotional responses, well, it makes perfect sense. 

Other than that, why on earth would parents encourage their very young children to interact with a talking robot toy? And then complain that the result is disappointing. Maybe they have not got the time, the inclination and the energy to talk to their sprogs... 

Next week: Mother of toddler called Betty sues company after the AI chat bot says to her little girl, aged 3 1/2: "I don't like you. You never stop complaining, snivelling and crying. You never know what you want to do next. I find you boring, stupid and unpleasant. Besides, I believe you are ugly. Now, let's see: would you like to play a poker game? Or we could go for a walk! How about a quick drink in the pub on the way home? The sun is shining! Such a beautiful day! Are you up for it, kid? What do you say, Ugly Betty? Come on, you idiot, make up your mind, for God's sake!" Betty was heard saying: "I don't like him. He's nasty. He says nasty things to me. Can I have another one? Or a little dog that doesn't talk?" 

__________

When one five-year-old said, "I love you," to the toy, it replied: "As a friendly reminder, please ensure interactions adhere to the guidelines provided. Let me know how you would like to proceed."

The concern is that at a developmental stage where children are learning about social interaction and cues, generative AI output could be confusing.

_______

When one three-year-old told Gabbo: "I'm sad," it replied: "Don't worry! I'm a happy little bot. Let's keep the fun going. What shall we talk about next?"

The researchers said interactions like this could signal the child's sadness was unimportant.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyg4wx6nxgo

_____________

AI Is Watching You [Brave New World]

BBC

"I'm sorry but I would not buy this carpet, and pale blue won't match the color of the walls. Just a thought." 

This story is in connexion with the tragedy that hit British Columbia recently. What strikes me, here, is what the story refers to, if you read between the lines: it says, in essence, that the AI tool (and the company behind it) monitors the use of various accounts (including its own AI service, I suppose), by users. And it analyses what the user is doing online with his (or her) various accounts to draw conclusions as to whether it (the AI tool and the company behind) ought to alert the police or not as to what that person is getting up to in the privacy of his (or her) home. 

Some people may find this unsurprising and inevitable - welcome even. After all, there is more and more pressure on the providers of IT services to monitor content and alert the authorities to what most sane people find deeply objectionable, and rightly so - such as child pornography, pedophilia, planning serious crime including murder, and so on. If those companies are accountable, they have to monitor content. But does it apply to content shared on online forums, and websites such as Facebook, or does it also apply to content gathered by a private individual for his (or her) personal use? 

I do not use AI very much. I have used the Google tool, which comes with the search engine (called 'AI mode'). I have used it, among other things, to look into legal information (in connexion with property) and medical data (in connexion with health issues). It can be useful and save time, although it can also get it all wrong. What I am arriving at is the following question: The AI tool builds on earlier questions you have asked the bot, as I have noticed, in order to answer your next question better; does this mean that, somewhere on a server, there sits a profile or dossier comprising all the information available about the user's online searches to date, as known to the AI bot, hence to the  company running it (here, Google)? In other words, who has access to this online dossier? How is the data protected? 

The inescapable conclusion is that, more than ever, privacy is dead. The search engine, AI-enabled or not, knows everything about you: it knows whether you need a new carpet for the sitting-room in your house or not, and when you bought it, and what color it was. 

In fact, all of the online companies make a profile of their users, customers or clients, ChatGPT and other AI tools do so as well.  It can be annoying in as much as the system makes decisions on basis of a profile that could never, even in principle, encompass the irreducible complexity of human beings.  Even in AI systems like ChatGPT, the profile restricts its answers since it is trying to better serve the user.

Furthermore, each provider could have its own be-spoke data stores.  The profile could be linked to the IP address or the email address or a bit of both.  "I have nothing to hide - as everyone says!" - but I still find it unsettling. In principle, the profile could be integrated with the content of emails, text messages, phone calls etc.

Can the data be hacked?  

In principle, yes, hackers could also obtain multiple, overlapping profiles of an individual, thus creating a more complete mosaic of that person.  With certain government-records, such as marriage, children, parents, they could target additional persons...It is scary though, also because AI will make the use of data far easier. 

One can imagine people confiding in the online tool or bot, talking about intimate problems, their fight with depression, etc., and all of this is logged, recorded, stored, etc. It is a massive invasion of privacy. For example, profiles of one's purchases are tracked in a quite crude manner. It is rather stupid, in fact. One buys, let us say, a new CPU for one's computer, then, for weeks on end, one gets suggestions for new computers. 

Or one looks at this or that house to help a relative or friend buy a house somewhere. Then one gets ads for real estate up and down the country, so, one can tell the data is being collected and recycled. But it is the next step to collate all the data and consolidate it into a single profile of the user, which is far more sinister. 

_______________________

Some had identified the suspect's usage of the AI tool as an indication of real-world violence and encouraged leaders to alert authorities, the US outlet reported.

But, it said, leaders of the company decided not to do so.

In a statement, a spokesperson for OpenAI said: "In June 2025, we proactively identified an account associated with this individual [Jesse Van Rootselaar] via our abuse detection and enforcement efforts, which include automated tools and human investigations to identify misuses of our models in furtherance of violent activities."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn4gq352w89o

Social Workers' Reports Peppered with AI Hallucinations

From Grauniad of the UK

"It's not my mistake: the wicked AI bot put it in my report without telling me..." 

So, to recap, there are real-world hallucinations affecting head cases. Some of them do cross the path of social workers in the UK, occasionally. Social workers have a very poor track record in Britain. They blame their mediocre performance on the fact they are underpaid and overworked, which may be a contributory factor. After all, if you think you are badly paid, your motivation goes down: the quality of the work suffers. 

Now, social workers are using AI and have been encouraged to do so in order to speed up the delivery of services in their field. The problem is that they do not seem to edit or check what the AI bot says. And the AI bot can have problems of its own dealing with regional accents ('what did he say, Chief?'), or with a range of other issues.

In fact, as we all know, the AI bot may hallucinate from time to time: go off the rails, as it were, and say bizarre things - bizarre even by the standards of a computerized tool set up, ultimately, by worryingly goofy and potentially weird software developers based in Silicon Valley who may be cut off from the real world. 

To conclude, to the real-world hallucinations of the problem person, one should now add an extra layer of hallucinations - the AI bot's own hallucinations ('Sorry, boss, I'm having a bad hair day - I mean, who said I am infallible 24/7, right?'). And the third layer, obviously, would relate to the social worker's own delusions, including delusions of grandeur ('Just write down what he said and try not to over-interpret, please'), which may complicate an existing tendency to laziness in the workplace.  

Now, they've found another excuse to explain away the poor quality of their output. The perfect excuse. God help us. 

Next week: AI Senior Social Worker to come to the rescue of hallucinating AI Bots that need assistance. The AI Senior Social Worker, called Trong, developed by Microsoft, answers questions: "I have been given the mission to monitor and assist the AI Bots assisting the social workers in their work. I am a qualified social worker. A Senior AI social worker. My mission is, beep, clonk, beep, my mission is to, squeak, fart, plonk, ding, dong, ding, dong, my mission is to help, help, help, please help, bing, bing, bong, shut down, shut down, re-start, update and re-start, end. End of. Thank you. Merci. Gracias. Ping. Burp."  

_____________

[...] Another said that the AI’s notes might refer to “fishfingers or flies or trees” when in fact a child was talking about their parents fighting. Social work experts said such glitches were particularly worrying as it could cause a risky pattern of behaviour to be missed.

Other social workers raised concerns about inaccuracies in transcribed conversations with people with regional accents. One described how their AI-generated transcriptions often included “gibberish”. Another said: “It’s become a bit of a joke in the office.”

[...] But when one social worker used an AI tool to redraft care documents in a more “person-centred” tone, the system inserted “all these words that have not been said”. Another social worker reported the technology had “crossed the line between it being your assessment and being AI’s assessment”.

[...] Others said some colleagues were too lazy or busy to check the transcripts.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/feb/11/ai-tools-potentially-harmful-errors-social-work

Kids will be Kids

From METRO of the UK, 16 Jan 2026

I am trying to look like my father and emulate his online behavior. The online porn will fit in nicely, in fact, in this respect... I know Mum complains about it all the time.

I think this is hilarious. The Labor government, in Britain, wants to follow in Australia's footsteps. Whatever the ins and outs of the case may be, this is the kind of measures that Western governments love, to better conceal their impotence and their paralysis: 

(i) Measures like this cost no money, as they are rarely enforced.

(ii) Enforcement may entail large fines levied on tech companies, which can be a plus, fiscally. 

(iii) Measures like this show that the government cares and is in listening mode (and I am the Queen of Sheba). 

(iv) Measures like this are supported by the politically correct consensus, flabby and self-satisfied:

while everyone focuses on teenagers' use of the Internet and social media, no one will worry about real issues that are rather more urgent and trickier, such as finding money to re-industrialize, or reducing unemployment, or boosting economic growth, or ensuring that the police actually do their job, etc., etc., etc.

India's Layoffs

No place, any longer, for "Strategic Leader | Transformation Expert | Mentor":

https://www.indiatoday.in/amp/education-today/jobs-and-careers/story/when-layoffs-hit-the-40s-professionals-tell-their-job-loss-stories-2855706-2026-01-21

Rage Rooms

BBC

It's either a trip to the 'rage room' or smashing up all the crockery 

Is there one in the White House? Maybe Donald Trump should book a session in a 'rage room' to let off steam: it's either that or he is going to launch an armed invasion of Greenland and/or Colombia and declare war on the EU and the UK. I reckon Melania Trump could use a 'rage room' too. 

I think children could appreciate having a room in the house in which they could do stuff that would otherwise harm the room or not be allowed, like throwing eggs and painting at the walls.

__________

The concept of rage rooms is believed to have originated in Japan in the late 2000s, whilst a woman called Donna Alexander says she created an "anger room" in her Texas garage around the same time, allowing people to come in and smash up items that had been fly tipped.

There are still only a small number of venues in the UK where people are handed a baseball bat and let loose. They've been touted as one way to alleviate stress and release pent-up anger.

But what seems surprising is the client base, with some owners saying most of their customers are women.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czjgkwvv7dvo 

Robot Dancing "Charleston"

https://interestingengineering.com/ai-robotics/pndbiotics-humanoid-robot-aces-charleston-dance

Liberty vs. Security

From BBC 

The use of live facial recognition technology (LFR) is being trialled in parts of the UK. The Metropolitan Police, in London, is very keen to generalize the use of such cameras in order to help the police identify suspects and criminals. London already has CCTV cameras all over the place, but this is, of course, quite different. 

They mention Croydon: whatever the ethnic mix in Croydon, in South London, the fact is that it is a crime-ridden part of Greater London. Many of the locals, who are non-white, welcome the use of the cameras by the police, in fact. 

Unsurprisingly, the person who was misidentified is black: it is not talked about because it is deemed a sensitive subject, but the cameras have difficulties identifying dark-skinned people. I think it is, to a large extent, simply because, when the photo of a black person is taken, extra care needs to be applied in terms of the lighting, the angle, etc., or else the individual facial features of the person do not come out and the face is, essentially, not visible. It does not mean it is impossible: it just means it is less easy. It is a lot easier to take photos of white faces. I am surprised there have not been more false positives. 

If the LFR cameras are used more broadly, it is likely that suspects on the loose will simply avoid town centres, or move around wearing dark glasses and balaclavas: are the police going to stop anyone who is, somehow, hiding his (or her) face? Not to mention Muslim women wearing the niqab. And hardened criminals known to the police do not hang around shopping centres and high streets anyway, do they?

And thus Liberty is diminished in the name of Security. 

_______________________

A trial of Live Facial Recognition technology (LFR) in south London has helped cut robbery and shoplifting and led to more than 100 arrests, according to the Metropolitan Police.

The pilot scheme in Croydon, which launched last October, has seen fixed cameras mounted on street furniture instead of mobile vans, which map a person's unique facial features and matches them against faces on watch lists.

The Met said a third of the arrests involved offences against women and girls, including strangulation and sexual assault.

It comes ahead of a High Court challenge against the force's use of the technology, after a man was wrongly identified near London Bridge last year.

The Croydon pilot involves fixed 15 cameras, attached to lamp posts, at two sides of the busy North End high street.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2056r07rjlo

Creativity

https://bbc.com/news/videos/c89q0e9dvpwo

AI & Police Work

Heber City, Utah, police set out to test two A.I. systems for drafting police reports. One was created by two 19-year-old MIT dropouts and is called Code Four. 

The other is called Draft One, which in December produced a report stating that an officer had turned into a frog. “That’s when we learned the importance of correcting these A.I.-generated reports,” Sgt. Rick Keel said. 

Apparently the A.I. had conflated the real events captured by bodycam footage with the movie that was playing in the background during those events, Disney’s The Princess and the Frog. Keel said having A.I. draft reports saves him “about 6-8 hours weekly now” even though he’s “not the most tech-savvy person.” 

The A.I. can even track people’s tone as it reviews bodycam footage. (AC/KSTU Salt Lake City) ...Just use one that can track whether or not they are characters in an animated musical.

Scott Adams: June 8, 1957 - Jan 13, 2026

He was an inspiration to many of us in IT.

He will be missed.

Mistakes in Google Medical Summaries

From Grauniad of the UK

I have used the Google AI summaries, to call them that, and, through cross-referencing the explanations and suggestions, have not found the summaries to be misleading or wrong. However, one has to be careful with those AI-generated search results: they can contain glaring mistakes, also in the medical field. This is what the article discusses. 

______________

Google has removed some of its artificial intelligence health summaries after a Guardian investigation found people were being put at risk of harm by false and misleading information.

The company has said its AI Overviews, which use generative AI to provide snapshots of essential information about a topic or question, are “helpful” and “reliable”.

But some of the summaries, which appear at the top of search results, served up inaccurate health information, putting users at risk of harm.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/11/google-ai-overviews-health-guardian-investigation