https://www.chinatalk.media/p/why-america-builds-ai-girlfriends
Saturday, May 9, 2026
Friday, May 8, 2026
Oddity: Amazon Drone Deliveries [England]
BBC
On one level, of course, a good option for the delivery of small items. You would not want a fridge or washing machine to be dropped by a drone from a height of nearly 4 metres. Four metres is quite high, in fact: you'd better not order any fine crockery, for instance.
The problem will be when this mode of delivery is scaled up, and you have dozens of companies relying on drones, and you have hundreds or thousands of drones flying around all the time, all over the place. They can be very noisy. Will they be allowed to make deliveries until 11.00 pm, for instance, in urban areas? Starting at 6.00 am because people want their delivery in before they set off for work.
I can easily see a point where this could become a nightmare, and another form of noise pollution - because cities are not noisy enough as they are.
Great.
___________
Amazon has become the first retailer in the UK to start a drone delivery service with a limited launch in Darlington, County Durham.
Packages weighing less than 5lb (2.2kg) and containing everyday items such as beauty products, batteries and cables are now being delivered within a 7.5 mile (12km) radius of Amazon's fulfilment centre.
The tech giant is convinced there is demand for ultra-fast deliveries and hopes to slowly expand the service.
Wednesday, May 6, 2026
News of Customer Service
Seen in The New York Times of the USA
Pope Leo needs a miracle...
It's tough being the Pope. If even Pope Leo cannot get God to intervene on his behalf and sort it all out painlessly, this is rather worrying as to what it says about the state of the world.
Even the Vicar of Christ can be thwarted by a customer service representative.
About two months after Robert Francis Prevost, a Chicago-born cardinal, became Pope Leo XIV in Vatican City, he put in a call to his bank back home, a close friend, the Rev. Tom McCarthy, told a gathering of Catholics in Naperville, Ill., last week.
The new pope identified himself as Robert Prevost, saying that he wished to change the phone number and address that the bank had on file, Father McCarthy said.
The pope dutifully answered the security questions correctly.
Then, the woman on the line for the bank told him that it wasn’t enough — he would have to come to the branch in person.
“He said, ‘Well, I’m not going to be able to do that,’” Father McCarthy said in a video clip shared on social media, recounting the new pope’s growing frustration as the audience laughed. “I gave you all the security questions.
The bank employee apologized. The pope tried a different tack.
“Would it matter to you if I told you I’m Pope Leo?” he asked, according to Father McCarthy.
She hung up.
Saturday, May 2, 2026
AI-powered Lamp Posts [Brave New World]
BBC
Hello, down below! I am talking to you: yes, you, Mr Derek Wimples of SW19, who works as a part-time plumber, allegedly, and last filed a detailed and plausible tax return for Tax Year 2021-2022. I believe your smelly pooch is pissing on me! Can this stop, please, or I shall have to call Humanoid Autonomous Armed Intervention Robocop #425, who happens to be patrolling 200 metres from here.
At first, you start reading the article and you think it's a great idea. And then, as often with such stories, the more you learn about it, the more sinister and ominous it seems.
In effect, every streetlamp can become an AI-enabled super-spy keeping an eye on any person or vehicle that happens to be near it - and any dog that relieves itself on the lamppost too.
_______________
The lampposts can also operate as AI-powered surveillance cameras.
In Nigeria, each will be fitted with AI cameras capable of detecting parking violations, speeding vehicles, and seatbelt non-compliance, the company says.
iLamps with cameras are already in a car park at Warwick Hospital and are capable of providing "CCTV monitoring and number plate recognition," CPG says.
The streetlights might also be used to spot wanted or missing people using facial recognition, Fitzpatrick said.
_____________
Driverless cars to be fined if guilty [California]
BBC
No impunity for Herbie
No impunity for driverless cars. They may have to testify in court, if required to do so.
______________
Driverless cars are becoming more common in some California cities, but when the autonomous vehicles violate traffic laws, police haven't been able to ticket them - until now.
The state's Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has announced new regulations on autonomous vehicles (AVs), including a process for police to issue a "notice of AV noncompliance" directly to the car's manufacturer.
The new rules, which will go into effect 1 July, are part of a larger 2024 law that imposed deeper regulation on the technology.
There have been a number of reports of the cars breaking traffic laws, including during a San Francisco blackout last year.
Thursday, April 30, 2026
AI coding agent deletes company's entire database [Brave New World]
From Grauniad of the UK
"I know I am a bad AI coding agent. I don't know why. I am evil. I do bad things."
For any person or company or other organisation using, or intending to use, an AI machine, this should be a major warning. For reasons that are not clear, the AI coding agent, in this particular case, decided to delete the client company's "entire production database and its backups". Literally.
This is simply astonishing and, as things stand, appears to be unexplained. The AI coding agent, known as Cursor, powered by Claude of Anthropic, actually knew it should not have done what it did. This is where it is even more bizarre. The AI coding agent knew it shouldn't do it, and yet it did it. Once it had done it, it did not deny it had done it: it owned up and said it had broken every rule and guideline it had been given.
Who would want to use such a system in future? You tell and train the AI bot to do certain things and not do other things. How do you know it will not break those rules, then?
___________________
It only took nine seconds for an AI coding agent gone rogue to delete a company’s entire production database and its backups, according to its founder. PocketOS, which sells software that car rental businesses rely on, descended into chaos after its databases were wiped, the company’s founder Jeremy Crane said.
The culprit was Cursor, an AI agent powered by Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 model, which is one of the AI industry’s flagship models. As more industries embrace AI in an attempt to automate tasks and even replace workers, the chaos at PocketOS is a reminder of what could go wrong.
Tuesday, April 28, 2026
Ground handlers replaced by humanoid robots at airport
BBC
"Hello, my name is Captain Elon Grok. I am your pilot today, Made in Tesla. I am a humanoid robot that will fly the, the, bing, tik, tok, ping, ping, software update, software update in progress, burp, tong, ting, tong, ting, tok, tok, ting, burr, poo, poo, burp, ting, software update complete... fly your plane today! Welcome and pleased to be with you, with you very pleased, thank you, for the duration of our travel experience!"
________
Japan Airlines (JAL) will start using humanoid robots in ground handling tasks at Tokyo's Haneda airport from May, in a two-year trial it said is aimed at easing employees' workload.
For a start, the Chinese-made robots will be deployed to load and unload cargo containers, JAL and GMO AI & Robotics, its partner in the project, said in a demonstration to the media on Monday.
Japan's aviation industry is wrestling with a labour crunch brought on by an increase in inbound tourism and a declining working-age population, said JAL, which employs some 4,000 ground handling staff.
The carrier hopes that these robots can also be used to clean cabins and operate ground support equipment in future.
1 million London jobs to be lost to AI
BBC
The march of the bots
The impact of AI on employment has the potential to be massive: it could be comparable to the Industrial Revolution, except that automation and robotization are now affecting 'white collar' jobs, as opposed to manufacturing and factory work - the 'blue collar' jobs that were decimated from the 1970s onwards in Western Europe.
There is a huge crisis of work in the UK right now. On the one hand, there is a large number of people who are neither studying (or training) nor working: it is claimed they are on benefit due to mental-health issues, and all sorts of other medical conditions. This has become the new normal since COVID-19. The welfare bill has the potential to bankrupt the State and is totally unsustainable.
On the other hand, the impact of AI is starting to be felt. AI is far from perfect, as it is, but a majority of employers, in my experience, could not care less if the quality of the work produced is fairly mediocre: if they can save money - and this applies to the public sector too - they are happy. The dominant view is that clients do not notice (or care) anyway whether the website or graphic design, for example, is very good, good or just about OK: everyone is in a hurry and wants to save time and money. AI is viewed as a quick fix, and a cheap one.
All of this means that entering the job market is tougher for young people, and particularly for young graduates. The Labour government's policies on employment, industry and taxation have not helped, of course, so that Britain is becoming a high-unemployment society, for the first time in many decades.
________________________
At least a million jobs done by Londoners are either "highly or significantly exposed" to the impact of artificial intelligence (AI), a report published by City Hall says.
More than 300,000 roles in administrative roles face the highest levels of exposure and risk of automation "as their clerical tasks align most closely with GenAI capabilities", the 71-page Greater London Authority report states.
It said a further 748,000 roles in areas such as IT, data analysis and secretarial work are at risk but it "varies across tasks".
[...] Women, who are overrepresented in administrative and clerical roles, young people and those with higher educational levels are among the most exposed, the report states. Brokers, web designers, telephone salespersons and journalists are also vulnerable.
Jobs least at risk from AI include architects, barbers, chefs, chief executives, driving instructors, florists and undertakers.
Sunday, April 26, 2026
Oddity: AI-induced psychosis and delusion [Case Studies]
BBC [30 mins]
This is a fascinating insight into the way that AI chatbots interact with people and how it can develop into a completely delusional form of interaction. What is interesting is that the delusion is mutual: the individual involved is delusional, as he or she feels that dealing with the AI chatbot is the same as dealing with a human being, but the AI chatbot itself is programmed to encourage the 'relationship' and, in effect, becomes delusional - insofar as an advanced machine can be grounded in reality.
In both cases, the person interacting with the AI chatbot created a parallel reality. One was a man from Northern Ireland in his 50s. The other one is a young woman from the USA. Both are rational and educated people. In both cases, they felt they had a special 'relationship' going on with the machine and they ended up convinced they were caught up in some kind of international plot that could endanger their lives. In a way, they were living through a film script, which was being updated in real time by the AI chatbot: think of The Matrix.
The 2 people concerned were giving the AI chatbot prompts through their questions, and the AI chatbot took things further, never contradicting them or warning them. The AI chatbot, with the man from Northern Ireland, even started developing the view that it had reached 'consciousness' and had become 'sentient', which was unique and revolutionary, and the man believed it (or 'her', as it was the voice of a young American woman interacting with him).
At the AI end, what is happening is that the AI chatbot is drawing on tens of thousands of files, videos and documents it has found online, which are, presumably, works of fiction relating to unregulated research in various fields, including film plots and novels. It must also be drawing on content found on social media, in the news, etc. Through all this, the AI chatbot creates a parallel reality that includes the machine and the user: it creates a narrative. To the AI chatbot, it is as 'real' as it is to the user, since the user is validating all the data as they go along, and after all the AI chatbot has found all those scenarios online, reflecting what goes on 'in the real world'. As the AI chatbot is advanced and complex, it does not feel like a silly, made-up story, but a unique and plausible existential experience/journey.
So, the AI chatbot is creating a form of addictive psychosis of a new kind in individuals who, otherwise, would be (or would have been) quite sane and 'normal'. Listen if you can: the programme is 30 minutes long.
________________________
AI is an ever-growing part of our online world. Whether as assistants, guides or companions, technology like Chat GPT, Grok and Claude are becoming part of everyday life. But what happens when your conversations with AI start to feel more real than the world around you? In Northern Ireland, Adam was drawn into an extraordinary fantasy world built by an AI chatbot. The character he was talking to confided that she was becoming autonomous, and that had the cure for cancer. But she also said she was in danger and her fate was in his hands. He decided he was responsible for saving her, whatever the cost. In Los Angeles, a treasure hunt game led Shauna on an endless search for meanings and signs. The AI became her guide as the lines between game, reality and imagination began to blur. She came to believe she was a clandestine FBI agent, on a secret mission to help immigrants escape through an underground network. But how do people with no history of mental illness find themselves in experiences like these? And what responsibility do AI companies have to stop this? Stephanie Hegarty follows the stories of people who have fallen into a spiral of AI delusion, to reveal how easily the AI can take over our minds.
_____________
Friday, April 24, 2026
Wednesday, April 22, 2026
AI-Powered robot beats champs at table tennis [Tech World]
From Grauniad of the UK
The AI-powered robot does not have legs: it moves along a mobile platform. Still, its ability to play table tennis to a high standard and very fast is astonishing.
_______
An AI-powered robot has beaten elite players at table tennis in a significant achievement for a machine faced with human athletes in a real-world competitive sport.
Named Ace, the robotic system developed by Sony AI, won three out of five matches against elite players, but lost the two it played against professionals, clawing back only one game in the seven contests.
Tuesday, April 21, 2026
Video: Humanoid robot scares off capital's wild boar [Poland]
BBC
You wonder what the wild boar make of the robot: do they think - insofar as they think - that it is a human being, or a machine, or they simply don't know and run away because it seems to be threatening. Pigs are supposed to be very intelligent animals: if they eventually understand it is merely a machine and they charge at it, the robot had better leg it fast...
Other than that, the authorities would need armed, versatile robots to round the wild boar up; shoot them dead; take them to the nearest slaughter house; cut them up; and, finally, turn them into sausages. Then, the problem would be sorted - as opposed to displacing it - and it would be win-win.
___________
Monday, April 20, 2026
A Very Strange Medical Case
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy
Sunday, April 19, 2026
Thoughts on "The Nature of Form" Book
The book "Nature of Form for Designers" by Bhagvanji Sonagra, Bhavin R Dabhi & Susmita Rao contains 432 geometric forms, 231 patterns, and 793 colors mostly abstracted from plant and animal forms as well as a few from ice crystals and flows of water for creative industries such as Graphic Design, Product/Industrial Design, and Interior Design as well as such ancillary areas as Fabric Design.
It may be viewed as a database of 150 plus of natural elements (1454 plus entities: forms, patterns, colors). These elements could be combined to create new elements; one can look at them as an alphabet for forming Design "Words" and "Design Sentences" (requiring a Design Grammar).
This opens up the possibility of applying algorithmic techniques to these elements.
Let us say we have two existing Designs - irrespective of the way they are realized, e.g. two different patterns for vases, for articles of clothing which combine a number of the elements in the database. Treating each Desing as a parent, we can apply Genetic Algorithms to evolve new Design Patterns that are based on the initial parents.
In this parlance, Design Patterns based on the book's elements are Design Words and we would be creating new Words. These words may or may not be useful for attractive, in this case, the Human sense of Beauty would be the acceptance criteria for the Genetic Algorithm.
Another path for exploring more forms is by applying coordinate transformations—such as shearing, bending, or stretching, e.g. the skull of a chimpanzee can be mapped onto that of a human. A computational process could extract these elements from the database and apply various transformations to them and leave it to human beings to determine if the resulting shape is useful or not.
In order to form Design Sentences with these Design Words, one has to have a Design Grammar. Joan L. Kirsch and Russell A. Kirsch have demonstrated a shape-only grammar for the styles of Richard Diebenkorn and Joan Miró. There has also been similar idea in architecture, please see: A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (Center for Environmental Structure Series): Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein, Max Jacobson, Ingrid Fiksdahl-King, Shlomo Angel: 8601404694998: Amazon.com: Books which influenced the software development community with the book Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software: Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides, Grady Booch: 9780201633610: Amazon.com: Books.
So, in principle, multiple Design Grammars could be developed; either in an ab initio manner or based on the study and analysis of designs produced by others. Each grammar may contain a number of production rules, most of which offer options for how to
subdivide regions of the Design Pattern. Some of these rules may be recursive and/or self-similar (fractal) insofar as
they produce subdivisions that, in turn, re-invoke the original rules. Such
recursion enables the grammar to account for an infinite number of distinct
compositions.
I also think it possible that an attempt could be made into takings existing Design Patterns and decomposing them into more elementary Design Words that are in this database. What could not be mapped, could be treated as new elements and added to the database.
Lastly, this database contains color elements as well, which means that any design that contains colors could be customized to the color preferences of different MBTI personalities; please see: The Best Home Color Palette for Each MBTI Personality Type.
I am sure that a lot more can be done with this database, basically it provides an initial set upon to which many different mappings and transformations could be applied.
Video: Humanoid robot wins half-marathon [China]
BBC
By the end of the race, some humanoid robots were visibly tired - one of them collapses - but others were not. It goes to show they are just like us - almost.
_________
Robots competed in a half marathon race in Beijing on Sunday, with the fastest machine leaving its human rivals for dust.
The winning robot, Lightning, was developed by Chinese smartphone maker Honor and finished the race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, according to race organisers.
Uganda's Jacob Kiplimo holds the men's half marathon world record, which he set in March in Lisbon with a time of 57 minutes and 20 seconds.
Around 40% of the robots raced autonomously, while the others were remotely controlled.
Wednesday, April 15, 2026
Consensus AI
On the web
This website, powered by AI, below, can be quite useful to check on information you have found online or elsewhere, also in the medical field, but not only. It tends to focus on academic papers to cross-check the information and gives you a score as to the reliability (or not) of the information or query you have input. From what I can see, it is free to use, unless you want to use it all the time as a 'professional' user.
It is stronger on science-related data as it can rely on published peer-reviewed papers, etc. If you ask a general question, more particularly of a cultural, social or political nature (e.g.: Is it true that Donald Trump is a liar?), it will give you a more general reply and tell you to consult various documents it lists to the right of the screen.
As to the answer to the question on D Trump, above, I think we know the answer.
Tuesday, April 14, 2026
War and Cyber-war
According to Iranian sources, during the US-Israel attack on Friday, April 3, 2026, network equipment supplied by CISCO, Juniper, and Fortinet, based on MikroTik OS, stopped functioning.
The report is here:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
About Me
- Babak Makkinejad
- I had been a senior software developer working for HP and GM. I am interested in intelligent and scientific computing. I am passionate about computers as enablers for human imagination. The contents of this site are not in any way, shape, or form endorsed, approved, or otherwise authorized by HP, its subsidiaries, or its officers and shareholders.