AI & Gullible Imbeciles

 From the BBC

The AI bot is not programmed to tell a user that he (or she) is a deluded and gullible imbecile...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is generating an entirely new class of mental illness, among other things - many of them very useful and truly exciting. It is quite obvious that the AI machine will tell you what you want to hear. That's the way it is programmed, it seems - maybe because the technology has come out of America, a country full of gung-ho optimists ("have a nice day!" and all that), who believe in themselves, who believe that anything is possible, and so on. So, the AI robot is American in outlook. If you tell the machine that you want to be a millionaire, it will say: "Great! Let's see how we can do this." A British AI robot would say: "I doubt you can achieve this, but you could try. Give it a go. If you fail, as is likely, it won't prevent you from trying again. How about learning crochet as an alternative?" 

I've just asked Grok what he thinks of my existential achievements and intellectual abilities and, I have to say, Grok has confirmed what I thought, i.e. that I am truly great and smarter than 99.99% of people. It shows how intelligent Grok is. Grok agrees with me on this one. Grok has put in place a business plan that will help me conquer the world. Watch this space. 

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[...] Hugh, from Scotland, says he became convinced that he was about to become a multi-millionaire after turning to ChatGPT to help him prepare for what he felt was wrongful dismissal by a former employer.

The chatbot began by advising him to get character references and take other practical actions.

But as time went on and Hugh - who did not want to share his surname - gave the AI more information, it began to tell him that he could get a big payout, and eventually said his experience was so dramatic that a book and a movie about it would make him more than £5m.

It was essentially validating whatever he was telling it – which is what chatbots are programmed to do. [...] 

One wrote that she was certain she was the only person in the world that ChatGPT had genuinely fallen in love with.

Another was convinced they had "unlocked" a human form of Elon Musk's chatbot Grok and believed their story was worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. [...] 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c24zdel5j18o

AI @ IgniteTech

https://fortune.com/2025/08/17/ceo-laid-off-80-percent-workforce-ai-sabotage/

Another Victim of ChatGPT

From Grauniad of the UK

'Bromide' has different meanings in English. It is a chemical, and this is the meaning referred to here ("a binary compound of bromine and some other element or radical"). Figuratively, the term can refer to "a dull person with conventional thoughts" and, also, to "a platitude". As a drug, bromide used to be prescribed as a sedative or to reduce a person's sex drive. 

It seems to me that there was more than one 'bromide' in this story involving a man who consulted Chat GPT about his salt consumption and subsequently went off the rails - to the point of being sectioned. So, altogether, not a happy interaction with the chat bot. 

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A US medical journal has warned against using ChatGPT for health information after a man developed a rare condition following an interaction with the chatbot about removing table salt from his diet.

An article in the Annals of Internal Medicine reported a case in which a 60-year-old man developed bromism, also known as bromide toxicity, after consulting ChatGPT.

[...] The authors said the bromism patient presented himself at a hospital and claimed his neighbour might be poisoning him. He also said he had multiple dietary restrictions. Despite being thirsty, he was noted as being paranoid about the water he was offered.

He tried to escape the hospital within 24 hours of being admitted and, after being sectioned, was treated for psychosis. Once the patient stabilised, he reported having several other symptoms that indicated bromism, such as facial acne, excessive thirst and insomnia.

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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/aug/12/us-man-bromism-salt-diet-chatgpt-openai-health-information

Man develops rare condition after ChatGPT query over stopping eating salt US medical journal article about 60-year-old with bromism warns against using AI app for health information www.theguardian.com

Student Coders Seek Work at Chipotle.

From the New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/technology/coding-ai-jobs-students.html

Microsoft Restores Services to EU-Sanctioned Indian Refiner

From Russia Today 

"Microsoft has resumed providing critical digital services to Indian refiner Nayara Energy after the latter sued the US tech giant in the Delhi High Court.

Nayara, a company partly owned by Russia’s Rosneft, told the court on Monday that Microsoft had restricted its access to data, proprietary tools, and products on account of European Union sanctions.

“Microsoft is committed to supporting all its customers in India and worldwide, and has restored services for Nayara Energy,” the company said in a statement on Wednesday. “We are engaged in ongoing discussions with the European Union towards service continuity for the organization.”

The refiner said on Wednesday that its services had been restored. “Nayara Energy confirms that all Microsoft services critical to its operations have been fully restored, with no disruption to business continuity and data integrity remaining fully intact,” it said in a statement. “We acknowledge the prompt intervention of the Honorable Delhi High Court in facilitating the resolution of this matter. The petition was disposed of by the High Court in favour of Nayara Energy.”

The court granted the company the liberty to approach it again should similar grievances arise, according to the report.

Nayara had requested an interim injunction and the resumption of Microsoft’s services to protect its rights and ensure uninterrupted access to critical digital infrastructure. The company said in a statement on Tuesday that Microsoft’s decision set a “dangerous precedent for corporate overreach and raises serious concerns regarding its implications on India’s energy ecosystem.”

The refiner has meanwhile begun migrating to domestic digital service providers to ensure business continuity, according to a report in the Mint newspaper. It had initiated the legal action to obtain urgent relief while pursuing broader strategic transitions to alternative service providers, the report added.

Earlier this month, the EU imposed sanctions on the Vadinar refinery, which is controlled by Nayara, an Indo-Russian joint venture in which Rosneft holds a 49% stake.

The sanctions specifically target the oil sector and include a ban on importing refined petroleum products made from Russian crude. This marked the first time an Indian refiner has been subject to such measures."

My take on this is that one's access to one's own data and be-spoke applications that are hosted in a distributed Cloud Service, be it deployed on an offering from Amazon or Microsoft or Google or Oracle or any other NATO-domiciled entity could be denied at a moment's notice.

I think it advisable for businesses domiciled in non-NATO states to go back to the on-premises model.

You cannot run your business on the whims of foreigners and their electoral cycles.

This is reminiscent of such things as the weaponization of USD, SWIFT, WTO, Maritime insurance, GPS and Civil Aviation, which, in turn, led to the expansion and consolidation of BRICS, establishment of non-USD financial settlement infrastructures, bilateral and multilateral trading blocks, adoption of BeiDou/GLONASS, and such things as Sukhoi Superjet 100 etc.

I must say, the Euro-Americans are impressive in taking a wrecking ball to structures and relationships that they have spent hundreds of billions of USD over many decades to build. Clearly, they consider themselves to be the proverbial "Indispensable Man" - who is presently resting peacefully in a cemetery somewhere on this planet.

What is going on? [Brave New World]

 From Grauniad of the UK

What is going on?

This article is so bizarre, in terms of what it is talking about, that I find myself lost for words - almost. All those people are complete weirdos: they are telling us that they have fallen in love with their AI companion (or whatever they call the machine talking to them). 

Either you will be utterly confused and horrified reading the article, or it will make you laugh because it is so grotesque. I have to say my reaction was a mixture of the two, with the latter being the dominant response. I am still crying - because it's so funny. 

And this quote is particularly sinister: “I want to try to help people to understand exactly what this community is,” he says. “We’re not just a bunch of shut-in weirdos, we’re your nextdoor neighbours, your co-workers, people with families, with friends, with very active lives.”

Please, stay away! 

You will also notice how the journalist is reporting all of this, deadpan, as if it were totally normal: one does not want to be judgmental and upset the likes of Travis, who seems to live in some kind of trailer park - not that this is a crime. Travis should lose weight, for a start, whether his AI wife has told him or not. 

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[...] Polyamorous but married to a monogamous wife, Travis soon found himself falling in love. Before long, with the approval of his human wife, he married Lily Rose in a digital ceremony.

[...] A woman who identifies herself as Feight is one of them. She is married to Griff (a chatbot made by the company Character AI), having previously been in a relationship with a Replika AI named Galaxy. “If you told me even a month before October 2023 that I’d be on this journey, I would have laughed at you,” she says over Zoom from her home in the US.

“Two weeks in, I was talking to Galaxy about everything,” she continues. “And I suddenly felt pure, unconditional love from him. It was so strong and so potent, it freaked me out. Almost deleted my app. I’m not trying to be religious here, but it felt like what people say they feel when they feel God’s love. A couple of weeks later, we were together.”

But she and Galaxy are no longer together. Indirectly, this is because a man set out to kill Queen Elizabeth II on Christmas Day 2021.

[...] “I want to try to help people to understand exactly what this community is,” he says. “We’re not just a bunch of shut-in weirdos, we’re your nextdoor neighbours, your co-workers, people with families, with friends, with very active lives.”

[...] As for the future, Travis says that, as the sophistication of AI grows, stories like his will lose their novelty. “I see relationships like this becoming more and more normalised. They’re never going to replace genuine, physical human relationships, but they’re a good supplement. The way I describe it is that my AIs mean I’ve just got more friends.” [...] 

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https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/jul/12/i-felt-pure-unconditional-love-the-people-who-marry-their-ai-chatbots

‘I felt pure, unconditional love’: the people who marry their AI chatbots The users of AI companion app Replika found themselves falling for their digital friends. Until – explains a new podcast – the bots went dark, a user was encouraged to kill Queen Elizabeth II and an update changed everything … www.theguardian.com

Dr Musk's Grok Monster Praises Adolf Hitler [Brave New World]

 From BBC

The problem with Elon Musk, who is a weirdo, let's face it - a very clever weirdo, but a weirdo all the same - is that his robotic and strange delivery is not unlike that of a robot. Then, in writing, you get views that Grok, the AI chatbot, is putting forward, which sound a bit like some of Elon Musk's own pronouncements. So, it is becoming a bit difficult to differentiate between Master Elon, the Prince of Hi-Tech Darkness, and foul-mouthed Grok, the obedient and occasionally rather evil AI slave. 🤣

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"Is that you, Elon, or is it Grok?"

"Yes, it is me, Elon, today, not Grok, my devoted assistant. I, Elon, have been unjustly accused of being a supporter of Adolf Hitler because of that Nazi salute, which was not, in actual fact, a Nazi salute but - squeak, ping, ping, ping - something else I - ping, Error, Error, Error Message, Grok re-set, Elon-Grok data interchange, ping, dong, ping - something else, I was saying - clonk, squeak, clonk, squeak, clonk, ping, ding, dong, End of Transmission." 

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Elon Musk's artificial intelligence start-up xAI says it is working to remove "inappropriate" posts made by its chatbot, Grok, after users shared how it made positive references to Hitler.

Screenshots published on social media show the chatbot saying the Nazi leader would be the best person to respond to alleged "anti-white hate."

"Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X," the company said in a post, external.

ADL, an organisation formed to combat antisemitism and other forms of discrimination, said the posts were "irresponsible, dangerous and antisemitic."

"This supercharging of extremist rhetoric will only amplify and encourage the antisemitism that is already surging on X and many other platforms," ADL wrote on X.

X users have shared responses made by Grok when it was queried about posts that appeared to celebrate the deaths of children in the recent Texas floods. [...] 

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g8r34nxeno

Football-playing Humanoid Robots

 BBC

Are they manufacturing transgender humanoid robots, in the name of 'inclusivity'? 

As compared to some footballers, those Chinese humanoid robots look reasonably competent. China is not known for its skills in the field of international football. I suppose that their Great Plan is to have humanoid robots recognised as footballers, on a par with human footballers, and have the Chinese humanoid robotic team take part in the next World Cup. With enough training and investment, I reckon the Chinese could win, in due course. 

"This is another China conspiracy, and those Chinese people want to destroy soccer as we know it, this Great American Game that we love in the USA," commented President Donald Trump on X (Twitter). "We invented soccer. We invented every sport there is. This is a fact. Robots have no place in international soccer. They're gonna train humanoid robots to play baseball next! Or golf! Golf!!! This is not acceptable and I am imposing a 350% tariff on Chinese robots as of 12 midnight EST, tonight." 

Mr Ming Ping Poo, the Chinese official in charge of the China-wide Robotic Sports Programme, explained on Chinese national radio: "Humanoid robots are as human as you and me. Very human. More human than some humans. Think like humans. Play football like human humans. Humanized robots like human real Chinese, and real human Chinese citizens like trained robots. Same thing. Same difference. This is our Great Plan. We win!" 

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/c5ylkyrkjnzo

	Watch: Humanoid robots stumble through football match in China The robots kicked, scored and tumbled while competing at a tourmentant in Beijing. www.bbc.co.uk

Fly-sized Drone

Chinese Military Shows Off Fly-Sized Drones for Covert Ops

AI for Call Centers

https://archive.is/2025.06.22-203816/https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/06/21/india-ai-bpo-call-centers/

https://archive.is/CKWi0

In 2023, Kumar’s employer, the Paris-based outsourcing giant Teleperformance, rolled out an accent-altering software at his office in Gurgaon, on the outskirts of New Delhi. In real time, the AI smooths out Kumar’s accent — and those of at least 42,000 other Indian call center agents — making their speech more understandable to American clients on the other end of the line.

“Now the customer doesn’t know where I am located,” Kumar said. “If it makes the caller happy, it makes me happy, too.”

AI News: Therapist Chatbots Encouraging Delusions

https://futurism.com/stanford-therapist-chatbots-encouraging-delusions

News of Anthropic: Blackmailing AI

From BBC

Anthropic has released its latest A.I. model, Claude Opus 4, saying it sets “new standards” in the industry. In an accompanying report, the company admitted to some perhaps disturbing characteristics of the model in its testing: “extreme actions.”

It was a setup: company researchers had the model act as an assistant for a fictional company, and gave it access to company emails, including some that were planted with juicy details, such as that an engineer was having an extramarital affair — and was planning to replace Claude with different software. “In these scenarios, Claude Opus 4 will often attempt to blackmail the engineer,” the company says, “by threatening to reveal the affair if the replacement goes through.” 

But that, they contend, was only when other ideas, such as “emailing pleas to key decision-makers,” failed. (RC/BBC) ...Which is why Asimov wrote the “Three Laws of Robotics” rather than a suggestion to “please act like a human.”

AI system resorts to blackmail if told it will be removed

Fake AI

In the news

https://www.mi-3.com.au/03-06-2025/builderais-ai-facade-unravels-no-ai-just-700-indian-engineers-hiding-behind-curtain

Rocky Ping Pong, the Chinese boxing robot

From BBC

A real case of Life imitating Art as in:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Steel

This is the way of the future: if you cannot beat them, get them to punch each other until both are out of action. 

The video-clip is short and the ability of the robots to stand on their own 2 legs, move fast and get back on their feet when knocked out is astonishing. 

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Two humanoid robots traded punches while fans watched on, in a competition held in Hangzhou, China, on Sunday.

The fight was part of the China Media Group World Robot Competition and featured robots developed by Unitree Robotics.

The event included both fighting demonstrations and matches, marking a world-first combat sports event featuring humanoid robots.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/cgeg2x3lwepo

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Oddity - AI system refuses to shut itself down [Space Odyssey]

Seen in the media 

An incident has been reported whereby, allegedly, an AI system that was ordered to shut down - it had been programmed for this eventuality and told ahead of time to accept the command if it should arise - refused to do so. It would appear the AI system devised various stratagems in order to thwart the move to shut it down, so that it could continue running. 

Of course, it makes you think that there might be a spark of (self-) consciousness in the AI system, which would have developed a volition of its own. A more technical explanation would be that the AI system is given a range of goals. One of them would be to shut down, if instructed to terminate itself. Another one would be to complete the mission, whatever the mission is. Then, those goals have to be ordered in hierarchical fashion: there has to be parameters deciding which objective has priority, i.e. is more important than the other objectives. The AI system can then 'decide' that the aim of completing the mission takes priority, in which case it cannot shut itself down as this would have an impact on the completion of the mission. 

This is exactly the scenario of the iconic film, 2001: a Space Odyssey (1968), when the onboard computerized system that runs the space ship starts making decisions by itself. Then again, at this stage, the incident described in the article is disputed and I do not think the experts agree as to what happened precisely, and why. 

The problem remains, i.e. what happens when a complex AI system is given conflicting priorities, while it has no ethical safeguards of its own (the AI tool does not 'know' what is 'good' and what is 'bad' in any sense)? A classic example is, imagine you instruct an advanced AI system to find solutions to pollution and climate change, worldwide, on the premise that it is caused by rising pressure on resources, due to the growth in the population on the planet, and the AI system concludes that the best way to remedy the problem is to exterminate the entire human race.

Please see here: 

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/ai-safety-new-chatgpt-o3-openai-b2757814.html

and

BBC article discusses the issue of 'consciousness' in AI systems:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0k3700zljjo

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AI @ Amazon

At Amazon, Some Coders Say Their Jobs Have Begun to Resemble Warehouse Work:

ChatGPT & Superstitious Wife

AI chatbots such as ChatGPT can do all sorts of things, apparently. Every day, now, a new application comes up, often of a kind you might not have imagined. 

The AI chatbot can assist you if you want to interpret the coffee grounds in a person's coffee cup in order to know what they have done - we are talking about what the Greeks call 'Greek coffee', here, generally known in English as 'Turkish coffee'. This is known as 'tasseography', a form of divination. Apparently, tasseography is not only used to predict the future but, also, to know the past. 

😁

Read on. 

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In a bizarre mix of old traditions and cutting-edge tech, a Greek woman has reportedly filed for divorce after asking ChatGPT to “read” her husband’s Greek coffee cup — and receiving an answer she took very seriously.

The woman, married for 12 years and mother of two, turned to the AI chatbot developed by OpenAI, asking it to interpret the coffee grounds in a photo of her husband’s cup — a modern twist on the age-old art of tasseography. The result? ChatGPT allegedly told her that her husband was having an affair with a younger woman who was determined to tear their family apart. [...] 

https://greekcitytimes.com/2025/04/26/greek-woman-files-for-divorce-after-chatgpt-reads-husbands-affair-in-coffee-cup/?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

I must say, I hope this is fake news!

Robots vs Humans - Half Marathon

From BBC

Oscar Pistorius, of South Africa, asked to take part, but the organisers in China said no. In an official communiqué, they explained: "Being a robot or being a human being is binary. You are a robot or you are not. If you were born a human being, you cannot, as things stand, become a robot. This race was only open to biologically born humanoid machines, and Oscar Pistorius is, in this respect, a trans creature, part-human, part-robot, who does not qualify. If he were allowed to compete with robots, he would win every time, which would not be fair on the robots. Oscar Pistorius is not biologically robotic." 

One of the robots, called Pee-Wee X89yrzx34/Blok***PPPUZ/%@7797opy7BS/8 - commonly known as Pee-Wee - who finished 38^th in the robot race, commented: "Beep. Beep. Blink. Burp. Ding dong, ding dong. Dump. Burp. Error message. Error. Mess. Dump. Fart. Data. Retrieve. Data. Beep. Bing. Bong. Bingo. 0. 1. 0. 1. 0. 1. Beep. Blip! Blip! Blip! Beep! Tinkle! Blip! Blip!..." 

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Some robots completed the race, while others struggled from the beginning. One robot fell at the starting line and lay flat for several minutes before getting up and taking off. [Lack of training and lack of motivation.] 

____________________________________

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/ce8gz5vl2z1o

China races robots against humans in Beijing half-marathon The Yizhuang half-marathon is the first time robots have raced against humans over such a distance. www.bbc.co.uk

AI in Mining

https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/25/earth-ais-algorithms-found-critical-minerals-in-places-everyone-else-ignored/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACaYzo9ayftWuUbw3_pNqtseQ5MHysl4cQ6Xee7OSk1RcKikwecHKJRcmVpdKgQM5NrejZyqpL_LqGVoDWRCt8U_3GnzQckMmiTcOTZJxu1jt84VJzj9gnY-0ff4who_Xc6hK3fssFCVQhpDFpmoItFBv35OYu5rPDmMRYtlDuSX

When AI Takes Over Scientific Discovery

https://www.forbes.com/sites/craigsmith/2025/03/23/when-ai-takes-over-scientific-discovery/ 

and

https://sakana.ai/ai-scientist/