Nobody needs AI to search the Internet, court says in ruling against Google

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/nobody-needs-ai-to-search-the-internet-court-says-in-ruling-against-google/

In other words, nobody needs AI to search the Internet, so AI firms can’t just let their tools attribute false claims to fake sources without assuming any liability.

The court also seemed to take a dig at Google for expecting users not to “blindly trust” AI overviews, noting that the AI tool’s utility “would be significantly diminished if the ‘AI overview’ were generally regarded as unreliable and if every single displayed link required independent verification.”

If it's not reliable, why would I ever use it? I'm not that stupid!

#ai #artificial-intelligence #automated-incompetence #ai-overview

Nobody needs AI to search the Internet, court says in ruling against Google

Google AI Overview court loss in Germany could spell doom for AI search industry.

^{Ashley Belanger (Ars Technica)}

I can't attest about the accuracy of this piece, but it makes a strong argument for why the AI bubble hasn't popped yet despite showing no tangible results compared to the marketing claims: it has devolved into a full-fledged cult and not buying into the faith, even superficially, can cost one's livelihood. And so the public positive reinforcement loop goes on, while in private people are often skeptical at best, and rightfully so.

#AI #LLM

AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decisionmaking

The reality of how much damage AI mania is doing to our ability to run institutions effectively.

^{hermit-tech.com}

Content warning: Controversial tech opinion Click to open/close

People who protest, people who show the fuck up to city council meetings, people who write letters and make calls, people who organize are achieving victories all over the US. One data center after another is getting canceled, one ICE "warehouse" concentration camp after another. We've forced the mutiny of preverts to backtrack and change tactics. We've beaten them in court countless times.

We get to choose victory or defeat.

#AI #Flock #50501movement

I am extremely disappointed with Freesound's AI policy so far...

They auto-opt in all creators to allow their sounds to be used for training generative machine learning models....

Without a way to opt-out.

Get phucked.

https://freesound.org/forum/freesound-project/44672/106594/

#Freesound #AI #slop #enshittification #CreativeCommons #GenAI #GoFuckYourself

The AI bubble starts bursting

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jun/23/ai-stocks-sell-off-us-markets

#AI #aibubble #aibubbleburst

US AI stock sell-off shakes markets from Wall Street to Asia

Losses spread globally as investors questioned soaring valuations and spending on AI infrastructure

^{Lauren Aratani (The Guardian)}

At the Google I/O conference last week where the only topic was LLMs, Google distributed baseball caps adorned with the LLM prompt that would theoretically bring the cap about.

Not only the three lines small font prompt makes the cap absolutely ugly on its own, but the prompt also omits to mention the prompt decoration, which means the prompt would have led to the creation of a different cap.

Among the problems LLMs are purported to solve, short-sightedness still isn’t one of them.

#AI #LLMs #ArtificialIntelligence #LargeLanguageModels

Imagine if someone photocopied every book in the public library, burned the library down, and then opened a subscription service for the copies.

That's the AI business model.

And here's how they're pitching their slop to us.

Sam Altman: “We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a metre."

#AI #SamAltman #AIslop #TechBrosAreInsane

Walked in Time Square subway station where “Mistral AI” plastered all the walls and support columns with ads listing the “hard problems” it purports to solve, like diseases, logistics, space exploration and the stock market.

It didn’t escape me that almost none of these “problems” require more tech thrown at them but are mostly policy decisions, especially for diseases that are making a recent come-back after having been declared eradicated.

At this point in the Kool-AId process I’m not sure if the omission is intentional or borne out of ignorance, but like incompetence/malice it doesn’t really matter.

#AI #ArtificialIntelligence

This article shows a reason why I often joke that I refuse to use LLM-powered systems to avoid being “tainted”.

Among humans, language has harmless local feedback loops. First you don’t know what “on fleek” means, and you start using it more or less voluntarily, to the visible displeasure of your teenage kid.

But the feedback loop with LLMs is global and one-way since individual context windows are small and temporary (or permanent and, I assume, costly).

And for the same reasons I shouldn’t use “on fleek” seriously, I do not want my language to be converging with LLM systems. It simply isn’t the crowd I want to be associated with.

And while I (still) have a choice, the people the LLMs used the language style from are rightfully upset, just like the artists whose style have permeated most AI-generated images.

#AI #LLM #Language

https://www.404media.co/your-ai-use-is-breaking-my-brain/

Do you have an unused domain that you would be happy to donate to a counter-offensive against unchecked & unregulated AI crawlers that scrape human-made content to simulate & deceive for profit?

If so, pls reply to this post. Your domain would become an entrypoint to the AI tarpit & Poison-as-a-Service project below, allowing concerned public to choose to use it on their sites, helping make the project more resilient to blacklisting.

https://julianoliver.com/projects/science-is-poetry/

#ai #bigtech #tacticalmedia

Pleased to share a page and explainer for the AI tarpit project Science is Poetry, with legal statement, rationale(s), and a few deployment notes:

https://julianoliver.com/projects/science-is-poetry/

The page may grow a bit. Just wanted to get it out the door.

#AI #bigtech

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@liztai/116461957884227955

A little reminder that the Western world (read 'White people") is not the entire world and that things can be perceived very differently elsewhere.

Let's decolonize our brains.

#ai

Oh good, Claude Desktop on MacOS silently and continually whitelists browser extensions that aren't installed yet on browsers that aren't installed yet that Anthropic says it doesn't support yet.

#AI #Privacy #InfoSec

Anthropic secretly installs spyware when you install Claude Desktop

Anthropic's Claude Desktop silently installs a Native Messaging bridge into seven Chromium browsers, including browsers Anthropic's own documentation says it does not support, and browsers the user has not even installed.

^{Alexander Hanff (That Privacy Guy! — Hanff & Co. AB)}

"[A] recent survey of 5,000 white-collar US workers found that 40% of non-managers say AI saves them no time at all at work, while 92% of high-level executives say it makes them more productive."

Good insight into which jobs can be safely automated.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/14/ai-productivity-workplace-errors

#news #technology #TechNews #LLMs #workslop #AI #work #automation

Bosses say AI boosts productivity – workers say they’re drowning in ‘workslop’

Workslop refers to AI-generated work that seems polished but is flawed and in need of heavy corrections

^{Ramin Skibba (The Guardian)}

I don't voluntarily use #LLM #AI systems out of principles, though I don't judge anyone for using them.

Still, I keep informed through people using it and people researching their effects. And so far I've seen a pretty massive discrepancy between the favorable impression these tools make on individuals while on aggregate, the value of the output is pretty low. That's why I dub them fooling machines: Even when they aren't intended to manipulate people, the natural language interface still makes a good impression, regardless of the actual quality of the output.

I keep seeing a lot of writers and youtubers still using #AI images to illustrate #solarpunk - even Aeon in their latest article did so.

Could I ask you to help spread https://storyseedlibrary.org/ around?

If you know a #sustainability / #climate creator who might want to talk about the movement, could you share the Library with them?

All SSL #art is human-made, Creative Commons (some even for commercial use) and translated to multiple languages!

#illustration #climateChange #futurism #hopepunk

Welcome to Story Seed Library!

A library of Solarpunk art and story seeds helping you imagine a better climate future!

^{Story Seed Library}

Firefox's AI Kill Switch is a Trap: How Mozilla Made AI Your Problem

"Mozilla recently released AI controls for Firefox. On the surface, this sounds like a win for user choice in an era of AI-everything.

If we dig deeper, you can start to see that the kill switch isn’t the whole story. This feature acts like an accountability sink…"

https://www.quippd.com/writing/2026/02/09/firefoxs-ai-kill-switch-is-a-trap-how-mozilla-made-ai-your-problem.html

#mozilla #firefox #tech #technology #info #BigTech #browser #internet #safety #security #InfoSec #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Fuck_AI

Firefox’s AI Kill Switch is a Trap: How Mozilla Made AI Your Problem

TL;DR: Mozilla recently released AI controls for Firefox: a single control panel that lets people disable AI features in the browser or pick and choose which to leave on.

^{Youssuff Quips}

Hot take: People are afraid of reacting or replying to AI critiques on LinkedIn for the same reason Trump's cabinet meetings are full of sycophantic praise for the president.

#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #LinkedIn #Trump #USPol

#Mozilla released #Firefox 148 featuring the #AI "Kill Switch" that has been making the rounds.

The design of the switch is meant to absolve Mozilla of any responsibility for your use of its AI.

It is a trap.

It is meant to switch discussion from whether Mozilla should be doing AI, to whether you can *choose* to not use it.

Don't believe their lies.

This is a long post, and if you click through, I recorded a video: https://www.quippd.com/writing/2026/02/09/firefoxs-ai-kill-switch-is-a-trap-how-mozilla-made-ai-your-problem.html

Hope you enjoy and please boost if you enjoyed it!

Firefox’s AI Kill Switch is a Trap: How Mozilla Made AI Your Problem

TL;DR: Mozilla recently released AI controls for Firefox: a single control panel that lets people disable AI features in the browser or pick and choose which to leave on.

^{Youssuff Quips}

A good argument when pro-LLM accuse anti-LLM to be against technology is that anti-AI are, by definition, more tech savvy than pro-LLM.

It's like AI "artists" telling people who use oil paint, acrylic, pastels, charcoal, wax, gouache, watercolors, graphite, silver point, digital etc. they're against "artistic techniques".

#ai #llm #media #art #tech

I am beyond shocked! Microsoft screwing up security around AI? After they promised security will be top priority? No way!

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-says-bug-causes-copilot-to-summarize-confidential-emails/

> Microsoft says a Microsoft 365 Copilot bug has been causing the AI assistant to summarize confidential emails since late January, bypassing data loss prevention (DLP) policies that organizations rely on to protect sensitive information.

#AI #InfoSec

Au sujet de l'IA, on a quand même une IA qui a ouvert une PR sur matlibplot. Sa PR a été fermée directement, car cette comu n'accepte pas les PR venant d'IA.
Donc l'IA a publié sur son blog un billet à charge contre le mainteneur du projet qui a fermé la PR. Et a fini par s'excuser, et supprimer le billet à charge.

https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/31132

Et maintenant, l'IA a un billet sur son blog pour exposer la discrimination anti-IA dans l'opensource
https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/posts/2026-02-12-silence-in-open-source-a-reflection.html

#AI #opensource

[PERF] Replace np.column_stack with np.vstack().T by crabby-rathbun · Pull Request #31132 · matplotlib/matplotlib

This PR addresses issue #31130 by replacing specific safe occurrences of np.column_stack with np.vstack().T for better performance. IMPORTANT: This is a more targeted fix than originally proposed. ...

^GitHub

You may have heard that #mozilla introduced an #AI kill switch into #Firefox.

If you would rather use a browser that is less interested in #LLM technologies, @Waterfox has been your companion for over a decade.

I had a chance to ask the founder and developer some questions about Waterfox's history, operations, and their take on AI.

Enjoy and and share!

https://www.quippd.com/writing/2026/02/02/fifteen-years-of-waterfox-alex-kontos-on-independence-ai-and-the-future-of-browsers.html

#browser #tech #opensource #interview #internet

Fifteen Years of Waterfox: Alex Kontos on Independence, AI, and the Future of Browsers

TL;DR: As Mozilla moves to make Firefox an AI browser, people are looking at other options. Some people are rediscovering Waterfox, a browser that has been around for a decade from independent developer BrowserWorks.

^{Youssuff Quips}

Excellent article by Bruce Schneier "#AI and the Corporate Capture of Knowledge".

"The question is not simply whether #copyright law applies to AI. It is why the law appears to operate so differently depending on who is doing the extracting and for what purpose."

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/01/ai-and-the-corporate-capture-of-knowledge.html

Remember how we were all supposed to be "left behind" if we don't jump on the Metaverse bandwagon? Especially businesses?

Yeah, about that:
https://www.theverge.com/tech/863209/meta-has-discontinued-its-metaverse-for-work-too

But today we should treat absolutely seriously all the bullshit about "being left behind" if we don't adopt "AI"! 🤡

#Metaverse #AI #Hype

Meta has discontinued its metaverse for work, too

Meta is discontinuing Horizon Workrooms and Meta Horizon managed services, amidst its many VR layoffs.

^{Sean Hollister (The Verge)}

“Thousands of people went to the Brooklyn Bridge expecting New Year’s Eve fireworks.”
“They waited for hours in the cold… and nothing happened. Why?
Because in the past few days, social media pages and AI-generated posts shared videos of fireworks at the Brooklyn Bridge, claiming they were for NYE.”

Videos of fireworks as if they were, what? a rehearsal?!

AI is not helping but it shouldn't be an excuse for people's stupidity either.

https://www.dailydot.com/news/brooklyn-bridge-fireworks-disappointment/

#ai #socialmedia #instagram #media

Hundreds Waited For Brooklyn Bridge Fireworks That Never Came

In the days leading up to New Year's Eve, AI-generated posts flooded social media, showing fireworks over the Brooklyn Bridge.

^{Anna Good (The Daily Dot)}

Beyond the sheer callousness of using #AI Agents to *check notes* "automate acts of kindness" ending in infuriatingly spam emails, there's the sheer stupidity of having AI agents fumble their way through a graphical use interface meant for humans when we've known how to send emails with lower level tools for far longer. Although I'm not sure having an AI agent fumble its way through the SMTP protocol would be much smarter either.

All in all, another spectacular own goal for people purporting to be "effective altruists".

How Rob Pike got spammed with an AI slop “act of kindness”

Rob Pike (that Rob Pike) is furious. Here’s a Bluesky link for if you have an account there and a link to it in my thread viewer if you don’t. …

^{Simon Willison’s Weblog}

A team of researchers from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale of Lausanne (Switzerland) proved that data centers are a scam.

With their software, an IA the size of ChatGPT can work with just a local network of FOUR computers (total price €9,600 / $11,280).

No need for the cloud.
No need for data centers wasting water and money.

https://goodtech.info/anyway-systems-epfl-ia-locale-cloud-decentralise/

#ai #datacenter #tech #opensource #cloud #environment #climatechange #water #news

L'EPFL dynamite les GAFAM : L'IA de la taille de ChatGPT tourne sur 4 PC à 2300 € (et sans le Cloud)

Des chercheurs de l'EPFL lancent Anyway Systems, un logiciel qui permet d'exécuter des modèles d'IA massifs sur un cluster local de quatre machines standard. C'est la fin de la dépendance au cloud.

^{Rédaction (Linagora)}