General AI Crap

The collapse of modern attention (and how to get it back) - Cal Newport - Chris Williamson​

Cal Newport is a computer science professor at Georgetown University, a productivity expert and an author.

Has AI “workslop” damaged our ability to focus? When AI entered the workplace, many thought it would replace knowledge workers. Instead, we’re flooded with AI-generated noise that feels productive but often isn’t.

In this new era, is the real competitive advantage simply the ability to focus?

Expect to learn what the future of work will be with major advancements in AI, what most people’s relationship with productivity is like at the moment, why your ability to focus is becoming increasingly more important, how people should deal with a lot of work messages, if new AI tools actually have been as transformative as they have claimed to be, if AI in the workplace has been a huge disappointment so far and why and much more…
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airborne said:
Can you please post the AI summary, no ways I’m sitting through 1:45hr of that??
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Courtesy of ChatGPT:

The video “The Collapse of Modern Attention (and How to Get It Back)” argues that the widespread feeling of losing the ability to concentrate is not simply a personal failure but the result of multiple systemic factors in modern life. It explains that constant digital stimulation—especially social media platforms designed to maximise engagement—fractures attention and encourages rapid task-switching rather than deep focus. The speaker also highlights additional contributors such as chronic stress, sleep deprivation, environmental factors, and workplace pressures that reward constant responsiveness instead of sustained thinking. Together these forces create an “attention crisis” affecting learning, creativity, and mental wellbeing. The video concludes that improving attention requires not only individual habits (like reducing distractions and protecting focused time) but also broader societal and technological changes that prioritise human concentration over attention-extraction business models.
 
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A lawsuit filed by Nippon Life Insurance Company of America claims ChatGPT misled an Illinois woman into believing it was providing legitimate legal advice, leading her to fire her real attorney and attempt to reopen a previously settled disability case.

The woman reportedly turned to the chatbot after her lawyer told her the settlement could not be undone. According to the complaint, the AI generated legal arguments and cited nonexistent case law, including a fabricated ruling to support its claims.

Acting without a lawyer, she allegedly filed dozens of court documents that were largely drafted with the chatbot’s help while trying to revive the case, despite a judge rejecting her request to reopen it. Nippon says the filings forced it to spend about $300,000 in legal costs and is now suing OpenAI, seeking damages and $10 million in punitive penalties.

The company argues the chatbot effectively engaged in unauthorized legal practice, while OpenAI has called the lawsuit meritless.

reuters
 
www.marca.com

Who is Jessica Foster? The pro-Trump influencer created by AI that made Republicans fall in love

As we move to an era where distinguishing reality from fiction becomes as tricky as ever, a new viral sensation has stolen the internet's attention in just couple of days. In the m
www.marca.com www.marca.com

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Jessica Foster, a woman who has accumulated nearly one million followers on Instagram thanks to her persona as a glamorous military girl and a real patriot who is always surrounded by the world's most powerful leaders.

But, as said, not everything you see online is real: She is a woman generated by AI. Behind her pictures, there is a fake product that has added more fire to the conversation about artificial intelligence and the nature of digital belief in the current era.

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thenextweb.com

OpenAI’s robotics chief quits over the Pentagon deal

Caitlin Kalinowski, OpenAI's head of robotics, resigned over the Pentagon AI deal, saying it lacked guardrails on surveillance and autonomous weapons.
thenextweb.com thenextweb.com
techcrunch.com

OpenAI robotics lead Caitlin Kalinowski quits in response to Pentagon deal | TechCrunch

Hardware executive Caitlin Kalinowski announced today that in response to OpenAI's controversial agreement with the Department of Defense, she’s resigned from her role leading the company's robotics team.
techcrunch.com techcrunch.com
 

AI features in Microsoft 365 are insanely expensive for consumers, and it makes no sense - Neowin​

Microsoft's idea of a Microsoft 365 Family plan: everyone chips in, but only one person gets the fancy AI. Need more Copilot? That'll be another $70. Lovely.

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A few months ago, I published an editorial emphasizing how Microsoft 365 is still my favorite product, but it's getting too expensive. That piece was triggered by me having to pay my annual Microsoft 365 Family subscription fee and realizing that it had been hiked to $129.99, up from the $99.99 I originally paid for it.

Microsoft's justification for this price increase was the addition of AI features, which I argued is ludicrous considering that you only get a few AI "credits" per month, and they can only be leveraged by the subscription owner. But hold on, it gets worse from here, so consider this piece a continuation of my previous editorial.

The way things stand right now is that Microsoft 365 Personal and Family cost $99.99/year and $129.99/year, respectively, and both of these offer excellent value if you're primarily looking to use Office apps and OneDrive cloud storage.

The only difference between them is that Personal is for one user while Family allows sharing the subscription's benefits with up to six people.

For just a difference of $30/year, Family makes a lot of sense if you do want to share it with other people. It also allows you to share the cost, which means that if you share with five other friends who also agree to pay their share, you'll effectively be paying $22/year, a massive reduction in price compared to the $99.99/year Microsoft 365 Personal, at least for the owner.

Do note that AI features cannot be used by other members of the family account, but hey, at $22/year, that's still an awesome value.

But things begin to get messy when you compare Microsoft 365 Family to Microsoft 365 Premium, a relatively new subscription plan that was introduced in October 2025. This Premium subscription costs an eye-watering $199.99/year, which is an insane price bump of $70 compared to Family.

Meanwhile, the only difference between Microsoft 365 Family and Premium in terms of value is that you'll get higher usage caps for some AI services and get access to a few new AI features. For example, the former offers 60 AI credits per month, whereas the latter promises "extensive usage beyond standard credit limits".

Similarly, Copilot Vision and Voice have higher limits too, and you do get exclusive access to some "advanced" AI capabilities.

Meanwhile, Agents, Actions, and the COPILOT function in Excel are only available for Premium subscribers.
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Read the full article at the link below:

 
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A developer, Alexey Grigorev, revealed on X that Anthropic’s Claude Code agent accidentally destroyed the entire production infrastructure of the DataTalks Club course management platform.
During a single Terraform session on February 26, the system erased 2.5 years of student submissions, homework, projects, and leaderboard data.



‘Prompt like a 6-year-old’: Indian-origin founder roasts German developer after Anthropic’s Claude deletes database​

financialexpress.com
 
satanboy said:
View attachment 1891704

A developer, Alexey Grigorev, revealed on X that Anthropic’s Claude Code agent accidentally destroyed the entire production infrastructure of the DataTalks Club course management platform.
During a single Terraform session on February 26, the system erased 2.5 years of student submissions, homework, projects, and leaderboard data.


‘Prompt like a 6-year-old’: Indian-origin founder roasts German developer after Anthropic’s Claude deletes database​

financialexpress.com
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Nah, Claude didn't wipe the DB... a developer/engineer didn't check and allowed Claude to do that.
 
ToxicBunny said:
Nah, Claude didn't wipe the DB... a developer/engineer didn't check and allowed Claude to do that.
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Maybe he should have vibe coded a backup schedule before he vibe coded a database update.
 
Looks like Amazon is backtracking on AI integration in its systems.... ;)

Amazon is holding a mandatory meeting about AI breaking its systems. The official framing is "part of normal business."

The briefing note describes a trend of incidents with "high blast radius" caused by "Gen-AI assisted changes" for which "best practices and safeguards are not yet fully established."

Translation to human language: we gave AI to engineers and things keep breaking?

The response for now? Junior and mid-level engineers can no longer push AI-assisted code without a senior signing off.

AWS spent 13 hours recovering after its own AI coding tool, asked to make some changes, decided instead to delete and recreate the environment (the software equivalent of fixing a leaky tap by knocking down the wall).

Amazon called that an "extremely limited event" (the affected tool served customers in mainland China).
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https://twitter.com/x/status/2031257644724342957
 

After outages, Amazon to make senior engineers sign off on AI-assisted changes​


Amazon’s ecommerce business has summoned a large group of engineers to a meeting on Tuesday for a “deep dive” into a spate of outages, including incidents tied to the use of AI coding tools.

The online retail giant said there had been a “trend of incidents” in recent months, characterized by a “high blast radius” and “Gen-AI assisted changes” among other factors, according to a briefing note for the meeting seen by the FT.

Under “contributing factors” the note included “novel GenAI usage for which best practices and safeguards are not yet fully established.”

“Folks, as you likely know, the availability of the site and related infrastructure has not been good recently,” Dave Treadwell, a senior vice-president at the group, told employees in an email, also seen by the FT.

arstechnica.com

After outages, Amazon to make senior engineers sign off on AI-assisted changes

AWS has suffered at least two incidents linked to the use of AI coding assistants.
arstechnica.com arstechnica.com
 
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