General AI Crap

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Starbucks has ended an AI-powered inventory system just nine months after rolling it out across 11,300 company-operated stores in the U.S.

The tool, called Automated Counting, used iPad cameras to identify products and was meant to reduce inventory checks from about an hour to 10–12 minutes.

Workers said it often misidentified milk, syrups and coffee bags, duplicated items reflected in refrigerators and lost progress when internet connections failed.

Some stores also received excess food and supplies because of inaccurate counts.

Starbucks said it retired the system after listening to employee feedback and reviewing its performance.
 

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The AI ‘tokenmaxxing’ corporate fad is fading as workplaces look to cut costs​


Silicon Valley executives were promoting high token consumption as a signal of high-performing employees.

A corporate fad of “tokenmaxxing” on artificial intelligence technology is hitting its limits as workplaces throwing AI at everything are seeing the costs rise without a similar spike in productivity.

What started as tech industry-fueled springtime hype over squeezing as much AI-generated work as possible out of products like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude has shifted to a summertime backlash.

“It’s very easy to create something you don’t need with AI,” said Vincent Gusdorf, head of AI analytics at Moody’s Ratings and author of a new report that recommends a more disciplined approach.

“Tokenmaxxing” refers to maximizing usage of tokens—the building blocks of generative AI that correspond to small pieces of text that an AI system reads or writes. Each token is about three-quarters of a word. And there’s typically a limit to how many you can use, with pricier versions of AI products offering higher caps.

“As bills started to pile in, people realized that those new tools are quite expensive and you need to use them wisely,” Gusdorf said.
 
satanboy said:
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Starbucks has ended an AI-powered inventory system just nine months after rolling it out across 11,300 company-operated stores in the U.S.

The tool, called Automated Counting, used iPad cameras to identify products and was meant to reduce inventory checks from about an hour to 10–12 minutes.

Workers said it often misidentified milk, syrups and coffee bags, duplicated items reflected in refrigerators and lost progress when internet connections failed.

Some stores also received excess food and supplies because of inaccurate counts.

Starbucks said it retired the system after listening to employee feedback and reviewing its performance.
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There is nothing AI about identifying objects. Been doing this for decades already using haar cascade models and others. Just slapping an AI label on something does not make it AI.
 
purrr said:
There is nothing AI about identifying objects. Been doing this for decades already using haar cascade models and others. Just slapping an AI label on something does not make it AI.
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Sure, but also very possible that AI is being used to (try) enhance existing models & methods.
 
tetrasect said:
haar cascade models are AI models
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Then everything is an AI model. I actually have done haar casade model training and used them extensively. I would not call that AI. It's just object recognition.
 
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Tim Sweeney has argued that resistance to AI is becoming unsustainable, calling the technology a "generational productivity tool" that will reshape every industry.

The Epic Games CEO claimed that companies influenced by "AI haters" risk becoming "entirely unviable" as competitors use AI to build better products faster. Reflecting on his own programming journey from 6502 assembly to modern languages like Verse, Sweeney said AI is simply the next step in helping developers focus on intent rather than low-level implementation.

"This is the beginning of the end of the AI luddite movement and it's long overdue," Sweeney wrote.

His remarks came in response to recent comments from Linus Torvalds, who said Linux is "not one of those anti-AI projects" and described AI as a useful development tool.
wccftech.com
 
satanboy said:
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Tim Sweeney has argued that resistance to AI is becoming unsustainable, calling the technology a "generational productivity tool" that will reshape every industry.

The Epic Games CEO claimed that companies influenced by "AI haters" risk becoming "entirely unviable" as competitors use AI to build better products faster. Reflecting on his own programming journey from 6502 assembly to modern languages like Verse, Sweeney said AI is simply the next step in helping developers focus on intent rather than low-level implementation.

"This is the beginning of the end of the AI luddite movement and it's long overdue," Sweeney wrote.

His remarks came in response to recent comments from Linus Torvalds, who said Linux is "not one of those anti-AI projects" and described AI as a useful development tool.
wccftech.com
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Mr Sweeney my friend, you're a CEO, so of course all that matters to you is the dashboard, and productivity, bums on seats, and the bottom line. AI makes it possible for you to fire more people, and make those who remain, work harder than shoe gluers in a Chinese sweatshop.

FUKK YOU MAN.
 
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It may already feel like a distant memory, but Cambridge Analytica was once implicated in one of the biggest social media scandals in history.

Back in March 2018, journalists at The Observer and The New York Times revealed that the little-known data analytics firm had improperly harvested the Facebook data of tens of millions of users without their consent.

Owned by billionaire Robert Mercer and operated by Donald Trump’s die-hard operative Steve Bannon, Cambridge Analytica had used the massive trove of personal data to target voters with attacks against Hillary Clinton, Trump’s rival in the 2016 presidential election.

Executives at the company were even caught bragging that their underhanded methods had pushed Trump into office.

The explosive incident forced a mass reckoning over privacy and surveillance in the social media age. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was called to testify before Congress, and his company’s reputation has never fully recovered.

Cambridge Analytica itself shut down just months after the revelations.

Fast forward to today, though, and Cambridge Analytica has somehow returned. And its resurrection comes in an almost comically 2026 way: CambridgeAnalytica.org, the firm’s former website, is now an AI-powered content farm.

Rebranded as CA Privacy Watch, the site’s new owners are using the husk of the defunct data company’s domain to churn out content about data, privacy, AI, and — in a puzzling departure from theme — pop psychology.

The articles it publishes are riddled with extensive plagiarism, we found, and it’s used at least one entirely fake writer to byline them.

This zombie version of Cambridge Analytica is designed to look and feel like a news site. On an “About Us” page, it claims to “examine how data, algorithms, and modern technologies shape public life, influence human behavior, and redefine power in the digital age” by way of “in-depth reporting and clear explanations.”

It also explicitly promised that “all articles are written and edited by human journalists and researchers,” and that it does “not publish AI-generated or automated articles without full editorial review.”

A disclaimer in the site’s footer, meanwhile, notes that the new site is “not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the former Cambridge Analytica Ltd or any of its successors.”

But the closer you look, the more the site’s Potemkin veneer unravels.
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Read the full article at the link below:

futurism.com

Someone Has Brought Cambridge Analytica Back as a Zombie Slop Farm

Cambridge Analytica has returned, in a very 2026 way: CambridgeAnalytica.org is now an AI-powered content farm.
futurism.com futurism.com
 
This one's especially directed at @FiestaST ... ;)

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Perhaps more so than any other social media platform, LinkedIn has been inundated with lazy AI-generated brainrot content. It has become the AI slop “punching bag,” a repository of painful engagement bait being spewed out by an army of bots who seem at times to mainly be lobbing business platitudes at one another.

Just last week, Substack CEO Chris Best took aim at the Microsoft-owned career site when he announced the launch of an AI detector feature “because we’re sick of slop and we don’t want Substack to turn into LinkedIn.”

According to AI detection company Pangram, a shocking two thirds of LinkedIn posts are showing up as being AI generated by users of its browser extension. More than 40 percent of longform posts were flagged as “fully AI-generated,” according to the company.

Credit where credit’s due: LinkedIn has seemingly caught on to the abysmal state of its service, quietly introducing a new button that allows users to flag a post that “seems like AI slop.”

“Genuinely thought it was a joke until I clicked on a few posts,” one user wrote in a Bluesky post after discovering the feature.

It’s a baffling move, but probably well intentioned. Whether LinkedIn will act on what will likely be a massive influx of flagged posts remains to be seen, however. Once flagged, the post becomes hidden to the user, but it’s unclear whether somebody at LinkedIn will review it.

As 404 Media points out, the inclusion of the new button is particularly surprising, because LinkedIn is simultaneously encouraging users to generate AI slop through an AI-powered writing assistant.

“LinkedIn’s AI-powered writing assistant will share personalized suggestions for your profile, to help you stand out and get noticed,” the company’s website reads. “The AI-powered suggestions are personalized based on your profile information and incorporate insights from analyzing millions of profiles.”

The company also started scraping user data without permission to train so-called AI “coworkers” last year, a dubious experiment that was shut down almost immediately.

It’s clear that the subject of AI is proving divisive in the LinkedIn c-suite. In a May 20 update, LinkedIn promised that it was looking to keep “conversations real” by keeping “AI slop” at bay.

“When AI is overused, especially at scale and in an automated way, it dilutes the valuable insights that real human conversations can spark,” LinkedIn executive editor Laura Lorenzetti wrote in the update. “It’s ok to use AI to help you write, but your posts and comments need to represent your voice and your perspectives. The ultimate value comes from the human behind the tool.”

To allegedly “strengthen authenticity,” LinkedIn is working on “technology systems” that “have been trained to recognize signals of AI slop,” according to Lorenzetti.

Judging by the latest news, it’s looking to leverage its own frustrated user base to stop LinkedIn from drowning in a bot-infested sea of slop. Only time will tell if it’s too late.
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futurism.com

LinkedIn Adds Button on Every Post to Report "Seems Like AI Slop," Which Is Definitely Going to Get a Real Workout

LinkedIn has caught on to the abysmal state of its website, adding a new button that allows users to flag a post that "seems like AI slop."
futurism.com futurism.com
 
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