Interesting Links for 10-05-2025

[andrewducker]

1. British Property Management Firms Are Helping Russians Avoid Sanctions

(tags:uk russia OhForFucksSake )

2. Amazon's warehose robots can now stow items faster than most humans

(tags:robots amazon )

3. Trans Labour councillor quits and accuses Starmer of 'throwing transgender people under a bus'

(tags:transgender lgbt labour )

4. Why the rich paid less tax in the 1970s - despite 98% tax rates

(tags:tax uk history )

5. "Letting AI make up cases" hits the UK legal system

(tags:law ai fraud OhForFucksSake uk )

6. The House of Lords wants opinions from autistic people (diagnosed or undiagnosed), or people who care for them.

(tags:autism houseoflords )

7. Scientists turn lead into gold at the LHC!

(tags:materials gold lead )

8. Always, always check the answers the AI gives you.

(tags:comic genocide funny ai )

9. Video Essay Condescendingly Reads Wikipedia at You

(tags:funny satire videos )

10. American men who refer to themselves as 'moderate' or 'centrist' score basically the same on values and opinions as people who identify themselves as 'conservative'

(tags:USA politics )

Comments

[simont]

Of course, #8 is an older joke than the modern notion of "AI", and indeed doesn't need AI at all. Even traditional optimisation techniques like gradient descent, simulated annealing or genetic algorithms will do well at finding the outcome you didn't at all want but your cost function forgot to rule it out!

[andrewducker]

I believe that before that one had to go to a genie or monkey's paw to get that kind of answer!

[simont]

I mean you can understand the genies being wilfully unhelpful. They must have been so sick of every smartarse who picked up a lamp saying "AHA I wish for a BAJILLION EXTRA WISHES bet I'm the first person ever to think of that."

[andrewducker]

And are very very grumpy for having such a crick in the neck.