What a depressing read.

Some important observations in here.

Dumb, indefensible war gets dumber and more indefensible.

Masnick’s fierce critique is all the more notable for how public he is that AI is good for some things, pushing back against grumpier folks (e.g., me).

Check this paragraph out, though:

What we actually have here is a marketing operation that used AI to automate the production of deceptive advertising at a scale and speed that would have been harder to achieve otherwise. Snake oil salesmen have existed forever. What AI gave Matthew Gallagher (and, I guess, his affiliates) was the ability to crank out fake doctors, fabricated testimonials, and deepfaked before-and-after photos faster than any human team could — and to do it cheap enough that a guy with $20,000 and no morals could build it from his house. That’s the actual AI story the Times should have written.

Ugh, this sucks.

So much about this that I don’t like. The article makes a good case that there may be good reasons to ease up on nuclear power regulations, but the language of AI and VCs suggests to me that those good reasons aren’t the top priority.

Terrifying stuff.

Good observations here. My respect for Anthropic was solely based on their seeming willingness to stand up for something, because otherwise, I have a lot of issues wirh them. This groveling makes that respect disappear.

Masnick—who is far keener on the idea of generative AI than I will ever be—is unsparing in his critique of OpenAI here, and it’s worth a read.

Good rage in this post.

The whole post is good, but the first two paragraphs hit on something particularly important.

Some good observations worth bookmarking.

Depressing read but very well put.

Not impressed with Substack, and Masnick does a good job of explaining why.

Kind of hate that we have to ask the question in this headline!

I’ve been (link)blogging recently about needing to talk about epistemology when we talk about generative AI. I know that in at least one case, I’ve evoked the generation of scientific knowledge as a counterexample to the “just the facts, ma’am” naïve epistemology promoted by AI and its supporters. To use generative AI to review papers—and to try to get around peer review—feels particularly dangerous to me.

There’s a genre of news story that I actively avoid following the discourse on but end up reading about once Mike Masnick writes on it, and then I get angry with everyone else. This fits nicely in that genre.

Finally read the full quote from Noem and it’s so bad. Scary times.

After seeing a few headlines, this is the first thing I’ve read on this fiasco. What a mess.

Interesting point from Masnick.

I finally read about the whole tattoo thing. It’s so dumb that it makes me angry. I don’t want to think about it, but I’m bookmarking it because if I don’t, my brain will refuse to remember that Donald Trump made such a dumb assertion. It will get drowned out by so many other dumb things.

Solid post with damning critiques.

I appreciate Masnick’s roundup of all the stupid things going on re: tariffs.

Masnick’s writing has never struck me as inflammatory or rushed. If he’s using this language, we should all be worried.

I soured on Section 230 for a bit, but I came back and largely because of arguments like this one.

As usual, lots to like in this post from Mike Masnick.