Friday Wrap: Volume Two
The second weekly round up of AI and other tech news stories from the past seven days.
Welcome back for the second of my weekly round-ups. Against all the odds, I've managed to keep to the posting schedule for two successive weeks. Will I make it to three weeks? Check your email seven days from now to find out!
LLMs are not people
There's something 0ut large language models that makes people start talking about them as if they were sentient beings. The language of "reasoning", "thinking" and even "hallucinating" all imply a certain level of consciousness that just isn't backed up by the facts. Halvar Flake breaks it all down in A non-anthropomorphized view of LLMs
AI's not worth the money to its users
I've written before about the level to which AI is subsidised by venture capital and should really cost the end user much more money. Over at Pivot To AI, David Gerard discusses recent survey results that show only 3% of US AI users are willing to pay a penny for it.
How to make money with AI
Despite the claims of AI-proponents that their new products will supercharge productivity, a lot of businesses are find that it actually creates more work and they need to pay someone to come in and fix the AI-produced content. BBC News talks to some of the people making money mending the output of the AI sausage machine.
Twitter CEO quits; Grok AI to blame?
As has been widely reported, the CEO of Twitter/X, Linda Yaccarino, has quit after two years in the role. What is unclear is what exactly pushed her over the edge. One possibility is that she finally tired of defending the indefensible as her resignation came just one day after the platform's Grok AI posted pro-Nazi and antisemitic content.
Ransomware Arrests
In the UK, four people have been arrested in connection with ransomware attacks on large retailers including Marks and Spencer, and Co-Op. Both stores suffered severe disruption to their bricks-and-mortar, as well as online, activities.
