The Hallucination HQ
AI news that's actually fun to read — 2026-05-27
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Today's Hallucination HQGoogle's New Search: Now With 30% More Fleeing Users
Google replaced its blue links with AI agents at I/O 2026, apparently deciding that what users really wanted was answers they didn't ask for, delivered with confidence. The backlash was immediate. DuckDuckGo saw a 30% spike in app installs — which, for a search engine whose entire pitch is "we're not Google," is arguably the most effective marketing campaign they never had to run.Source: TechCrunch
The Vatican's AI Problem Is Theologically Fascinating
Pope Leo XIV's new encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, warns of AI's dangers to humanity — which is fine, except analysis posted on LessWrong suggests between 40% and 100% of certain paragraphs may have been written by AI itself. To be fair, the irony is so perfectly constructed it almost reads like a parable. The Vatican has not commented, presumably because there is no prayer long enough for this particular situation.Source: The Verge
A Flaw in 325 Million Downloads — Nothing to Worry About, Obviously
Researchers discovered "BadHost," a critical vulnerability hiding in Starlette, an open-source web framework downloaded 325 million times per week and quietly embedded in a staggering number of AI agent systems. The flaw could allow attackers to hijack those agents entirely. Starlette is so foundational to modern AI infrastructure that finding a hole in it is less like discovering a leak and more like discovering the pipe is the leak.Source: Ars Technica
Startup Makes Gig Workers Walk Around in Camera Hats So Robots Can Learn to Walk Around
Human Archive — founded by researchers from UC Berkeley and Stanford, in case you needed the pedigree — is paying gig workers in India to wear camera-equipped caps and sensor devices, harvesting the kind of real-world physical movement data that robotics labs desperately need. It is, in essence, outsourcing embodied human experience. Descartes said I think therefore I am. Human Archive says you walk, therefore our robot might eventually manage stairs.Source: TechCrunch
AI Will Destroy All Jobs (Terms and Conditions Apply)
MIT Technology Review has done the unglamorous work of actually checking whether AI is gutting white-collar employment — and the answer, so far, is: not really, not yet, and possibly not how anyone predicted. Recent tech layoffs at firms like Meta and Coinbase make for alarming headlines, but the broader labour data remains stubbornly uncooperative with the narrative. It turns out "the robots are coming for your job" is, at present, somewhat more hypothesis than fact.Source: MIT Technology Review
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As always, we remain cautiously optimistic — emphasis on the caution.
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