Today's Hallucination HQThe Orb Comes for Your Love LifeSam Altman's World — the project that scans your eyeballs to confirm you're a human being, which feels like something you shouldn't need to confirm — is expanding. New partnerships are rolling out, with Tinder apparently first in line. The logic is sound enough: dating apps are catastrophically full of bots, and World wants to fix that. Whether users will queue to have their irises inspected before swiping right is, let's say, an open question. Source: TechCrunch
A Shoe Company Discovered the Magic WordsAllbirds — makers of trainers, not software — announced it was pivoting to AI and watched its stock price septuple in short order. Seven times. For a shoe company. The Verge's podcast used this as a launching pad to ask whether we've hit peak AI hype, which is a fair question to ask when orthopedic footwear can conjure a market rally simply by saying the right two letters. The answer, based on available evidence, is: not quite yet, unfortunately. Source: The Verge
More Code, Worse Code, Higher Bill — Congratulations"Tokenmaxxing" is what happens when developers instruct AI models to generate as much code as possible per prompt — maximising output, minimising thought. New research suggests this is producing vast quantities of expensive, error-prone code that then requires substantial human effort to fix. So developers are working harder to clean up the mess that was supposed to save them work. The AI is, to its credit, extremely productive. It's just not being productive at the right thing. Source: TechCrunch
Val Kilmer, Digitally RecalledA trailer for As Deep as the Grave features an AI-generated version of the late Val Kilmer, and the internet has reacted with the warmth typically reserved for cold callers. Filmmakers insist the production is ethical, noting they worked with Kilmer before his death and have his estate's involvement. "Terrifying" is the word circulating on social media, which is doing the film no harm commercially. Whether it's a touching tribute or an unsettling precedent probably depends on which trailer you watched and how much wine you'd had. Source: ABC News Australia
Five Trillion Dollars, Best of Luck to AllJim Zelter, president of Apollo Global Management — a firm that manages roughly $700 billion in assets, so not given to casual estimates — has warned that the AI infrastructure spending boom may not actually reward investors. US data centres alone could demand $5 to $6 trillion over the next five years. The concern isn't that the technology won't work. It's that the returns may arrive late, unevenly, or perhaps for someone other than the people writing the cheques. A relatable experience, really. Source: Business Insider
As ever, the machines are learning. It's the economics that remain confused.
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