Today's Hallucination HQThe App Store Is Having a Moment, and AI Probably Built Half of It
New data from Appfigures reveals a notable surge in app launches this year, with AI development tools widely credited for making it easier — and cheaper — to ship software. More developers building more apps faster is either wonderful news for consumers or a reliable path to downloading seventeen nearly identical flashlight apps. History suggests it'll be both. The app economy, once declared dead, has apparently been quietly doing press-ups.
Source: TechCrunch
One Professor's Solution to AI Essays: Make Typing Hurt Again
A Colorado college instructor has introduced typewriters into his classroom to prevent students from outsourcing their essays to AI — which is a bold strategy, essentially fighting software with furniture. Students must compose in real time, on physical machines that cannot autocomplete, hallucinate, or pretend to have read the book. Whether this teaches critical thinking or simply a deep personal hatred of correction fluid remains to be seen.
Source: Hacker News
Tesla's Robotaxi Empire Now Controls an Alarming Percentage of Texas
Tesla has expanded its driverless taxi service to Dallas and Houston, following its Austin launch last year. All three cities are in Texas, which is either a deliberate rollout strategy or the only place regulators said yes. Passengers can now hail a car with no human at the wheel, which sounds futuristic until you remember Texan highway speeds, at which point it sounds like a very committed science experiment.
Source: TechCrunch
AI Slop Is Coming for Steam, and Valve's Filters Are Feeling Nervous
Steam, the world's largest PC gaming platform, is bracing for a wave of AI-generated games that could overwhelm its already-strained curation systems. The concern isn't that AI games will be terrible — plenty of human-made games manage that without assistance — but that they'll arrive in such extraordinary volume that finding anything good becomes archaeologically difficult. Valve built a storefront; they may have accidentally built a landfill with a search bar.
Source: Techdirt
Quantum Computers Are Now Better at Predicting Chaos Than You Are at Avoiding It
Researchers have demonstrated that combining quantum computing with AI dramatically improves predictions of chaotic, complex systems — weather, turbulence, things that normally laugh in the face of conventional modelling. By using quantum processors to detect hidden patterns in data, the AI becomes measurably more accurate over time. This is either a genuine breakthrough in humanity's ability to understand disorder, or very sophisticated preparation for a world with increasingly unpredictable weather. Possibly both.
Source: Science Daily
As always, we'll be back tomorrow — assuming the chaotic systems hold.
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