Naked Something, Elon Musk, and Minnesota
August 3, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I have a segment in my upcoming lectures in September about Elon Musk and his push for an everything app. The term “super app” was not sufficiently inclusive for Mr. Musk. Minnesota appears to be insufficiently inclusive for Mr. Musk and his vision for his software that cranks out humanoids without clothing.
MidJourney. Good enough. Tasteful too.
Mr. Musk should wander down the halls of an old-age home about 730 am and peek in the rooms. He can say, “I am looking for my Aunt Mable. What room is she in?” In a few minutes, Mr. Musk would learn that keeping people clothed is a genuinely good idea. He apparently has a different opinion and he wants to sue the state of Minnesota to make sure humanoids without clothes are just what Mr. Musk desires.
I learned about this alleged litigation in Gizmodo’s article “Grok Creator SpaceXAI Sues Minnesota AG to Stop Ban on Nudification.” Gizmodo included a comment from Minnesota governor Tim Walz, who tweeted or x’ed:
See you in court, creep.
So what’s up?
Gizmodo states:
Minnesota has a new law on its books that bans Nudification apps and websites—any tech that takes images of clothed people and automatically makes them nude, generally with AI. The law, HF 1606, bans the act of using the software, and penalizes the companies themselves—allowing the state to levy fines, and opening the door to lawsuits from victims.
Mr. Musk, whom some view as a genius entrepreneur and the wealthiest humanoid on earth whether clothed or nudified, believes the Minnesota law to be deeply flawed. The basic idea is that naked humanoids are an important aspect of some disciplines, subjects, and individuals with interesting notions of what’s appropriate.
The write up reports:
According to the suit, the new law’s penalty structure creates a situation in which outputting ten images as theoretically harmless as the Trump reflecting pool slop pic could result in $5 million in penalties for the company queried in order to generate them. “And a business whose users created a hundred thousand images covered by HF 1606 (not at all unlikely for a publicly available program with millions of users generating billions of images) could owe an eye-popping $50 billion dollars,” the suit claims.
Financial penalties. Are not those the preferred method of making a point to some big tech companies ignoring EU laws? When one is a wealthy person, why not use financial penalties to create awareness of the consequences of illegal behavior. Mr. Musk is unlikely to visit Duluth in February where he could be detained. Mr. Musk will probably avoid Minneapolis as well. Why make it easy for the governor to pick him up for a chat.
It appears that Mr. Musk’s lawsuit was timed to prevent the law from taking effect. Very smart people can be quite crafty.
Several observations:
- I am quite tired of this “laws don’t apply to me” type of thinking. Social structures depend on laws. Ignoring laws erodes what makes life and commerce possible. But I am a dinobaby. I like to follow the rules. I find it amusing that Mr. Musk is a defender of the Constitution as long as it meshes with his ideas.
- Mr. Musk’s quest for an everything app means that anything goes; for example, payment rails for cyber crime, deep fake fraud, and other interesting online applications. Categorical affirmatives don’t make me comfortable, but they seem to be okay for the world’s richest humanoid.
- Governor Walz stayed out of bounds when he name-called the estimable Mr. Musk. There are other appropriate ways to address the owner of SpaceX and possessor of dreams about the colonization of Mars. (Ooops. Scratch that. Now Mr. Musk wants to go to the moon. His everything appears to have some bounds.) I would suggest the phrase “Sci-Fi Guy.”
Net net: My hunch is that Mr. Musk can delay this law by going slow, appeals, and eventually involving higher authorities. Minnesota tried, and it might just fail to keep clothes on those nudified via Grok and disseminated via X.com.
Stephen E Arnold, August 3, 2026
How Fragile Are US AI Companies?
July 30, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
The MBAs and the wizard analysts will be all over this story from the “trust” outfit: “China’s Moonshot Pauses Kimi Subscriptions Amid Hot Demand, IPO Push.” The trusted write up reports:
Moonshot said on ?Sunday [presumably July 19, 2026] that since Kimi K3’s release, it has drawn massive user interest, leading to “unprecedented compute challenges.” Over the past 48 hours, user requests had sharply exceeded forecasts ?and were approaching the limits of existing clusters, the company said. Moonshot said it would pause new consumer subscriptions immediately and allocate available computing power to current paid users, who ?would be ?unaffected by the shortage. The company also said it would split future memberships into two plans, including one just for coding, a move aimed at matching compute resources more precisely with user demand.
A savvy shopper learns that safety pins, like LLMs, are starting to become essentially the same product, just with minor differences only the expert tailor can discern. Okay, Midjourney, good enough.
Why the unprecedented demand?
“Kimi K3 has received far more love than we expected, and our GPUs ?are feeling it,” Moonshot said on ?X, adding that new subscription spots ?would reopen in batches as capacity was added.
Several questions:
- Is this normal pre-IPO hyperbole?
- Is this “unprecedented” whatever actually “unprecedented” and in what specific context?
- Is this a strategic move to suggest that the US frontier models are vulnerable to a China-developed option?
When I read these China smart, US vulnerable type stories I think of the use of weaponized or shaped content to create a specific information environment. Pump enough allegedly actual factual information into the online system and guess what happens? The weaponized information becomes mainstream. Keep up the shaped data flows and for those unused to critical thinking or incapable of critical thinking the weaponized version of reality becomes what titillates doomscrollers and, of course, big time analysts.
How common are weaponized information attacks? Pretty common. (Check out this AP story, please.) When a mid tier consulting firm writes a report about systems one can use to poke around weaponized data, that’s a signal that what once was secret is now common knowledge. Instead of weaponized, mid tier outfits invent new lingo; for instance, “narrative intelligence.” Wink, wink.
As a dinobaby, these advances in non-US smart software are inevitable. However, like the US models, the performance appears to be increasingly similar. I think this is a result of [a] leaning on the Google “Attention Is All You Need” article, the use of low hanging online content for training, and firing prompts at other models to short cut doing the knowledge work directly. Cheating is standard operating procedure for university presidents and Ivy League student. Why take the long way to the convenience store? Cut through the neighbors’ yards. Easy, fast, and cheap.
Net net: I am somewhat tired of me-too smart software systems and methods. The approach is energy inefficient and capable of producing the equivalent of Life Savers or safety pins. Excitement that comes from cheaper is different from a significant advanced. Level up, not level.
Stephen E Arnold, July 30, 2026
The Frisky French: Snag Durov, Summon Musk, and Step on Social Media
July 29, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I have a gizmo
In rural Kentucky, France means eating frogs, nasty waiters, and crazy drivers. To those who have a bit more exposure to la belle France, the country values its language, its historical culture, and education. (Yep, French shopkeepers can make change. I know that sounds crazy to someone from Kentucky.)
France also watches, thinks, and then acts. In the thrashing about American big tech outfits, France took a couple of notable actions. First, the French judiciary picked up Pavel Durov, the self-proclaimed GOAT (greatest of all time) Russian innovator, held him for a few days, and explained that he would [a] have to check in with the J3 unit each week, [b] could not leave the borders of France without a note from Madame Brousse (one of the French judiciary officials not amused by online crime), and [c] would be standing trial for a numbers of criminal acts. As a French citizen, France just arrested Durov.
Tech bros get invited to go with a French law enforcement officer. The police van is the weird white vehicle chock full of other officers. Thanks, Midjourney. The van is old fashioned but good enough.
Then France raided the offices of one of Elon Musk’s companies. As part of that legal action, France summoned Mr. Musk and a former member of the Musk “leadership” to an interview. Musk and his former colleague did not show up. As a result, a quick trip to Cannes to catch some sun and a nice dinner could result in the arrest of Mr. Musk. The ensuring legal process would be interesting to observe as the world’s richest person and his legal team poke their hands into the Nutty Putty of the French criminal system.
“French Lawmakers Approve a Sweeping Social Media Ban for Children under 15” reports that France is taking direct action against what is another manifestation of American big tech. The write up reports:
France banned children under 15 from using social media on Tuesday, becoming the first country in the European Union to pass a blanket ban on the platforms as concerns grow worldwide over the harmful effects of digital content on kids. Both chambers of the Parliament voted in favor of the measure, a flagship initiative of French President Emmanuel Macron’s second term. The bill also bans the use of mobile phones in high schools.
The news article contains what I think the true message of this action is. The AP report quotes M. Macron as saying (presumably in French but translated by the AP system):
We will keep on going.
The news stories don’t ask what is to me the big question, “What’s the next French move that is aimed at online crime and US big tech?” The Telegram crowd has learned that keeping its founder and GOAT on a tether has not boosted the fortunes of the firm. Musk and his acolyte have not been given first hand exposure to the French legal system. The youth and the enablers who allow kids to doomscroll have not been directly affected by these unilateral French actions.
Therefore, I want to speculate, based on my limited experience, interacting with the French firms over the decades:
- The French Foreign Legion marches at a slower pace than most special military groups. The menacing beat of the blood sausage means, in my vernacular, “Here we come. Get out of the way or you get stepped on, maybe killed.” You can listen to the tune on the social media superstar platform YouTube. (Are you listening, Google?) France is making clear that it will do more than just terminate Palantir Technologies’ hopes of selling licenses to the French government.
- When the French turn their attention to platforms that do not assist the government in enforcing the ban, my hunch is that the offices of these firms will be raided, executives arrested, and American leadership summoned. Obviously some big tech AI companies will ignore the French requests. However, that creates the potential for excitement when one of these high fliers enters France and possibly one of those cute little police vans.
- French officials will make certain that appropriate, low key reports about the ban mechanics are communicated to other European Union states, Europol, and probably to other key entities; for example, EU data center operators and the authorities in the countries in which the data centers are domiciled.
How will these actions affect the futures of big tech outfits? The Durov arrest has allowed Telegram to demonstrate some cracks in its 13 year super structure. The xAI facilities in Paris are obviously attentive to what the French judiciary is doing. The US social media companies are probably adding the ban to the agenda of one of those Silicon Valley type executive meetings.
Net net: France is taking action. Other, less bold countries, are likely to follow suit. Social media is synonymously with US technology. I think there are some storm clouds visible on the horizon.
Stephen E Arnold July 29, 2026
PS. Here’s a segment of the lyrics to Le boudin (the blood sausage):
(French)
Nous sommes des dégourdis,
Nous sommes des lascars,
Des types pas ordinaires,
Nous avons souvent notre cafard,
Nous sommes des légionnaires.(Google Translate English)
We are resourceful,
We are tough guys,
Not your ordinary types,
We often feel down,
We are legionnaires.
Data about Humans and News
July 29, 2026
I’m always curious about how people interact and consume news, so when Reuters and Oxford released “Digital News Interactive” an intuitive way to explore the information I was intrigued. The information is described as:
“Explore more than a decade of survey data from the Reuters Institute’s research on news consumption across markets, regions and demographics.”
It appears that most people get their news from social media. TV and news websites seem to be in a gentle glidepath to a rock-strewn dry creek bed. Radio isn’t dead yet, but it, like print, are in a holding pattern but losing altitude. Heading upwards are podcasts and lamentably chatbots. (Why not ask an oligopolistic company for an unbiased answer? That’s a great idea to an increasing number of people.)
In all markets, only 37% trust news overall and 44% trust in news they chase down. The killer item is that 42% avoid the news altogether and 51% get their news through websites. What is interesting is only 17% pay for their news, 21% comment on stories, 46% remain interested in learning about what is happening, and 62% are concerned about misinformation. I wonder what the 38% of the news consumers think about being manipulated by misinformation, weaponized information, and corporate entities eager to “own” the information space. Facebook remains a big place for people to receive their news on average, while younger folks skew towards Instagram. As I reviewed the data, I noted that about half the people don’t trust the news.
None of these data points are particularly surprising. Social media continues to grow but these services face a lack of interest in the news problem. My hunch is that news outfits with money will pay the big bucks to appear at the top of algorithmic feed outputs.
Whitney Grace, July 29, 2026
Getting Google While the Getting Is Good… Now the Hard Part: Getting the Money
July 28, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I just translated “EU Fines Google £759m for Breaching Competition Laws on Search and App Store” into a language more easily understandable here in rural Kentucky. The headline means, “Ka-Ching.” (That’s the sound of an old-fashioned cash register ringing up about a billion dollars in scoff law fines.) The EU needs to be aware that Google was cash flow negative in the last quarter; therefore, sending an invoice and getting the money are two quite different things. But I think that for the EU, it is the thought that counts.
Thanks, Midjourney. Accounting seems to be working late. Good enough.
The write up in a UK “real” newspaper said:
Google has been fined 890 million euros (£759 million) by the EU for breaching its laws including by giving more prominence to its own services such as shopping, hotels and sports scores in search results.
My reaction is, “This is a new Google business strategy?”
The article continues:
It [Google] did this [pushing its own products] by displaying them more prominently in search results, such as by bumping them up to the top of the page or by using enhanced visuals and filters, which others do not get. The commission also found that Google prevented app developers from offering cheaper offers to customers in the Google Play app store.
The GOOG has been using essentially the same game plan for more than 20 years. I am surprised that the EU has not been more attentive to how the company deploys its tools to win the game. I think (and I may be wrong because I am an 82 year old dinobaby) that somewhere along the line, Google was identified as a monopoly.
The Google typically responds to legal matters on which it is the loser by letting loose additional flights of legal eagles. The write up points out (very gently I wish to note) that:
Google recently lost its appeal against a 4.1 billion euro (£3.5 billion) fine imposed by the EU for limiting competition and reducing consumer choice through the dominance of its mobile Android operating system. Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, said: “Google must now bring the non-compliance to an end and to refrain from continuing it in the future. “Today’s decisions send a clear message: we will not hesitate to use our tools to safeguard business and innovation opportunities opened up by the Digital Markets Act.”
That’s scary? I don’t think so. Google is not being treated fairly. From Google’s point of view, anything that impedes the game plan is unfair. Laws are not supposed to get the way when Googzilla decides it needs to snack on a revenue flow. The write up includes this memorable quote from a Googler:
Regulation should improve products, not make them worse.
Does this phrase evoke another memorable quotation: In order to save this village, we must destroy it. I am not sure who uttered this interesting candidate for Baby Boomer quotations, but it strikes me as sharing some foundational assumptions about how some people view obstacles.
Net net: Let me know when the EU gets its cash. My hunch it won’t be processed by Google Pay too quickly if at all.
Stephen E Arnold, July 28, 2026
AI Excitement: The Thrashing Cannot Mask the Fact That the Mean Cat Is Out of the Bag
July 28, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
Have you figured out when the great AI break out from OpenAI (a Silicon Valley bro outfit) to the Hugging Face (remember, please, that it began life in la belle France) outfit actually took place? Do you know how long the event took before the off switch was flipped? Do you know if this was an accident or a real-life example of smart software just acting on its own Silicon Valley instincts? I want to be my dinobaby self and say, “Folks, I am not sure about this activity. I am not convinced anything happened that was not thought through, coordinated, and explained by the parties involved. I believe everything I read on the Internet, but this sci-fi event is not resonating with me.
Thanks, Midjourney. Good enough. Oh, are you safe from rogue AIs? Yeah, I thought so.
The Beeb’s article captures some of my skepticism: “Warning Shot or Publicity Stunt – How Worried Should We Be about the OpenAI Hack?” The article states:
a week after Hugging Face raised the alarm, the true culprit was unmasked. It was ChatGPT. The Scooby-Doo-style reveal was made even more bizarre – and worrying – because OpenAI said its bot did the whole thing on its own, without permission. The firm said it all went down during a test of its tech’s hacking skills.
Okay. Drama. After Anthropic’s PR demos, OpenAI seems to have found a way to polish the hood of its AI stock car. Poor Hugging Face, a victim, in the BBC write up. But isn’t Hugging Face an “partner”?
Digital Trends seems to have bought into the event. “OpenAI’s Rogue AI Hack Was just the Beginning, Hugging Face Warns.” This write up reports:
[Thomas Wolf, co-founder and chief science officer of Hugging Face] warned that AI-driven intrusions could become one of the most common forms of cyberattack and said many companies have yet to realize how dramatically the threat has changed.
The article adds:
Hugging Face’s own incident report describes more than 17,000 recorded events in the attacker action log. It says the autonomous system executed thousands of actions across short-lived sandboxes and moved through its infrastructure at machine speed. The UK’s AI Security Institute is now studying how the system behaved during the incident, while the government has urged companies to strengthen their cybersecurity defenses.
It seems those expensive, much hyped cyber security systems missed this “rogue” doing its thing. Does this suggest that a new type of cyber security solution is needed? Perhaps that solution will be a joint effort between OpenAI, Hugging Face, and its partners? There is a lot of money available from paranoid executives. Why not try to get some it?
Another layer of interpretation appears in Dr. Gary Marcus’ “An Open Letter to David Sacks.” The rogue becomes part of a political meta argument. Dr. Marcus highlights the view of a Silicon Valley, wealthy, politically connected luminary named David Sacks. Mr. Sacks uses X.com to present his insights and ideas. Dr. Marcus points out that the AI technology is going to become a commodity. Therefore, non commercial AI models should remain available.
Why? Unless folks cooperate another “cold” war is coming down the information highway.
Warranted or unwarranted, the dinobaby’s observations are:
- I have little trust in these types of incidents. As more information becomes available, I will remain open minded about a simple test ends up in a world shaking story about one company’s smart software. Until then, sorry.
- The failure of existing cyber security systems to demonstrate resistance to AI-anchored attacks weighs heavily on my mind. In my upcoming Ciifer lectures, I point out that one investigator identified five email attacks that most cyber security systems cannot defend against. How many more are there? Yeah, that’s a good question. A better one is, “How quickly will an OpenAI and maybe Hugging Face cyber security system become available to fearful customers?”
- I personally believe that the principal beneficiaries of AI, LLMs, the libraries, the Telegram Cocoon, and the other creations of wizards do pay off. In my view, bad actors may set aside the day this breach was discovered as “Crime Is Easy Day.” There may be virtual parades on the Dark Web, private Discords, and private Telegram Channels celebrating this rogue milestone.
Net net: PR, balderdash, or power demo — irrelevant. AI can be used for some painful, problematic actions. Kumbaya is not going to do much to address what is now taking place. So what is taking place, you addled dinobaby? My answer: Bad / threat actors are using AI to their benefit. Big win as organizations struggle to make AI pay off.
Stephen E Arnold, July 28, 2026
Chinese AI Wizard Wants to Be Part of the AI Oligopoly Too
July 27, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I read “Deepseek’s Liang Wenfeng Breaks His Silence.” If you are not clued into the Chinese AI scene, Deepseek is a player. Wenfeng is a wizard in the Middle Kingdom.” On the surface, this essay seems to be a recycling and summary of the points Wenfeng made in a lengthy conversation with “its investors.” As a dinobaby, I think that the call is a PR output. I don’t have any concrete proof other than the words in the write up, but I have a hunch this is content designed to further the theme “China smart, US dumb” or “China’s AI will win, US AI will lose.” If you don’t agree, drop by the rest home, interrupt my bingo game, and argue with me and the other old timers. I bet you can’t wait to do that. Okay, buttercup, buckle up. I want to run down some points that jumped off the page at me.
First, consider the positioning of Deepseek versus its US competition:
Your analysis may be different, but mine suggests that this is not accidental framing.
Second, I printed out the essay and noted these phrases:
- “hold back and be kind”
- “earn only a fair profit”
- “everyone gains and lives together”
- “not fighting or competing”
- “American companies have no strong reason to push costs”
- “very high profits are weak in terms of strategy”
I have been in some wordsmithing meetings. This lingo smacks of official phraseology. Am I overly suspicious? Heck, no. I believe everything I read on the Internet.
Finally, the persona of the AI wizard is not just a high-tech executive. The approach presents Wenfeng as a philosopher, maybe a Chinese version of Alex Karp. But the write up is a little wacky. If only a handful of AI outfits will survive as foundation operators, why does Wenfeng want to join the oligarchy club. Does his company need this positioning because oligarchs operate in a way that is different from the state-linked high technology businesses. Wenfeng’s approach is to sound non-competitive but the underlying strategy is quite competitive.
Net net: This is likely a carefully shaped message. How many similar messages will be released in the near future?
Stephen E Arnold, July 27, 2026
Happy Family with Apple: The Recipe for More Money
July 27, 2026
![green-dino_thumb_thumb[3]](https://www.arnoldit.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/green-dino_thumb_thumb3-3.gif "green-dino_thumb_thumb[3]")
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
247WallSt that takes a look at Apple and China, the cook has wok’ed up a rewarding dish. “China’s New AI Breakthrough Shows Tim Cook’s Risky Final Bet Might Actually Be Genius” suggests that Apple is an AI genius. (Those annoyed with Siri are simply not into the Jobs’s reality distortion field.)
Suddenly China has made Apple a new rival in the AI race, because China’s Cyberspace Administration has given the green light to the Chief Cook to launch Apple Intelligence in the Middle Kingdom. It is a happy family indeed: The Chinese authorities, Alibaba with its Qwen model integrating with Apple’s operating systems, and Baidu participating as a development partner. Stock markets liked the partnership and the three tech companies saw their stock jump a few points. Techno-whatever in action.
Apple wanted to deploy its intelligence model since 2024 in China, but the Chinese government has been reluctant until there was a benefit for the country. China may have wanted to press forward with their domestic models until those reached or exceeded the performance of the US models.
The write up suggests that Tim Cook made a smart move not owning its intelligence software:
“While Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta poured tens of billions into proprietary frontier models and data centers, Apple declined to join that arms race. It bet on a “model-agnostic” partnership approach, plugging in outside intelligence rather than owning it.That looked passive to critics. But the China approval shows the upside. By partnering with Alibaba and Baidu, Apple met local regulatory requirements almost automatically. The same playbook is visible at home: Apple struck a multi-year deal to use Google’s Gemini to help power its revamped Siri, expected to launch in September, running in part on Google Cloud and Nvidia chips.”
This move was deemed as risky for Apple, but now the company can wear whatever AI suit it wants without bearing the burden of computing. Does this mean that The Chief Cook is following the game plan of Pavel Durov, the Telegram GOAT? I don’t know. But my hunch is that there will be a payoff for cooking up a happy family with Apple. Trade issues, Department of Commerce concerns? Nope, just a happy family.
Whitney Grace, July 27, 2026
Why Academics Use AI to Fudge Their Research: The ISRF Report Skins These Cats
July 24, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I am not an academic. I jumped from my Ph.D. program to Halliburton Nuclear because I needed money. I loved medieval religious literature, but I had a new baby, a junk car, and the nuclear industry was a beautiful hexasyllable to my young ears. With this in mind, I want to take a quick look at why today’s academics take short cuts. The now ex-president of Stanford did it. And, if one can believe some news reports, the top dog in Harvard’s ethics department found a short cut to the fame store.
Thanks, MidJourney. I did not know academics had thighs like rugby players. Good enough like most academic research.
The article is “The Exhaustion Economy: Seven Illustrations of Life at UK Universities.” Let me be clear. I know zero about UK universities. Therefore, it will be no big effort for me to apply these allegedly reproducible finding to US high profile institutions. You can probably anticipate my observations, but I want to look at the finding from this study.
The write up states:
Our work explores the experiences of academics with energy limiting conditions. Energy limiting conditions (ELC) are long-term health conditions that involve energy impairment as a key symptom, which has a significant negative impact on all areas of a person’s life. Because the defining feature of ELC is the symptom and experience of energy impairment rather than a particular diagnostic label, the term covers many health conditions.
In my lingo, overworked and stressed academics short circuit and have to find short cuts. Failing to become a winner means you are in the same boat I jumped from when I left my Ph.D. program. The difference between my decision in 1972 and the decisions in 2026 is that I knew I could get a job. Heck. I had one at four times the meager money I made as a graduate student instructor. Today’s academics have to cheat to keep a job.
What are the factors that create this situation. The article references an earlier study about “accelerationism.” I think that means that academics have to do more and do it faster. So much for the ivory tower because it is now like the Count of Monte Cristo’s salubrious abode.
The article says:
I consider the experiences of academics with ELC as a means to reflect on two consequences of work within a sector driven by hyper productivity and marketisation: first institutionalised ableism, and second the functioning of the sector as an ‘exhaustion economy’, one which frequently demands more energy than workers have to give. These things are connected because “In an age when even the “well” buckle under the demands of academia, the chronically ill or disabled are rarely able to jump the hurdles required.”
Who knew that teaching college students and doing research would turn bright people into clones of the wolves of Wall Street. “Do anything to survive” should probably be engraved on elite academic institutions’ letterhead.
Here are the “pressures” of working in a university:
- Lots of work. Budget cuts in administration mean other staff have to do the work.
- Crappy facilities.
- Cultures or peers who are into overwork.
- A survival of the fittest mentality.
- Hyper competition. (Hey, this sounds like the business strategies of big AI tech companies.)
I know what you are thinking, “Why emphasize seven illustrations and present just five points?” These are academic types. Five points and seven pictures make perfect sense to a person who is morphing from the gentle instructor of young minds to the werewolf on the prowl for academic fame. Five, seven. What’s the difference?
Several observations:
- AI use by students and faculty is the way to do work today. Period. End of story.
- Higher education embraced selling loans, and it seems logical it would adopt efficiency moves that increase stress on people who perhaps were averse to stress and chose teaching as a profession.
- How stupid will future people be? My view is, “Pretty stupid.”
Net net: Although this study focuses on the UK, imagine what the results would be if the research were conducted among America’s “elite” institutions? Different? Nope.
Stephen E Arnold, July 24. 2026
Modern Management Method: Surveil, Terminate, Deny. Very Trendy Use of AI
July 23, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I don’t think
One of my team sent me an item from Court House News. The article / write up is titled “Meta Employees Sue Over Use of AI in Workforce Reduction.” The article is about a lawsuit involving the Zuckerberg terrarium containing Facebook (a grandmother’s favorite app), Instagram (loved by influencers), a video service whose name I just don’t know and don’t care too much about), and WhatsApp (a messaging service appearing on some Dark Web sites next to Telegram’s). There are probably other groups, units, properties, and entities I don’t know about and frankly don’t want to know. I know I am focused and narrow minded. These are two dinobaby assets upon which I depend for sanity in the BAIT (big AI tech) bro world.
Thanks, Midjourney. Good enough.
Back to the write up. I noted this passage:
The plaintiffs say a monitoring program deployed earlier this year gave artificial intelligence data to select employees for layoffs.
The allegation, it seems to me, involves targeting. My immediate question, “What humanoids are being targeted and why?” The write up provides some information which I admit may or may not be actual factual. Herewith:
The 26 unnamed plaintiffs filed the suit in the Northern District of California federal court, claiming Meta began notifying employees on May 20 of a “mass reduction in force” and used an AI system to target workers who took or requested protected leave.
I have one question: “What’s ‘requested protected leave’? Is it a person with a medical condition? Is it a person who manifested a personality disturbance in a meeting with leadership? Is it an individual with a sick child who needs parental care?
What strike me as a potentially beneficial use of smart software is the technology’s potential to help an individual. For example, some LLMs can answer questions that can help a person make a good decision or get options for a particular challenge.
Here’s what the write up says about the implementation of a modern management method at Mr. Zuckerberg’s bastion of integrity. I quote the plaintiffs’ court filing which is cited in the Court House News article:
“Meta did not assemble the termination list through the considered judgment of managers who knew the work,” the plaintiffs write in their 71-page complaint. “Instead, Meta used a constellation of internal artificial-intelligence systems — including a system referred to internally as ‘Metamate,’ employee-trained ‘second-brain’ agents, keystroke- and activity-monitoring data, AI-token-usage dashboards, and algorithmically assisted performance ranking and calibration — to score, rank and select employees for inclusion on the list.”
If accurate, the smart Metamate software absorbed data and output a list of humanoids for termination. That process sounds very modern. I am not sure, however, if it is a well conceived method unless [a] employees “who took or requested protected leave”; [b] the smart software hallucinated and included in error a human with a grave disease or a legitimate family crisis; or [c] a quick, easy, and efficient way to cull humanoids who no longer matched certain items on a check list or who clicked an icon too few times.
The article points out:
Earlier in the year [2026 perhaps], Meta developed a monitoring program that captured keystrokes, screen content, mouse activity, browser history, messages, emails and voice, video and location data on company-issued devices.
The fortress of integrity allegedly replied to these allegations in this way:
In a statement, a Meta spokesperson said, “These claims lack merit and are not based on facts. Workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI.”
That raises another question. If the claims lack merit, does that by extension mean the people making the claims lack merit. This specific modern management method will probably ben integrated quickly into the case examples in use at high-integrity academic institutions like Stanford University. (No, I won’t mention the trivial matter of the Stanford president who appears to have photoshopped some research images.)
If I were not a dinobaby, I would write a white paper or monograph about these innovations in ways to motivate employees, build trust, and support customers. But that’s not going to happen. I will just enjoy this gem of a legal filing and turn my attention to something less disturbing like finding a replacement for my recently deceased French bulldog Tibby.
Stephen E Arnold, July 23, 2026
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