The EU: Another Government Does Some Fancy Dancing
April 30, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold. I find it interesting that AI detectors identify my writing style as AI output. I suppose I should be flattered, but I just don’t care.
The European Union loves to fine American companies. I suppose if I could ring up some notional money, publicize my stance against American overreach, and get elected — I would do some fancy dancing.
I read an article or exposé published by Investigate Europe. “How Big Tech Wrote Secrecy into EU Law to Hide Data Centers Environmental Toll” states:
Microsoft and DigitalEurope, a lobby group whose members include Amazon, Google and Meta, secured a secrecy provision in EU law to block public access to critical information on data centers’ environmental impact, Investigate Europe can reveal.
What’s a Digital Europe? My recollection is that it consists of more than 100 high-tech outfits and what are called “national trade associations.” I interpret this phrase to mean “soft advocates” for big technology.
Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough.
Investigate Europe figured out that big AI tech outfits or what I call BAITs worked hard to make sure that the environmental impact of large-scale data centers was not widely known, disseminated, talked about, or provided to citizen groups willing to carry signs. No big surprise to me. Investigate Europe, on the other hand, appears to have be in a cloud of unknowing. I find that darned interesting.
The write up reports:
With the EU set to triple its data center capacity in the next five years, the European Commission started collecting key metrics like energy efficiency and water consumption from facilities. However, information on individual facilities’ footprint is kept secret, after industry pushed to amend the 2024 legislation to classify it as confidential and commercially sensitive.
This strikes me as standard operational practices for BAIT-type outfits. Now folks are worried that bad things will come about when the data centers power up. The write up says:
Europe is building data centers at break-neck speed, with €176 billion in investment expected over the next five years. The rush has triggered widespread concerns about pollution and intense energy use as well as impacts on communities and natural habitats.
Let’s not forget consumer impacts like “power shaping.” Someone’s sensitive electronic devices, including a few with uninterruptable power supplies or back up generators, may be tested. Failures mean that someone might hear, “Daddy, my mobile is not charging.”
Who crafted the confidentiality wordage? I don’t know, but it seems as if some of the Microsofties played a role. The report offers this factoid as a quote from Bram Vranken at the Corporate Europe Observatory, an NGO in Brussels:
“The fact that the Commission copy-pasted a Microsoft amendment is shocking,” Vranken said. “Who does the Commission really represent: Big Tech or the public interest?”
My answer to this question is that dolphins, herring, and black stork are probably not the EU’s primary concern when it comes to data centers.
Investigate Europe is working with other publishing outfits to pass the word that fancy dancing has taken place. More hoe-downs are likely to be held to make sure that power, emissions, noise, and assorted infrastructure projects are kept under wraps.
This is not a surprise.
Stephen E Arnold, April 29, 2026
Microsoft Does the AI Cha-Cha
April 30, 2026
Have you seen the charts and lists of Microsoft Copilot instances? The numbers don’t match. I am not sure anyone has an accurate tally because now Microsoft is removing Copilot features. Which is it? Adding new must-have smart software to Microsoft services or removing Copilot because users are not too keen on the “take your medicine, Sally” approach.
It is Microslop, not Micromom.
My guess is that Bill Gates likes Copilot less than the publicity one of his friendships has generated. Tom’s Guide reports why Amanda Caswell, “I Ditched Copilot For Claude In Microsoft Word-And I’m Never Going Back.” Caswell explains how her writing process was Copilot. She’d start, be interrupted by tedious copy and paste and shifting tabs and be constantly annoyed with the productivity killing actions. When Anthropic released a Claude add-on for Word, Caswell decided to do a case study about which was better. Here’s what she found:
“Before this, ChatGPT was a destination where I had to go when I had a question such as “what’s another word for X” or “What word would help punch up this headline?” Now, the AI lives inside my document. Similar to Gemini inside a Google Doc, Claude now works in Microsoft Word — the platform I prefer over Google Docs for reasons worthy of another article. Instead of treating the AI as a separate entity, it feels like a native feature of Word. The biggest shift was psychological: when the tool is right there in the sidebar (or even responding to my Word Comments), I stop overthinking the "interaction" with the AI and just focus on the writing.”
Caswell discovered that Claude is an encouraging, useful editor that not only stimulates the creative process but also improves work via constructive criticism and helpfulness. I wonder if this is how AI should be used: As a tool and not a replacement for actual humans.
What has Microsoft done with its plethora of AI tools, systems, and technologies? Microslop. Microsoft wanted the word to be filtered from online discourse. Not even Copilot could pull that off. It was busy making Notepad much more useful. Time for a senior management leadership cha-cha-cha.
Whitney Grace, April 30, 2026
A New Spin on Start Up Doom: Nope, Not Good News
April 29, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
One of the “think thing” essays has been parked in my to-do file for about a month. Today (April 15, 2026) is the day. The write up is “Your Startup Is Probably Dead On Arrival.” With folks getting RIFed left, right, and sideways, the “start up now” chant is getting louder. The cited essay said:
… most startups older than two years old have an obsolete business plan – and a technical stack and team that’s likely out of date.
The essay tips its “think thing” hat toward smart software. The argument about Titanicism gets back on track with this statement:
The constraint used to be: Can we afford to build and ship this? Now the constraint is: Do we know what to test? And can we get in front of users fast enough to learn? Agile is no longer a serial process.
Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough.
For me, this is “go fast, young man.” Apologies to Horace Greeley who wrote in 1865 something similar. The jargon for this concept is accelerationism.
The problem for the start up is that it must adopt smart software. The problem for the two year old start up is having to adapt to smart software. To start today, one must know the agentic boogie. To catch up, one must start over. Does this sound like good news for startups?
The source essay provides a list of tips. Here are three:
- You need a 2026 playbook
- The start up needs a “defensible moat”
- And I quote: “If you’re not losing sleep, you haven’t understood what’s happening.”
Okay, let me bring up a slightly different angle on this argument. Consider large companies. How do their new products work? If we look at Microsoft, it did the acceleration thing, burning tires in front of the disco. What’s happened? Microsoft is parking its AI hot rod and talking to experts about making the Copilot do more than get speeding tickets.
What about Amazon? The company is doing new things like killing functional Kindles and making chips and building data centers near a war zone and making life difficult for a customer to find a semi-decent product. It’s going fast and doing the equivalent of burning donuts in front of the disco.
And Google? It has gone slow. Like a turtle it has moved forward. Its pace of innovation, however, has allowed many flowers to bloom. Who can keep track of the new things Google is doing? But some Googley things are catching attention; for example, fiddling with YouTube ads and then insisting that those ads are not fiddled. Google also hides functionality in its smart software. At the same time, it chokes off innovation for the Android ecosystem. But the company sells ads. AI is a utility forcing Google to flounder in a quest for the good old days of traffic means clicks means a river of ad revenue.
These examples suggest that “startup thinking” at big companies does not do much better than regular startups; that is, the failure rate is baked in. A hit is a fluke, not a system and method like making commercial food like Nabisco chocolate chip cookies. (Watch a video on the process and then compare that method with the startup flounder, pivot, adapt thing.)
Several observations:
- Smart software is not able to get outputs right more than 75 to 85 percent of the time
- The agentic fantasy means that different smart software components are going to function correctly almost 99 percent of the time; otherwise, those retirement savings, yeah, gone due to a smart software problem buried deep in agentic Disneyland
- In the 2026 business environment, organizations are faced with problems not resolved by a Harvard Business School case study: War, civil issues, think thing marketing, etc.
Net net: Going fast is fun. What’s new? The speed factor. Humans, amp it up. Live fast. Die young.
Stephen E Arnold, April 29, 2026
Tech Bros Are Not Stoopid. You Are.
April 29, 2026
The Nation posted“The Anti-Intellectualism of the Silicon Valley Elite.” Let’s think about that for a moment. Do the technology elite, the leaders in Silicon Valley, and the future of mankind lack intellect?
Look at these notable contributions: Data centers that suck power and scare animals. Social media. 24×7 surveillance. Lots of money for them and their fellow travelers.
Outstanding achievements.
The Nation’s article states:
“As the historian Richard Hofstadter noted, a fierce anti-intellectual spirit has long animated American culture, but it has typically targeted the knowledge elite from below. What’s striking about today’s brand of anti-intellectualism is that it infuses the American knowledge elite; it stems from the bedrock conviction among tech oligarchs that they have mastered everything and have nothing left to learn. In this cloistered vision of tech-driven learning, they believe that deep intellectual work—the kind you do when you author a complex piece of music, for example—has little or no inherent value. Their disdain for it has fueled their attacks on higher education, the humanities, and learning for its own sake, which they believe has no purpose beyond its inevitable digitization and monetization.”
The write up points out that some tech elites think learning for learning’s sake does not deliver a payoff. High school and college education are not useful unless a wizard is a late bloomer can join one of the BAIT (big AI technology) companies.
What else does the article reveal:
“As ardent monopolists, they’ve managed to believe they’ve cornered the market on critical thinking. Everyone else needn’t be troubled by the rigors of learning, since they exist solely to serve as drones in the tech regimes of the future.”
Does this sound in line with “all men are created equal”? My view is that Silicon Valley bros are indeed elitists, oligarchs, champagne socialists, idiots with money, toxic masculinity, and gangsters made of zeros and ones.
Yep, the tech bros want females to be “trad wives” and pay attention to the kiddies. The tech bros do the man concerns. Lesser entities support the new construct. And what about emotional intelligence of empathy and compassion?
Hey, just ask Gemini, OpenAI, or another of the AI utilities. The outputs will set you on the right path.
Whitney Grace, April 29, 2026
A Free AI Directory: No Longer Feel Clueless, Lost, or Left Behind
April 29, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
A link turned up. I clicked it because the title “Top AI Companies in 2026: Visionaries Driving the AI Revolution” contained two words which attract my limited attention: Visionaries and Revolution. The write up is a free directory with links to the cited firms. Three points about this list:
- There are about 150 organizations listed. The vast majority of these were terra incognita for me.
- The firms are grouped, somewhat idiosyncratically. Exploration and scrolling (lots of scrolling) is necessary to view the organizations listed.
- Logos for each entity appear in the write ups about the organization. Most of the logos baffled me.
- There are some surprises in the list. I did not know the Rockefeller Foundation was into AI.
- Job hunters, check this out.
Who knew? https://www.eweek.com/news/ai-companies/
Some group did a lot of online searching. The inclusion criteria are not evident to me, but I am a dumb dinobaby. I am not sure the target audience is 82 year olds with my wonky editorial peculiarities.
If you enjoy learning about AI without hunting down the “leaders,” this eWeek article is for that type of person.
Stephen E Arnold, April 29, 206
Winning US Government Contracts: Two Mini-Case Studies
April 28, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
Just for fun, let’s assume that the information in “US Security Agency Is Using Anthropic’s Mythos Despite Blacklist, Axios Reports.” In February 2026, Anthropic (a big AI tech) outfit did not want its technology to be used to kill people. The US government declared Anthropic a “risk,” and that label acted like stepping on the brakes of an outlaw race car. The cited news story is a second hand report, but it strikes me as close enough for horseshoes.
Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough. No logos on the buildings. That’s a thoughtful touch.
A high-tech outfit is kicked out of the US government procurement line up. What does that company do? First, the firm publicizes that its has ethics. I know that is a strange concept for a Silicon Valley bait outfit, but bear with me. The government decision made Anthropic more visible. If anecdotal reports can be believed, more people signed up because of the firm’s “ethics” play than dumped the outfit. Then Anthropic emitted information about how its Claude programming tool was doing a bang up job. And the coup de grâce. Anthropic had a marvelous, advanced, essential capability: Its system could find hundreds, thousands, and maybe millions of software vulnerabilities. The other BAIT outfits sat on their hands. As if by magic like that filling the pages of the Lord of the Rings, Anthropic is allegedly back in the US government. Representatives of the firm had a meeting in the big White House. And the Reuters’ story cemented the trustworthiness of the report. Remember. Thomson Reuters is the trust outfit. So you know I can trust the cited story.
Clever chess moves. Done in plain sight. Bingo. Anthropic is not just back; it is back in a security agency.
Now contrast this with this scenario for another Silicon Valley company. This firm is old by high technology’s accelerationist standards. Founded in 2003 (in case your math is rusty that’s about a quarter century ago), Palantir landed some projects with a secretive US government agency. The company did some fancy dancing in order to get access to the i2 Ltd. Analyst Notebook’s proprietary file format. (FYI I did a few small and meaningless jobs for i2 Ltd. before it was acquired by Silverlake and then IBM and now Harris.) The fancy dance moves ended up in court. Money changed hands. The proceedings were sealed. But the footwork is important. Then the company ran into some procurement procedural issues and sent forward deployed engineers to areas where military operations were underway. That was supposed to demonstrate how well Palantir’s system worked, but it produced some friction. And then, from out of the blue several years ago, Palantir ran ads in the Wall Street Journal positioning itself as an AI company or in my lingo a BAIT outfit. Finally, Palantir became a cause célèbre in Washington, DC, and promptly became the go-to company for super advanced, super capable, super smart software.
Which company pulled off its return to the US government with more finesse? Was it Anthropic, a firm that essentially issued news releases? Was it Palantir with its NFL approach to getting a touchdown? I will leave it to you to answer this question.
From my point of view, several observations are warranted:
- Becoming a go-to provider of technology is a key to sustainable revenue. If a vendor plays one’s cards correctly, a US government procurement can extend over a number of years. Don’t forget those scope changes and engineering change orders. We are talking big money that will be sucked from the veins of Booz, Allen- and IBM-type companies. The big losers in this BAIT example are the existing providers of services because they now have to become suppliers to the BAIT outfits. Second fiddle is not traditional providers favorite job in the Federal symphony billing orchestra.
- Both of the BAIT outfits demonstrated that decisions related to specific procedural behaviors are malleable. In fact, some vendors can pretty much do anything and still become the golden child watching dump trucks deliver cash to kid’s playpen.
- The technology does not have to work. The technology simply has to be perceived as the greatest thing since sliced bread. The technology must cement an agency’s commitment to innovation. The outputs definitely will be capable of delivering better, safer, faster, and cheaper government outputs. Metrics? Hey, who is counting. When’s the last time you got your hands on the audited numbers from a Federal agency engaged in making America safe, secure, and law abiding? I have worked on government projects since the 1970s and I have not come across such a document and probably never will because I don’t care as an official dinobaby.
My point is that at this point in time, both Anthropic and Palantir have pulled off a remarkable destabilization of the Beltway Bandits; that is, the consulting firms, the hardware and software providers, and the support professionals who have controlled the Beltway for decades. Now the game has changed, and I think one should tip one’s hat to the clever tactics used by the companies that now appear poised to bill billions upon billions for years to come.
Tasty BAIT indeed.
Stephen E Arnold, April 28, 2026
Microsoft and Its Magic Touch: Slurp, Slurp, Slurp
April 28, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold. I find it interesting that AI detectors identify my writing style as AI output. I suppose I should be flattered, but I just don’t care.
I read “LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer.” No, I don’t know if the write up is a confection or concrete. The publisher is “BrowserGate”. The title is snappy. I want to take a quick look at what the essay (news report?) asserts. I personally believe everything I read on the Internet. You may take a a different road in the “yellow woods.”
The main point of the article strikes me as:
Microsoft is running one of the largest corporate espionage operations in modern history. Every time any of LinkedIn’s one billion users visits linkedin.com, hidden code searches their computer for installed software, collects the results, and transmits them to LinkedIn’s servers and to third-party companies including an American-Israeli cybersecurity firm. The user is never asked. Never told. LinkedIn’s privacy policy does not mention it. Because LinkedIn knows each user’s real name, employer, and job title, it is not searching anonymous visitors. It is searching identified people at identified companies. Millions of companies. Every day. All over the world.
This is a thought provoking series of statements, and my first thought is that the legal eagles in Microsoft / LinkedIn hangers are putting on their flight suits. Ground crews are checking the verbal ammunition. The air traffic control professionals are clearing air space. The lawyers will be going aloft.
Moving the cash from data sales is a big business but boring. Thanks, Venice.ai, aside from one employee going the wrong way the image is good enough.
I noted the statement “one of the largest corporate espionage operations in modern history.” I would agree that Microsoft is in the data collection business. But if the firm is using these data for corporate espionage, one must act, “With all that information, how could the estimable firm foul up its artificial intelligence service, image, and mindshare? Something does not compute for me.
The second point is that a distinctly American company is not outputting information about what it does, is doing, did do, and will do. Evidence of this approach may be gleaned from the firm’s former president’s testimony in a trial in Europe and the marketing information about the firm’s relationship with its Number One AI partner, OpenAI.
The third point is that cross correlation is as commonplace as hitting a drive-through for a cup of coffee on the way to work. Of course, those with access to data find relationships, map them, and process the analytics outputs for signals. Now at first glance, the entire process seems sketchy. I assure you that it is the equivalent of hitting speed dial to see if a lunch date with a colleague is okay for today. No big deal. Why make a standard operating procedure a hair-on-fire event. Folks, cross correlation has been a thing for decades in policeware, intelware, and regular software. I know these statements may be surprising to some people, but that’s where the idea of life-long learning shows that most people do not keep up.
The write up continues with yellow lights blinking and sirens sounding. It offers up this gems:
LinkedIn’s scan reveals the religious beliefs, political opinions, disabilities, and job search activity of identified individuals…. Under EU law, this category of data is not regulated. It is prohibited. LinkedIn has no consent, no disclosure, and no legal basis. Its privacy policy does not mention any of this.
Okay, what’s the problem? For those in the EU, just embrace Linux as France is doing and stop using US social media. Most of the US outfits really don’t recognize countries, blocs, and royal edicts. The US companies do what is necessary to generate revenue, capture and hold user attention, and sell advertising. Believe me, the data slurpers know that selling advertising is a darned good business.
The link reveals that this “essay” is quite a lengthy white paper. I will leave it to you to work through the entire document. I had to break my reading into separate segments. I know that my interest in reports that BAIT outfits (big AI tech firms) are making people unhappy. Sure, some kids kill themselves because of certain outputs. Sure, US messaging services allow bad actors to coordinate. (Keep in mind that the coded-in-the-snow Telegram Messenger is in this game too.) Of course, the price gouging, dark patterns, and “Senator, thank you for that question” transparency puts some fire in the eyes of otherwise rational people. But the process has been chugging along for a quarter of century, and what do we have. BAIT.
One assertion is:
LinkedIn’s code uses a three-stage fallback chain to detect whether a specific extension is installed in your browser.
Stage 1: Direct communication. The code attempts to contact the extension directly using Chrome’s
externally_connectablemessaging API. If the extension developer has explicitly disabled this channel in theirmanifest.json, this method fails, and LinkedIn moves to stage 2.Stage 2: Resource probing. The code attempts to fetch a known file from the extension using its
web_accessible_resources. This is the equivalent of checking whether a door is unlocked by trying the handle. If the extension developer has not exposed any web-accessible resources, this also fails, and LinkedIn moves to stage 3.Stage 3: DOM mutation detection. The code monitors for changes to the page structure that are characteristic of specific extensions injecting elements into LinkedIn’s interface. This catches extensions that modify what you see on the page.
This strikes me as a variant on the methods used by some Telegram Messenger bots. I don’t want to label the method malware, but one might be able to find some similarities. In fact, in my upcoming Telegram lecture I walk through one approach that performs similar functions just within the mini app and dApp environments. My example is a fake job posting but operates via a smart contract with the payloads stored in the TON blockchain. The approach makes detection and removal somewhat more difficult that the approach used by Microsoft LinkedIn. I suppose their approach can be upgraded, but for now, it’s lagging behind the state of the art in sporty container activity.
The essay ends with a call for action. There’s a list of “extensions.” There is a — heaven help me — WhatsApp group. There is a call for the readers of the essay to talk with a journalist. But the big request is “Support the Browsergate Legal Fund.”
Several observations:
- What data are public facing AI companies acquiring and monitoring when a person needs hallucinating smart software to be more productive and increase one’s chances for brain fry?
- What data are cross correlated in most major cities by government agencies, financial institutions, private companies, and capable black hat hackers? Where do those data end up?
- What is the revenue generated by repackaging such collected data and offered to marketers on different financial terms via third party data brokers or subsidiaries of BAIT outfits that provide advertisers with market data?
I appreciate and enjoy the reaction to a reality that has been chugging along for decades. My question is, “Where have you been?” The Browser Gate Web site provides a link. Click it and you get updates. That’s called “sticky.”
Stephen E Arnold, April 28, 2026
Does Google Stretch the Truth, You Know, Like Lie?
April 28, 2026
The Cool Down says that “Google AI Is Lying To Users At A Virtually Unprecedented Scale, Report Says. The Arnold IT team is horrified. Google? Outputting falsehoods? We were surprised at the assertion. The cited article suggests that Google’s automatic AI answers that appear at the top of all search results and everyone has to use because Mama Google knows exactly what everyone wants sort of like God, right. The cited sources says that Google is in fabrication land, a Disneyland type of world that looks real but is just a bunch of mechanical gears, hidden tunnels, and Mouseketeer wannabes.
The AI intelligence startup Oumi researched Google’s responses and found that they’re correct 91% of the time. That sounds good, but Google handles 5 trillion searches a year. I am not a mathy type, but this seems to be about one mistake out of 10 outputs. Hey, that is nothing. Look at it this way: Mama Google is right 90 percent of the time. So what if those parenting decisions produce a problem. Look at the upside.
Am I sad that a tool meant to increase human knowledge is delivering incorrect information. No, I am thrilled. Google is leading us to a future based on Silicon Valley philosophical ideas. Google is smart; therefore, its outputs are smart. If you don’t get it, you are a loser.
The write up says:
“Part of the issue lies in how AI systems work. Large language models, such as those behind Google’s summaries, are designed to respond with confidence, even when they’re wrong. Studies have suggested that many users don’t double-check these answers, a tendency known as “cognitive surrender,” wherein people trust authoritative-sounding information without verifying it.”
Then there’s the environmental impact. While new models of AI are more energy efficient and rely on renewables, the current models are already straining critical resources. Two things Google is doing: lying and straining the grid.
Let’s applaud the business approach of the winners at Google. (Can you determine if an AI output is accurate, invented, or an advertisement? Of course not. That’s the reason Google is the leader. You know. A digital god built on advertising, the Clever method, and putting one’s finger on the butcher’s scale.
Whitney Grace, April 28, 2026
Hidden Friction: AI Causes Cost Escalation, Not Cost Reduction
April 27, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold. I find it interesting that AI detectors identify my writing style as AI output. I suppose I should be flattered, but I just don’t care.
The AI surveys add some sparkle to my otherwise dreary day. The thrashing of Telegram and those in its ecosystem have become far too predictable. I suppose excitement is in short supply when the founder and CEO awaits trial in the country with which the phrase “red tape” or colloquially “la paperasse.”
A senior vice president of finance reviews the mid year numbers since AI was deployed and headcount reduced. He wishes he ran an ice cream stand on the beach in Brazil. Thanks, Venice.ai. Pretty average.
Therefore, an AI survey brightens my day. I noted this write up: “Half of All US Employees Use AI at Work Now – And Waste Almost 8 Hours a Week Doing It.” Amusing, no? The subtitle is another punch line; to wit:
Companies on the front lines of AI adoption are also hiring and laying off more employees on average than those that aren’t…
That cues my laugh track. Use AI and what do you get? Employee churn and probably productivity friction. Humor can arrive in the form of a surprise. My hunch is that the bean counters and some AI forward companies are looking at administrative costs, recruitment costs, a few anomalous overruns, and possible some nastygrams from customers, suppliers, and partners. Ho ho ho.
The write up points out:
while 41% of employees said their employers had begun using AI internally “to improve organizational practices,” far fewer (26%) said they have a roadmap: that their employers have not “communicated a clear plan for integrating AI into current practices.”
I call this management by Nike slogan: Just do it. However, “doing it” and not fouling up certain business processes, employee satisfaction, and the aforementioned bean counters seems to be tricky. But, hey, if one is not doing AI, then one, one’s organization, and one’s career is as dead as Billy the Kid in 1881. No Sheriff Pat Garrett needed. AI did that job reasonably well.
The article turns to the Gallup survey, offering:
While two-in-three respondents said the technology has made them more productive at work, far fewer (just 12%) said they “strongly” feel that it’s “transformed how work gets done.” In other words, AI is like an energy jolt to existing procedures, but it’s not (yet) fundamentally reshaping the procedures themselves. Employees are effectively using AI to do what they’ve always done, only faster.
Then I read:
A recent report published by software company WalkMe, however, found that the growing use of AI in the workplace is actually leading to a lot of wasted time.
My interpretation: Bean counters will be sweating bullets. The payoffs may not be the bonus boosters accountants enjoy receiving. Therefore, replace the bean counters. Problem solved. Oh, there is the slight issue with business process inefficiency, managing churn, humanoid salary cost containment, cutting prices to keep customers, and the other often unnoticed heat from money burning in small piles, not data center scale stacks.
Who wins? My thought it is whichever BAIT company becomes a monopoly. The losers? Ask an AI.
Stephen E Arnold, April 27, 2026
China Smart, US Dumb: AI Systems Improve Themselves
April 27, 2026
![green-dino_thumb_thumb[3]](https://www.arnoldit.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/green-dino_thumb_thumb3-4.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.
Before I comment on “Self-Improving AI Model Has People Talking – For Good Reason,” I want to mention that Telegram incorporated a Chinese AI model in its Messenger app. The app (according to some social media mavens) changes the language from what the user wrote to what the Chinese app thinks is a more appropriate selection of words. Try it yourself with Taiwan as an independent nation or some Uyghur oppression lingo. Now, back to the write up about a Chinese innovation in making AI models smarter, better, and probably cheaper.
An artist’s rendering of Shaped Information Inc. Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough.
The New Atlas article said:
ASI-Evolve, built by researchers at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, works [to improve itself] by running a continuous loop that mirrors how humans would put this type of technology through its paces. Essentially, it creates variations of AI models, alters how they’re trained and adjusts the data they learn from. It then runs its own experiments to see which clone performs better, using those results to guide what it tries next.
I think this is an interesting statement. But there’s more. The article added:
By generating ideas, testing them and refining the results in a self-improving loop, ASI-Evolve mirrors the trial-and-error process of not just AI model building, but also science and math research. As such, it raises the possibility of accelerating discoveries in fields where progress is slow due to human researchers testing many possible outcomes.
The software figures out solutions in a way that suggests it is behaving more like a curious human than a Microsoft Word document and its obtuse approach to numbering. The benefit of this approach is that humans are still needed. I think that the longer-term goal, however, is to eliminate some humans, possibly those in the United States. I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer but China is presented as just making so many strides. Its robots can win mini marathons as long as the gizmos don’t run out of power. (Were those humans chasing the Chinese robots doing more than admiring the pace and gate of the digital marathoners?)
The write up points out that green is in the smart improving software’s future:
It’s worth noting that the researchers haven’t detailed energy costs of running ASI-Evolve, but its speed and efficiency, and closed-loop self-learning, suggests it’s nowhere near as power-hungry as leading models trained on enormous datasets. AI agents are expected to drive China’s next stage of development – one where new data centers are also mandated to be powered by green tech.
Like the videos of a young girl repairing a generator with hand tools in a farm yard, this write up is one of a sequence of shaped communications. These are designed to remind the US that China is making strides in applied technology and more esoteric flavors of innovation.
This is just business as usual: Pump information into the US-anchored digital publishing system and let people absorb this “shaped” or “weaponized” information. Works great most of the time.
Stephen E Arnold, April 27, 2026
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