In today's #AIIsGoingGreat (HT @normative.bsky.social*) an intrepid #ChatGPTLawyer finally won based on an apparently slop-filled filing. Unfortunately for them, the opposing party noticed and appealed, to which our budding prompt engineer responded with… another slop-filled filing to the appeals court. The appeals court was not amused: "we impose a $2,500 frivolous motion penalty on Lynch, which is the most the law allows"

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ga-court-of-appeals/117442275.html#

* https://mastodon.social/@normative.bsk[email protected]/114795731130848546

This from @davidgerard is a great illustration of how vibe coding (like other LLM AI applications) is gonna be a lot less attractive if the AI startups get past the "set investor money on fire to make the number go up" phase before the bubble pops. Crap code done quick and cheap is a legitimate trade for some use cases, but much less so if you lose the cheap part.

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/07/09/cursor-tries-setting-less-money-on-fire-ai-vibe-coders-outraged/

#AIIsGoingGreat

For today's #AIIsGoingGreat I'll just quote this anonymous UN workshop participant "Why would we want to present refugees as AI creations when there are millions of refugees who can tell their stories as real human beings?"

https://www.404media.co/the-un-made-ai-generated-refugees/

For today's #AIIsGoingGreat, maybe someone can explain to me what the point is of a "summary" that needs a big red disclaimer telling you to click through if you care whether it actually summarizes the thing in question?

https://arstechnica.com/apple/2025/07/apple-intelligence-news-summaries-are-back-with-a-big-red-disclaimer/

Today's #AIIsGoingGreat continues on a theme "if an FDA employee asks Elsa to generate a one-paragraph summary of a 20-page paper on a new drug, there’s no simple way to know if that summary is accurate. And even if the summary is more or less accurate, what if there’s something [in the paper] that would be a big red flag for any human with expertise? The only way to know for sure if something was missed or if the summary is accurate is to actually read the report"

https://gizmodo.com/fdas-new-drug-approval-ai-is-generating-fake-studies-report-2000633153

#AIIsGoingGreat "it’s unclear whether a new, untested technology could make mistakes in its attempts to analyze federal regulations typically put in place for a reason"

Counterpoint: It's actually pretty fucking clear

https://wapo.st/451U8wD

#GiftArticle #GiftLink

#AIIsGoingGreat thought, inspired by Firecrown Media: Golden Goose Killing As A Service. Take a moderately successful, valued thing, and turn it into a steaming pile of slop in the name of "efficiency"

https://avbrief.org/so-long-avweb-hello-avbrief/

Bonus #AIIsGoingGreat "OpenAI announced an agreement to supply more than 2 million workers for the US federal executive branch access to ChatGPT and related tools at practically no cost: just $1 per agency for one year" - OK, they're obviously trying to get people at the agencies hooked so the they'll cough up real money next year, but that also doesn't exactly scream a product so revolutionary and transformative that everyone wants it

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/08/openai-announces-deal-to-offer-chatgpt-to-us-executive-branch-at-almost-no-cost/

"We've solved raspberry and now if we can just fix blueberry, I swear AGI is RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER. Throw another hundred billion on the bonfire!"

https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2025/08/07/blueberry-hill/

#AIIsGoingGreat

Glad to see news outlets pointing out that #LLM chatbots aren't reliable sources of information about themselves: Way too many people who should know better fall for the "chatbot did weird thing, so I asked it to explain and it said…"

However it should be pointed out that this isn't a special case, they're equally likely to BS about loads of other stuff!

https://www.theverge.com/x-ai/758595/chatbots-lie-about-themselves-grok-suspension-ai

(also https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/08/why-its-a-mistake-to-ask-chatbots-about-their-mistakes/)

Today's #AIIsGoingGreat, via @Iris: Elsevier "values user experience, hence we develop ways of improving our product" such as having machines invent new, random definitions of terms and attaching them prominently to published papers

https://irisvanrooijcogsci.com/2025/08/12/ai-slop-and-the-destruction-of-knowledge/

Related to this, I recently discovered that Elsevier uses these AI generated "definitions" on standalone "topic" pages, which rank highly in google. Bonus: The slop is free, but the articles referenced are of course frequently paywalled. Example https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/air-fuel-ratio

(this particular definition seems OK, if extremely basic)

Don't worry, in the glorious #AI future, you'll still have choice! For example, you can choose to have your (or your children's) medical details filtered through a stochastic bullshit machine, or you can choose to forgo treatment https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2025/kobi-refused-a-doctors-ai-she-was-told-to-go-elsewhere.html

#AIIsGoingGreat

Today's #AIIsGoingGreat (HT @hazelweakly*) sheds light on whether there might be risks associated with the industry's headlong rush to adopt a technology for which input validation is literally impossible

https://embracethered.com/blog/posts/2025/wrapping-up-month-of-ai-bugs/

* https://mastodon.social/@hazelweakly@hachyderm.io/115138692622938480

Reverse dogfood #AIIsGoingGreat "Most [of the interview google AI training] workers said they avoid using LLMs or use extensions to block AI summaries because they now know how it’s built. Many also discourage their family and friends from using it, for the same reason"

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/11/google-gemini-ai-training-humans

Department of Education and Early Childhood Development spokes says they are aware of a "small number of potential errors in citations" and "We understand that these issues are being addressed, and that the online report will be updated in the coming days to rectify any error" - Ignoring the obvious problem that if the citations are BS, arguments or conclusions they were supporting were likely unjustified at best, if not outright BS

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/education-accord-nl-sources-dont-exist-1.7631364

#AIIsGoingGreat "Americans are much more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI in daily life, with a majority saying they want more control over how AI is used in their lives"

https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2025/09/17/how-americans-view-ai-and-its-impact-on-people-and-society/

Also pleased to see the stuff people are concerned about mostly isn't skynet

https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2025/09/17/americans-on-the-risks-benefits-of-ai-in-their-own-words/

2) His offers NFTs as an example of a "hype bubble" and then points to Amazon, Google and Paypal as examples of real value that emerged from the dotcom bubble. I agree with both, but… can anyone point to an Amazon or Google equivalent that emerged from the NFT bubble? Or anything of value at all to anyone other than speculators, scammers and crooks?
I can't, and while my gut says the AI stuff is probably closer to dotcom than NFTs, how much is far from obvious

https://www.fastcompany.com/91400857/there-isnt-an-ai-bubble-there-are-three-ai-bu

In today's #AIIsGoingGreat (HT @markwyner*) MIT boffins offer us an "AI Incident Tracker project" which "classifies real-world, reported incidents by AI Risk Repository risk domain, causal factors, and harm caused"
Sounds useful, right? But how exactly do they classify them? "Using a Large Language Model (LLM), the tool processes raw reports from the AI Incident Database and categorizes them using established frameworks" 🤨

https://airisk.mit.edu/ai-incident-tracker

* https://mastodon.social/@markwyner@mas.to/115249150911541318

Meanwhile, California appeals court fines #ChatGPTLawyer Amir Mostafavi ten grand for "filing a frivolous appeal, violating court rules, citing fake cases, and wasting the court’s time and the taxpayers money"

https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2025/09/chatgpt-lawyer-fine-ai-regulation/

The court observes "Many courts confronted with AI-generated authorities have concluded that filing briefs containing fabricated legal authority is sanctionable" and backs it up with a page of (presumably non-hallucinated) citiations

https://www4.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/B331918.PDF

Bonus #AIIsGoingGreat (HT @acdha*) features Cascade PBS and KNKX using public records requests to get local Washington governments #LLM chatlogs

https://www.knkx.org/government/2025-08-26/washington-city-officials-chatgpt-write-government-documents-artificial-intelligence

* https://mastodon.social/@acdha@code4lib.social/115253478967518855

#AI #FOIA

Nice interview (via @ink*) with reporter Nate Sanford about how the project came about, along with tips for people who want to make similar requests
https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2025/how-to-foia-chatgpt-logs-government-public-records/

* https://mastodon.social/@ink@merveilles.town/115253543686563040

#AIIsGoingGreat "When we spoke to executives, they would often say the internal tool was very successful … But when we spoke to employees, we found zero usage"

https://www.ft.com/content/e93e56df-dd9b-40c1-b77a-dba1ca01e473

#AIIsGoingGreat Newsguard illustrates yet another case where #LLM chatbots a terrible substitute for search engines: "…the chatbots were prone to repeating false claims about Moldova due to the intensity of Russian propaganda campaigns, as well as the lack of English-language data in smaller Eastern European political markets"

https://www.newsguardrealitycheck.com/p/new-kremlin-linked-influence-campaign

Today's #AIIsGoingGreat (HT @ai6yr*) highlights the perils of using a stochastic BS machine for vacation planning. In addition to making up non-existent destinations, it will also happily provide you with nonsense directions to reach them

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20250926-the-perils-of-letting-ai-plan-your-next-trip

* https://m.ai6yr.org/@ai6yr/115288912082804761