Tuesday Newsday Feb 13 - Feb 19: AI-Powered Bullshit, Apple Anti-Competitive Practices, Reddit Comments For Sale, & More!
Tuesday Newsday

Tuesday Newsday Feb 13 - Feb 19: AI-Powered Bullshit, Apple Anti-Competitive Practices, Reddit Comments For Sale, & More!

Graham C
Graham C

Unfortunately, the AI hype train has finally made its way to the internet kitchen. The chefs have been using Chat GPT for their recipes and let's just say the results are mixed. Despite this setback, the ratio of good to bad to clinically insane has remained roughly the same, fortunately, so we'll take that as a win.

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Air Canada Gets Owned... By Their Own Chatbot

Air Canada has been forced to give back a partial refund to a customer who was misled by the company's own chatbot. The customer in question asked the Air Canada chatbot to explain the company's bereavement rates for airfare, to which the chatbot incorrectly represented company policy on the matter.

This appears to be the first case of its kind, at least in Canada, and it sets a very reasonable precedent, in my opinion. AI chatbots are not all-knowing beings, they are only as good as the information they're trained with and companies need to be held accountable for this if they're going to use the chatbots to give clients information related to their dealings.

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Apple Purposely Breaks iPhone Web Apps in the EU

Apple, the world's leading crusader in the fight against the right to repair, is back at it again with some truly uninspiring anti-competitive nonsense. This time around, they're guilty of purposefully breaking progressive web apps in the EU, because of "regulations." Translated, they're upset that the EU is starting to regulate all the extra bullshit out of their business model. Here's a sample from the world's smallest violin:

GIF of Mr Krabbs playing the worlds smallest violin
A moment of silence for Apple, however will they financially recover?
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Your Reddit Data Is Officially For Sale

Reddit has just announced a $60 million per year deal with an un-named AI company in exchange for allowing said company to train their AI on user-generated content. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm really looking forward to the AI-generated troll posts on r/AITA. As companies begin to face legal scrutiny for scraping the web for training data, at least Reddit is being honest with us and not just selling the data behind our backs. For what that's worth.

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Open AI Bans State-Sponsored Hackers From Using ChatGPT

Don't worry everyone, Open AI has banned state-sponsored hacking groups from using Chat GPT to enhance their operation capabilities! The company has bragged about the removal and blocking of accounts belonging to several groups that are suspected of using the platform for such purposes. I'm sure these groups will now sit idly on their hands and totally not find a workaround within literal minutes. I wonder if Open AI will put out a post bragging about that. /s

TL;DR

The internet chefs keep banging out quality morsels, in line with this year's theme of absolute chaos. From AI-generated bullshit to corporate bullshit, you can always count on bullshit to be a part of your everyday experience online. Safeguarding your online presence is absolutely essential for the sake of your own sanity. Don't worry though, we've got most of that covered already.


Graham C
Graham C