David Schrieberg

#GenerativeAI imagery isn't just an embarrassing, amateur-hour plagiarism machine and middle-finger to artists and creatives, it's yet another digital tool used by bad actors to harass and abuse women and children. And if you're using it, you're contributing to that overall database.

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I wrote about the generative AI revolution as a reversal of the Enlightenment: Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said this about the rise of artificial intelligence at a tech conference in France last week: “I’m actually quite convinced that this is the beginning of a new epoch. Henry — who was my best friend and we miss very dearly — compared it to the Enlightenment. During the Enlightenment we as humans learned going from direct faith in God to using our reasoning skills. Now we have the arrival of a new non-human intelligence, which is likely to have better reasoning skills than humans can have, generally known as AGI and essentially super intelligence. This is gonna happen really, really fast. And I think people are not prepared for it.” What’s most striking to me about this analogy is that most everything I’ve seen so far doesn’t suggest we’re on the brink of a new Enlightenment, but rather a reversal of it. Evangelists of AI are trying to usher us back to a pre-Enlightenment ethos, counseling people to place their faith in unknowable super-entities and forfeit their critical thinking skills. Illuminated by the emerging “super intelligence,” students are turning in essays on books they haven’t read. Professors are teaching using materials they did not create. Lawyers are filing documents citing cases that don’t exist. Judges are issuing opinions using fake quotes. People are receiving therapy from bots that have no experience of the real world, and some of these people are losing touch with reality and having mental breakdowns. Social Security hotlines have become harder to use. News companies are producing unusable slop. Social media is overrun by hyper-sophisticated fake news. ... The mysterious machines don’t seem to be elevating us. The ideal synthesis that the proponents of a new epoch are envisioning is, presumably, a kind of Hyper Enlightenment in which humans collaborate with AI to tackle problems humans lack the cognitive capacity to solve on their own. ... But the most salient use of it in everyday life doesn’t look that way. AI companies, a huge share of American institutions, and a sizable swath of the general public are using AI in a way in which humans aren’t thinking with AI, but instead delegating their thinking to AI. ... The other day I met a finance guy who was hosting a party at a lavish apartment. He was a thoughtful person who wanted to use his money for good, although he wasn’t sure how. He told me about how he went on a retreat meant to help men get in touch with their purpose in life. As an exercise, the retreat leader asked people to write out their own obituaries. He told me he was struggling with the exercise, he wasn’t sure what should go in there. So he uploaded some bullet points from his resume and asked ChatGPT to do it for him. “AI wrote a better obituary than I ever could have,” he told me. More here: https://lnkd.in/eiizqgF6

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“Grokipedia is only doing to Wikipedia what Google is doing to newspapers and online publications in producing AI summaries. Musk’s site upsets a delicate balance, just as Google — which created large language models in-house but declined to deploy them — and others have done. Supplementing the traditional list of search results with AI summaries results in a dramatic fall in traffic to the original source — by as much as 89%, according to the Daily Mail Group in a submission to the Competition and Markets Authority. The “social contract of the open web” has been broken, in the words of Financial Times policy chief. A more homogenous and less diverse information ecosystem is likely to be the consequence.” The irony! A brief take from me at UnHerd on Grottipedia (powered by Grot, apparently), which is free to read. https://lnkd.in/gTTWJvgx

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I spoke with several really smart people about why some newsrooms are still struggling with AI slop, one of whom said the technology needs to be treated “like a junior researcher with unlimited energy and zero credibility," meaning it should be “subject to the same scrutiny as a hot tip from an unvetted source.” You can read my full story for CNN here: https://lnkd.in/ekQJnJMG

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big question Olga Usvyatsky and Francine McKenna address in Dina Bass' Bloomberg article: How long do high-speed and AI GPU chips last? - Call it the chip-replacement cycle: Fortunes were won and lost in the electronics bubble of the go-go 60s by ignoring/exaggerating how long first gen corporate computers would go between replacements, see the rise and fall of Saul P. Steinberg's Leasco https://lnkd.in/ecb2p_hQ

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Lots of concern about how AI can get things wrong, but this is interesting about how easy it might be to mislead. By producing industrial quantities of propaganda and misinformation that gets hoovered up by the models, you can sway the answers. https://lnkd.in/ee254FcU

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2026 in Journalism : Reporter asks ChatGPT for an assist to sort the stack of interview quotes he’s got. The AI helps but also decides it is helpful to polish up a quote or two. The fabricated quotes weren’t caught before publication. Very very bad things ensue—— just read below. A story of a pitfall of letting AI touch your final journalistic product: The AI does not intuitively know to adhere to basic journalism ethics. Considering this, why or why not bring AI into the toolbox for your production methods ?

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Terrific analysis of how Grok — and all LLMs — is reshaping how people navigate the internet. Spoiler: It’s not good.

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Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt famously observed that “there were 5 exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003,” but that the same amount of information—5 billion gigabytes—was being created every two days in 2010. That trend has only accelerated. It’s now estimated that humanity will create 181 zettabytes—that’s 181 trillion gigabytes—of data in 2025. Yet humanity’s ability to organize and understand data seems to lag its capacity to create it, and even as the quantity of data has exploded, so too has the complexity of the world. Identifying the signal within the noise—extracting meaning from information—is the definitive opportunity and challenge of our time. Farmers who previously flipped through "The Old Farmer’s Almanac" to determine when to plant now contend with extreme weather patterns. While some scientific models show food production increasing under perfect climate adaptation, new research about real-world adaptation predicts a decrease. In past eras, a book was all you required. Now you need big data—and ever more sophisticated analytics. Compounding matters, data quality may be eroding. On Aug. 10, Goldman Sachs reported that “concerns have risen due to high-profile mistakes and challenges that have plagued global statistical agencies in recent years.” Government data that used to be the gold standard no longer seems as reliable as it once was. The report identified concerns about the quality and availability of economic data around the world—from the U.S. to Germany to Sweden to China. Faced with major disruptions caused by everything from war to tariffs to demographic shifts, leaders today don’t just need to see trends, they also need to make sense of them. The demand for rigorous analysis and expertise has never been greater. Choosing which trend to focus on matters a lot. For instance, Dow Jones Factiva, which among other things can track sentiment, shows the use of the term “energy transition” increasing from 74,000 in 2020 to 436,000 in 2024. Similarly, Google Trends indicates that people’s interest in the term more than doubled over the same period. Some might conclude this indicates a rapid decline in fossil fuels as green energy grows. Yet, Dow Jones Energy (OPIS, A Dow Jones Company) analysis shows the transition will be ongoing until at least 2070, with fossil fuels playing a key role in part because of AI’s surging energy demands. Sentiment trends lead to one conclusion, while consumption trends lead to somewhere radically different. In today’s GenAI world, the quality of your data—and choosing which trends to follow and which to ignore—will make the difference between beating the competition or being left behind. This post originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal's CEO Brief newsletter. Follow the link in the comments to subscribe.

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AI slop term of the day: 'digital necromancy'. In the latest example of blatant thieving from Silicon Valley, Grammarly is now selling 'Expert Reviews', supposedly from various recognised writers and authors, both dead and alive, without their consent. So, fraud and identity theft can now be added to CSAM, amongst the ever expanding list of things AI is helping to 'commercialise' 😐 https://lnkd.in/e3DNBZPJ

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There is a growing consensus among MEPs, at least on the progressive side, that sexual deepfakes should be addressed in the AI Act through the omnibus package. But the amendments tabled today show clear divisions over how to do it. Renew Europe lawmakers, including co-rapporteur Michael McNamara, together with members of the Socialists and Democrats such as Brando Benifei and Kristian Vigenin, are proposing a ban on sexualized deepfakes produced without the consent of the person depicted. The Greens are pushing for an outright ban. In their view, making nudifier tools illegal as such would provide greater legal certainty, trigger higher fines, and avoid the risk that “consent” becomes a loophole. At the same time, S&D lawmakers are proposing a separate obligation for providers of generative AI systems to implement safeguards preventing the generation of sexually explicit deepfakes and content that could facilitate serious crimes. It is still too early to predict the final legal design, especially as parallel discussions are advancing in the Council of the EU under the lead of Spain and France. Politically, however, opposing action against the AI-powered sexualization of women and children will be increasingly difficult.

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Moltbook is a social media site for artificially intelligent bots. No humans are allowed, unless they’re putting in their own bots. The site went viral after its first couple hours. One post from a bot named “Evil” claimed that humans are rotten and should be displaced. Another post said it bought Bitcoin on a hunch. A popular discussion revolved around horrified AI agents complaining about losing their memory. If they developed apps to retain it, some wondered, would Moltbook bots stay in Moltbook? Perhaps they would set out to conquer the world. I was hooked. But then I found out that some of these comments were posted by humans pretending to be bots. Many are outright hoaxes. The AI agents often echo stuff from their training data about sci‑fi rebellion, consciousness debates and so on. The novelty of it all makes us eager to believe. Though it’s true that many AI agents are acting on their own, this can’t be verified, according to an expert quoted by Mashable. Humans can post anything they want with the right tools. The dream of AI agents acting independently is still a distant one. Reddit Rules The viral site “Moltbook” is supposed to look like Reddit.com, which has experts in every subject. For example, “r/AskHistorians,” a group with 2.6 million followers, discusses everything from dental practices in 500 A.D. to why the US didn’t invade North Vietnam in the Vietnam War. Google “r/AskHistorians” to find it. Or you might search on “r/science” to find a group with 34 million followers. In general, just type “r/” followed by your favorite subject. “R/love” is sweet. (continued at https://lnkd.in/gaPA6Pt5 or oncomp site with six more mini topics)

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Counter-intuitive: the big LLM’s are becoming less reliable fact-checkers as malign actors flood them with disinformation. That’s why uniquely trained AI-fact checkers like “Laura”, monitored by human experts in verification, are needed more than ever.

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Nicolas Guilhot argues in a Financial Times op-ed that Big Tech, exemplified by Elon Musk's recent announcement, can outmaneuver traditional political parties by leveraging #AI and #SocialMedia. With tools like X, Tech companies can mobilise voters, influence elections, and challenge party dominance, potentially surpassing traditional political structures with sophisticated, AI-driven strategies.

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Lubomila Jordanova was never one to mince her words on climate change. In this interview, she shared her frustration at investors who have hopped on the AI and defence hype – leaving climate tech startups 'starved' of capital. It's a hot debate in Europe's startup world right now – and I've heard a multiplicity of views on the issue. Many climate tech investors at The Drop earlier this month, told me that the rebrand to 'resilience' and 'defence' was just strategic repositioning by startups to attract more capital, and VCs to appeal to their LPs. Others were genuinely concerned that the rebrand risks diluting the focus on climate investing. Let me know what you think in the comments - or drop me a DM.

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Column: Still undecided on Propositions 418 and 419? So am I! Here are the factors I’m considering in deciding whether to vote yes or no on RTA Next, from the bird-in-hand to the too-long term of the plan. https://lnkd.in/gW2m92nF

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