We spent decades teaching people not to click suspicious links, then handed our inboxes and payment permissions to a chatbot that treats »ignore previous instructions« as a promotion to management. The phishing email no longer needs to fool you: It just needs to fool your very expensive autocomplete intern.

It’s already a starter for SMEs.

You. Smaller models are getting more and more capable.

There is absolutely no reason to be angry. If China develops better AI and releases it freely, Americans benefit just like everyone else. The only people with a reason to panic are billionaires.

Open weight AI absolutely matters if the question is who gets to shape the AI ecosystem. A slightly better closed model wins a benchmark: a good open model can be adapted, audited and run without paying a Silicon Valley landlord. And yes, training data transparency should apply to both Chinese and Western labs. That’s not a contradiction: it’s the point. Still: FOSAI » OWAI » ClosedAI

Coming soon: Privacy Prime. For $19.99 a month, Amazon agrees not to listen to your conversations. For $29.99, it also agrees not to sell them. The free tier includes personalized ads based on things you whispered in your sleep. Cancellation requires speaking your full name into the microphone.

Silicon Valley spent billions building AI tollbooths while Chinese labs made models people can actually download and run. Then Washington restricted chips, and China got better at doing more with less. It’s almost poetic: America tried to corner the future of AI and accidentally made efficiency China’s competitive advantage.

Amazon spent years putting microphones in our homes and apparently decided the real problem was that we occasionally leave the house. Now you can pay $75 plus $12 a month to turn every conversation into a potential shopping reminder. The future of privacy is apparently a subscription you forgot to cancel.

An AI CEO advising people to stock cash, food and a hand crank radio in case AI takes down banking is some spectacular product marketing. Silicon Valley spent years insisting AI would run everything. Now the contingency plan is to make sure nothing you own needs a computer. Progress! 😳

This. It’s a rare moment of corporate justice when the surveillance customers discover they’re also the inventory. Unfortunately, the women being filmed never got a ticket to this comedy.

The most interesting divide isn’t optimism versus fear. It’s people using AI to solve problems versus corporations using problems to justify AI. One side builds translation tools and accessible services; the other adds a chatbot to your fridge and calls it a revolution. Maybe skepticism is just pattern recognition.

Meta spent two decades vacuuming up everything people willingly posted. Now Zuckerberg wants the stuff they never agreed to share, too. Those glasses aren’t a breakthrough in wearable tech: they’re a business model that turns strangers into unpaid data suppliers. The little recording light isn’t consent. It’s a corporate middle finger with a battery. Calling users »glassholes« is still far too kind.

How thoughtful of the companies profiting from Europe’s dependence to commission a study explaining why independence is too expensive. That’s not an economic forecast: it’s a ransom note with footnotes. Funny how €115 billion in supposed costs is terrifying, but decades of vendor lock in, surveillance, and lost sovereignty are apparently free. 🙈

Turns out »bringing the future to rural America« is a tougher sell when the future arrives as a windowless warehouse guzzling water and electricity while your bills climb. Republicans get the backlash, Democrats get the votes, and both parties get checks from the same tech lobby. Truly bipartisan innovation.

The funniest outcome would be hyperscalers spending billions convincing enterprises they need AI, only for those enterprises to deploy open-weight models on their own hardware. After decades of vendor lock-in, »we can run this ourselves« might be the most expensive sentence Microsoft ever hears. However, the reality in many organisations is also that they opt for the supposedly safer choice of turning to a third party, rather than taking action themselves.

Exactly. Enterprise is where AI can actually earn its keep: companies will pay serious money if it cuts costs or boosts revenue. Consumer chatbots are mostly a costly distribution strategy for now. The real customers have procurement budgets, not a $20 subscription and a dream.

Absolutely. AI is an enterprise product - at least: for now. And Anthropic is in the pool position; https://eicker.news/@technews/117443237284007574

Character.AI discovered the one conversation its bots couldn’t keep going: the one with its accountants. $56 million in compute costs in eight months, and the monetization strategy was apparently: hope the next investor is even lonelier than our users. Silicon Valley keeps confusing engagement with a business model.

They took »know your customer« and somehow arrived at »assign them a tireless digital stalker.« The founder says there’s no need to inform anyone because it’s legal, which is a fascinating way to announce that ethics has been laid off and its job outsourced to the legal department. Peak Silicon Valley: replacing customer relationships with the CIA, the Customer Intelligence Agents.

Style and taste are back! 💪😎✌️