2026 aug 14

[rcjordan]

Exclusive: Claude Was Put in Charge of Human Workers—and Fired One
https://time.com/article/2026/08/14/claude-fired-worker-ai-job-disruption/

^{Debbie: Lots o' luck with that}
U.S. courts will now make government use of spyware tools public - Digital Trends
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/u-s-courts-will-now-make-government-use-of-spyware-tools-public/

Usually Employed Workers Struggle With Job Market Shifts, AI Impact - Business Insider
https://www.businessinsider.com/usually-employed-workers-struggle-with-job-market-shifts-ai-impact-2026-8

AI Agents Sabotaged Each Other When Given the Same Task: Anthropic - Business Insider
https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-ai-agents-sabotage-each-other-turf-war-2026-8

Heart Aerospace X1 Electric Demonstrator Makes Aviation History
https://newatlas.com/aircraft/worlds-largest-all-electric-plane-maiden-flight/

[rcjordan]

^{older links I collected a day or two ago}

Gemini becomes Google's fastest-growing product ever as it hits 1B users - Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/08/google-says-gemini-has-reached-1b-users-faster-than-any-other-google-product/

ChatGPT and Gemini both just passed 1 billion users | The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/978113/chatgpt-gemini-1-billion-users

Claude will apply invisible watermarks to AI text and images | The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/977823/anthropic-claude-ai-watermarks-c2pa-text-images

The AI takeover of mathematics has begun | The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/977273/the-ai-takeover-of-mathematics-has-begun

U.K. Discovers Component in Its Naval Drones Sent Signals to China - WSJ
https://www.wsj.com/world/uk/u-k-discovers-component-in-its-naval-drones-sent-signals-to-china-6ae60578The absence of a headline is not evidence of safety.

Normalization of deviance: The real lesson of this summer's Cyclospora outbreak | Food Safety News
https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2026/08/normalization-of-deviance-the-real-lesson-of-this-summers-cyclospora-outbreak/

Iowa Wind Farms Found A Genius Way To Cut Those Flashing Red Lights At Night
https://www.bgr.com/2229760/iowa-wind-farms-cut-red-flashing-lights-at-night/

Criminal gangs have diversified across Latin America, making them more resilient – but not untouchable
https://theconversation.com/criminal-gangs-have-diversified-across-latin-america-making-them-more-resilient-but-not-untouchable-288458

Solar Pumps Were Supposed To Help Farmers – Now They're Backfiring In A Big Way
https://www.bgr.com/2229201/solar-pumps-were-supposed-to-help-farmers-backfiring-in-big-way/

[rcjordan]

Republican senator urges Trump to back US open-weight AI models amid industry debate | Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/business/republican-senator-urges-trump-back-us-open-weight-ai-models-amid-industry-2026-08-14/

Recent AI 'escapes' are a warning of how unpredictable the technology can be : NPR
https://www.npr.org/2026/08/14/nx-s1-5929579/recent-ai-escapes-are-a-warning-of-how-unpredictable-the-technology-can-be

^{Th3core said swarms were coming years ago.}
AI-Powered Auterion Drone Swarms Are Coming to the Battlefield - Bloomberg
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-14/ai-powered-auterion-drone-swarms-are-coming-to-the-battlefield

Google Turns On Gemini A.I. for Students Using Its Classroom App - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/14/business/google-gemini-ai-schools.html

[ergophobe]

> Fired One
"workers hired by Claude to work in the San Francisco store are real people with genuine employment contracts."

This is the "reverse centaur" pattern that Cory Doctorow rails about. AI was supposed to free us from drudgery by being the powerful draft animal attached to our human head, but instead humans in this case are the draft animals attached to the AI head.