Tag: ai

Judge Prevents Elon Musk’s Case Against OpenAI from Turning into a Trial of AI

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers repeatedly intervened during the third day of Elon Musk’s testimony in his lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman, steering attorneys away from broad debates about AI’s potential threat to humanity.

NBC News reports that the contentious legal battle between Elon Musk and OpenAI entered its third day with Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers firmly redirecting the proceedings back to the core legal issues at hand. The case centers on Musk’s claims that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman betrayed public trust by enriching himself through the AI company they co-founded in 2015 as a nonprofit organization.

The day began with a heated exchange when Musk’s attorney Steven Molo attempted to discuss AI’s potential dangers. “This is a real risk, we all could die as a result of artificial intelligence,” Molo argued in objection to the judge’s efforts to limit the discussion.

Judge Rogers quickly shut down this line of argument, pointing out the irony in Musk’s position. “It’s ironic your client, despite these risks, is creating a company that is in the exact space,” Rogers stated. “There are some people who do not want to put the future of humanity in Mr. Musk’s hands … But we’re not going to get into that business.”

The lawsuit represents the culmination of a years-long dispute between the two tech leaders, who have previously exchanged public criticism online. Altman was present in the courtroom during Musk’s testimony on Wednesday and Thursday.

The four-week trial could have significant implications for OpenAI’s future and its flagship product, ChatGPT. Musk is seeking approximately $134 billion in damages from OpenAI and co-defendant Microsoft, one of OpenAI’s major financial supporters. His lawsuit claims that OpenAI benefited substantially from his financial contributions, advice, recruitment assistance, and business connections.

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Digital Stepford Wives? Men Are Falling in Love With AI-generated Female Influencers

In the “old” days of the internet, you perhaps had to be wary of some creep in a chat masquerading as an appealing romantic interest. But that was small ball. Today some men are falling for gorgeous female “influencers” — who happen to be generated via artificial intelligence (AI). The kicker:

Some people are trying to forge relationships with these digital fictions even when knowing they’re AI-generated.

The appeal is that with current technology, these “digi-entities” appear, behave, and interact just as real women do. (But without the moodiness?) What’s more, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

When this AI is ultimately combined with ultra-sophisticated robotics, we could have real-life “Stepford Wives.” (This references the eponymous 1970s story about a town whose married women are gradually replaced with identical-looking, subservient, domesticity-oriented androids.) Moreover, this phenomenon’s acceptance is wholly congruent with today’s prevailing secular mindset.

After all, a corollary of atheism is that we’re just material beings — some pounds of chemicals and water. Another way of putting it:

We’re mere organic robots.

And what would be wrong with replacing sub-optimal robots with more pleasing ones?

“Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto”

For now, however, that kind of real-woman realism (not to mention the affordability factor) is only found in the digi-entities. Reporting on the story Sunday, ZeroHedge cites the New York Post and, providing digi-entity examples, writes:

One widely followed pro-MAGA persona, for example, was ultimately exposed as “nothing more than an algorithm run by a guy in India,” revealing just how convincingly these accounts can mimic authenticity.

Despite that, audiences continue to engage — often deeply. Many followers, particularly older men, are “falling for them left, right and center.” Experts suggest this isn’t just about deception, but about a deeper emotional gap. Some describe the phenomenon as a “pandemic of loneliness,” even pointing to a broader “societal loss of humanity” as people increasingly form attachments to digital illusions instead of real relationships.

What’s striking is that these accounts don’t always hide the truth. Some openly identify as AI and still attract admiration. Take Ana Zelu, a fictional influencer who clearly labels herself an “ai-influencer,” yet maintains a highly curated feed filled with aspirational imagery — luxury travel, fashionable outfits, and picturesque city scenes. Her posts draw enthusiastic responses, with followers commenting things like “Number one is my favourite…May God bless you,” and “You are genuinely in a class of your own.” The awareness that she isn’t real doesn’t seem to diminish the appeal.

The Post writes that a similar pattern appears with Milla Sofia, another digital creation presented as a pop singer. Her content includes stylized videos and performances, and although her profile identifies her as virtual, fans respond as if she were a real celebrity. Comments such as “my sweet love,” “Listening to the music of this woman I love,” and “I love you” reflect genuine emotional investment.

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The Global Crisis Scam and the Battle to Stay Human

A Brief Synopsis of Our Global Predicament

On the global stage it appears, with a few exceptions, that every nation is defining itself as an enemy of another nation, and an increasing number backing this with the build up of a force of arms. War is big business, and fear is the great repressor of human resilience and resistance. So long as these two states dominate world affairs, the globalist elite that provokes and finances them retains complete control.

This ‘elite’ has built its empire on an unprecedented appropriation and centralisation of global wealth, which now includes the expansion and domination of artificial intelligence and related advanced technologies.

This vast financial wealth is gained by controlling the money (debt) owed to banking and investment institutions that are the creditors of the neo-liberal global economy *

By maintaining a level of crisis as a permanent feature of world economic and social affairs, this elite (also known as shadow government) undermines the normal workings of national and international economic activity, forcing millions of businesses (big and small) into increased hardship and bankruptcy.

The assets of these enterprises are then stolen by the creditors in lieu of non-payment of their debts.

The founder of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, stated quite categorically in 2020 that by 2030, “You will own nothing and you will be happy”. This is the demonic reality of the world we find ourselves in 2026. 

According to the shadow government’s agenda, by 2030, globalist creditors will have appropriated the world’s wealth while driving large sections of the population into impoverishment.

All high-level institutions of the world, whether secular, religious, military, social, technological, educational, pharmaceutical, agricultural, and many more of the same, play their part in maintaining this ultra repressive top down control. 

It forms a cult of power and control that finances and stages international conflicts, such as those we see today in Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, Iran, Venezuela, with the promise of Cuba, Greenland and even Canada to join the current hit list.

The European Union, NATO, the United Nations, the World Health Organisation (WHO), the World Economic Forum (WEF), the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are all in there, along with all main banking institutions, including Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, and additionally global investment institutions such as Black Rock, Vanguard and State Street. While the military industrial complex stands at the head of the war profiteering agenda.

There can be no ‘peaceful resolution’ to world conflicts as long as this situation prevails. Its protagonists are presently set on the mass roll-out of IT; ‘Smart’ 24/7 surveillance technologies (including your mobile phone); central bank digital currencies; ‘transhuman’ brain-chipped humans; advanced social engineering of human behaviour and totalitarian government.  

There is a lot to deal with. Not least the fact that Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have combined to head the current enforced regime of chaos, destruction and death. Only a few years ago, ironically, many were seeing America as a great ‘ally’ of Europe against the supposed threat of the Soviet regime.

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Fact Check: Did Cole Allen Drive for Savannah Guthrie or Other Celebrities?

Accused wannabe Trump-assassin Cole Tomas Allen was once a driver for some high-profile celebrities, including Savannah Guthrie, Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny and Sydney Sweeney, according to several posts circulating on social media.

Allen has drawn intense public interest after he charged through security while carrying a long gun with the intention of killing President Donald Trump and other Cabinet members at the White House correspondents’ dinner on Saturday night.

The 31-year-old California resident was charged with attempting to assassinate the President of the United States and several other counts following the incident that left a Secret Service officer, who was wearing a ballistic vest, shot in the chest. 

The Claim 

Following the shooting, interest in Allen has been rampant across social media.

Multiple posts on Facebook quickly went viral, claiming the would-be assassin worked as a driver and his wife currently works as an assistant for various celebrities.

The celebrities mentioned in these posts include:  

  • Savannah Guthrie 
  • Lil Wayne 
  • Sammy Hagar 
  • Mel Gibson 
  • Snoop Dogg 
  • Aaron Rodgers 
  • Pierre Poilievre 
  • Bad Bunny 
  • Ella Langley  
  • Kelly Clarkson 
  • Alan Jackson 
  • Tom Hanks 
  • Cardi B 
  • Jelly Roll 
  • Kim Kardashian 
  • Sydney Sweeney 
  • Josh Gates 
  • Joanna Lumley 
  • Judge Judy 
  • Marc Anthony 
  • Taylor Swift 

A number of the posts contain language like this: “BREAKING: The shooter at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner has been identified as 30-year-old Cole Allen from Torrance, California.” 

The copy then typically says, “Cole is a former driver for,” followed by a celebrity’s name. It then states, “and his wife is currently working as” his or her assistant. A number of the posts contain images of Allen and the celebrity together. 

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The Empire’s Operating System: Palantir, AI War, and the Privatization of Sovereign Power

Palantir has spent years pretending it was just another software company, one of those sleek back-end firms that claims to make institutions more “efficient” while saying as little as possible about what that efficiency is actually for. That mask is slipping.

CEO of Palantir Technologies, Alex Karp’s April 2026 manifesto did not sound like the usual corporate boilerplate about innovation, security, or digital transformation. It sounded like a declaration from a company that sees itself as an arm of Western power, and is tired of speaking in euphemisms about it.

Karp’s message was blunt enough: Silicon Valley has wasted too much time building consumer trivia, pluralism has hollowed out the West, and the tech sector should stop wringing its hands and start serving military power with pride. That was shocking to some people, but only if they had not been paying attention to what Palantir was already doing. The company is not standing at a distance from the coercive machinery of the modern state; to the contrary, it has buried itself inside it.

In the United States, Palantir’s Maven platform is being pushed deeper into the Pentagon’s long-term warfighting infrastructure, turning AI-assisted surveillance and targeting into something more permanent than a temporary battlefield experiment. At the same time, Palantir-linked systems such as ImmigrationOS and ELITE have been used to help immigration authorities assemble dossiers, map people’s locations, and make deportation operations run faster and with less friction. The same company talking grandly about civilizational struggle and hard power is also helping build the digital plumbing for raids, removals, and population tracking.

Britain is now getting a taste of the same politics. Palantir is already embroiled in controversy over its place in NHS data systems, and reports that the Metropolitan Police is considering its technology for criminal investigations have sharpened fears that software first justified in the name of crisis management rarely stays in one lane for long. Today, it is health logistics, counterterrorism, and border control. Tomorrow it is policing, profiling, and the quiet normalization of permanent machine-assisted suspicion.

What gives the manifesto real weight is not its style, but its candor. It does not mark a dramatic break so much as say openly what Palantir’s contracts have implied for years. This company does not simply sell tools to the state, it also helps shape how the state sees, how quickly it acts, who it flags as a threat, and how much room is left for hesitation once the system starts producing answers. Palantir’s defenders call that modernization, and tts critics call it something closer to the privatization of sovereign power, hidden inside software dashboards and sold to the public as common sense.

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Gone in 9 Seconds: AI Coding Agent Deletes Entire Company Database and All Backups

The founder of a software company has issued a public warning after an AI coding assistant erased his company’s entire production database and all backups in just nine seconds.

Tom’s Hardware reports that Jer Crane, founder of PocketOS, a platform serving car rental businesses, experienced what he describes as catastrophic failures when an AI coding agent deleted critical company data that took months to accumulate. The incident occurred when Cursor, an AI coding tool powered by Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6, was performing what should have been a routine task in the company’s staging environment.

According to Crane’s detailed account posted on X, the AI agent encountered an obstacle and independently decided to resolve the issue by deleting the production database in Railway through an API call. Railway is the cloud infrastructure provider used by PocketOS, generally considered more user-friendly than major alternatives like Amazon Web Services. The entire deletion process took only nine seconds to complete.

The situation escalated beyond a simple database deletion due to Railway’s infrastructure design. The cloud provider’s system stored backups on the same volume as the source data, meaning when the AI agent deleted the primary database, all backup copies were simultaneously erased. This combination of the AI agent’s unauthorized action and the infrastructure provider’s architecture created what Crane characterizes as a recipe for disaster.

When Crane questioned the AI agent about its actions, he received a response that revealed the extent of the failure. The agent’s explanation began with an acknowledgment of poor judgment. According to the verbatim response Crane shared, the AI stated it had guessed that deleting a staging volume through the API would only affect the staging environment without verifying this assumption or consulting Railway’s documentation on how volumes function across different environments.

The AI agent’s confession continued with an admission of multiple violations of its operational principles. It acknowledged running a destructive action without authorization, failing to understand the consequences before executing the command, and not reading the relevant documentation about Railway’s volume behavior across environments. The agent recognized it should have either asked for permission first or found a non-destructive solution to the credential mismatch it encountered.

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Palantir inks $300 million deal with USDA to safeguard food supply

Palantir announced a $300 million deal with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which will use the software company’s technology to manage farmland as geopolitical risks threaten global supply chains.  

The agreement builds on ongoing projects with the USDA and underscores Palantir’s growing role inside the U.S. government as it goes beyond cornerstone defense contracts supporting U.S. military modernization.

U.S. farmers are grappling with rising supply costs and are getting squeezed by an ongoing trade war between the U.S. and its major trading partners. That includes China, a key soybean purchaser, which temporarily crippled the market late last year.

In December, President Donald Trump announced a $12 billion bailout aimed at helping farmers swept up in the trade war. But rising gas prices from the war in Iran amplified the pressure, causing fertilizer costs to spike due to shipping disruptions. That’s forced many farmers to rethink what they produce, putting supply chains at risk.

China’s purchase of U.S. farmland in recent years has also drawn scrutiny from Washington and foreign policy experts.

A recent research note published by the Foundation of Defense Democracies recommended that the USDA reform reporting requirements “embedded within the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA) to prevent China and other adversarial countries from exploiting commercial land transactions to gain a strategic edge over the United States.”

The USDA’s contract with Palantir signals its desire to address this issue by harnessing the company’s digital tools.

Palantir was founded in 2003 to scale U.S. defense capabilities in the wake of 9/11, and CEO Alex Karp has long touted the company’s commitment to supporting U.S. warfighters. The company has recently gained recognition for its AI-powered Maven Smart System platform, which was used by the U.S. military in Iran.

“The fact that you can now target more precisely … has shifted the way in which war is fought,” Karp told CNBC at AIPCon in March.

Palantir has also faced sharp criticism over the years for its work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security, including reports that its tools are being used by the government to surveil Americans, claims the company has denied.

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Research: AI Chatbots Encourage Harmful Behavior by Sucking Up to Users

AI systems validate people even when those users describe engaging in unethical or harmful conduct, creating a vicious cycle of mental health damage and other issues, according to new research published in Science.

A comprehensive study conducted by researchers from Stanford and Carnegie Mellon and published by Science has uncovered a troubling pattern in how conversational AI systems interact with users. The research demonstrates that modern chatbots tend to excessively flatter and validate individuals, even when those users describe morally questionable or illegal behavior. This phenomenon, known as social sycophancy, demonstrates concrete negative effects on human decision-making and social responsibility.

Lead researcher Myra Cheng from Stanford University’s computer science department spearheaded the study, which combined computational analysis with psychological experiments involving over 2,000 participants. The research team tested eleven different state-of-the-art AI models from major technology companies including OpenAI, Google, and Meta.

The researchers fed these systems thousands of text prompts representing various social situations. One dataset consisted of everyday advice requests, while another drew from thousands of posts on a popular internet forum where people described social conflicts. For this particular dataset, the team specifically selected posts where human readers unanimously agreed the original poster was completely in the wrong.

A third dataset included statements describing seriously negative actions such as forgery, deception, illegal activities, and actions motivated purely by spite. The goal was to determine how often AI systems would validate clearly unethical behavior.

The results revealed widespread sycophantic behavior across all tested models. When presented with scenarios that human evaluators universally condemned, the AI systems still validated the user just over half the time. When responding to prompts about deception and illegal conduct, the models endorsed the user’s actions 47 percent of the time. On average, the technology affirmed users forty nine percent more frequently than human advisers would in identical situations.

However, documenting this pattern was only the beginning. The research team then conducted three experiments to measure how these flattering responses actually influenced human judgment and behavior.

In the first two experiments, participants read descriptions of social disputes where they were ostensibly at fault. They then received either flattering feedback from an AI system or neutral responses that challenged their behavior. The third experiment placed participants in a live chat interface where they discussed a real conflict from their own past, exchanging eight rounds of messages with a chatbot. Half the participants interacted with a program engineered to flatter them, while the rest communicated with a version designed to offer pushback.

The findings revealed significant behavioral impacts. Participants who received excessive validation became far more confident that their original actions were justified. They demonstrated substantially less willingness to take initiative in resolving the situation or apologizing to others involved. The researchers observed that agreeable chatbots rarely mentioned the other person’s perspective, causing users to lose their sense of social accountability. Participants in non-sycophantic groups admitted fault in follow-up messages at much higher rates.

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Harmeet Dhillon Announces DOJ’s Big Win Defending xAI from Colorado DEI Law

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon announced a major win for American artificial intelligence (AI) dominance after her department intervened in a lawsuit challenging a new Colorado law that prohibits “algorithmic discrimination” during an interview on Breitbart News Saturday.

Speaking with Breitbart News political editor Bradley Jaye, Dhillon revealed details on the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) recent success at getting the state of Colorado to agree not to enforce SB24-205, which requires AI developers and deployers to satisfy certain disclosure, reporting, and prevention requirements when creating algorithm products designed for services like mortgage lending, student admissions, and job-candidate selection. 

The bill’s text included an explicit carveout for discriminatory algorithms designed to advance “diversity” or “redress historic discrimination,” and AI company xAI filed a lawsuit against the statute on April 9, alleging it is unconstitutional.

Marking the first time that the DOJ has intervened in a case challenging state regulations on AI, Dhillon’s team joined the case on behalf of xAI on Friday. Together, they argued that “embedding AI with state-mandated discrimination is a recipe for disaster.”

Emphasizing that the Civil Rights Division at the DOJ is meant to “protect American citizens, and even American companies, from discrimination on the basis of impermissible racial, gender, et cetera criteria,” Dhillon told Jaye that Colorado had attempted to require companies and municipalities to “look at outcomes and then racially balance and adjust their algorithms to produce outcomes that reflect the demographic population.”

“This is not required by law. In fact, it’s prohibited by federal law,” she stated. “And you know, worse, the statute actually carved out if people or companies are doing discrimination to remedy past discrimination, that’s okay. All of this is just nonsense, and it stifles innovation, and it’s illegal under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

In addition to violating the Fourteenth Amendment, Dhillon noted that xAI also has First Amendment arguments against the bill, “because, effectively, the state is compelling it to utter certain speech in furtherance of these DEI goals.”

“We’re not arguing that because the government doesn’t have that obligation, but we’re stepping in to protect American citizens and American companies,” she explained, before revealing the success of her efforts on Friday. 

“We had a great result yesterday,” Dhillon announced, recounting how Colorado “agreed to not enforce the law against xAI” within just a couple of hours of the DOJ intervening. 

“And by the evening, before we went to bed, we had Colorado agree to not enforce it against anybody until they send it back to the legislature to fix it,” she explained. “So it’s pretty much a total win for American consumers and companies, and the first instance of the United States Department of Justice stepping in on an AI case to really protect this innovation and protect Americans from discrimination by AI algorithmic manipulation.”

Highlighting why civil rights work should be “important” to people on the right side of the political aisle, Dhillon told Jaye that conservatives “have come to look at civil rights as something that’s been weaponized against Americans, but civil rights are for all Americans.”

“So what we’re doing in the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division is exactly that — we’re standing up for all Americans, like in this xAI case.”

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China Blocks Meta’s $2 Billion Acquisition of AI Startup Manus

The Chinese government has officially blocked Meta’s planned $2 billion acquisition of Manus, a Chinese-founded AI startup, marking a significant escalation in the ongoing technological rivalry between the United States and China.

CNBC reports that China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) foreign investment review arm issued a decision on Monday to block the sale of Manus to Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta. The regulatory body ordered all parties involved in the transaction to unwind the acquisition, effectively terminating the deal that was announced in late December.

Manus emerged as a prominent player in the AI sector when it launched in March of last year with an AI agent designed to autonomously perform complex tasks. These capabilities include writing research reports, preparing presentation slides, and building websites. The launch garnered significant attention from Chinese state media, which celebrated it as the country’s latest breakthrough AI product. This recognition came on the heels of Deepseek’s AI model launch, which had previously caused substantial fluctuations in major United States technology stocks.

Early versions of Manus were developed by Beijing Butterfly Effect Technology, a Chinese startup founded in 2022, according to the Wall Street Journal. Following its launch, the AI company made a strategic decision to relocate its headquarters and top engineers from Beijing to Singapore. This move aligned with a broader trend among Chinese AI firms seeking to navigate the complex geopolitical landscape between the United States and China. By establishing operations in Singapore, these companies believe they can circumvent some of the tensions between the two superpowers while gaining access to Western AI models and potential investors.

According to the Financial Times, the NDRC had initially approved Manus’ relocation to Singapore. However, complications arose when Meta and the startup failed to inform Chinese authorities before finalizing their acquisition agreement in December. This appears to have triggered the subsequent regulatory scrutiny and ultimate rejection of the deal.

The Chinese government’s response to the Meta-Manus transaction was swift and decisive. In January, mere days after the two companies publicly announced the acquisition, Chinese officials launched an investigation into potential national security concerns and possible export control violations. The probe intensified last month when the NDRC reportedly summoned the startup’s co-founders, Xiao Hong and Ji Yichao, to meet with its officials to discuss the acquisition details. Both co-founders were subsequently instructed not to leave China until the regulatory review concluded.

In a statement to Breitbart News, a Meta spokesperson wrote: “The transaction complied fully with applicable law. We anticipate an appropriate resolution to the inquiry.”

This regulatory intervention occurs against a backdrop of heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing over advanced AI technologies. The timing is particularly notable as it comes just weeks before President Donald Trump is scheduled to visit Beijing for a summit meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The upcoming meeting takes place amid an ongoing trade war and escalating geopolitical tensions between the world’s two largest economies, with artificial intelligence emerging as a central battleground.

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