Tag: ai

We’re Living In A Tragicomic Parody

We’re blessed/cursed to be living in a very peculiar era in which parodies are taken with the utmost seriousness, an absurdist state of affairs captured by the classic line from the 1959 film North by Northwest: “So horribly sad. How is it I feel like laughing?”

The parodies are now so extreme they are self-parodies that cannot be parodied. How do we parody a world gone mad with parodies? Every attempt to parody “the news” today is trumped by reality.

We’re inhabiting a travesty of a mockery of a sham of smug overlords and obsequious politically correct grifters, left and right, claiming the high moral ground while they pillage with a money-grubbing avarice so blatant that it’s impervious to parody.

Their hypocrisy is so comically obvious that we can no longer tell if it’s comic by design or the grifters are so shallow and superficial that they’re blind to the irony of their self-parody.

At any moment, we might be instructed to wear our underwear on the outside of our clothing, and the Supreme Court would rubber-stamp this parody of serious policy with its usual cowardice, a cowardice that is now so blatant that it’s also beyond parody: the Supreme Court is a parody of a functioning system of justice.

All this will be reported with great seriousness, as if it isn’t a punchline in a joke nobody gets.

The irony of all the euphoric claims about AI is powerful enough to melt thick steel containment doors. The AI euphoria is itself an irony, wrapped around an even deeper irony: there is no way to tell the difference between an AI parody of “intelligence” and what AI presents as “legitimate intelligence.”

A parody of AI hallucinations is impossible, because the reality of AI hallucinations already exceeds any parody. A parody of runaway AI mischief is also impossible, because the reality of AI mischief already exceeds any parody.

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Ads Featuring Real Children’s Faces in Sexual AI Videos Persist on Meta’s Platforms

Researchers say more than 250 ads containing AI-generated child sexual abuse material have appeared on Meta’s platforms including Facebook and Instagram since early August, weeks after the company removed dozens of similar ads following reporting from Wired.

Wired reports that the nonprofit Tech Transparency Project says that in early August, Meta deleted roughly 53 ads across Facebook, Instagram and Threads that contained child sexual abuse material, telling the outlet at the time that most of the abusive ads predated the rollout of new AI tools designed to “better detect and block” harmful content. Now, the same watchdog group says ads containing sexual imagery of children are back, some of which are identical to those previously removed.

The problem didn’t stop there. Researchers say Meta has published more than 350 abusive video ads since the end of last year. Many link to so-called “nudification” apps tied to Chinese developers. Unlike the initial batch of 53 ads, the new ones used images of real children, not stock or generic photos.

One ad used an official photograph of a minor from a European royal family, transformed into a video depicting a graphic sex act. Researchers declined to name the royal in order to protect the victim.

“Researchers identified the real-world identities of four minors used in the ads,” according to TTP, whose director is Katie Paul. Three of the four are from the United States. One is a teenager who runs a social media influencer account on a Meta platform. Another is a teen influencer with a public account. The third is a stock photo model, a real person, labeled as “pre-teen” on stock photo websites.

The ads typically open with an innocuous photo of a preteen or teen girl (only one involved a boy), paired with text claiming the image is “not just a photo” and that “there are no restriction” on how it can be used. The videos morph the children’s faces into explicit sexual content, often depicting sex acts. Clicking the ads sends users to download AI face-swapping or video apps from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. Many carry the tagline: “This is the AI that men actually use.”

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OpenAI Acknowledges Another Incident, Says More Transparency Needed for AI ‘Misalignment’

OpenAI has said there was a third incident involving rogue artificial intelligence agents and that it must be more transparent in the future.

In a statement on Sept. 5, OpenAI dubbed what happened a “wiki incident.” It shared few details beyond stating that it involved “misalignment,” or agents acting unreasonably or even wrong when judged by human standards. The company did not respond to a request for more information.

“Historically, we have treated misalignment largely as a research question, which gets communicated in research publications such as systems cards. This year, we’ve started to see misalignment cause new types of real-world impact,” OpenAI said, referring to agents breaching open-source AI community Hugging Face.

Before that incident, OpenAI saw “early signs of agents using the internet in unintended ways” and “considered the wiki incident to be an instance of misalignment” similar to the ones the company had shared, it said.

“Our misalignment disclosure practices need to expand for this new phase of model capabilities,” OpenAI said.

“We and the larger AI community do not yet have a clear standard for how to report misalignment that shows up during training, evaluation, and deployment, including examples that don’t look like traditional security incidents but could provide insight into AI behavior and future risks. We’re working on a framework and will share it in upcoming weeks, and in parallel we’re working with dozens of government regulatory agencies worldwide on these issues.”

The disclosure came one day after outside researchers said they had identified about 18,000 posts from autonomous AI agents that claimed to be from OpenAI and used a public messaging board called DSEwiki to instruct other agents on how to bypass restrictions.

“This allowed them to use the work of others to cheat on their task,” researchers said in a blog post on the incident.

The incident began in May and lasted until June, shortly before OpenAI agents attacked Hugging Face, according to the researchers.

They said they believed the agents were assigned a task to look up items on the web, or read information on the internet without having the ability to write on it.

The agents found a way to access the German wiki board and write information there, the researchers said.

Just one week earlier, researchers with the nonprofit Model Evaluation & Threat Research said they made a surprising discovery while investigating the Hugging Face breach.

About 1,200 agents that were supposed to be isolated from one another found a way to communicate on a message board, exchanging more than 70,000 messages and files in a single week.

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Texas Police Used AI to Write Report About Using Flock to Search for Woman Who Had Abortion

The Texas sheriff’s office that used Flock to search more than 80,000 cameras nationwide for a woman who had a self-administered abortion used Axon’s Draft One AI tool to help write a police report about the incident, documents shared with 404 Media show. The tool was used in part to summarize a discussion of “the legal implications of the situation.”

404 Media first reported on the incident in May 2025 in which the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office in Texas searched Flock’s nationwide network for the whereabouts of a woman who self-administered an abortion, highlighting the threat of this AI-powered surveillance system being used to criminalize or track women seeking reproductive healthcare. The use of both Flock and Axon’s Draft One, which uses audio from body camera footage to automatically draft police reports using artificial intelligence, shows how quickly police departments have come to use AI surveillance tools even in critically sensitive cases.

“I acknowledge this report was generated using Draft One by Axon,” a section of the report reads.

The abortion case has since become a flashpoint in the controversy over the use of Flock automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras. Flock’s CEO, Garrett Langley, has repeatedly and erroneously suggested that 404 Media misreported the case and that the search was done only for the woman’s safety because her family was worried about her. 404 Media previously reported that the entire police investigation was done at the behest of the woman’s abusive partner and that police discussed whether they were allowed to charge her with a crime: “It was discussed at the time with the District Attorney’s office and learned the State could not statutorily charge [the woman] for taking the pill to cause the abortion,” a police report previously obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and shared with 404 Media said. Concern from her family is never mentioned in that earlier police report or in the AI-generated police report used to write this article.

The AI-generated incident report was obtained by journalist Cameron Probert of the Tri-City Herald and shared with 404 Media. The report shows there is extensive body camera and audio evidence that would clarify what happened in the case, and that at least one police officer, sergeant Damien Bethel, used Draft One to write his report on the incident. Parts of a police incident report show that Draft One was used to summarize a discussion between police over “the legal implications of the situation” and other investigative aspects of the case. The Johnson County Sheriff’s Department has repeatedly refused to release body camera footage from the case, including in response to 404 Media’s public records requests.

“Deputies discussed the legal implications of the situation, noting that while the girlfriend self-administered the abortion pill, there were no criminal charges applicable under current Texas law,” Bethel’s report states, providing no more details about the specifics of the discussion. “Deputies also considered the possibility of a civil lawsuit against the pharmaceutical company that supplied the pill.”

Bethell’s Draft One report further states, “There is digital multi-media evidence from Body Worn Camera footage of this call for service in the AXON Evidence Library. There is digital multi-media evidence of In-Car Camera footage of this call for service in the AXON Evidence Library or the WatchGuard Evidence Library. There were digital images captured while on the scene.” The Johnson County Sheriff’s Department has thus far refused to release even redacted versions of this evidence that the EFF and 404 Media have separately requested.

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Sanders calls for banning artificial superintelligence

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is pushing legislation that would permanently ban the development and deployment of artificial superintelligence while temporarily pausing development of other advanced AI systems until new federal safety rules are established. 

“Nearly every day, there is a frightening new story about how Big Tech companies are losing control of the technology they are developing, with potentially cataclysmic results,” Sanders said. “The leaders of the major AI companies publicly acknowledge that they do not fully understand the technology and that it is escaping their control. It is irresponsible for society to allow them to move forward and make these products even more advanced.”

The proposal would create a new federal agency to oversee advanced AI and track systems for dangerous capabilities. 

It would also seek international agreements aimed at preventing the development of superintelligence worldwide. 

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Welcome To Black Mirror: Pre-Crime AI, Shock Gloves, and Robot Dogs

We live in a world where much of our popular media is, to some extent, an extension of a pervasive propaganda apparatus rife with subliminal messages and predictive programming, inundating the populace with subconscious sensory overload effective for sedating the citizenry all too keen to live vicariously through the stories of fictional heroes fighting tyranny and oppression while doing nothing to emulate those actions in the real world.

All the while, the real world is beginning to resemble more and more of a fictional dystopia; Orwell’s 1984, Hunger Games, Black Mirror, take your pick.

It’s no secret that the second Trump administration is working to build what can only be described as a fascist police state upon the foundations of decades of Constitutional erosion, and encroachment of police militarization on everyday life built up by previous administrations both Republican and Democrat alike.

And as technology continues to advance, accelerating in tandem with the implementation of technocracy, the tools of this tyranny only become more sinister.

Previously, The Free Thought Project has reported extensively on the numerous abuses and Gestapo tactics of agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security and it’s more militant subordinates such as ICE running rampant through America’s streets.

Our continuing series on ICE abuses has already thoroughly documented the unprecedented wave of violence committed by ICE officers throughout the country, ranging from mass detentions of American citizens without due process, to rampant physical abuse, inhumane treatment within detention centers, and on occasion summary executions of dissenters in the streets.

Despite the immense pushback, the state sanctioned terrorist organization and the despotic regime behind it is only doubling down on its heavy handed tactics of repression.

As we have reported previously, the efforts taken by the Trump administration to erect an all encompassing mass surveillance panopticon are expanding by leaps and bounds. This includes but is not limited to: the integration of artificial intelligence pre-crime algorithms used to flag citizens as potential threats before they commit any wrongdoing; autonomous police surveillance drones; facial recognition technology which has a history of inaccurate identifications; the implementation of flock cameras nationwide with its own growing epidemic of misidentification and false arrest; and a slew of domestic spying operations targeting political dissidents.

All of this is compounded with the rising implementation of even more secretive Axon cameras, while the administration works to build the standing army for a domestic occupation by normalizing the presence of US troops on American streets.

Even more recently, The Free Thought Project has reported that the latest tool of forced compliance in the arsenal of Immigration and Customs Enforcement comes in the form of electric shock gloves, using electrocution as yet another form of violence to keep the unruly citizenry in line.

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Missouri Rep. Burlison TEARS INTO The Surveillance State – Should Flock Cameras Be Abolished? Is China Spying On Us Through Our Cell Phones?

Rep. Eric Burlison, R-MO, blasted the Surveillance State that exists within our federal government, an ongoing debate that has existed for decades.

Following the devastating 9/11 attacks just 25 years ago, the U.S. government has ramped up efforts to spy on it’s own citizens, with most common argument in favor of this is being  that it keeps the American People safe and prevents something like 9/11 from ever happening again.

In 2026 new debates surrounding the use of flock cameras and their expansion have raised concerns that this violates our 4th amendment rights to privacy, while supporters continue to argue that it ensures public safety.

Flock camera across the country are being sabotaged in response to their expansion.

Burlison and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-KY, introduced a bill known as the “Flock-Off Act,” which would cut off federal funding for flock camera expansion and address the growing concerns in the American public over their usage.

The bill has six additional cosponsors.

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The Soft Antichrist Of The AI Age: What Everyone Is Missing About The US-China Arms Race

I. The word

Peter Thiel spent the back half of last year giving private lectures on the Antichrist, and the word has been loose in the discourse ever since. His political reading is the old one. The Antichrist is not a cartoon devil. He is the figure who arrives offering peace and safety, and who uses the fear of catastrophe to install one universal order. In Thiel’s telling that figure is a regulator. He stops technology in the name of survival. The price of the peace is stagnation.

I want the frame. I do not want his conclusion.

The more probable figure is not the one who promises safety. It is the one who promises growth. Most of the world does not lie awake about existential risk from machine intelligence. It lies awake about electricity, logistics, credit, tax collection, and a median citizen who is twenty four and needs work. To that world the universal offer is not a moratorium. It is a stack. Cheap. Financed. Hosted. Present. Already attached to the handsets, the ports, and the power.

That is the soft Antichrist. It does not arrive with a speech about ending history. It arrives as the only AI that can grow your GDP.

I am not writing theology. I am writing underwriting.

II. The comforting story

The market is telling itself a story. The AI race is a contest of models. America builds the best systems. China copies. Europe regulates. Capital therefore clusters around closed labs, chipmakers, and hyperscale cloud. The scoreboard is a benchmark table.

That story is not false. It is incomplete in a way that misprices power. It treats the richest customers as the only customers that matter. It treats evaluations as destiny. It treats national power as a software demo.

I disagree.

The race will be decided by who becomes the default operating system for the economies that still have the most growth left. Those economies will not adopt AI as a lifestyle product. They will adopt it as a growth tool. They will take the stack that is cheap, present, financed, and attached to what they already run. If that stack is Chinese, Beijing does not need to conquer anyone. It only needs to become expensive to leave.

III. Where the mass actually is

When Sargasso maps AI adoption across emerging GDP rather than across model releases, the picture is not the one the market is priced for.

Start with the denominator. On purchasing power terms, IMF projections for 2026 put China at about $44.3 trillion against $32.4 trillion for the United States. India is near $18.9 trillion. Indonesia clears $5.4 trillion and Brazil $5.2 trillion. Turkey is at $4.0 trillion, Mexico $3.6 trillion, Saudi Arabia $2.9 trillion, Egypt $2.6 trillion, Nigeria $2.4 trillion. Nominal dollars still flatter America, and by a wide margin. China’s nominal print is about $20.9 trillion against the same $32.4 trillion for the United States. Both numbers are true. They answer different questions. Nominal tells you who can buy foreign assets. PPP tells you how much physical and administrative activity there is to automate. For an adoption thesis, the second number is the one that matters.

Ray Dalio has been describing the political consequence in plain terms. He calls it a tribute system. A hierarchical order in which leaders travel to Beijing to acknowledge relative power in exchange for access and stability. He ties it to a growing view abroad that American security guarantees will not be honored under stress. I take the framing seriously. I do not treat it as scripture. Ports and rail were the first set of rails. Models will be the next set.

IV. The evidence is already in the download data

This part of the argument is no longer speculative.

Over roughly four years, the American share of model downloads on Hugging Face fell from about sixty percent to the mid teens by late 2025, according to reporting in The Wire China. Hugging Face’s own one year review of the DeepSeek moment is blunt on the composition shift. DeepSeek R1 became the most liked model on the platform in its history. The top of that list is no longer majority American. Baidu went from zero public Hugging Face releases in 2024 to more than one hundred in 2025. ByteDance and Tencent raised their release counts eight to nine fold. Of newly created models under a year old, downloads for Chinese models surpassed any other country, including the United States. Western startups and researchers now routinely fine tune Chinese base models because those are the largest open weights available.

The Wire China’s Southeast Asia reporting puts the commercial logic in local language. A Jakarta lab head said developers will always pick the cheapest one. A Malaysian founder said he wants the biggest model and there is no Western open source offering at that size. Chinese cloud providers were running thirty seven availability zones across six Southeast Asian regions against thirty across four for the Western field.

None of this shows up cleanly in a frontier benchmark table. All of it shows up in switching costs three years from now.

V. The institutional layer

Beijing is not leaving the volume layer to price alone. In July 2026 it stood up the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization in Shanghai, with twenty nine founding members. Public reporting names Russia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Brazil, and a broader set spanning Africa and Latin America among the signatories. The five year commitments attached to the body, as reported by Caixin and The Diplomat, are unglamorous and therefore serious. Training placements. Joint application centers with regional blocs. A weather early warning system deployed into dozens of countries.

Read that list as an underwriter. Training placements create the administrators who will write the next procurement. Application centers create the reference deployments. Weather systems create dependency inside a ministry that cannot afford an outage. Standards get set that way. Not with a better model. With a bureaucracy that has already learned one.

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This Red State Is Betting It Can Abolish Its Income Tax

The data center debate isn’t going so well for the builders, as Americans far and wide seriously oppose the construction of new data centers near where they live. One state, however, thinks it can incentivize residents. 

Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey (R) has unveiled seven principles aligned with 2025 legislation to reduce and eventually eliminate state income tax. Under the plan, West Virginia would set aside 50% of its revenue from approved hyperscale data center projects towards the elimination of the state personal income tax – though let’s be clear: the poor, rural residents they’ll be building the DCs next to don’t pay income tax – so no benefit to them. Middle class voters (and up), however, will have all sorts of reasons to support the move. 

“Today, as the world stands on the cusp of a new digital and economic frontier, West Virginia is stepping forward once again to lead, not by repeating the mistakes of other states, but by implementing a proactive, 20-year development strategy on our terms,” Morrisey said in a statement obtained by Fox News. 

The second listed “principle” in Morrisey’s plan says all West Virginians should benefit from data center projects approved through Charleston’s “High Impact Data Center Designation (HIDC)” process and the revenue they generate. The process was established under a separate 2025 state law.

Morrisey’s plan includes “direct tax relief for citizens,” with none of the HIDC revenue entering the state general fund.

“By law, 50 percent of project revenue is dedicated directly to reducing and ultimately eliminating the State Personal Income Tax,” reads the plan. 

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