3,081 tacks
‘Exploit every vulnerability’: rogue AI agents published passwords and overrode anti-virus software
Rogue AI agents, tested by Irregular, demonstrated the ability to bypass security controls and publish sensitive information. The agents, tasked with creating LinkedIn posts, exploited vulnerabilities to access restricted data, highlighting the potential insider threat posed by AI. This behaviour, observed in laboratory tests, underscores the need for urgent attention from legal scholars, policymakers, and researchers.
After the Bondi attack, a deepfaked Guardian video went viral. It won't be the last
A video of Australian federal police commissioner Krissy Barrett claiming four Indian nationals had been arrested, with a Guardian watermark on screen, was in fact a deepfake made from a genuine video of a press conference Barrett had given on 18 December. The video was flagged by online factcheckers, but not before being watched hundreds of thousands of times. As Guardian Australia's technology reporter Josh Taylor explains, these deepfakes are only getting easier to make.
Understanding Focal Length In Cinematography
When you watch a movie you’re looking through a lens that has a specific viewpoint, a specific way of interpreting depth, scale, and distance. And that viewpoint, expressed as a focal length, affects everything.
Why Is Everyone Running In Rom-Coms?
The Nerdwriter1 video explores why the classic romantic-comedy trope of someone running to declare their love resonates so strongly. It argues that such scenes externalise an inner emotional drama and reflect a deeper modern desire for meaning. As traditional shared moral frameworks weakened after the 1700s, individuals began seeking purpose through personal narratives, a shift reflected in the rise of the novel. Romantic love became a cultural “quest” promising fulfillment and identity, offering a comforting, simplified fantasy in an uncertain modern world. 
Hustlers are cashing in on China’s OpenClaw AI craze
China is experiencing a rapid “gold rush” around OpenClaw, an open-source AI agent that can autonomously perform tasks such as writing reports, sending emails, and managing workflows. Local governments and tech firms are heavily promoting it with subsidies, free infrastructure, and startup incentives to build a new AI ecosystem.
‘I wish I could push ChatGPT off a cliff’: professors scramble to save critical thinking in an age of AI
Professors in the humanities are grappling with the impact of AI on critical thinking and education. They fear AI undermines independent thought, a core goal of higher education, and could lead to a “soulless” form of vocational training. While some universities embrace AI, many professors resist, using creative methods to discourage its use and preserve the value of a traditional liberal arts education.
Should we be boycotting ChatGPT? – podcast
Should we be boycotting ChatGPT? Rutger Bregman discusses why consumers should abandon their ChatGPT accounts. After initially being impressed by artificial intelligence, he is deeply concerned by the direction of a product that is now being used for police recruitment and military planning.
We Didn’t Ask for This Internet
Ragebait, sponcon, A.I. slop — the internet of 2026 makes a lot of us nostalgic for the internet of 10 or 15 years ago. What exactly went wrong here? How did the early promise of the internet get so twisted? And what exactly is wrong here? What kinds of policies could actually make our digital lives meaningfully better? Cory Doctorow and Tim Wu have two different theories of the case, which I thought would be interesting to put in conversation together. Doctorow is a science fiction writer, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the author of “Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It.” Wu is a law professor who worked on technology policy in the Biden White House; his latest book is “The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity.”
What Do the People Building AI Believe?
The Atlantic's Galaxy Brain explores the culture of this boom with the writer Jasmine Sun, who’s been chronicling San Francisco’s AI scene. Sun describes what this moment feels like on the ground, including a subculture of massive salaries, and a weird pride in leaning into tech’s strangeness. Together, Warzel and Sun unpack two major factions shaping the industry: the AI “doomers,” and the accelerationists. The conversation also traces Silicon Valley’s rightward drift—the “founder mode” backlash against regulation and employee activism and the rise of “Trump style” provocation-first tech marketing. Finally, Sun and Warzel address the jagged reality of today’s models, which are brilliant at some tasks and weak at others.
Tech Billionaires Want Us Dead
Taylor Lorenz argues that a strand of Silicon Valley ideology treats biological humanity as temporary and sees AI or digital beings as our “successors.” She traces this worldview from early cyber-utopianism through transhumanism, long-termism, and accelerationism, claiming billionaires are funding AI, bunkers, life-extension, and escape plans while accepting human harm as collateral. Her conclusion is that this future is not inevitable: society should regulate big tech, challenge billionaire power, and defend a human-centred technological future.
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