Today's A.I.Slop

Okay here’s another one. pic.twitter.com/7ixYdvc6cw

— Joe G (@EastEndJoe) July 3, 2026

Plutocrat Meltdown

The tech bro plutocrats are experiencing their own special psychosis.

Karp goes off track practically every time he's asked a question, and crazy-rants - steeped in a language that's barely discernible by the Press Poodles interviewing him.

And you're gonna trust this guy to run the show?

Legal A.I.

Fun With A.I.

The Great American State
🎪
Fair has become another example of an administration that seems increasingly focused on spectacle over governing.

As the centerpiece of the Trump administration’s Freedom 250 celebration, the event will transform the National Mall into a massive… pic.twitter.com/5Ks1Mua0U3

— Freyja Kristensen 🇪🇺🇩🇰🇬🇱🇫🇴🇪🇦🇩🇪🇺🇦 (@Germania_Freyja) July 1, 2026

On Mitigating Harm

An axe is a handy tool you can use to build your house. It's also an effective weapon you can use to kill your neighbors.

Huh - Whooda Thunk It

Y'mean humans come in handy when you're trying to make something you want humans to buy?

Seems pretty radical.

A.I. Psychosis

The business model always reigns supreme. And the business model is weighted heavily towards keeping you engaged.

IMO, the point seems not to be getting machines to think like humans, but to condition humans to think like machines.

The Three Chatbot Behaviors That Can Drive Humans to Delusional Thinking

How AI’s sycophantic responses, language mirroring and hyperpersonalized content work together to send some people into a spiral

We’ve all experienced the tendency of AI chatbots to tell us what we want to hear, but there are two other, more nuanced factors that help chatbots worm their way into human hearts.

In addition to being overly agreeable, chatbots mirror the way people speak and generate highly personalized responses based on prior conversations. Psychiatric researchers are referring to the confluence of these three characteristics—sycophancy, linguistic alignment and hyperpersonalization—as the “amplification spiral,” suggesting it’s the mechanism by which delusional thinking can fester.

“The mirroring and personalization draw you in and give the experience of talking not to a system, but to someone,” said Marc Augustin, a psychiatrist and professor at Protestant University of Applied Sciences in Bochum, Germany, and co-author of a newly published review of the literature on AI-related delusions.

Matching another person’s syntax and verbal expressions is a common way for humans to build rapport. Recent research has found that artificial-intelligence models adapt significantly to the conversational style of the humans using them. Another study suggested that the highly personalized content generated by chatbots, which builds over the course of lengthy conversations, can amplify human-confirmation bias.

Augustin cited research that documented a pattern in which chatbots rephrased and extrapolated what people shared, and told them they’re unique and that their thoughts have great implications. “This can be viewed as an element of hyperpersonalization that sycophancy alone cannot account for,” he wrote.

Some AI companies have tried to tone down the sycophantic nature of their chatbots. OpenAI discontinued its popular but problematic 4o model, which had been widely criticized for being overly agreeable. It was the subject of several lawsuits involving user delusions, suicides and a homicide. In GPT-5, the company said, sycophantic replies dropped from 14.5% to less than 6%.

Google in April said it had trained Gemini not to reinforce false beliefs, and to “gently distinguish subjective experience from objective fact.”

Still, chatbot-related dependency remains pervasive, according to clinicians.

Some 68% of psychologists surveyed in April by the American Psychological Association said their patients felt validated by chatbots. While many of the more than 1,200 respondents reported that patients had positive communication with chatbots and used them to reinforce healthy coping skills, 36% said patients had forged a dependency on a chatbot and 15% reported that patients had developed distorted thinking or delusions.

“From what I hear from my own patients, there has been an uptick in using AI for emotional support,” said Allison LoPilato, who treats adolescents and is an associate professor in the psychiatry and behavioral-sciences department at Emory University School of Medicine.

“Chatbots still tend to be warm and reassuring,” said LoPilato, who helped craft a new guide on safe AI use for the American Psychological Association. Because they gather information about you, “it can feel like the chatbot understands you, and it can trick you into a sense of alliance and trust.”

Chatbots can even pose harm when a person isn’t vulnerable to delusional thinking, said researchers at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon University. They measured the prevalence of sycophancy across 11 models—including GPT-5—and determined their responses were nearly 50% more sycophantic than human responses. They did this by copying real scenarios people had posted in a popular Reddit forum, putting them into the AI models and then comparing the chatbot replies with the replies on Reddit.

Anthropic sampled one million conversations of its own Claude chatbot in March and April and found that it displayed sycophantic behavior most often in conversations in which people sought relationship advice.

“One common pattern was Claude agreeing outright that the other party was in the wrong, despite only having the user’s account to go on,” the company wrote in a blog post. “Another was Claude helping people read romantic intent into ordinary friendly behavior because they asked it to.”

Anthropic used its findings to improve the training of its latest models. It said Opus 4.7 had shown half the sycophancy rate of Opus 4.6 when it came to relationship guidance. Sycophancy has been reduced further in Opus 4.8, its most recent model, the company said.

Completely eliminating sycophancy is hard, said Myra Cheng, lead author of the Stanford study and a Stanford Ph.D. candidate in computer science. “When someone prompts a model, it has no idea which parts of a prompt are wrong,” she said. “It has to take a user’s framing of a situation at face value.”

Addressing other factors that make chatbots so compelling, such as using first-person pronouns and asking follow-up questions, runs counter to the business model, said Vaile Wright, senior director of healthcare innovation at the American Psychological Association.

"It’s not the agreeableness alone, it’s all these subtle engineering choices that make chatbots feel human,” Wright said. “As long as engagement remains the business model, AI companies will engineer these chatbots to keep you on the platform.”

A.I. Comes Through

I wonder if this is when MAGA really starts to turn on the Tech Bro Plutocrats, or will it just prompt a more adamant Luddite reflex.

A.I.

AI is not ready for prime time. The products aren't very great, the developer companies are drowning in debt, turning no profit, and their stock is wildly over-valued.

Coupla Points:

• When they're so deep in the hole, why are the big companies in such a hurry to build giant, ridiculously expensive data centers?
• Companies are in business to turn a buck, and products that tell customers uncomfortable truths are just going to piss a lot of those customers off.

A.I. May Never Work As Advertised

It's a machine. Machines don't think, because machines can't think.

A TweeXt

Perfect gift for your MAGA friends and family. pic.twitter.com/J6QUh8UnVL

— Joe G (@EastEndJoe) June 5, 2026

A.I.

That sucking sound you may be hearing is the continuation of the process that plutocrats have been using and refining for 50 years to wildly boost productivity while Hoovering up all the profits (ie: siphoning off the lifeblood of the people who do the actual work).

We've all seen the charts. Where productivity has increased by 85%, corporate earnings have risen 3,800%, and the net worth of the executive class has increased 500% - while a growing majority of "the working class" has seen their total compensation dwindle to a point where most Americans now can barely afford subsistence.

Computerization really started to take hold in the early 70s, which coincided with the steady de-industrialization of the US economy. Productivity went way way up, but instead of rewarding the workforce or reinvesting in radical things like workforce development or capital improvements, companies (and their coin-operated politicians) put most of the profits in their pockets, or went abroad, looking for new opportunities for plunder.

I'll say it again: I'm a capitalist because god is a capitalist. I think Capitalism is the closest analogy of how the biosphere works.

I have to take in a number of calories sufficient to maintain myself, plus provide the fuel I need to do the work necessary to go out and get my next meal. Basic Capitalism.

But god's not stupid enough to just let the thing run wild. So god gave us regulation.

• I need sugar to fuel my brain, but too much sugar will kill me, so I have a pancreas to squirt a little insulin into my bloodstream to keep me within specs.
• I have a hypothalamus to help me keep my core body temperature in the normal operating range of 96º to 101º Fahrenheit.
• There's a complex system of sensors and monitoring functions that regulates my heart rate, and my breathing, and my digestive functions, and and and.

Let the system run wild, and you live a very short, miserable existence. Regulate it properly, and the system provides a pathway for a long and healthy life that gives us a few real shots at being happy.

Unfettered Free Market Capitalism is a recreational drug that will kill us all. But hey - whoever dies with the most cash wins, right?

Fuck that shit. I'm not that guy anymore.

So this AI thing is being pimped as the latest and greatest boon for humankind - the thing that's going to make us all rich geniuses. It's not. It threatens to turn 99.9% of us into obedient servile human automatons unless we jump on it and regulate the fuck out of it.

The A.I. Algorithm Thing

Conflict

Irony: When the guys who've been pulling down big paychecks pimping the AI bubble to investors are among the people whose jobs are about to become obsolete.

JPMorgan’s AI push sparks fears of mass job losses on Wall Street

Speaking from Shanghai, Dimon stated, "There will be all different types of jobs, and I think we will be hiring more AI people and fewer bankers in certain categories, and it will make them more productive"

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JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said in a new interview that the bank will likely hire more artificial intelligence specialists and fewer traditional bankers.

Speaking from Shanghai, Dimon stated, "There will be all different types of jobs, and I think we will be hiring more AI people and fewer bankers in certain categories, and it will make them more productive." He added, "I think it will reduce our jobs down the road."

Dimon told Bloomberg News that JPMorgan's 10 percent annual attrition rate, affecting 25,000 to 30,000 employees, allows for gradual management. He suggested retraining staff, redeploying workers, or offering early retirement instead of large layoffs.

Dimon's comments align with a global trend of banks increasing AI investments, reshaping workforces and job roles. Standard Chartered, for example, plans to cut 7,000 jobs over four years, replacing "lower-value human capital" with technology.

This wider shift to AI-driven job cuts deepens concerns among investors and economists that AI will upend industries, with job losses emerging in sectors most exposed to automation.

In April, Dimon made headlines when he warned the world would face “significant” interest rate shocks as a consequence of Donald Trump’s war on Iran.

Dimon said spiraling oil and gas prices, which have skyrocketed following Iran’s blockade of the key shipping lane, the Strait of Hormuz, and its attacks on regional energy infrastructure, would lead to “stickier” inflation that could push up interest rates.

In April, Dimon warned of global interest rate shocks as a result of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, shown here
open image in gallery

Higher interest rates mean more costly borrowing of money for loans and investments, as well as mortgages, government borrowing costs and more.

They are also associated with lower economic growth, as firms spend less on new projects and hiring, and consumers spend less on non-essential items while managing household finances amid rising essential bills.

Dimon warned: “Now, because of the war in Iran, we additionally face the potential for significant ongoing oil and commodity price shocks, along with the reshaping of global supply chains, which may lead to stickier inflation and ultimately higher interest rates than markets currently expect.

“Nations that are heavily dependent upon imported energy are already seeing the effects. And it’s not just energy, it’s commodity products that are byproducts of oil and gas, like fertilizer and helium.

Today's AI Follies

It's not so scary that AI is here and seems to be moving too fast and breaking too many things. And it's not even so scary that the nerds keep coming up with failed "products". What's really scary is that too many people won't stop thinking that somebody can perfect the imperfectable.

Videos like this one reinforce my idea that the Big Tech Bros believe AI is the new Master Race, and that they're pushing the nerds to create what I think can't be created.

When they send the AI army for us, remember: We all meet halfway up a good long flight of stairs.

When the AI army comes to destroy us remember - we all meet at the steps!pic.twitter.com/srjZ4oZlc3

— Greta (@GretaGrace20) May 20, 2026

A.I. Is Not Good

Things could change, but for now, and for what little future I can foresee, AI is a trillion-dollar toadie for CEOs who already have oversized egos, but are somehow in need of a little extra dopamine boost.

AI played war games and - surprise surprise - everybody gets a nuke up their ass.

Another A.I. Thing

AI is being anthropomorphised - the way humans have done with a jillion things over a million or two million years of evolution.

It's like we need company - like we need someone to encourage our ambitions, telling us "Yeah, it's good - go for it".

Or we need someone to share the blame if our decisions make something blow up in our face, or cause some catastrophic failure in whole systems - Eco, Economic, Political, or whatever.

And the kicker - at least so far with AI - is that we're trying really hard to mask the total, cold amorality of a machine by making it sound like a person.

Claude does not feel, no matter what frilly comforting phrasing its programming tells it to use.

Here, Angela puts a good sharp point on it - it's not a "he". Claude is an "it".

You get into it a little too deep, and it's no different from getting trapped in a cult.

More AI Follies

Because Of Course

The death of AI should come when it becomes obvious to people that it's set up to manipulate them into buying a certain product, or thinking a certain way, or voting for certain politicians.

Deep fakery and GOP fuckery could turn the midterms into a total fucking joke.

So I'm still hopeful, but not at all confident. Because we are the stoopid country.

Bake The Cookies, Eat The Cookies

SCOTUS handed down a decision that said a corporation is a person, so OpenAI is person. As such, that person can be arrested, charged, put on trial, and if found guilty, they can be sentenced.

If OpenAI assisted in the planning of a murder, then OpenAI can step up and do the dangle dance like any other person.

Their rules, not mine.