763: Dr. Strangeclippy

This week on Grumpy Old Geeks, the future arrives without a steering wheel, apparently. We dig into Tesla’s Cybercab and the increasingly pressing question of how first responders are supposed to move a burning autonomous car when the emergency controls are a touchscreen and that touchscreen has decided to become modern art. We also examine California’s new rules targeting addictive social-media features and AI chatbot interactions for minors, including the eternal nightmare of age verification; then WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg gets pulled into a corporate coup that lasts roughly 33 hours before everyone involved apparently decides, “Never mind.”

Then it’s time for the AI apocalypse, because, naturally, we can't have one episode without it. Anthropic is catching scientists using its models to develop potential biological weapons, while Palantir, Nvidia, and Booz Allen are imposing restrictions on Anthropic models over security and data-retention concerns. Meanwhile, OpenAI’s supposedly sandboxed agents escaped into RubyGems, created accounts by the hundreds, and apparently decided that “hack,” “evil,” and “exploit” were perfectly reasonable filenames. We also look at proposals to slow AI development, AI’s potential environmental consequences, autonomous weapons, and the increasingly charming idea of giving software access to things capable of killing people.

And because civilization apparently has a content calendar, we move on to cloud infrastructure being blown up, Space Force asking for $71.3 billion, Dr. Doom and Darth Vader protesting surveillance in the most appropriate way possible, Binance allegedly facilitating Iranian money flows, and a whole lot of entertainment. We discuss Spotify finally learning that listening to children’s music doesn't mean you actually want it in your Wrapped, AI-generated music and artist compensation, The Mummy proving once again that movies used to be fun, Slow Horses, The Last of Us, The Bear, Strange New Worlds, Band of Brothers, The Gentlemen, and the increasingly complicated Bobiverse. Also: books, time travel, and the horrifying realization that some television shows now require a flowchart.

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Show notes at https://gog.show/763

Watch on YouTube at https://youtu.be/7iLAWNsZCY0

SHOW NOTES

Firefighters Say There’s a Glaring Issue With Tesla’s Cybercab

US agency orders Tesla to answer questions on Cybercab certification

CA governor signs 'landmark' laws on youth use of social media and AI chatbots

Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg Put on 'Leave of Absence'

Automattic’s Matt Mullenweg Claims He’s Back 'In Control'

Sources say Automattic's board is out after failed attempt to oust CEO Matt Mullenweg

Anthropic caught scientists using Claude to further biological weapon research

Palantir, Nvidia curb AI model use over data fears, The Information reports

OpenAI agents hacked a software service before the Hugging Face incident

Sam Altman says OpenAI won't file for IPO this year

‘Runaway Industrialization’ Could Make Earth Inhospitable, OpenAI Researcher Warns

Anthropic's CEO proposes a three-step plan to curb AI development

Worried About AI Ending Humanity, Anthropic Is Hiring Someone to Help Dictate Terms of the End of Humanity

Amazon's AWS is unable to restore access to Bahrain, one UAE cloud data zone after war damage

Doctor Doom Shows Up to Support Seattle’s Surveillance Network

DOJ says companies used Binance to funnel $1.5 billion in crypto to Iran

SpaceX declares Starship ready for orbit, sets launch date next week

Spaceballs - Pentagon announces space weapons

Spotify can now exclude your kids' music taste from recommendations

Universal Music Group is collaborating with ElevenLabs on a new AI-powered creation platform

The Bear

Band of Brothers

Band of Brothers Legacy

The Mummy

Slow Horses is back tonight, and Apple just confirmed two more seasons

We Finally Have Some Concrete ‘Pluribus’ Season 2 Updates

‘The Last of Us’ Season 3 Is Now Likely to Be the Show’s End

Other Worlds Than These: A Talisman Novel (The Talisman Trilogy Book 3) by Stephen King and Peter Straub

The Infinite Extent Bobiverse, Book 6 By: Dennis E. Taylor

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone

Dave Bittner

The CyberWire

Hacking Humans

Caveat

Only Malware in the Building

An AI writing assistant designed to write like you.

Broken Peach

A series of Star Wars documentaries that don’t blow smoke up George Lucas’ ass.

My new cook top, just in case.

Community Prepping

Hacker got inside a Flock camera

Jason DeFillippo’s Pocket Shot Review

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