Sunday, August 30, 2026

A human did remarkably well playing Go against an AI (AI roundup)

franklantz.substack.com/p/go-lives?r...

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— Frank Lantz (@flantz.bsky.social) August 24, 2026 at 10:59 AM
Great, and long discussion about Go and how the AI works:
Part of the reason it’s very strong is that Go players like it a lot. KataGo had a great innovation where it’s actually accounting for points, which is how humans judge the game: by counting points. The prior AIs were sort of doing something else, which is related to counting points when they judge win rate, but not actually telling you a point estimate. So when KataGo started counting points, and people could read that point estimate and learn from it, KataGo was immediately more useful as an educational tool than any of the prior AIs had been.
 





NEW: Thermal drone footage shows the Microsoft-backed DataOne AI data center in Vineland, NJ is running dozens of gas generators. None of them have permits. A Floodlight visual investigation with @us.theguardian.com:

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— Floodlight (@floodlightnews.org) August 27, 2026 at 9:37 AM








Israel is running a synthetic think tank. AI written articles designed to be read by AI and populate chatbot search results

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— Matthew Gault (@mjgault.bsky.social) August 25, 2026 at 11:38 AM
(The institute has added a page headed funding, which states: “An earlier version of this page said the Institute operated without external funding, and that was true when it was written.”)







I’ll raise you this Facebook/Meta advert from last week that offered the chance to tell an AI child exactly what to do and she’d do it!

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— Jim Waterson (@jim.londoncentric.media) August 25, 2026 at 9:37 AM

The other frames were actually creepier. I reported it a week ago for yknow nonce vibes but I can see it’s still live. www.facebook.com/share/v/19TT...

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— Jim Waterson (@jim.londoncentric.media) August 25, 2026 at 12:49 PM








response to the double whammy of prolonged bitcoin value dip and tech firms throwing around serious money on the mass AI-build out. Monster data centres that once kept bitcoin ticking over are now unplugging to provide compute for Anthropic etc. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

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— Joe Tidy BBC News (@joetidy.bsky.social) August 26, 2026 at 1:22 AM








Is it AI slop or human art? That's the question at the center of a case over a cartoon stick worth (potentially) hundreds of millions of dollars. www.npr.org/2026/08/19/n...

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— Geoff Brumfiel (@gbrumfiel.bsky.social) August 22, 2026 at 6:01 AM
("Steal a Brainrot is one of the top games on the online gaming platform Roblox")















PSA: How to avoid getting scammed by a fake NFL player

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— Mina Kimes (@minakimes.bsky.social) August 28, 2026 at 12:12 PM













i think billionaires should be allowed to publish ai-generated op-eds if they also publish the exact prompts they used to generate them www.patreon.com/MaxRead/post...

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— Max Read (@maxread.info) August 26, 2026 at 9:50 AM








“.. His warning is a striking shift from three years ago, when he wrote that the coming ‘bumpy’ AI job disruption would lead to a “manageable” transition .. .. Now, he says it will wreak economic catastrophe, with ‘far fewer’ jobs than exist today ..” @semafor.com www.semafor.com/article/08/2...

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— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) August 26, 2026 at 5:17 AM
("One of Gates’ fears about letting AI continue unchecked is that society will turn against it entirely, derailing its potential to improve humanity, particularly through advances in science and health. 'What is the backlash going to be as these jobs go away?' he asked. 'It’ll make the data center thing look like nothing.'")























("The program offers live sessions with instructors every week, but the AI avatars are the ones providing feedback during practice pitches and board meetings")







("Libraries exist to get books to readers—books and other forms of knowledge and entertainment, provided for free. The fundamental incompatibility of purpose between libraries and Google Book Search could be mitigated if Google were willing to contribute some of its data and expertise to the creation of a Digital Public Library of America")















("Paltrow seemed to take the ensuing controversy in stride")







("That storytime TikTok is probably an ad")



























(Disney's theme park announcements were pathetic compared to this stuff, which might be why they leaned into nostalgia announcements)























See you don't need Ai bullshit you just need to sell 48 tacos for $77

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— Brett "Solidarity 2026" Banditelli (@banditelli.org) August 22, 2026 at 9:55 AM
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