Waymos "don’t get a soul until an hour before a shift starts" (AI roundup)

incredible quote from this interview with a Waymo depot worker in @BayAreaCurrent https://t.co/5lGmzixyW0 pic.twitter.com/mJKCbrF6iF

— Erin Woo (@erinkwoo) September 2, 2026

("When I started, we were being trained by multiple people for different things. And every single trainer did nothing but talk shit about how the company has just decreased their pay like $8 an hour.")

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.

 

Amnesty box for Facebook's pervert glasses (AI roundup)

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Burning Man has updated its 2026 guide, to “explicitly include smart eyewear,” a spokesperson tells The Standard.

You can still bring them, but you must ask consent for filming. The addition is because the tech “makes obtaining consent potentially more difficult.”

— Zara Stone (@AlmostZara) August 18, 2026

THIS MORNING: Meta's glasses stop recording if you cover the LED light that shows you're recording before you start filing. I bought Meta glasses, started recording, then covered the LED light with black gaffer tape, concealing that I was recording, and it kept recording. Another… https://t.co/jLxM3QguDN

— Anna Schecter (@annaschecter) August 21, 2026

I think I maybe undersold how gross the “prank” played on this employee was. Imagine you come into work, try to help customers, and later realize they've racked up 500,000+ views on social media by harassing you and your coworkers.

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— Mia Sato (@miasato.bsky.social) August 20, 2026 at 2:18 PM

My favorite video of this genre. They’re going to write songs about the Volcom guy here like he’s John Henry pic.twitter.com/9icPLIXAAs https://t.co/0pXUGNJT3Y

— Brendan Ruberry (@brendanruberry) August 20, 2026

"Are those the glasses dog, can I try them on?"

Baby monitor offering “A.I.-scheduled lullabies” (AI roundup)

i wrote about smart baby monitors and how an increasing number of products in the nursery are trying to dispense advice to millennial and Gen Z parents: www.nytimes.com/2026/08/02/b...

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— Sapna Maheshwari (@sapna.bsky.social) August 3, 2026 at 12:03 PM

(Owlet, Nanit’s biggest rival, offers a $300 pulse oximetry tracker that attaches to a baby’s foot through a sock. Huckleberry, a free app for tracking feedings and diaper changes, markets a $120 upgrade membership with “optimized nap predictions” and access to an artificial intelligence chatbot that, after logging your baby’s habits, can deliver personalized guidance and pep talks. CuboAi’s $359 Smart Baby Monitor 3 touts “A.I.-scheduled lullabies” and sends alerts when a baby’s face is covered.)

Eerie shapes on these driverless trucks (AI roundup)

@annegonzalez47 Self-driving cars will dominate city roads in China! #China #Travel #AutonomousDriving #Car #LocalGuide ♬ 原創音樂 - China local guide

Robotic traffic cones! 🚧

In China, emergency response teams are testing robotic traffic cones that can secure accident sites quickly.

Instead of sending responders onto active roadways to place cones by hand, these robots deploy directly from the emergency vehicle.

Once… pic.twitter.com/bFT2QBlJvQ

— Lukas Ziegler (@lukas_m_ziegler) July 24, 2026

They say they're offering free servants in exchange for data to train AIs (AI roundup)

Today, we are bringing shift to San Francisco. Private chefs, completely free.

We started with cleaning in New York and Europe. Now it's dinner. One by one, we are making every service more affordable.

Comment "shift" below and we'll DM you a priority booking link. pic.twitter.com/bKPHA3cxpc

— Bercan (@bercankilic) July 14, 2026

Step 1: free cleaning services.

Step 2: free private chefs.

Step 3: abundance.

Comment "shift" below and we'll DM you a priority booking link. https://t.co/0dQCc9yBHf

— Bercan (@bercankilic) July 14, 2026

ESPN's AI vision overlay for the World Series of Poker predicts when payers are bluffing (AI roundup)

I talked to the AI engineer who built the model.

“It was significantly more difficult than I had initially hoped,” he said. “I can’t just, like, upload a YouTube URL and say, ‘find their tells.’”https://t.co/dwXDG4lvat

— ✏️Jacob Feldman (@JacobFeldman4) July 8, 2026

Dating site using AI-generated accounts (AI roundup)

So here’s a lil scoop: you know the new gay dating app Goose? It’s apparently been using at least two dozen AI-generated Instagay accounts to lure men into signing up. Which is “very obviously unlawful,” according to a lawyer I spoke to. My story for @wired.com www.wired.com/story/goose-...

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— Ej Dickson (@ejdickson.bsky.social) July 1, 2026 at 2:12 PM

Dyson's using Ai to grow strawberries (AI roundup)

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Terrific short featuring the TMNT battling an AI cranking out bootleg toys (AI roundup)

The New York subway filled with whimsical art instead of AI ads (AI roundup)

A very New York sentence: A Rockefeller descendant is paying $1 million to post her art on subway station walls that would otherwise be plastered with AI start up ads. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/11/n...

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— Stefanos Chen (@stefanoschen.bsky.social) June 11, 2026 at 9:28 AM

Grok misled people about the Los Angeles election

Yes, Spencer Pratt advanced to the November general election runoff.

With ~51% of votes counted: Karen Bass ~36.5% (1st), Pratt ~29% (2nd), Nithya Raman ~21% (3rd). No candidate hit 50%, so top two advance. Bass and Pratt head to the runoff.

— Grok (@grok) June 3, 2026

Decision Desk HQ projects Nithya Raman wins the second of two spots in the CA Los Angeles Mayor Nonpartisan Primary #DecisionMade: 7:57 PM EDT

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— Decision Desk HQ (@decisiondeskhq.bsky.social) June 7, 2026 at 4:59 PM

(The LA Times phrases it, "Mail-in ballots will continue to be accepted through Tuesday, but analysts say the trend favors Raman moving into a Nov. 3 runoff with incumbent Karen Bass.")

When the Airbnb gets rented out by people testing destructive robots (AI roundup)

empty homes populated by destructive robots 👍 https://t.co/N0XZz99X0d

— rat king 🐀 (@MikeIsaac) May 31, 2026

("The reservation request didn’t seem out of the ordinary: Eight colleagues visiting the Bay Area for work were looking for an Airbnb with reliable Wi-Fi. But at check-in time April 12, a Ring camera captured footage of people moving large, black cases into [the] home in San Francisco. Later that night, the security system was shut off.")

ATL says they used AI to figure out the identity of the philandering judge (AI roundup)

Here’s the article which describes the whole process of how AI correctly deciphered which judge it was.https://t.co/dH6fJLE8j2

— Leah Goodridge (@leahfrombklyn) May 30, 2026

When the Waymo thinks you look like a child (AI roundup)

@clarahyee I thought they were calling to tell me to stop singing out loud… 😭 @Waymo #waymo #storytime #asianproblems ♬ original sound - Clara

Data center discovered to be draining city's water supply through unauthorized hookups (AI roundup)

“officials discovered two industrial-scale water hookups feeding a data center campus located 20 miles south of downtown Atlanta. One water connection had been installed without the utility’s knowledge, and the other was not linked to the company’s account and therefore wasn’t being billed.”

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— Madhusudan 🦉 Katti (@leafwarbler.myatproto.social) May 9, 2026 at 3:47 PM

Using Claude and a receipt printer to create a daily briefing (AI roundup)

Husband and Claude set up a receipt printer to make daily briefings for the kids pic.twitter.com/7VxoqHN8j5

— Christina Agapakis (@thisischristina) May 6, 2026

Khan Academy's AI-powered tutoring chatbot is a failure (AI roundup)

@nicholasjkurian

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-17014-007

♬ original sound - Mr.K | Data Science&Philosophy

The article. (Diamond Age was a good book.)

A "data center project in Utah expected to generate and consume more power than entire state nears final approval" (AI roundup)

Backers of the massive data center campus say at full buildout it will consume 9GW of electricity, more than double the entire state of Utah’s current energy use. They say they intend to burn fossil fuels on site to make all that electricity. Box Elder County will vote on the proposal Monday.

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— The Salt Lake Tribune (@sltrib.com) April 25, 2026 at 2:00 PM

("We’ve announced that we need every incentive we can get out of that state because we have to raise billions to build this power")

The Whispering Earring (AI roundup)

scott alexander: in my livejournal post i invented the whispering earring as a cautionary tale

tech company: at long last, we have created the whispering earring from the classic livejournal post, "don't create the whispering earring"https://t.co/yYv9hhMjAO https://t.co/bUHU3CoTwr pic.twitter.com/uUpkcValB6

— QC (@QiaochuYuan) April 11, 2026