AI Reading for Sunday January 4

With AI capabilities doubling roughly every eight months, leading models complete apprentice‑level tasks ~50% (up from ~10% last year). and two achieved >60% in self‑replication; Aria director David Dalrymple warns the world may not have time to prepare for the worst AI safety risks. - the Guardian

People experiencing AI-induced delusions after intense chatbot interactions are seeking peer support and online communities to relearn human communication, while clinicians, policymakers and providers face calls for stronger safety guardrails and increased clinician training. - The Washington Post

AI agents as insider threats: an AI agent is like a stoner intern with nukes, who might also misinterpret something and act maliciously at any time. If you give them too much access, they could do a lot of damage. - The Register

Dude, where’s my root password

In late December 2025, a deepfake George Will circulated on YouTube, Facebook and TikTok falsely claiming he announced a Supreme Court "72-hour" order forcing Trump to produce financial records, researchers and fact-checkers found. - Snopes

On X, sexual harassment and perhaps even child abuse are the latest memes. - The Atlantic

Musk says people using Grok to make illegal content will be penalized. - X (formerly Twitter)

Might as well try least restrictive measures first, 3 strikes and you're out, but might also need AI models to have better guardrails. They can stop you posting Eagles tunes but can't stop your deepfake revenge porn?

everything is just a meme now, even foreign policy is designed to activate a mostly foreign-bot extremist social audience, who cares about real-world consequences.

Your AI doesn't believe in God: Benchmark evaluated 20 models across seven dimensions and found the Faith dimension averaged 48/100, prompting experts to warn that growing AI use for therapy and companionship raises moral, safety and regulatory concerns. - Fox News

Maybe a bigger problem is it doesn't believe in democracy, by design. There seems to be room for more benchmarks on whether AI reflects your values. And also more settings to tune the personality and guardrails.

Economists in an FT survey say the US will extend its productivity lead thanks to an AI boom, and America's dominance in sectors such as technology is not expected to reverse soon. - Financial Times

Stars, Stripes and Server Farms Forever.

Is the AI Boom a Bubble Waiting to Pop? Here’s What History Says - Bloomberg

UBS forecasts global equities rising about 15% by end‑2026, with S&P 500 targets of 7,700–8,100 from UBS, Deutsche Bank and Oppenheimer, while a Deutsche Bank poll of 440 found 57% name a plunge in tech/AI valuations as the top risk. - the Guardian

ChatGPT's 2026 investment plan recommends expecting interest rates to begin declining mid-2026, inflation stabilizing around 2.5–3%, a slow real estate rebound as mortgage rates ease, and prioritizing long-term exposure to AI, clean energy and infrastructure. - Yahoo

The Race for Global Domination in AI - The Atlantic

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas warned that powerful on-device AI running locally on chips could reduce demand for centralized data-center inference and infrastructure spending, potentially benefiting chipmakers and OEMs such as Apple, Qualcomm, Samsung, Lenovo and HP. - Yahoo

Pharmaceutical companies and investors have poured billions into AI drug discovery—VCs invested $2.7 billion through the first three quarters of 2025—producing candidates like Insilico's Rentosertib, which entered human trials in under two years and showed Phase II lung-function improvement. - Quartz

Leaders can use AI tools—like Motion, Fireflies, Notion AI and ChatGPT—to automate admin, summarize project recaps and stagger meetings post-holiday, helping teams regain momentum, reduce return-to-work anxiety and address that nearly half of American workers don't use all vacation days. - Fast Company

Tech leaders report integrating AI and smart devices into parenting, with Sam Altman saying ChatGPT aided raising his baby and using a Cradlewise (~$2,000) crib, Sundar Pichai using Google Lens, Alexis Ohanian using ChatGPT, and many setting strict screen-time limits. - Business Insider

tired: it takes a village; wired: it takes a swarm of agents

Narwal announced the Flow 2 robovac, launching April 2026, with dual RGB cameras and AI object-recognition that tags valuables and pets, sends photos and map locations while keeping 5 cm distance, plus up to 30,000 Pa suction and 158°F mopping. - The Verge

I Tested an AI Fitness Coach Who Wouldn’t Accept Any of My Excuses: New virtual trainers from Fitbit, Peloton and Apple aim to keep your workouts on track - The Wall Street Journal

no pAIn no gAIn

7 Home AI Tricks That Make Even the Smartest Chatbots Look Dumb: package and sound detection, presence-sensing thermostats, pet-activity recognition, conversational assistants, water-leak detection, and AI video summaries. YouTube transcript summaries are great, ain't nobody got time for that. - CNET

Researchers in Science Robotics taught a real robot arm 1,000 distinct tasks in under 24 hours of human demonstrations using a single demonstration per task via Multi-Task Trajectory Transfer, achieving tenfold improvement in data efficiency and generalization to unseen objects. - Fox News

Amphibious robodog video - Reddit

Google engineer: AI built a year’s worth of code in an hour. - Reddit

With apologies to Woody Guthrie

This cloud is your cloud,
This cloud is my cloud
From cooling towers, to deep-sea cables
This cloud was trained on you and me

As I went scrolling that glassy ribbon
I saw above me a Starlinked heaven
I saw below me a Silicon Valley
This cloud was trained on you and me

I clicked and wandered, I fed the models
Through scraping spiders and broken promises
All around me Siri kept saying
This cloud was trained on you and me

There was a firewall of mumbo jumbo
A popup flashing the Terms of Service
But behind the screen, it didn’t say nothing
This cloud was trained on you and me

When the fans kept humming, and the red lights flashing
With the tax breaks flowing and profits growing
A voice kept asking through noise and numbers
Was this built for you and me?

They scraped our faces, they cloned our voices
Mapped our habits to illusory choices
They called it progress, and pink slips drifted
As jobs disappeared quietly

This cloud is your cloud, this cloud is my cloud
Till billionaires fence off the common ground
From server farms to the halls of power
This cloud was trained on you and me

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