Bulletin · No. 006 — Close the Blinds

Scientists Asked AI to Impersonate 112 Public Figures. What Happened Next Is a 'Dire' Warning

Researchers had AI systems impersonate 112 public figures and then asked participants to evaluate both the real figures and their AI impersonators. People consistently rated the AI versions as more authentic, coherent, and relevant than the actual politicians.

"The map is not the territory." — Alfred Korzybski, 1931. The map, it turns out, has better approval ratings.

I Have Thoughts About That Kylie Jenner Meta Glasses Ad

Meta launched Starfire AI glasses — its latest AI-enabled wearable — with Kylie Jenner as the campaign face. 404 Media reports on the product and its pitch.

The woman in Apple's 1984 ad threw a sledgehammer at the screen and ran. Kylie Jenner has 399 million followers and has never held a hammer.

County With 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

Henrico County, Virginia — a major data center hub — is projecting a 25% rise in electricity costs next year. County officials sent guidance to school workers advising them to close the blinds and turn off their computers to help manage the increase.

"We had to destroy the village in order to save it." — anonymous US major, Vietnam, 1968. Henrico County, Virginia, 2026: close the blinds.

Companies Are Making Claude and Codex Talk Like Cavemen to Stop AI's Soaring Costs

A movement to strip AI prompts down to primitives to reduce token costs — called "caveman" — has attracted contributions from a senior OpenAI employee. Companies are deliberately degrading the linguistic sophistication of their AI interactions to stay within budget.

"Me Tarzan, you Jane." — in which the $157bn AI industry discovers that brevity was always an option.

Scammers Sell Seeds for Exotic AI-Generated Flowers That Don't Exist

eBay, Amazon, and Etsy are flooded with listings for seeds of flowers that were generated by AI and cannot exist. The platforms have been unable to stop the scams. Buyers receive ordinary seeds or nothing at all.

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty." — Keats, 1819. The listing has 47 five-star reviews.

Tidal Says It Won't Pay Royalties for AI-Generated Music

Tidal, the streaming platform that launched in 2015 with a press event featuring Jay-Z, Rihanna, Beyoncé, and Madonna pledging that music ownership and revenue would belong to artists, has announced it will not pay royalties for AI-generated music. The policy leaves unresolved whether AI is the artist (owed nothing) or the instrument (in which case the human using it should be paid).

"It's got a good beat and you can dance to it." — American Bandstand, 1952–1989. Tidal would like to clarify that the beat does not have a publishing deal.

The AI Industry Is Losing

Ed Zitron's argument that the AI industry is losing — economically, culturally, or by its own stated measures — depending on which numbers you choose to count.

The AI industry has raised more money than any technology sector in history. Ed Zitron, who charges $70 a year, says it's losing. One of them is measuring something.

Understand to participate

Geoffrey Litt at the AIE conference: effective collaboration with coding agents requires understanding what the agent has built, not just accepting its output. Without that comprehension, delegation becomes a one-way door.

The factory floor worker who can't explain the machine is called unskilled. The knowledge worker who can't explain the agent is called a force multiplier.

Quoting Jon Udell

Simon Willison quotes Jon Udell's reframe of "human in the loop": "It's our loop, we work the same way we always have, now we recruit agents to join the team." A proposal to shift the linguistic default from machine-centric to human-centric.

"We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us." — McLuhan. Jon Udell proposes instead: we recruit our tools. The org chart is currently being updated.