My main newsletter, Complex Machinery, includes a section called "In Other News..." It's where I list one-liners about interesting articles that didn't fit into any segments.

You can think of this list as a version of In Other News, but with a wider remit than Complex Machinery's "risk, AI, and related topics."

Above the fold

1. Drones are taking over jobs traditionally associated with snipers. In Ukraine, the old guard sharpshooters are going with the flow and helping the younger drone pilots develop their craft.
2. The way companies encourage genAI use has led employees to create a mountain of agents. Now they have to figure out how to rein it back in. (WSJ)
3. Public service announcement: how to spot when someone is recording you with so-called "smart" glasses. (PC Mag)
4. Massive consulting firm EY eats crow due to (incorrect!) generated artifacts in a report. (FT)
5. Here's a nice long-read about an undercover agent who busts poachers. (The Atavist Magazine)
6. Some "researchers" had the "bright" "idea" to … ask preschool teachers to record their classes in order to train AI models. At least, that's what they said it was about. (404 Media)
7. After rolling out genAI customer service bots, companies pull the plug almost three-quarters of the time. (The Register)
8. People apparently want to feed their bank account data into ChatGPT. At least, that's what OpenAI says. (Gizmodo)
9. Remember how genAI companies (allegedly!) pulled in a ton of books as training data? Now Anthropic says some books are to blame for its models misbehaving. (Ars Technica)
10. Those robo-boss apps that have plagued food delivery drivers, rideshare drivers, and warehouse packers are now coming for hotel housekeeping staff. (Proof News)

AI datacenters

(Has this become a recurring segment? Time will tell.)

• New, mammoth datacenter approved in Utah. (TechRadar)
• Almost three-quarters of Americans don't want datacenters nearby. (Sherwood News)
• People in Pennsylvania protest datacenters. (Ars Techica)
• Yet again, datacenters cause a jump in power prices. (The Register)
• Would people be OK with smaller, cuter datacenters? For the backyard? (Ars Technica)
• At least one politician is willing to cross the proverbial aisle to fight datacenter expansion. (KWTX)

The rest of the best

• One take on the effects of genAI: instead of freeing us up for leisure activity, it'll just turn us into scrolling, ad-consuming zombies. (Le Monde 🇫🇷)
• OpenAI is upset over Apple's (apparent lack of) ChatGPT integration in iOS. (Les Echos 🇫🇷, Ars Technica)
• As though hallucinations weren't bad enough on their own, some of them include real phone numbers. Real, but incorrect for the task at hand. (MIT Technology Review)
• Yet another genAI customer service chatbot … just makes things up. This time in a medical context. (Der Spiegel 🇩🇪)
• That's not the same as the medical transcription bot that made things up. (CBC)
• While some developers see productivity gains from using agentic tools to write code, not all of them are so impressed. (404 Media)
• Here's your periodic reminder that the genAI wave is more talk than action. There's a ton of talk, mind you. A wall-to-wall media blitz designed to make you think that genAI is bigger than it really is. But that's still more talk than anything else. (The Atlantic)
• There's another problem with those genAI-based toys: the products are intended for kids, but the models are intended for brains of the over-13 variety. (The Observer)
• Some of those Tesla robotaxi crashes were apparently caused by … remote support drivers. (Wired)
• Cisco joins the list of companies cutting headcount in order to fund their genAI adventures. (TechCrunch)

Did I miss anything?

Have something I should read? Send the link my way.