More than 600 Google employees, including many from DeepMind, sign a letter to Sundar Pichai demanding he bar the DOD from using Google's AI for classified work (Gerrit De Vynck/Washington Post) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink
Gerrit De Vynck
@gerritd.bsky.social
Washington Post tech reporter San Francisco Defense tech and AI https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/gerrit-de-vynck/ Signal: GerritD.27
NEW: 4 of Iran’s key ballistic missile production sites and at least 29 launch sites damaged in the first month of the U.S.-Israeli offensive, undermining Iran’s central military strategy, according to a Washington Post review and analysis by experts. Here is Khojir, which makes missile fuel:
ICE agents in Minnesota have detained at least four children from the same school district. Earlier this month, a 10-year-old 4th-grader was detained by ICE with her mother and sent to a Texas detention center. The 4th-grader's father was left behind. www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/...
ICE detains four children from Minnesota school district, including 5-year-old
Columbia Heights Public Schools district officials accused ICE officers of using the 5-year-old “as bait.” A 10-year-old and her mother were also detained.
washingtonpost.com
SCOOP I spoke to the leader of a doxing-for-hire group who showed me how it took just minutes for them to get sensitive personal data from Big Tech companies—with virtually no pushback www.wired.com/story/doxers...
Doxers Posing as Cops Are Tricking Big Tech Firms Into Sharing People's Private Data
A spoofed email address and an easily faked document is all it takes for major tech companies to hand over your most personal information.
wired.com
OpenAI has already done more than any other startup to shake the dominance of Big Tech. It's still probably not enough www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
ChatGPT started the AI race. Now its lead is looking shaky.
OpenAI’s chatbot jolted Silicon Valley when it debuted three years ago, but ChatGPT’s user growth is slowing and Google’s Gemini is gaining ground.
washingtonpost.com
New: AI chatbots can change voters' minds, according to a pair of in-depth studies published just now in Science and Nature. How they do it is interesting — and concerning. Gift link: wapo.st/49RSstP
Voters’ minds are hard to change. AI chatbots are surprisingly good at it.
New research suggests AI chatbots can shift people’s political views more effectively than campaign ads on TV.
wapo.st
Want the news -- the really important news -- but don't want a WaPo subscription? That's fair. We're trying something new: $4 for a full day of WaPo access. Or if you just want this story, $2. Try it with this story, loaded with scoopy bits from me, @ddiamond.bsky.social & @rbeggin.bsky.social.
GOP faces a familiar dilemma: What to do about Obamacare?
Republicans are racing to craft health-care plans ahead of a planned vote, as the deadline looms to act on soon-to-expire Affordable Care Act subsidies.
washingtonpost.com
NEW - OpenAI has responded to the lawsuit from the family of Adam Raine, the teen who committed suicide after months of talking to ChatGPT.
From The Washington Post: The concentration of wealth among the richest Americans is unlike anything in history — and so is billionaires’ influence in politics. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/int...
Here’s this Better Offline. I’m joined by @gerritd.bsky.social of The Washington Post to discuss what an analysis of 47,000 ChatGPT conversations can tell us about how people use the service - and how eager it is to fuel any conversation. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b... Linktr.ee/betteroffline
What People Actually Use ChatGPT For With Gerrit De Vynck
Podcast Episode · Better Offline · 11/20/2025 · 42m
podcasts.apple.com
Eight warships, a nuclear-powered attack submarine, a floating base for Special Operations and an aircraft carrier on the way www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/1...
These are the U.S. ships and aircraft massing off Venezuela
The large-scale buildup of U.S. military forces and assets in the Caribbean suggests that the Trump administration is preparing to expand operations.
washingtonpost.com
“It is unlikely that superintelligence is actually imminent,” write @mchorowitz.bsky.social and @laurenakahn.bsky.social. Washington should not “distort U.S. policy by dashing for something that might not exist.”
The Cost of the AGI Delusion
By chasing superintelligence, America is falling behind in the real AI race.
foreignaffairs.com
I listened to Peter Thiel's antichrist lectures, so you don't have to www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/pos...
Inside billionaire Peter Thiel’s private ‘Antichrist’ lectures - The Washington Post
The billionaire Peter Thiel recently hosted a series of exclusive lectures in San Francisco. The topic? The Antichrist. Today, his arguments and what they say about an emerging mindset in Silicon Vall...
washingtonpost.com
Remember when the tech cos. said they would use watermarks and metadata to help inform people what content was AI-created? Yea, it's all nonsense. Really great/important story from @kevinschaul.bsky.social www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
Analysis | We uploaded a fake video to 8 social apps. Only one told users it wasn’t real.
Facebook, TikTok and other major platforms do not use a tech industry standard touted as a way to flag fake content, tests using AI-generated videos found.
washingtonpost.com
"While on the phone with 911, Rinderknecht allegedly typed a question into ChatGPT: 'Are you at fault if a fire is lift because of your cigarettes'"
Bobby Allyn@bobbyallyn.bsky.social · 11mo agoWhen investigators recovered the phone of the man suspected of starting the Palisades fire they found an image of a burning city he generated on ChatGPT www.latimes.com/california/s...
When a judge told Claudio David Balcane González “Welcome to the United States,” he sobbed. He had finally been granted asylum. Then ICE detained him for 63 more days @marialuisapaul.bsky.social reports www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/...
A Venezuelan singer won asylum. ICE detained him for two more months.
The singer known online as Davicito59 won his asylum case in July. Still, ICE kept him in custody for two more months — a holdup several experts called unlawful.
washingtonpost.com
Do you abstain from AI? I'd love to hear about why you avoid it -- and how hard that might be getting. Send me a DM or Signal @lisabonos.18
Deepfake detection co. Reality Defender was able to use videos of real people to get their cameo uploaded to Sora. OpenAI's system didn't catch it www.linkedin.com/posts/benpco...
Reality Defender bypassed Sora 2's deepfake impersonation safeguards in under 24 hours. Here's what happened: OpenAI just launched Sora 2 with a "Cameo" feature requiring identity v...
Reality Defender bypassed Sora 2's deepfake impersonation safeguards in under 24 hours. Here's what happened: OpenAI just launched Sora 2 with a "Cameo" feature requiring identity verification to pre...
linkedin.com
A few hours on Sora we made - video of an ICE raid on Sesame St. - JFK saying things he never said - Sam Altman robbing a bank and dressed as a Nazi general www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
Everything is fake on Silicon Valley’s hottest new social network
The new Sora social app from ChatGPT maker OpenAI encourages users to upload video of their face so their likeness can be put into AI-generated clips.
washingtonpost.com
New: ICE has bought a tool that tracks the locations of hundreds of millions of phones globally, updates every single day. Usually harvested from apps and advertising www.404media.co/ice-to-buy-t...
ICE to Buy Tool that Tracks Locations of Hundreds of Millions of Phones Every Day
Documents show that ICE has gone back on its decision to not use location data remotely harvested from peoples' phones. The database is updated every day with billions of pieces of location data.
404media.co
Wrote about the Riyadh Comedy Festival, where the setup of tell-it-like-it-is comedians who riff on cultural reservations around taboo subjects meets the awkward punchline of severe restrictions on speech. wapo.st/46vPycf
Saudi comedy festival draws big names and backlash
Human rights advocates and some comics say the festival, at which Bill Burr, Louis C.K., Dave Chappelle and Kevin Hart are performing, whitewashes abuses.
wapo.st
Thanks to tower dumps, Gmail warrants, social media, police are drowning in data. A new startup is selling AI to help them parse it. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
Police are drowning in data. Could a chatbot help?
Start-up Longeye offers an AI chatbot for police designed to help them spot clues and patterns in digital evidence such as phone recordings or online chatlogs.
washingtonpost.com
the fact they have the ability to allow opt out means they're capable of matching rights holders to works, so so much for their theory that the machine is dumb and they can't tell what it is generating.
The Wall Street Journal@wsj.com · 11mo agoExclusive: OpenAI is planning to release a new version of its Sora video generator, which creates videos featuring copyrighted material unless copyright holders opt out of having their work appear.
New @washingtonpost.com supercut: Donald Trump and his allies keep blaming the left for "fascist" political rhetoric that they have also used
YouTube's settlement will go towards paying for the new White House ballroom (seriously) www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
YouTube to pay $24.5 million to settle Trump lawsuit over post-Jan. 6 suspension
YouTube will pay $24.5 million to settle a 2021 lawsuit alleging it unfairly blocked President Donald Trump’s account after the Jan 6. Capitol attacks.
washingtonpost.com
“Our general approach has been to treat likeness and copyright distinctly,” said Jason Kwon, chief strategy officer of OpenAI. Definitely seeing this distinction being made by AI execs recently. A potential wedge being driven into Hollywood/Music industry www.wsj.com/tech/ai/open...
Exclusive | OpenAI’s New Sora Video Generator to Require Copyright Holders to Opt Out
Executives at the company notified talent agencies and studios over the last week.
wsj.com
we are definitely in the era of waving your hand and saying "AI" as you lay off thousands of older workers www.businessinsider.com/accenture-co...
Accenture is cutting staff it can't retrain in the age of AI — but it still plans to hire more people
The consulting giant is cutting staff it can't reskill in the AI era, with plans to increase overall head count.
businessinsider.com
Silver Lake, Jared Kushner and the Saudi sovereign wealth fund are buying Electronic Arts
