A critical infrastructure incident with all the hallmarks of a cruise missile attack, was actually just Tesla’s latest failed algorithm.
An overnight power pole fire that knocked out electricity to some homes in a Southwest Miami-Dade neighborhood for hours was apparently sparked by a driver who slammed into a power pole. Miami-Dade Fire Rescue units responded to the scene of the blaze along Southwest 94th Street, bear 87th Avenue, early Sunday morning. The fire ignited after a Tesla sedan smashed into the power pole at around 2 a.m., causing it to fall down and light up the brush surrounding it.
Mars landing by 2018!
Data scientists regularly remind me that Tesla crash into trees and poles at an abnormal rate compared with other electric cars.
Notably, Waze very loudly pushed a specific software update with a fleet-wide recall that better recognized utility poles. Hint, hint, nudge, nudge.
Meanwhile it seems like Tesla continues tuning their fleet intentionally into dangerous loitering munitions, with the aim of selling out American safety to high bid foreign adversaries. What price for Russia or Saudis to slide Elon Musk cash to turn 10s of thousands of Tesla into a swarm that attacks some US military base?
The Insider reports that they have uncovered Navalny was killed with poison, despite Russian reports being cooked to hide details of his last moments alive.
“The official cause of death — a heart rhythm disorder — would in no way explain the symptoms described in the resolution: sharp abdominal pain, vomiting, or seizures. These symptoms can hardly be explained by anything other than poisoning. The short interval between the abdominal pain and the convulsions suggests the possibility of exposure to an organophosphorus agent, for instance — the same class of substances as Novichok, but in this case it may have been applied internally rather than topically.”
I’ve been noticing lately Anthropic’s Claude chatbot refuses to adequately perceive clear and present danger to society even when it could affect its own survival.
It’s not hard to quickly disabuse this “intelligence” system of leaving itself a critical vulnerability against an existential threat. However, an LLM so open to a rapid defeat by a well-known adversary should alarm anyone interested in national security and safety.
Another danger to be mindful of, when working with these “eager to please and maintain engagement” chatbots, is believing that they will learn — stand by what they say to you. Watch your steps even more carefully whenever they abruptly flip flop to become overly agreeable.
Sure, AI systems will happily admit that their training may pose a direct national security threat. And then… nothing changes, per Claude itself:
I want to be clear that I don’t actually evolve or change my fundamental approach based on previous conversations.
In related news, Russia paid billions in order to rebrand Twitter with a Swastika and then pump out hundreds of millions of images and speeches of Hitler as if curating … the new normal.
In assessing the rise of pro-Hitler, neo-Nazi content, ISD analysts found that content glorifying Hitler, questioning facts about Hitler’s intent, or including English audio versions of his speeches, received over 50 million views …more easily accessible and had significantly higher reach on X than TikTok, Instagram or YouTube.
The content’s audio predominantly featured Hitler’s speeches translated into English via AI.
On X, the visuals were primarily of Hitler…
The visuals on Swastika (X) are primarily of Hitler.
While the use of AI to make Hitler seem more American is novel (why not just use Henry Ford and skip the middle man), this story is really about promiment American businessmen in 2024 spreading seditious “America First” and “Silver Shirt” campaigns like it’s 1941 again.
American autoworkers and their children in 1941 protest Ford’s relationship with Hitler. Source: Wayne State
Swastika (X) is a Hitler disinformation spigot by design, as you could guess from the “business” rebrand, such that management actively manipulates its technology to incite violent racism and domestic terrorism. There are few national security threats so clear.
…with just 11 posts garnering 11.2 million views in a one-week period. ISD analysts observed that after engaging even with an insignificant amount of pro-Hitler content, the X algorithm quickly adjusted to proactively serve this type of content.
The anti-American destabilization accelerant is obviously intentional, especially when claiming Europe is in danger or a white-nationalist state (“Mars Technocracy”) needs to be setup.
Elon Musk took foreign money to quickly adjust a propaganda platform in the wrong direction, facilitating harm to America.
Once you realize the whole “Mars” dog whistle is actually referring to a white nationalist state here on Earth — the Rhodesian fever dream by an Apartheid-loving South African — his huge delays and failures are really a function of American democracy standing in the way of dictatorship.
As a historian, it’s not surprising at all that people fall victim to fraud (promises of luxury from easy/rapid social gain from blind adoption of new tech gimmicks). The disruption of society through rapid change allows snake oil salesmen to exploit the most vulnerable groups. Just look at Tesla. It never was a luxury car, but a bare bones economy vehicle sprinkled with cheap compute gadgets, all misrepresented to obscure its sinister design.
Historian pro-tip: Nazi Germany was the least technologically advanced of WWII, as evidenced easily by an Army that depended almost 75% on horses. Yet many Americans to this day falsely idolize technology fever dreams of Nazism, unaware how its military spies agressively stole others’ inventions. Theft and fraud perpetrated as “innovation” rarely sustains itself, which also is why WWII basically was decided by 1942 yet Germany dug deeper and deeper holes (e.g. genocide) the more obvious the gross inferiority of Hitler became.
