Daily Tech News 9 July 2025

• Yesterday I noted that Twitter was taking steps to make its AI chatbot, Grok, "less politically correct".
  
  It looks instead of making it 5% more Hitler, they dialed it up to 500%. (Tech Crunch)
  
  For a few hours it sounded like a cross between Heinrich Himmler and the Ayatollah Khamenei, or a moderate Democrat.
  
  Twitter has been cleaning up the mess and Grok is back to normal now, which for a chatbot means remarkably useless and only not dangerous because nobody trusts it for anything.

• What is AGI? (Ars Technica)
  
  Well, it stands for "artificial general intelligence", but what it means depends on what the speaker needs it to mean. None of the big AI companies are focused on true intelligence, but rather on whatever gimmick will keep investor dollars flowing.

  According to one definition reportedly agreed upon by Microsoft and OpenAI, the answer lies in economics: When AI generates $100 billion in profits. This arbitrary profit-based benchmark for AGI perfectly captures the definitional chaos plaguing the AI industry.

  
  
  
• IBM's new Power11 systems offer up to 256 cores, 2048 threads, and a lot of memory. (Serve the Home)
  
  Don't ask how much.
  
  
  
• The New York Times told the truth for once and The Verge is frothing mad. (The Verge) (archive site)
  
  I think the CDC needs to intervene at Verge HQ.
  
  
  
• Can an email travel more than 500 miles in 2025? (Flak)
  
  Mostly, yes. Not always, but mostly.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:30 AM

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