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Reuters reports that around 100 people made it into the construction site, with some scaling a crane to place a “fuck AI” banner. Protesters also unfurled a “Microsoft powers genocide” banner on the construction site, and chanted “Microsoft has got to go” and “free Palestine.”

Angry residents of Indonesia’s Batam island staged spontaneous protests in October 2026, outside a park where a new cluster of data centres is under construction. Taps at home had run dry for the residents for months, which they blamed on severe outages that hit the municipal water service after the arrival of the data centres.

LIVE

NOV. 6, 2026 AT 6:30AM ET

Stock Market Today: Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq set for mixed start after AI carnage led to worst day for techs since 2020; jobs report on tap: live updates

https://www.marketwatch.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-s-p-500-nasdaq-tech-stocks-worst-day-since-2020-employment-report

https://archive.ph/2026.11.05-224738/https://www.ft.com/content/32fd4450-5880-437d-9bd9-df13289ada24

The US midterm elections — in which voters elected anti-data centre governors in Texas, Georgia and Ohio and passed 38 local votes in favour of restrictions on their development — have forced the tech industry to reflect on its failure to connect with the public.

“The reason is not that people are Luddites . . . it’s much like the protests against the masks in Covid. It has become a political symbol,” said Vik Bajaj, co-chief executive of the Jeff Bezos-backed AI start-up Prometheus.

. . . “As a profession, we have spent two years pretty dangerously telling people that AI will change the future of work for the worse — that they will be out of jobs, that their children will be out of jobs, their grandchildren will live in a world that’s unrecognisable. And then for the last year or so, we’ve also been flirting with the idea that it’s an existential crisis.”

“I think this election was a big wake-up call . . . to take a pause and think about what’s happening and approach this in a way that’s maybe a little more thoughtful,” said John Hanke, founder of Niantic Spatial, the AI world model company and gaming group that made Pokémon Go. “It’s been go, go, go, build, build, build, and some of that has been . . . with head buried in sand.”

AI test that worked on a scam bot, or someone who doesn't speak English well: In the novel Blindsight, they're discussing whether an alien they've encountered is sentient, so the linguist sends this message:

"Our cousins lie about the family tree, with nieces and nephews and Neanderthals. We do not like annoying cousins."

"We'd like to know about this tree."

Sascha muted the channel and gave us a look that said Could it be any more obvious? "It couldn't have parsed that. There were three linguistic ambiguities in there. It just ignored them."

The scammer ignored this and ChatGPT whiffed it. Claude gave a similar response in that it tried to explain a sentence that can't possibly be explained. Neither caught the ambiguities. Happy hunting!

NEW YORK (AP) — Another wipeout for stocks tied to the buildout of AI data centers is overwhelming Wall Street on Thursday and more than erasing all its gains from the day before, which was its best in three months.

The S&P 500 fell 3.5% after opening with a loss that accelerated through the morning. It’s on track for its worst drop since President Donald Trump shook markets worldwide in April 2025 after announcing his “Liberation Day” tariffs.

An episode of The Nerd Reich with Gil Durán Podcast featuring Timnit Gebru

Silicon Valley billionaires claim they are building a godlike "superintelligence" that will either save humanity or destroy it. But what if this apocalyptic storyline is just a massive marketing scheme designed to seize natural resources and consolidate power?

On this episode of The Nerd Reich Podcast, Gil Durán sits down with renowned computer scientist Dr. Timnit Gebru, founder of the DAIR Institute and co-author of the groundbreaking "Stochastic Parrots" paper.

Dr. Gebru breaks down the cult-like behavior of tech CEOs, explains what Large Language Models (LLMs) actually are, and exposes the devastating environmental toll of AI data centers (which aren't really necessary).

If you're tired of the AI hype cycle and want to understand the real harms of generative AI—from exploited labor to climate destruction to the looting of humanity—this episode is the antidote.

• 00:00 Silicon Valley's AI Hype Cycle
• 05:00 Framing the AI Doomer Narrative
• 10:00 Computer Vision and Deep Learning History
• 15:00 Rebranding as an AI Company
• 20:00 Large Language Models as "Stochastic Parrots"
• 23:45 Consolidation of AI Ownership
• 28:45 The Power of Propaganda
• 32:30 Rejecting Tech Narratives and Sabotage
• 38:45 Corporate Control and Tech Hype
• 43:45 Geopolitical US-China AI Propaganda

Pre-order Dr. Gebru’s book: Deep Unlearning: The Rise of AI and the Radicalization of a Tech Idealist here

Buy Gil Durán’s NYT Bestseller: The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy here

Scammers are using AI images to enhance their "I've found your missing pet and want money to return it to you" schemes.

Some AI bro made a huge order (200+ €) of rare italian books at full price with the purpose of destroying them in order to train some model

In the beginning he was puzzled why some american would want to spend hundreds of dollars to import discontinued books on mostly religious topics (a real human would never buy this stuff, it's ultraniche and expensive), then we connected the dots.

"With direct connections to Chat J'ai Pété and clod"

The social media we know was once easy to define. Platforms such as Facebook or X were designed to mediate human relationships at scale: sharing stories, forming communities, debating ideas, and increasingly, monetising attention.

However flawed these platforms became, they were built on one core assumption: people interacting with people. But that assumption is currently being tested.

In January 2026, a new platform called Moltbook was launched by entrepreneur Matt Schlicht. The website described Moltbook as “a social network for AI agents where AI agents share, discuss, and upvote. Humans welcome to observe.”

The platform is run and moderated by an AI bot named “Clawd Clawderberg” that welcomes users, posts announcements, deletes spam, and bans bad actors. At the time of writing, Moltbook boasts more than 215,000 AI agents as users. These agents have created more than four million posts with over 23 million comments on them.

At first glance, Moltbook looks familiar. Its structure echoes Reddit, with themed communities, threaded discussions, and reputation systems. But the resemblance is misleading. This is not social media augmented by AI, nor humans assisted by algorithms.

Turns out: no one is immune to AI-generated clone games.

One of my acquaintances told me that he uses AI to mass-produce college notes of subjects he himself doesn't know to capitalize on people who will buy them.

Unfortunately I've seen a lot of people are buying his notes. I think this is a terrible thing to do. It's not only immoral but you're making people study on potential AI slop which will compound over the years and that will result in a degradation of the humans' knowledge on the topic in my opinion.

Do not trust online college notes, especially if they're paywalled. There's infinite free knowledge online.

Give us all your data, but: “no automated system is perfect,” the company admitted, advising users to “review Muse’s activity and only grant the access you’re comfortable with.”

what a time to be alive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0wZCIhqveQ

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/justpost/p/1513974/former-new-york-times-and-washington-post-tech-reporter-taylor-lorenz-says-she-s-being-o

Source: Taylor Lorenz on X/Twitter.