Comment Re:Update (Score 1) 3
Classic grok results. If it wasn't for the pay-to-play, there'd be no grok in the US government at this time.
Submission + - New Ai-Powered "America.gov" Government Website Uses Gemini and Grok (cnn.com) 3
fahrbot-bot writes: CNN is reporting (and others) that President Donald Trump on Tuesday unveiled America.gov, a government website meant to serve as a one-stop shop for people trying to accomplish basic tasks like renewing a passport, enrolling in Medicare or applying for disaster relief.
The site, which launched with some basic functions ahead of a full rollout next year, is designed to serve as an AI-powered guide through the thicket of government agencies that Trump officials pledged would ultimately save people a whole lot of frustration.
The administration’s new initiative aims to allow Americans to access dozens of federal websites through a single point, making America.gov akin to a search tool that pulls information from across the government. And in the same way that people increasingly use AI models like ChatGPT or Google Gemini to compile information and provide customized answers, Trump officials claimed that America.gov would be able to do the same for people’s interactions with the federal government.
Enrolling in Medicare, for example, will become a matter of typing the request into the America.gov AI tool and following its step-by-step instructions. The same goes for applying to a government job — the new tool will now let people upload their resume directly to the site — or answering questions about federal benefits, publicly available documents or other necessities that fall under the federal government’s vast umbrella.
“Our vision is that one day, this type of convenience and simplicity will be across every government service,” said Joseph Gebbia, who leads the government’s National Design Studio.
But the reality is that the most advanced actions won’t be available until some point in 2027, raising questions about how long it will take for the administration to revamp the way the people interact with the government’s websites. The current version of America.gov can only do “answers.”
In related news, Variety notes that America.gov confirms, for now anyway, that Biden won the 2020 election.
The site, which launched with some basic functions ahead of a full rollout next year, is designed to serve as an AI-powered guide through the thicket of government agencies that Trump officials pledged would ultimately save people a whole lot of frustration.
The administration’s new initiative aims to allow Americans to access dozens of federal websites through a single point, making America.gov akin to a search tool that pulls information from across the government. And in the same way that people increasingly use AI models like ChatGPT or Google Gemini to compile information and provide customized answers, Trump officials claimed that America.gov would be able to do the same for people’s interactions with the federal government.
Enrolling in Medicare, for example, will become a matter of typing the request into the America.gov AI tool and following its step-by-step instructions. The same goes for applying to a government job — the new tool will now let people upload their resume directly to the site — or answering questions about federal benefits, publicly available documents or other necessities that fall under the federal government’s vast umbrella.
“Our vision is that one day, this type of convenience and simplicity will be across every government service,” said Joseph Gebbia, who leads the government’s National Design Studio.
But the reality is that the most advanced actions won’t be available until some point in 2027, raising questions about how long it will take for the administration to revamp the way the people interact with the government’s websites. The current version of America.gov can only do “answers.”
In related news, Variety notes that America.gov confirms, for now anyway, that Biden won the 2020 election.
Submission + - Trump says Arch will be a military complex with weapons, drones, sniper's nest (theguardian.com)
fahrbot-bot writes: The Guardian is reporting, along with others, that President Donald Trump is proferring a new argument for building his triumphal arch in Washington DC: it will be converted into a “top grade military complex” replete with drone and ammunition storage space and customized sniper facilities on the roof and plaza.
In a post on his Truth Social platform on Sunday morning, Trump claimed that his new plan came at the “strong request” of the US military. He said the 250ft structure would be able to “house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage”. The president added, “There will be no facility like this anywhere in the world.”
This seems like a ploy to get around courts holding up the project by re-framing the project as a National Security matter, as he did with the East Wing of the White House. (Can the Kennedy Center be far behind?)
In a post on his Truth Social platform on Sunday morning, Trump claimed that his new plan came at the “strong request” of the US military. He said the 250ft structure would be able to “house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage”. The president added, “There will be no facility like this anywhere in the world.”
This seems like a ploy to get around courts holding up the project by re-framing the project as a National Security matter, as he did with the East Wing of the White House. (Can the Kennedy Center be far behind?)
Submission + - America PAC's VoteSafe.org is nothing but a honeypot (cybernews.com)
echo123 writes: Elon Musk’s bogus voter registration website is collecting extensive user data and selling it.
The website was funded by Musk and is operated by America PAC, a conservative political action committee founded in 2024 to support Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
The VoteSafe.org website has been promoted as a way for Americans to register to vote and check their registration ahead of the November midterm elections.
But MeidasTouch and Snopes found that despite presenting itself as a voter-registration resource, the site doesn’t actually register users to vote.
The site's privacy policy says America PAC can collect information, including:
Users' names
Dates of birth
Addresses
Email addresses
Phone numbers
IP addresses
Location
Information about how they interact with the site
It also permits the collection of "inferences" about users, including their preferences, characteristics, behavior, attitudes, and psychological tendencies.
The policy says the information may be shared with or sold to business partners for targeted marketing.
The website was funded by Musk and is operated by America PAC, a conservative political action committee founded in 2024 to support Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
The VoteSafe.org website has been promoted as a way for Americans to register to vote and check their registration ahead of the November midterm elections.
But MeidasTouch and Snopes found that despite presenting itself as a voter-registration resource, the site doesn’t actually register users to vote.
The site's privacy policy says America PAC can collect information, including:
Users' names
Dates of birth
Addresses
Email addresses
Phone numbers
IP addresses
Location
Information about how they interact with the site
It also permits the collection of "inferences" about users, including their preferences, characteristics, behavior, attitudes, and psychological tendencies.
The policy says the information may be shared with or sold to business partners for targeted marketing.
Submission + - U.S. almost attacked Chinese ship over hallucinated AI nuclear arms report (cnn.com)
fahrbot-bot writes: CNN is reporting that an AI hallucination of Chinese nuclear components almost led to US military attack on a Chinese ship.
The intelligence report, circulated across the US military this spring in the midst of the war with Iran, immediately set off alarm bells: A Chinese ship in the Middle East was transporting components of a nuclear weapons program.
The US military swung into action with plans to intercept the vessel, according to four sources familiar with the episode. According to two of the sources, armed members of the US military were preparing to board the ship. Military planes were in the air, one of those sources and another source familiar with the incident said.
It was only just before the planned operation that officials dug deeper into the report put together by a special operations command analyst and found it had been generated with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) — and that a chatbot the analyst had used inaccurately identified the material the ship was carrying. CNN was not able to learn what the misidentified cargo was.
The report, according to one of the sources, was “entirely false.” But it also “almost started a war,” the source said. Any US operation against a Chinese vessel could have risked spiraling into an armed conflict between the two nations.
The kind of “hallucination” that the tool used by the analyst in this case conjured has not been an isolated incident across the intelligence community since these tools began proliferating across government, according to one of the sources.
The intelligence report, circulated across the US military this spring in the midst of the war with Iran, immediately set off alarm bells: A Chinese ship in the Middle East was transporting components of a nuclear weapons program.
The US military swung into action with plans to intercept the vessel, according to four sources familiar with the episode. According to two of the sources, armed members of the US military were preparing to board the ship. Military planes were in the air, one of those sources and another source familiar with the incident said.
It was only just before the planned operation that officials dug deeper into the report put together by a special operations command analyst and found it had been generated with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) — and that a chatbot the analyst had used inaccurately identified the material the ship was carrying. CNN was not able to learn what the misidentified cargo was.
The report, according to one of the sources, was “entirely false.” But it also “almost started a war,” the source said. Any US operation against a Chinese vessel could have risked spiraling into an armed conflict between the two nations.
The kind of “hallucination” that the tool used by the analyst in this case conjured has not been an isolated incident across the intelligence community since these tools began proliferating across government, according to one of the sources.
Comment Re: So what (Score 2) 145
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
What? All [amazon or whatever] cares about is cost/benefit/profit. Old (and rare) books are cheap and [amazon or whatever] is already investing massively in data centers. The beast demands to be fed.
Comment Quid Pro Quo (Score 0, Troll) 58
The US intelligence agencies determined it was not in the United State's national security interest for Nvidia's most advanced chips to be exported without control, for fear they'd fall into the wrong hands, (like the Chinese). The UAE really wanted to buy those chips so they bribed Trump and voila!
Comment Re:How will they break things this time around? (Score 3) 54
Any bets? The eating of documents? Confidential work documents all of a sudden being suggested to your son preparing a presentation for school?
Anybody got any other ideas?
This is what is know to the industry as, "a cluster".
Comment Re:Landfills are such a bad idea (Score 1) 183
If you're right then the fix is just to pay people to sort it all, don't need an AI for that. The disappointed oligarchs will just switch it off when most of the solutions involve just paying folks enough to do whatever needs done.
Actually AI sorts everything very well.
Comment Re:I want a super yak! (Score 2) 31
I want a super yak!, I promise to take good care of it, and collect super milk every day on time.
I want a pony.
Comment Re:Be fair - no one could've seen this coming (Score 1) 41
After all, look at how much care Musk's DOGE team put into protecting and sequestering sensitive government data!
Absolutely! The USB drive was kept safe in their trouser pockets.
Comment Re:If you work in tech (Score 3, Insightful) 24
and you still don't see the value of unions, I don't know what to say.
Companies are simply churning through their work force to suppress wages. Over hire, over fire. It's a toxic culture of pure stress for everyone below the VP level.
...there's also the H1-B situation.
Comment Re:Pragmatic attitude works well on this. (Score 1) 92
He's typically pragmatic about it, and the attitude serves well.
Here's a few posts from Dries Buytaert, lead of the Drupal project, (UserID 1)
Comment Re:AHHHHHH (Score 1) 157
My cat judges me. AI doesn't.
Not only does AI judge you, it's constantly keeping score. Your cat merely judges you using fuzzy logic.
Comment Re:private equity firm (Score 1) 50
PayPal still does one thing no one else does - which is allow two random people to accept credit card as a payment option. In other words, the recipient does not need to have a merchant account.
Stripe allows its users to accept credit cards as payments.
