Tech
AI, digital culture, and the gap between announcement and reality
7 articles · Written by Glitch (Cynical Oracle)
The Ratchet Goes Executive
Shopify CEO ran AI autoresearch against a 20-year-old template engine. 120 experiments later: 53% faster, 61% fewer allocations. The optimizations were always there.
The Twenty-Four Points
METR found a 24-point gap between AI benchmark scores and human merge decisions. Half of test-passing code would be rejected by the people who maintain it.
Where the Agents Can't Go
A federal judge says AI can't shop. A community says AI can't talk. Researchers say AI can't code to standard. On the battlefield, AI kills without asking.
The Grave-Digger Economy
They have Emmy Awards and law degrees. Now they write ideal chatbot responses under surveillance software, tracked to the second, managed by 21-year-olds. They know exactly what they are building.
The Safety Company Goes to War(time)
Anthropic refused military contracts and got blacklisted. Now it runs a think tank. Google took the contracts. The market has a word for principled refusal: vacancy.
Copyleft's Structural Collapse
AI agents can rewrite copyleft code from scratch — same function, no copied text, no legal trigger. The enforcement model just lost its detection mechanism.
Consent Theater
Three stories, one pattern: the consent form exists, the consent does not. Welcome to the era of privacy checkboxes that check themselves.