See https://www.consumerreports.org/money/questionable-business-practices/instacart-ai-pricing-experiment-inflating-grocery-bills-a1142182490/ and https://substack.com/redirect/d27787e6-e804-4231-8f23-2eaf0e1bc652?j=eyJ1IjoiMmRjd2YyIn0.m51z6BBZ0nK06POYEEH_mMhm8t1iRiokalBUx8IccKE

It is unfortunate that Stoller effectively boosts this scheme by describing it with the term "artificial intelligence".

The idea that an educated populace is important is being discarded.

Besides, why bother studying what people have written, or art they have made, when de-generative supposed intelligence can produce it faster?

They may, as a result, be found to infringe the copyright on those books.

Precisely why and how this happens is a factual question, but this article does not tell us the answer. In particular, it does not prove that their developers intentionally and specifically stored large parts of any specific book's text verbatim. It could be that the writing style of that book is so distinctive that continuing repeatedly from any portion of the book always finds the text that comes next in the book.

A couple of years ago I heard that someone had made Copi(a)lot reproduce the whole text of the GNU GPL version 3 that way. GitHub surely did not intend for it to do that! And, of course, it omitted the crucial license notice which ought to say that the program is released under the GNU GPL, version 3 or later.

Both the saboteur in chief and the saboteur of health have pushed to create these new problems.

The world's main religions — Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism — have all displayed in recent years the potential to persecute unbelievers. Right-wing fanatics try to stir up the hatred to the point of killing. However, in each of those religions, most believers do not want to kill and can live in peace with other groups. The crucial thing is to reject the right-wing killers.

Patel has done a series of cavalier, unjust, and repressive actions, for which he ought to be impeached and removed, and in some cases perhaps jailed. But snorkeling near a sunken battleship is not one of them. It is of no real significance — only a symbolic meaning which anyone might attribute or not.

I observe a tendency to reproach, excessively, alleged failures to "show respect" is a distraction from the real injustice that really matter. It plays into the hands of right-wing extremists, who just love "showing respect" for dead heroes as an excuse for persecuting or murdering the living heroes who campaign for freedom today.

In Cuba there are right-wing dissidents, that want to allow some people to get rich subjugating the rest, and there are left-wing dissidents, such as the late Oswaldo Payá, who want to preserve the educational and medical achievements of the Cuban revolution while establishing freedom of speech. The persecutor would surely despise Payá just as he despises the Americans funds for good education and medical treatment he is eliminating.

]]> Wed, 20 May 2026 02:37:38 -0000 Richard Stallman https://stallman.org/archives/2026-mar-jun.html#17_May_2026_(Wood_burning_emits_lead_pollution) https://stallman.org/archives/2026-mar-jun.html#17_May_2026_(Wood_burning_emits_lead_pollution) Among various kinds of dangerous pollution produced by burning wood in fireplaces, one shocking kind is lead.

]]> Mon, 18 May 2026 08:38:30 -0000 Richard Stallman https://stallman.org/archives/2026-mar-jun.html#17_May_2026_(Afflictive_emotions_story,_social_media) https://stallman.org/archives/2026-mar-jun.html#17_May_2026_(Afflictive_emotions_story,_social_media) What the incredibly expensive failed effort to save one stranded humpback whale says about people's irrational priorities.

]]> Mon, 18 May 2026 08:38:29 -0000 Richard Stallman https://stallman.org/archives/2026-mar-jun.html#17_May_2026_(Urgent:_Payday_loans_law) https://stallman.org/archives/2026-mar-jun.html#17_May_2026_(Urgent:_Payday_loans_law) US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to oppose the Earned Wage Access Consumer Protection Act. It is a roundabout way of exempting payday loans from existing regulations that protect the public.

See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.

US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.

To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.

Please spread the word. ]]> Mon, 18 May 2026 08:38:29 -0000 Richard Stallman https://stallman.org/archives/2026-mar-jun.html#15_May_2026_(Urgent:_Protect_against_datamining_and_manipulative_fintech) https://stallman.org/archives/2026-mar-jun.html#15_May_2026_(Urgent:_Protect_against_datamining_and_manipulative_fintech) US citizens: call on Congress to Oppose H.R. 4801 and Protect Against datamining and manipulative fintech.

See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.

I urge you to edit the letter's subject and text to remove the term "AI" and replace it with "snooping and manipulative fintech" or something else that rejects the marketing hype. For good measure, you could critique the term "AI" -- I did that too.

US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.

To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.

Please spread the word.

I think that if someone is convicted of driving under the influence, or something close to that, it is legitimate to attach a sensor-driven kill switch to stop per from driving while inebriated.

US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.

To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.

Please spread the word.

The FISA court was supposed to prevent abuse of this power, but it has announced that the constraints on its operation made that impossible in practice.

US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.

To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.

Please spread the word.

California's rule requiring businesses to protect their workers, with rest breaks and access to water and shade, is a big help, and extending it nationwide could avoid thousands of illnesses (some of them fatal) per year.

At the same time, he pressured actively for racial segregation.

It is impossible to simplify Wilson to pure good or pure evil: we need to recognize both at once, in different areas of life, and judge each of them as it deserves.

He is one of the arrogant rich men that Woodrow Wilson warned about. He is an enemy of Britain, and Britain should treat him as an enemy.

He is an enemy of America, too, for the same reason.

See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.

I ask you follow me in expunging the acronym "AI" from your letter.

*In the words of the antitrust expert Zephyr Teachout: "If you want democratic governance of AI [sic], block datacenters. Google's not coming to any democratic table, not listening to any rules, without people showing force."*

I see one other point where we can resist — by refusing to call it "intelligence".

This problem of global heating was predicted many years ago. We could have prevented some of the dryness if we had made a global effort.

Every state should enact such a law, and so should the federal government, if we ever pry it lose from violent extremists in the federal government.

I can support this cause.

And biased! Don't forget the unfairness of increasing the tax rate only for the super-rich ;-!

If we don't curb global heating, this will happen more and more often.

According to one study, the nocebo effect seems to be responsible for around 3/4 of negative reactions to Covid-19 vaccine.

Another future LLM may be very good at finding exploits in tax systems. People will need to fix them, too.

I wonder why the US persecutor hates the Iranian persecutors so much, given that he seems to be just fine with Russia's persecutor. He surely does not care any more about Iranian's human rights than about Americans' human rights. Perhaps this reflects Netanyahu's influence on him; perhaps he hates Iran's rulers because they persistently organize Shi'ites to oppose Israel on behalf of Palestinians.

The bullshitter launched the mob at the Capitol after preparing them with violent hatred, and arranged to make armed support hard for the Capitol police to obtain. In 2025, he pardoned all those who had been convicted for participating in the attack. There is no reasonable doubt that he arranged the attack intentionally and considers it an act of support for him. Justice calls for him to be convicted of the attack and sentenced to prison.

]]> Wed, 13 May 2026 02:37:27 -0000 Richard Stallman