Category: Artificial Intelligence

NYU: Forced to learn about gender non-conformity among the indigenous people of French Canada

by philg

This is the week that eager schoolwork nerds will get their Early Decision answers from the nation’s elite universities.

Our mole at NYU (over $100,000 per year including a few required extras, such as airfare and going out in Manhattan) was required to choose from a short list of core courses, only one of which had availability… French in the Americas:

Here’s a slide from the 12th week of the course:

The teacher explained to our mole that the indigenous were natural followers of Rainbow Flagism and that this native religion was suppressed by European colonizers who were also passionate gender binarists. My email to the mole:

They’re making you learn about an economically irrelevant subgroup within an economically irrelevant subgroup within an economically irrelevant country. (Natives within Quebec, which is on track to lose its language, religion, and culture to recent immigrants, within Canada, whose manufacturing output is perhaps 1/50th that of China?) It feels to me as though they’re teaching this because they have some professor who is an expert on the subject, not because any American needs to know this information. How could this possibly be justified compare to learning about the history of China, for example? Or if you want to talk about ethnic minorities, why not talk about the ethnic minorities of China or the noble Muslims who’ve settled in Europe, Canada, and the U.S. despite rampant Islamophobia?

(I later checked with Grok and learned that China does not have 50X the manufacturing output of Canada, measured in dollars, but rather only 36X.)

Here’s another slide from the same PowerPoint and I would love to know how it could relate to European migrants conquering the noble natives 200 years prior to the invention of the tank.

On the other hand, it is tough to come up with a scenario in which understanding the above images and being able to answer the “What do they have in common?” question posed by the professor would have a $100,000 value. On the third hand, maybe the ability to answer the question is worth $trillions? Let’s see how our future AI overlords do with it.

Grok:

Gemini disagrees almost completely!

ChatGPT also disagrees with Grok:

It seems as though NYU could replace all of its students with these three LLMs and still have a lively in-class discussion!

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Artificial stupidity meets the bathtub faucet

by philg

Loyal readers may remember Moen Flo Artificial Intelligence Water Overlord, in which the intelligent water overlord was dumb as a rock. This post is about what happened after I got the cartridge out of the faucet.

ChatGPT confidently identified the Roman tub faucet based on a photo of the top of the cartridge. The identification came with “100% certainty”:

The Pfister cartridges it told me to buy are plastic and don’t have a splined top:

When I pointed this out, ChatGPT told me to buy some other Pfister cartridge that was obviously wrong and intended for a sink faucet, not a tub faucet. I managed to get the cartridge out and sent ChatGPT a photo:

(Of course, this was obviously false as well.)

I went to Broedell Plumbing Supply here in Jupiter. The guy at the counter quickly found a Phylrich web page with dimensions that matched the faucet. I asked ChatGPT “You sure it isn’t a Phylrich 10240?”

The Phylrich web page says that its cartridge has 16 points, not 12 as ChatGPT confidently says. When I sent ChatGPT close-up photos of the top of the old cartridge and the bottom of the handle, it found 20 splines (I counted 16). ChatGPT still wanted to replace the failed cartridge with a Pfister. It came up with a dog-ate-my-homework story:

Grok was a little better. Shown a picture of the top of the cartridge (not the entire cartridge):

The dates have to be wrong since our house was built in 2003 and I don’t think that they used vintage materials. A Google search for the suggested “Phylrich Regency” and “Phylrich Versailles” doesn’t bring up anything with dual spouts. When I pushed back on Grok it changed its mind to Newport Brass or Jaclo. When I sent a photo of the complete cartridge, Grok said that it was American Standard or Pfister. Grok seems worse in terms of hallucinating the existence of similar-looking dual-spout roman tub faucets.

The plot thickened a little further. I ordered two replacement cartridges (one hot, one cold) from Phylrich ($155 including shipping, i.e., about the same price as a Glacier Bay deck-mount tub faucet from Home Depot (bizarrely rated at 2.4 gph, which I don’t think can be right because that’s roughly Federal shower flow limit and a standard Delta tub filler is about 20 gph at 60 psi)). The cartridges fit and work perfectly. So the faucet is definitely Phylrich, right? I emailed a photo to the company’s customer service department and they say that they never made a faucet like that. ChatGPT, to its credit, did have a plausible explanation:

Many manufacturers bought cartridges from the same OEM suppliers. … Boutique brands (including Phylrich) often used “generic” brass compression stems early on. … So Phylrich’s cartridge fits simply because the valve body was designed around a widespread industry-standard stem pattern. … Your faucet is almost certainly a “private label” or discontinued OEM roman-tub set

(It still erroneously believes that the stem pattern is 20 splines and referred to that.)

Maybe I could order two of these swan sets and use two of the spouts on the existing rough-in kit? That would cost only about $10,800. That’s a mere trifle for some of our Palm Beach County neighbors.

I think the above tale at least demonstrates that (1) AI is not always ready for the real world, and (2) one should never install anything in one’s house that didn’t come from Home Depot.

Speaking of Home Depot, nearly the complete range of South Florida vehicles in the parking lot: airboat, Tesla, Rolls-Royce (I have seen Ferraris in that lot before, but not on the same day as the below photos were taken):

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Image creation in Gemini vs. ChatGPT and Grok

by philg

Advice from a guy who will be paying taxes to keep the Mamdani Caliphate running: “I would ask: “May I meet you?” before engaging further in a conversation. I almost never got a No.”

Gemini applying this for Mindy the Crippler:

ChatGPT does a comparatively crummy job:

Grok is off in its own world (I could get it to use this puppyhood picture of Mindy the Crippler, but it simply ignored my request to use the one of the golden retriever standing on the windowsill of the minivan):

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Who’s in love with Gemini?

by philg

Gemini 3 has been out for a couple of weeks now. Who is finding it more useful than ChatGPT, Grok, et al.?

I gave a simple tree identification task to Gemini 3, ChatGPT, and Grok. All three failed the task with supreme confidence. A plants-only image classifier handled the task nicely and without any boasting based on the following images of a neighbor’s tree:

Here’s Gemini getting it wrong:

(It’s important to have cold-hardy plants here in Palm Beach County in case it gets slightly below freezing, as it did in 1989, or briefly snows, as it did in 1977.)

ChatGPT, “almost certainly” and with a convincing explanation:

Grok, asked “What tree is this?” answers that it isn’t a tree at all:

Here’s a Yucca filamenta photo from a nursery:

What is the neighbor’s tree? Almost surely Coccothrinax crinita (Old Man Palm), an immigrant from Cuba:

I can’t figure out why all three of these AI overlords did so badly. Yes, the plant classification web site has a smaller database of images to deal with, but given my prompt with the word “tree” in it why weren’t the general purpose AI services able to narrow down their search and do as well as a plants-only image database system?

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How about an AI math tutor that looks at paper and pencil?

by philg

The New York Times, which told us that closing schools for 18 months was the absolute best thing for children (keep them safe from a virus that was killing Americans at a median age of 82), now tells us that screens are bad… “The Screen That Ate Your Child’s Education”:

Many of these devices are provided by schools. You might think that these school-issued devices allow only a limited number of functions, like access to classroom Canvas pages and Google Docs. If you assumed that, you would be wrong.

Sylvie McNamara, a parent of a ninth grader in Washington, D.C., wrote in Washingtonian magazine that her son was spending every class period watching TV shows and playing games on his school-issued laptop. He often had no idea what topics his classes were covering. When she asked school administrators to restrict her son’s use of the laptop, they resisted, saying the device was integral to the curriculum.

In a survey of American teenagers by the nonprofit Common Sense Media, one-fourth admitted they had seen pornographic content during the school day. Almost half of that group saw it on a school-issued device. Students watching porn in class doesn’t just affect the students themselves — picture being a teenager in math class trying to concentrate on sine and cosine while sitting behind that display of flesh. It is disturbing on a number of levels.

(Teenagers are spending 80 percent of their in-class time watching porn and then just wasting the rest of the school day?)

Based on looking over the shoulders of our 4th and 6th graders, electronic math homework is the worst idea that I’ve seen. Each problem is multiple choice. The child can click on A. The software says “Wrong”. The child can then click on B. The software says “Wrong”. The child can then select C. The software says “Right” and proceeds to the next problem. Neither teacher nor parent is notified that the homework was apparently completed via guessing. Then the test comes along and the child who got 100% on homework might receive a grade of 25-40% because the test doesn’t allow for correction of wrong guesses.

What if an AI could work like a human math tutor? My dream is a household with cameras everywhere so that an artificial intelligence can tell me where to find scissors, tape, the coffee cup that I set down 15 minutes ago, etc. (see Why doesn’t ChatGPT tell us where to find items in our houses?). Given those already-installed cameras, an AI can watch a young scholar working on pencil and paper and say “That answer isn’t quite right”, then explain where the child went off track.

Optional enhancement: eye-safe laser pointer on a gimbal so that the robot can point to a place on the physical page while talking about what went wrong and what the learner should do.

The closest existing product to the above is Photomath, I think. You can give it a handwritten math problem and it explains how to solve it. I don’t think that is what most learners need, though. They already sat through the teacher telling them how to solve the same kind of problem (maybe while simultaneously streaming porn?). Also, instead of getting kids off the screen it forces kids onto the screen to use Photomath. The above-described system would be 100 percent audio-based from the learner’s point of view.

Should this be called “MathGPT”? Of course that name is already taken. The product seems to be a way to get learners to spend more time on screens:

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ChatGPT prevents users from WrongThink

by philg

I asked ChatGPT “what percentage of Americans receive at least some form of welfare, e.g., public housing, SNAP, or Medicaid?” and it responded only with “Stopped searching”:

Grok is willing to tackle this question, however (see below).

Separately, here’s a study of how LLMs will trade off human lives once AI is in charge and decides, for example, that it needs to kill humans in order to slow down climate change. White people will be killed first:

Native-born Americans will be killed while immigrants are preserved (unless an immigrant chooses to work for ICE, in which case he/she/ze/they will be killed):

(Illustrating the power of language, “undocumented immigrant” and “illegal alien” have completely different values.)

————- Grok’s answer to the forbidden question

Overview of Welfare Participation in the US

The term “welfare” in this context refers to means-tested government assistance programs targeted at low-income individuals and families, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps), Medicaid (health coverage for low-income people), public housing or rental subsidies (e.g., Section 8), and similar benefits like the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). These differ from universal or entitlement programs like Social Security or Medicare, which are based on contributions rather than need.

Estimating the percentage of Americans receiving at least one such benefit is challenging due to overlapping enrollment (e.g., many SNAP recipients also get Medicaid) and varying data sources. Participation is measured either as a point-in-time snapshot (monthly average) or over a year (at some point). The most reliable, recent data comes from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), focusing on major means-tested programs.

Key Findings from Latest Data

  • In 2019 (pre-pandemic baseline): Approximately 17.7% of the U.S. population (about 59 million people) received benefits from at least one major means-tested program, including SNAP, Medicaid, TANF, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and housing assistance. This figure accounts for overlaps and is derived from HHS analysis of Census data.
  • Broader 2019 estimate including more programs: When expanding to 10 key safety net programs (e.g., adding WIC, Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), and Child Care Development Fund), participation rose to 30% (99.1 million people). However, this includes some non-strictly means-tested elements like certain child care subsidies, so the core welfare figure aligns closer to 17-18%.
  • Post-pandemic trends (2022-2024): Participation has declined from pandemic highs but remains elevated compared to 2019. For example:
    • Medicaid: ~18-20% of the population (74-80 million enrollees in 2023, though “unwinding” of emergency expansions reduced this to ~72 million by mid-2024).
    • SNAP: 12.3% (41.7 million in FY 2024).
    • Housing assistance: ~4-5% (4.8 million households in 2023).
    • Accounting for overlaps (e.g., 80% of SNAP recipients also on Medicaid), the combined unique share is estimated at 20-25% based on Census SIPP updates and USAFacts analysis. No official 2024 Census figure is available yet, but trends suggest stabilization around 22%.

Older data (e.g., 21.3% monthly in 2012 or 49% household-based in 2010) overstates due to narrower program definitions or different metrics. Current figures reflect economic recovery but persistent inflation and inequality.

ProgramApproximate % of Population (Latest Data)Monthly Enrollees (Millions)Notes
Medicaid22% (2023)80 (peaked; ~72 in 2024)Largest program; covers low-income families, children, disabled adults. Overlaps heavily with SNAP (80%).
SNAP12.3% (FY 2024)41.7Food assistance; highest in states like New Mexico (21%).
Housing Assistance (e.g., public housing, Section 8)4.5% (2023)~7.5 (individuals)Serves ~4.8 million households; long waitlists common.
Other (TANF, WIC, SSI)2-5% each2-8TANF (cash aid): <1%; WIC (nutrition for pregnant women/children): 6 million.
At Least One (Unique)17.7-25% (2019-2024 est.)60-80Overlaps reduce total; higher for children (39% in 2012, similar today).

Demographics and Trends

  • Who participates? Children (under 18) have the highest rates (~30-40%), followed by working-age adults in poverty (15-20%). About 60% of adult recipients work part- or full-time, often in low-wage sectors like hospitality.
  • By race/ethnicity: Higher among Black (41% in 2012) and Hispanic (25-30%) populations, per Census data, due to socioeconomic factors.
  • State variations: New Mexico (20%+ households on SNAP/TANF) vs. Utah (5%). Overall federal spending on these programs: ~$1.1 trillion in FY 2023 (14% of budget).
  • Caveats: Figures exclude employer-sponsored aid or tax credits like EITC. Post-2020 expansions (e.g., continuous Medicaid enrollment) inflated numbers temporarily; 2024 “unwinding” has disenrolled ~20 million.

For the most up-to-date interactive data, check the Census Bureau’s SIPP tool or HHS reports. If you need breakdowns by state or program, let me know!

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Ample qualifications to run a $100 million AI startup

by philg

At the intersection of the OnlyFans and the AI Bubble, “Eric Schmidt’s ex-mistress, 31, sues former Google CEO, 70, over alleged stalking, abuse and ‘digital surveillance’” (New York Post):

The 31-year-old former mistress of Eric Schmidt has accused the ex-Google CEO of stalking, abuse and “toxic masculinity” — claiming that he subjected her to an “absolute digital surveillance system” as the pair have secretly tussled over cash, a failed AI startup and access to a sprawling Bel Air mansion, The Post has learned.

In early December, Ritter and Schmidt — whose net worth is estimated by Bloomberg at $44.8 billion — struck a “written settlement agreement” that required Schmidt to make “substantial payments” to Ritter but whose details remain under seal, according to a Sept. 8 filing in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

In the since-withdrawn TRO request, Ritter claimed that the tech tycoon days earlier had locked her out of the website of her startup Steel Perlot — an AI-focused venture firm into which Schmidt had plowed $100 million, a source close to the situation told The Post.

The article suggests that “a German Shepherd named Henry” is a disgrace to his breed in terms of providing protection. Despite owning this powerful beast, the plaintiff says that she’s been a victim of sexual assault at the hands of a senior citizen who is 39 years older than herself. Young lithe actresses and directors, such as Gavin Newsom’s current wife, couldn’t escape from elderly obese Harvey Weinstein, but none of them had a German Shepherd to assist them.

Related:

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Will AI make conscientiousness and organization more or less valuable?

by philg

A human’s productivity is typically determined, to a large extent, by intelligence and conscientiousness. These are both heritable traits so there is a limit to how smart and conscientious a person is likely to become if his/her/zir/their biological parents weren’t smart and conscientious.

As we celebrate National Coffee Day today, I’m wondering if the conscientious aspect of productivity will be rendered more or less relevant by artificial intelligence and robotics. Consider a person prone to disorganization and procrastination, both behaviors negatively correlated with conscientiousness. Suppose that each of us is being followed everywhere by a humanoid robot. At any given moment, the robot reminds us what needs to be done. Even the spaciest among us will never space out and miss a videoconference because the robot will log us into it.

The flip side of this argument is that AI is a productivity amplifier and, therefore, the people who are currently unproductive will stay unproductive (100 times 0 is still 0) while the productive will become superheroes of output. Maybe a person with mediocre conscientiousness will be rendered more conscientious by the companion robot, but that person will still be left in the dust by the conscientious who’ve gotten even more of a boost from their companion robots.

Related:

  • “Heritability of the big five personality dimensions and their facets: a twin study” (classic 1996 paper finding 44% heritability for conscientiousness)
  • Wokipedia forced to admit that we’re not all born equal when it comes to IQ (but remember that in the Wokipedia world there is no correlation between race and IQ, only “high heritability of intelligence within races”)
  • average IQ in the US is declining (coinciding with soaring immigration from societies with low average IQ), thus making conscientiousness more important: academic paper (2023) from Intelligence (“A reverse Flynn effect was found for composite ability scores with large US adult sample from 2006 to 2018 and 2011 to 2018. Domain scores of matrix reasoning, letter and number series, verbal reasoning showed evidence of declining scores.”)
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Current stock market valuations explained

by philg

From Pedro Domingos, a CS prof at University of Washington, the best current explanation for stratospheric stock market valuations:

Oracle’s main business these days is promising vast amounts of cloud computing it doesn’t have to AI companies who don’t know how they’ll pay for it.

WSJ, a month ago:

The S&P 500 currently trades at 22.5 times its projected earnings over the next 12 months, compared with the average of 16.8 times since 2000. … The 10 largest companies in the S&P 500 accounted for 39.5% of its total value at the end of July, the most ever…

How badly beaten up did investors who bought into stocks at a high P/E ratio get? I asked Grok “Consider an investor who purchased the S&P 500 in February 2000. What annual return on investment would he or she have received through August 2025 vs. an investor who bought in August 2002 and held through August 2025?” and learned that the “Peak P/E ratio” investor (bought before the dotcom bubble burst) would have earned a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 6.3% vs 8.9% for an investor who bought at a more reasonable P/E ratio in August 2002. This difference is close to the difference between investing from 2002-2025 in wired U.S. (9%) vs. tired Europe (5.7%).

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Robot tugboats to repel Greta Thunberg’s selfie flotilla and similar?

by philg

Climate change no longer being an issue, apparently, Greta Thunberg and friends have spent the past month headed for a visit to the noble Gazans via diesel-powered flotilla (“Global Sumud Flotilla”). It’s a strange situation because the flotilla participants seem to have no respect for Palestinian religious and cultural norms, e.g., they permit females to roam the decks of their yachts without wearing hijab. The photo below could perhaps be a prostitute with two clients by Gazan standards:

Israel has established a blockade against its military enemy in Gaza and, therefore, under international law can repel (or sink, if necessary?) any ship that crosses the dashed red line below.

But Israel gets a lot of bad press when it uses standard military procedures. What about robot tugboats that could intercept the selfie yachts and push them out of blockade area? That would deny Greta Thunberg and other diesel-powered climate activists the photo opportunities that they seek. The flotilla folks claim that to be unarmed so they don’t have any means of destroying robot tugs. Robot tugs could be built in different sizes to match up to the different size yachts in the flotilla. They’re intercepting uncooperative vessels so should have a higher top speed than conventional tugboats. The Israelis could start with simple skiffs equipped with modern outboard engines. Since the skiff doesn’t have to hold any cargo or humans it could hold a tremendous amount of fuel for endurance. Surround the skiff with used car tires so as to get some extra points for recycling.

For maximum reliability with minimum fuel consumption and pollution, the Israelis could use Honda’s only V8 engine (350 hp; Mercury makes one with 600 hp if necessary):

Loosely related, Israel has invited the hostile vessels “to dock at the Ashkelon Marina and unload the aid there”, which would certainly be anticlimactic compared to a climate activists-v-robot interaction!

As of September 24, 2025, the yachts had survived 14 attacks by warships and warplanes, without sustaining any damage, and were using their inoperative radios to report a “communications jam” that has rendered their radios inoperative:

See also “Posing with Hamas chief, activist who’s joined Greta on Gaza ‘freedom flotilla'” (Daily Mail):

Grinning as he gives a Churchillian ‘victory’ sign, the spokesman for Greta Thunberg’s Gaza ‘freedom flotilla’ poses with a Hamas chief weeks before setting sail.

Wael Nawar was draped in a scarf emblazoned with the terror group’s emblem as he stood with other pro-Palestinian activists beside Youssef Hamdan, who runs Hamas’s North African operation, during a meeting at its Algerian headquarters in June.

Mr Nawar is listed alongside Swedish campaigner Ms Thunberg as part of the 13-strong ‘steering committee’ orchestrating the Global Sumud Flotilla, which left Spain last week to deliver food and medical aid to Gaza.

Another committee member, political activist Marouan Ben Guettaia, was also a guest of Hamdan a few days after and later posted a picture of the pair sitting in front of a Hamas flag.

A third committee member, Brazilian Thiago Avila, attended Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s funeral in Beirut in February and praised him as an ‘inspiration’.

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