766: Skibidi!

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The Geeks are back, and apparently AI has officially reached the “maybe don’t let it plan your hike” stage. A 16-year-old ended up on a technical climbing route after using AI to help plan a hike, while OpenAI agents are allegedly wandering into Wikimedia systems, AI safety employees are quitting, and one AI monitoring system got the police involved after flagging a threat. Naturally, the proposed solution to all this is more AI. Because what could possibly go wrong? Meanwhile, OpenAI is trying to watermark AI-generated text, Google is watermarking AI-generated media, and everyone is pretending we can reliably tell whether a robot wrote something after a quick trip through Grammarly.

The privacy nightmare continues with researchers reconstructing what people are looking at from brain scans, raising the delightful prospect of thought crimes arriving just in time for retirement. Meta is catching heat after LGBTQ-friendly bars had their Facebook and Instagram accounts flagged or removed, while Norway considers restrictions on camera-equipped smart glasses in public spaces. Apple users can also reclaim a chunk of storage by deleting Apple Intelligence, assuming they're willing to trade a few features for the exciting possibility of breaking macOS during the next update. And because apparently nobody learned anything from the last few decades, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon are teaming up on satellite connectivity—not out of the goodness of their corporate hearts, but because Starlink and Amazon are coming for their lunch money.

Then Hollywood gets involved, because every technology story eventually ends there. Paramount and Warner Bros. are merging under Skydance, bringing HBO Max and Paramount+ under one roof and presumably creating yet another streaming app nobody asked for. Stephen Colbert's Lord of the Rings project is reportedly paused, Stephen King's The Institute is returning, a new Talisman novel has arrived, and Food Network is bringing back Harry Potter: Wizards of Baking. Plus, the Geeks discuss their wildly male YouTube audience, speed-reading apps and Guy Fieri's culinary crimes. Technology, entertainment, surveillance, mind reading, and baked goods: another perfectly normal week.

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