AI comes riding to the rescue
Don’t know if anyone is tracking the growing number of articles on how people are using AI. Some are pretty clever application, and barring Skynet belatedly becoming aware (the original movie self-awareness date was August 29, 1997) the potential is there. But there are still humans feeding info into the learning, and what they are feeding in is – well, less than omniscient.
Do a search for “medical advice from AI dangerous” and try reading a few articles.
A stunning medical case report published last month revealed that a 60-year-old man with no history of psychiatric or health conditions was hospitalized with paranoid psychosis and bromide poisoning after following ChatGPT’s advice. NY Post
I kinda liked this one:
Even OpenAI’s latest AI model is still capable of making idiotic mistakes: after billions of dollars, the model still can’t reliably tell how many times the letter “r” appears in the word “strawberry.”
Worse yet, the new MyChart tool isn’t required to divulge that a given response was written by an AI. That could make it nearly impossible for patients to realize that they were given medical advice by an algorithm. Futurism
But I gotta say, the one that really got me excited was this one from Maryland. I even considered sending it to Mason for one of his Stupid People of the Week columns – but it ain’t a people.
Armed police handcuffed and searched a student at a high school in Baltimore County, Maryland, this week after an AI-driven security system flagged the teen’s empty bag of chips as a possible firearm.
Baltimore County officials are now calling for a review of how Kenwood High School uses the AI gun detection system and why the teen ended up in handcuffs despite school safety officials quickly determining there was no weapon.
Well, unless you consider a foil Doritos bag as a weapon. No word on which flavor or if they were the dreaded Assault Doritos.
“The first thing I was wondering was, was I about to die? Because they had a gun pointed at me,” Allen told WBAL, saying about “eight cop cars” pulled up to the school.
“I was just holding a Doritos bag — it was two hands and one finger out, and they said it looked like a gun,” Allen told WBAL.
Omnilert, the company that operates the AI gun detection system, expressed regret over the incident and emphasized that its system is designed to identify a possible threat and elevate it to human review.
The AI gun detection system has been used in Baltimore County public schools since 2023, analyzing video from the schools’ existing security cameras, Superintendent Myriam Rogers said during a news conference Wednesday. CNN
I used to say that no artificial intelligence can match natural stupidity. Starting to think the machines’ learning is catching up.
Category: "Teh Stoopid", Science and Technology
“Expressed regret over the incident.”
As I tell someone who’s done something SO stoopid, and they’re attempting to apologize, “sorry don’t feed the bulldog”.
The “human review” failed too… the cops showed the kid a picture of Doritos in his hands and said the computer thought it looked like a gun after they cuffed and searched him.
Yes. The cops did what the computer told them to do despite that it was clearly wrong. No human review. They gave him a picture to justify their lack of judgment when deadly force could’ve been involved.
That’s sad. Local places (usually liberal) often don’t hire people who’re “too smart” to be cops and then demand they enforce the law in a rote manner nowadays. This is what happens.
“Local places (usually liberal) often don’t hire people who’re “too smart” to be cops and then demand they enforce the law in a rote manner nowadays.”
The smart ones know that a career in inner-city law enforcement is a bad bet nowadays.
“A career in inner-city law enforcement is a bad bet nowadays”. It’s always been a bad bet. I worked about 2 years in an inner-city, then got smart and went to the north end of my city. Best thing I did.
I glad the kid wasn’t arrested and his friends had to Chip in bags of doritos chips for his bail….
Sounds like there was more than one dip shit involved..
Sorry Beans but I can’t come across any 1950’s street corner vocal group harmony song with dip shit in it….
I heard that Amazon is laying off a few thousand corperate employees due to AI taking over their jobs
We do not need to push for artificial intelligence, we need to cure natural stupidity first. That is the main epidemic at this time.
I had a stripper tell me once, after she was arrested for trafficking drugs, that she had checked Facebook and it had told her that it was legal to carry up to two pounds of Marijuana in your car. Marijuana was indeed illegal in the state she was arrested in.
The fact that AI gives even worse advice than random people on Facebook is noteworthy.
“system is designed to identify a possible threat and elevate it to human review.”
Here’s the human factors problem. People are naturally lazy. By that I don’t mean worthless (though there is debate)…but, if there’s a task, and there’s a way to make the task easier, we humans naturally default to it.
I would argue that this is why any human-AI melded interfaces need hard stops against independent AI action. Not because the AI may be wrong (though we know it can be), but because the humans will naturally allow the AI to take over more and more decision making.
AI may need a dead man’s switch and one incapable of being fooled with a heavy object put on it.
The first rule of “AI Killswitch” is never talk about AI Killswitch.
Tangentially relevant:
https://www.stripes.com/branches/air_force/2025-10-24/air-force-bases-private-ai-centers-19532137.html
According to a shipmate’s chatGPT, Abraham Lincoln was the first US President to be paid electronically via direct deposit.
The number of F term papers from dumbass kids it’s gonna skyrocket… though, the way schools are now, they may even be teaching them this shit.
Agreed. Include AI in this:
Lincoln was visiting Manhattan New Yor City back in the day and was in a horse drawn cab going to meet the mayor in Little Italy for dinner so after an hour going in circles, the driver yells down to Lincoln, I’m sorry Mr. President but I lost the way to the spaghettisburg address….
And I’ve had this in my folder and used it for many many many years
You’re putting a lot of stock in liberal/progressive/union teachers. I don’t think they’ll catch the AI fuckups, they’ll give Junior an A for his excellent research skills.
Here’s the only cool thing I did with AI. “AI, draw me a caricature of this picture.” (Picture taken on my last day in command when I boldly took my POV into the motor pool to pose my car with my other ride.)
I asked AI to draw me a 1955 CJ-3B. I don’t know if it scanned my photo library, but damned if it didn’t draw a dead ringer for my Jeep. Except my wheels are black.
Cool.
It’s just a matter of time before some politician or bureaucrat suggests enhancing the TSA with AI.
The TSA is already bad enough. Factor IA in and things would unravel pretty quickly.
The villain of this event was heard to quip
Foiled Again!
Yeah, I’m pretty dug in against any use of AI for anything of importance. The tech isn’t ready.
As Director of Media Relations for the proud but humble woman owned business that provided the software in the Baltimore High School incident, let Hack be perfectly clear. Yes, there were some “design flaws” in the development of the software, but in our defense, the Baltimore Public Schools System declined the upgraded version that included Y3K protection. Although we will not be offering a refund of the purchase price, we will provide the student involved a complementary red hat as a gesture of good will.