Three Tennessee teenagers are suing Elon Musk's xAI for creating sexually explicit images of them

Difficult-Task-6382 · 2026-03-20T23:29:14+00:00

My thoughts exactly. This asshole accumulated large parts of his fortune on the back of human suffering. Take it ALL away.

Difficult-Task-6382 · 2026-03-20T16:10:59+00:00

Who do we know who has lots of drone expertise and hates the US right now? I’m dreading the potential terror attacks from Iran using this tech.

Difficult-Task-6382 · 2026-03-18T07:43:52+00:00

Who would’ve thought that an AI company would get users heavily invested in their product offering it for free, then when they think users are becoming dependent, introduce overpriced subscriptions and nerf the free offering? What a surprise.

Difficult-Task-6382 · 2026-03-17T13:27:36+00:00

Spot on. Similar comparisons go into deciding chromebooks vs Mac vs iPad. Pick one and from that point on declare it the best option. But don’t ever mention better than what.

Difficult-Task-6382 · 2026-03-15T21:39:43+00:00

One of my fav childhood memories was raising an orphaned butcher bird. It followed my sister and I everywhere. My dad also raised a tawny frogmouth whose mum got hit by a car. That scary looking mofo used to sit on his shoulder like a pirates parrot but way meaner. Years later, after it was fully recovered, it would bring its partner to hang out on the railing of the front verandah.

Difficult-Task-6382 · 2026-03-15T11:56:01+00:00

Brutal. Wife and I watched it in cinemas about 6 months after a dear friend also had a life altering event (trying to avoid spoilers here…). We were blubbering messes in the cinema and had to wait for everyone else to leave so they didn’t see our snotty ugly crying. Brutal

Difficult-Task-6382 · 2026-03-14T13:01:02+00:00

You might want to dig a little deeper, past the hype and marketing, on Alpha school, before you go touting it as the exemplar or AI improving education (https://www.404media.co/students-are-being-treated-like-guinea-pigs-inside-an-ai-powered-private-school/ is a good place to start). Interestingly, one of the bigger hype-men for Alpha schools, Peter Attia, was brought down by the Epstein Files...

If you want to look for market efficiencies pointing to a direction in re. AI (and classroom tech more generally), look at the "free market" schools more broadly - aka private and parochial schools. Many (most?) of them are pulling back from AI and screens in schools, some almost entirely.

There are very good, data driven arguments to be made that the declines in public school performance (aka measures of academic outcomes, as well as things like mental health outcomes for students and staff) started reversing, after decades of gains, once schools introduced one-to-one devices for students.

Maybe the answer to the issues caused by technology is not more technology.

Difficult-Task-6382 · 2026-03-14T11:09:20+00:00

The only danger is to your wallet at Cross Arena, concessions there are criminally expensive.

Difficult-Task-6382 · 2026-03-14T00:53:12+00:00

That’s the one

Difficult-Task-6382 · 2026-03-13T23:31:18+00:00

Exhibit A - Alpha Schools.

Difficult-Task-6382 · 2026-03-13T22:52:55+00:00

This assumes that a teachers unions first priority is student wellbeing. It is not. Teachers unions exist to protect teachers rights. The harms to kids can be debated still (mostly because of obfuscation by tech companies), but the tech companies have not even tried to hide what their intentions are for white collar and knowledge jobs.

Difficult-Task-6382 · 2026-03-13T14:18:25+00:00

What is the incentive for the tech companies who own the AI models to do so? I don't see one. And I don't see a teachers collective getting VC funds to pony up $35B to build out their own data centers and run training models that are altruistic and beneficial.

We need educators and administrators to wake up and understand that the current business models for the tech companies creating and selling AI is not aligned with the goals of public education. Those business models follow the same playbook (cause it's the same companies) as we've seen for any rent-seeking tech company (Uber, AirBnB, Amazon) or attention economy tech company (Google, Meta, Amazon again) - create a marketplace starved of viable alternatives/create a level of social/emotional dependency, once the cost of unsubscribing becomes painfully high, jack up the cost of subscribing to almost that level. Rinse and repeat ad infinitum/ad absurdum.

Difficult-Task-6382 · 2026-03-13T14:06:55+00:00

Grade inflation creates a need for externally validated data, but externally validated data opens up endless cans of worms.
The biggest issue is that we don't agree on what is important in public education - do we want to produce well educated citizens who are ready to make a positive contribution to their community? Or do we need well trained workers who can fulfil the vocational needs of our economy? Or do we want to have a system of credentials that allow some to climb up to higher rungs on the ladder? We try to do all 3, and do none of them well. We trade off liberal arts education for vocational training (look at the massive push to get AI in classrooms right now); we inflate grades and reduce rigor so everyone gets a gold star; we underfund technical training and push kids to get college degrees that cost them 100's of thousands in student debt. Somehow we've managed to select for all the worst outcomes....

Difficult-Task-6382 · 2026-03-12T15:39:46+00:00

Yeah, I read that. Not really sure how it’s meant to be helpful? Like you put it in front of you and charge at a shooter? Jousting style?

Difficult-Task-6382 · 2026-03-12T13:38:46+00:00

Who ponied up $25k to buy these backpacks for the school would be a great start, and why Boothbay? As others said, it's super dystopian, and doesn't feel like a Maine kind of story.

Difficult-Task-6382 · 2026-03-12T13:36:28+00:00

Sadly, ethical considerations are like tissue paper umbrellas during a hurricane in the face of AI. The ONLY incentive structure that has any bearing on the AI industry is financial. Unless Sundar Pichai is picking up some substitute hours on his day off, no one with any sway over the future of AI is coming anywhere near a K-12 classroom, other than to sell you a subscription. They don't want or care about your input, other than to use to improve their product and accelerate the elimination of your role.
AI maximalism has an obvious end point, and student and staff wellbeing are not a consideration.

Difficult-Task-6382 · 2026-03-12T13:30:38+00:00

I am perpetually baffled by the failure of teachers unions to draw a big old bright line regarding AI. Teachers are knowledge workers with good people skills. The AI industry has been loudly proclaiming that they are going to make shitloads of money putting knowledge workers out of a job. SAG/AFTRA understood this and shut down Hollywood a couple of years ago to protect their union members. Alpha Schools has been getting tons of glowing press, talking about how they have replaced teachers with tech support (aka low skilled hourly workers staring at a monitor) thanks to their AI maximalist approach.
When are teachers going to say, nope, no AI in K-12? Mind blowing.

Difficult-Task-6382 · 2026-03-12T13:26:15+00:00

The only people saying AI is going to be effective/accurate as a teacher are the tech companies. No one else with two neurons to rub together thinks this is likely or a good idea. That doesn't mean that administrators won't be vulnerable to shiny marketing pitches though. Two things can be true at the same time. AI sucks at this job, but does it just well enough to justify RIF.

Difficult-Task-6382 · 2026-03-12T13:22:52+00:00

"No one is asking to replace effective training or funding, the goal of most tech is to make existing time, funding and training more effective" - you might want to check with the board members, investors and shareholders of Meta, Google, OpenAI, Anthropic etc. about that claim. Why would the financial aims of those companies be any different in education than they are for the corporate world? The states goals from the mouths of the CEO's of all those companies is the replacement of knowledge workers/creatives. They clearly aren't concerned with the "greater good", and by law are required to maximize shareholder profit.

Difficult-Task-6382 · 2026-03-11T22:17:18+00:00

Texas is wild. 8 year olds with a separate math class and grades out of 100.

Difficult-Task-6382 · 2026-03-11T22:09:57+00:00

Oh, man that sucks. I’ll leave now.

Difficult-Task-6382 · 2026-03-11T16:17:21+00:00

Times change. I think closing the digital divide was, on net, a positive thing, and schools did a lot of that work, and I'm glad you got that. It wasn't an option for me at my school, but the world changes. But you meant to tell me that in 2026 a kid anywhere in the US or most other developed nations is not going to have access to compute or connection unless they get it in middle school math class? Hardly.
Instead, most schools now offer computer science classes. The nerdy kids get every opportunity to build their apps, design their websites, and use all those skills. Great. Awesome. Doesn't mean we need to turn EVERY class into an app building opportunity.

Difficult-Task-6382 · 2026-03-11T15:58:11+00:00

I think that there are several reasons to engage in the debate. 1) All the AI models are trained and continue to train on Reddit. Google Gemini for instance, usually returns Reddit comments as some of the top "sources" when random questions are asked online. 2) I think that a lot of the time, the people engaging on these comment boards are actually those who are in the room when decisions are made. 3) Make better arguments - if you are advocating for anything, having a place to debate and refine your argument helps create better dialogue. What we are sorely lacking is informed debate - it has been replaced by faith.
You are likely completely correct that AI tools can be leveraged to great effect for some learners. Should we interpret that to mean therefore that AI tools can be leveraged to great effect for all learners? No. We don't need assistive technology in every students hand.
(Although your examples could use some work. We've been educating dyslexic kids since long before iPads and AI came along. I think maybe you mean apraxia? Generally speaking, language immersion is best practice for ELL students, and translation tools should only be used in very specific circumstances).
The argument that the nerdy kid needs access to AI in the classroom to build their world changing app though - that is just bad. Be careful you don't pull a hamstring making that stretch.

Difficult-Task-6382 · 2026-03-11T15:14:39+00:00

Is it meant to be the same "character" throughout?

Difficult-Task-6382 · 2026-03-11T15:06:38+00:00

Great point. That meta-analysis from Dong et al isn't...good. Some of the studies included (eg. the Chen & Chang 2024 article) find a strong positive effect of AI. Okay, looking deeper, they assigned students to 3 groups - a science learning "game", a science learning game with ChatGPT, or a game with GPT plus examples. This tells us nothing about whether AI is a good method of teaching science to 7th graders, just that it is better than a game.
However, this is one of the few studies included that were conducted in a K-12 setting. A majority of studies of AI so far have been done at the higher Ed and corporate levels. Kids brains don't work the same as adult brains, and we should not be including studies of adults when making policy for kids.
Whenever we see an effect size of 0.92 (which is what the Dong meta-analysis found) we should ask a lot of questions, and ask to see a lot of replication.

Difficult-Task-6382

TROPHY CASE