Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
This week, both our winners on the insightful side come in response to the German court ruling that Google is liable for false claims in its AI overviews. In first place, it's an anonymous comment about Bruce Schneier's reaction to the ruling:
There's nothing in the law that requires us to accommodate AI systems if they are fundamentally untrustworthy, just as we don't need to accommodate untrustworthy human systems."
Schneier's spot-on here. The greedy-but-lazy thugs at the AI/LLM companies want it both ways: they don't want to invest the time, effort, and clue required to build reliable systems, but they don't want to be held accountable for the massively unreliable systems they've already built.
By the way: the opinion itself is extremely well-written. The court did its homework. Full marks.
In second place, it's A Guy with the first comment on the post:
Seems like common sense. AIs that constantly lie and AI agents that break things are defective products.
For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment from Arianity about NCOSE lawyers repeatedly citing fake cases:
When this first started happening publicly ~2 years ago, I shook my head. Whatever, it's embarrassing, but new technology takes time, most lawyers are old and not particularly tech savvy.
How the fuck are we still doing this (on seemingly like a weekly basis) 2 years later??
Next, it's n00bdragon with a comment about JD Vance bragging about being able to do lots of Watergates:
He's right in another sense as well. Watergate wouldn't even last 12 hours today because the Trump administration does that every day before breakfast. Say what you want about Nixon, at least he still had the vestigial thread of shame to resign. He didn't try to pull a coup or have his own vice president murdered.
I think Vance knows Trump would (quite literally) stab him in the back if it came down to it, but is making a calculated gamble that someone will succeed in taking down Tangerine Jesus and leave him with the presidency if only he can belch forth the required amount of nonsense until that day. I think he's an idiot who does a disservice to his country and the human race in general with that idea but there it is.
Over on the funny side, our first place winner is Doug with a comment on our post about CBS ratings continuing to nosedive:
The Lawnmower
Don't make the mistake of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison.
In second place, it's glenn with another comment about the NCOSE lawyers:
You say legal briefs." I say fan fiction."
For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with a comment from Rocky about the settlement for the man who was arrested for playing Star Wars music at National Guard troops:
After this win, O'Hara can follow them around again playing the Imperial March on a very tiny violin.
Finally, it's Pixelation with a quick reaction to the title of the latest episode of Ctrl-Alt-Speech:
Bad that pun. It's ban.
That's all for this week, folks!