Cool update to last week’s story on why language doesn’t equal intelligence: a Michigan judge cited it to justify imposing sanctions over a ChatGPT-assisted filing that mentioned real cases but misstated their facts. Congrats to author Benjamin Riley, and thanks to folks who pointed it out on X and Bluesky!
![LLMs are toolsthat “emulate the communicative function of language, not the separateand distinct cognitive process of thinking and reasoning.” BenjaminRiley, Large language mistake, The Verge https://techyes.pages.dev/aiartificial-intelligence/827820/large-language-models-ai-intelligenceneuroscience-problems [https://perma.cc/7EHD-PLLZ]. When an LLMoverstates a holding of a case, it is not because it made a mistake whenlogically working through how that case might represent a“nonfrivolous argument for extending, modifying, or reversing existinglaw or for establishing new law;” it is just piecing together a plausiblelooking sentence – one whose content may or may not be true](https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/Screenshot-2025-12-04-at-8.35.16%E2%80%AFAM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100)
ProPublica writes that Paul “Nazi Streak” Ingrassia — the White House’s Department of Homeland Security liaison — told customs officials to return devices they’d seized from the influencer and alleged rapist and sex trafficker, possibly hindering an investigation and alarming DHS officials, who described the act as “handing out favors” to Tate.
The former FTC head and antitrust watchdog was named alongside three others as transition co-chair today, following Mamdani’s victory last night. Khan praised Mamdani’s support for small businesses in a September New York Times editorial, describing their struggles in “a marketplace increasingly dominated by corporate giants and gatekeepers that use coercive and abusive tactics to squeeze them out.”
A good piece at The Barbed Wire on Ya’akub Vijandre, one of multiple non-citizen journalists punished by the Trump administration in its war on the press:
It’s becoming clearer to me that the government is attempting to lay a foundation for dissenting political beliefs as grounds for terrorism.
And people like Ya’akub — non-white, non-Christian — have been made its primary examples.
He was credited for being popular on TikTok, but New York’s new mayor spent his time on the city’s streets.
Alongside retweeting a post calling Wisconsin’s voter rolls “crooked,” Musk purports to believe New York’s long-running fusion voting system (which boosts visibility of minor political parties) is a “scam” disfavoring independent candidate Andrew Cuomo. Musk endorsed Cuomo over Democratic frontrunner Zohran Mamdani — whose name Musk also purports not to know.
A few years ago I wrote about a project to revive the early 3D virtual community Cybertown, and yesterday, I got an alert that Cybertown is “back and fully restored” as of this month. There’s a bit more detail on the Facebook page, including info about its mayoral race.
