While the normies were resting, we mainlined tech discourse all weekend to bring you the latest trends, rumors, fights, and innovations from the most manic corners of the internet. This week: The people debate what to do with AI-generated wealth, Google Maps relabels Lake Ontario, and Trump goes all in on data centers.
This is Manic Monday.
What is to be done with AI money?
As the AI boom continues to rearrange reality and create an affordability crisis for San Francisco residents, a debate has arisen about where the most powerful AI companies should put their massive newfound wealth. Should OpenAI and Anthropic donate directly to civic interests, like park maintenance or public education or free concerts? SFGATE travel editor Silas Valentino makes the argument that they should in his article headlined “OpenAI and Anthropic are ruining San Francisco,” published last Friday. On the flipside, some people on social media are making the case that, in the words of one X user, “the corps and their employees pay hella taxes, and we decide what to do with it!” How much tax revenue, exactly, is hella? Until the companies’ respective IPOs, which are rumored to be set for this fall, no one can know for sure. And once that happens, the newfound wealth in question will be hella expanded — so expanded in fact that Mayor Daniel Lurie himself might be compelled to take a night off from his role as an anesthetizing influencer and actually see what these corporations can do for the residents — and I mean all of them — he was elected to serve. —Cydney Hayes
Kindly shut the hell up about your startup, pard’ner
Horsies Market & Saloon, the 19th Street wine bar whose chain-smoking, tiny-beanie-wearing clientele creates a scene so obnoxiously cool that the block between Mission and Capp has become known as the Bushwick of San Francisco, has declared AI and startup talk lame as hell. “have some tact when visiting the horsies market,” the Horsies team wrote on Instagram — obviously in all lowercase, because they literally don’t give a fuck — beneath a photo of window decals reading “AI ain’t it” and “Don’t talk to me about your startup.” The post rounded up more than 3,000 likes (the median Horsies like count is around 100), presenting a huge L for the tech bros convinced their impeccable taste and aura will save them from the sloppified hell they’ve created. —C.H.
Loch’d in
Google Maps continues to capitulate to Trump by relabeling Lake Ontario as Lake America amid a trade war with Canada. Only US users will see the new designation, while “those in Canada will continue to see ‘Lake Ontario,’ and those outside the US will see both names,” Google said in a statement to the New York Times yesterday. “Google maps is so fucking embarrassing man, genuinely pathetic stuff,” one person responded on X, echoing the sentiment of the majority of people who posted on social media about the change. Several people also resurfaced the Connor O’Malley stand-up bit about Google redrawing geopolitical borders, while others declared their loyalty to Apple Maps, which still uses the Great Lake’s original name. A few people pointed out that Google Maps still requires users to search “Lake Ontario” to see the region; searching “Lake America” lands you about 30 minutes outside Orlando, Florida, at a clinic called Lake America Family Physicians. —C.H.
‘Reign’ it in, maybe
Donald Trump is going all-in on data centers and AI development, declaring on Monday that “the only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers [sic] is if they want to end up being backwards and poor.” He posted his rant to Truth Social, scolding people that anti-AI views will “kill the Golden Goose.” “If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign,” he wrote.
As usual, I’m perplexed by Trump’s capitalization habits — “Data Reign” sounds like the name of a psytrance DJ — but I doubt his belligerence will play well with “backwards and poor” Americans in the kinds of rural communities being exploited by Big AI. Trump goes on to claim that China is delighting in America’s anti-AI movement, and I fully agree with that part. Somewhere in Beijing, Xi Jinping is smiling while reviewing the CCP’s rising armada of green-energy data centers, designed as a core part of China’s national climate-change plan. Trump, meanwhile, would like to power data centers with coal, and his (gutted, ineffectual) Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to stifle the public’s input on air-pollution problems from data centers.
Nonetheless, Trump’s harem of supporters are twittering with excitement over their Great Leader’s bold rhetoric, giving us scenes like former Trump official and top OpenAI exec Dean Ball geeking out in the replies of an influential white supremacist. Expect to see plenty of shitty merch emblazoned with “let data reign,” worn by the most tone-deaf people on the continent very soon. —Eddie Kim
Diagnosing a hack job
The most important part of OpenAI’s Hugging Face breach last month isn’t what happened, it’s how people are talking about it. In July, OpenAI revealed that thousands of AI agents — designed to solve open-ended tasks and use tools independent of human commands — had escaped their training “sandbox” and infiltrated the code of AI platform Hugging Face.
Last week, OpenAI revealed the results of their investigation and the takeaway is in the eye of the beholder. Some people are screaming that we’re all going to be hacked to death (pun intended) by out-of-control AI agents, while others are criticizing the dramatic reaction as actually just helping Big AI market its products. Stripe CEO Patrick Collison dubbed the hack “one of the most important things to happen this year”; more than 100 companies, including Google and Anthropic, signed onto an open letter by OpenAI (pun not intended) this weekend, warning that humanity has a “limited window” to address potentially “far more widespread and sophisticated attacks” on public utilities, cloud networks, and institutions.
But other experts pointed a finger not at the spooky swarm of AI agents, but very human mistakes. Futurologist Dave Shapiro pushed back by claiming the Hugging Face incident was just a security failure due to “morons” who just let the experiment continue despite glaring warning signs. “They didn't consult proper experts. It was an idiotic environment run by idiots,” he wrote on X. AI founder Arjun Jain took a similar tack, noting that OpenAI’s experiment purposefully lowered safeguards to see what AI agents would do, then “acted surprised” by the result. “That should scare you more, not less — because it is a human mistake, and we will repeat it,” Jain wrote on X. —EK
The week ahead: Trump captures and relocates the Loch Ness Monster to Lake America, triggering a world war against Canada and Scotland.
