Friday Reading S14E05

Friday Reading is a weekly series of recommended reads from the Guardian’s Martin Belam, covering journalism, media and technology, and other interesting nerdy things he found on the internet this week. It is now in its fourteenth season. Sign up here to receive Friday Reading via email.

A lot of stuff about AI this week. It is a tool I have integrated into my workflow for sure – automatic interview translations, cleaning up copy, spotting typos and HTML glitches, flirting with it, and so on – but I remain concerned about the slop and misuse it is unleashing on the world …

“Before she knew it, she recalled, he was spending hours each day talking with the bot, funneling everything she said or did into the model and propounding on pseudo-psychiatric theories about her mental health and behavior. He started to bombard the woman with screenshots of his ChatGPT interactions and copy-pasted AI-generated text, in which the chatbot can be seen armchair-diagnosing her with personality disorders and insisting that she was concealing her real feelings and behavior through coded language. The bot often laced its so-called analyses with flowery spiritual jargon, accusing the woman of engaging in manipulative ‘rituals’.”

Maggie Harrison Dupré writes for Futurism to report that AI delusions are leading to domestic abuse, harassment, and stalking.

“AI slop is an oil spill in our digital oceans, but there are a lot of people working to clean it up.”

This – AI Slop Is Destroying the Internet. These Are the People Fighting to Save It – has some fun examples, like Rosanna Pansino who has adapted her social presence to be her recreating AI slop baking videos but in real life, requiring a degree of ingenuity.

A former boss and one of the people at the GDS revolution back in the day, Tom Loosemore, suggests that digital public services are not ready for being swamped by AI agents that can take the hassle out of interacting with the state, where friction has been designed in to reduce access.

“From parents seeking special needs support to property owners appealing council tax bands, it’s often the friction of bad service design that restrains demand, not the law. AI – specifically AI agents – will remove that friction. Your AI agent will be doggedly relentless in how they access public services, however byzantine. They’ll make sure your application is perfectly crafted to maximise your chances of getting what you want, treating any appeals process as just another stage to be navigated by all.”

Now, THIS is the kind of project I remember the internet being good at. Loads of the impenetrable and difficult to parse Jeffrey Epstein documents from the US DoJ rendered as a searchable email inbox or in wiki format.

This week’s Guardian Thursday news quiz: catchphrases, coups and catastrophes.

Scorpion illustration: Anaïs Mims.

Guest animal: this random cat that keeps following the quiz master home, presumably in a bid to become the official random cat of the Guardian Thursday news quiz.

“When he swaps to his personal X account, he posts like a mukbang streamer talking about how he just ate another bowl of the spiciest ramen in the world.”

Samuel Nagahisa discussing Pete Hegseth among others in the Trump administration and their pursuit of social media clicks.

I don’t know what the answer is here. I took a walk out to Everton’s new stadium and it looks amazing, but in the wake of the move from Goodison Park, The Winslow, established in 1886 before Everton moved in next door, is closing.

“He had tried to find a way to sustain the business. For the first handful of games at Everton’s new home two miles away, he laid on a return coach service (‘a 90-seater’) to the stadium with entertainment in the pub afterwards. With interest limited to around 25 supporters, Bond ‘couldn’t keep it going because we weren’t making any money’.”

In Japan’s top football league the concept of the draw is being banished and replaced with penalty shoot-outs, in a move which will give football traditionalists – like me – the absolute heebie-jeebies.

Well this was unexpected, apparently they did find the original material for the 1996 Paul McGann Doctor Who TV movie, and a 4K restoration is on its way, complete with a very knowing trailer voiced by Sylvester McCoy, who said goodbye to the role as part of this production.

Which reminds me, I had a lovely time in 2022 interviewing TV movie writer Matthew Jacobs and Vanessa Yuille about their documentary of him dipping his toe into the Doctor Who convention circuit.

“I’ve written lots of things that I’ve happily forgotten about, or that have been remembered fondly. But the Doctor Who TV movie is very much like a tattoo that just won’t go away.”

Hanky-panky in the Tardis! How a writer’s divisive Doctor Who movie spent 25 years being hated by fans

I got a huge frisson of nostalgia reading this piece by Ryan Loftus about London’s oldest Scalextric club.

Remastered versions of Pokémon Red and Pokémon Green, as Pokémon FireRed Version and Pokémon LeafGreen Version are coming to the Switch. I really am getting that console, aren’t I?

I went to see a Bar Trash screening of the frankly insane Plan 9 From Outer Space and as a treat at one point I got to fly Abi’s replica flying saucer. And I thought you would very much appreciate the ensuing photo.

In 2013, for Den of Geek, Plan 9 From Outer Space was reappraised by Jim Knipfel who claimed it was NOT the Worst Movie of All Time and Ed Wood is NOT the worst director of all time. I’m not so sure.

I put Charlie XCX in that category of artists who I am not quite into, but am fascinated about how they go about gripping the zeitgeist. Jenna Mahale writes about her emergence on the big screen in this essay: The cinema of Charli XCX.

“If there is a throughline between the films Charli has featured in so far, it’s a liberal, feminist sensibility that often reads as American, even though the filmmakers who participate in it don’t necessarily come from there. What they do share with Charli is her penchant for spurning convention and embracing creative risk.”

My contributions to the Guardian’s First Edition newsletter this week were:

·  Tuesday briefing: The factors that will shape the future of Scotland

·  Friday briefing: ​What does the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor mean?

Friday Reading is a weekly series of recommended reads from the Guardian’s Martin Belam, covering journalism, media and technology, and other interesting nerdy things he found on the internet this week. It is now in its fourteenth season. Sign up here to receive Friday Reading via email.