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The Funny Place: 1912

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Atlantic City, New Jersey, circa 1912. "The Boardwalk and Steeplechase Pier." George Tilyou's "amusement pier" lasted the better part of a century, hurricanes and fires notwithstanding. 5x7 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.
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mkalus
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Midtowner Motel: 1964

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July 1, 1964. Here we are at the Midtowner Motel, in a Kodachrome slide donated by a fan of Shorpy. But where is the Midtowner Motel? Let us know in the comments below. View full size.
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The Factories: 1899

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Niagara Falls, New York, circa 1899. "The Factories -- Niagara Gorge. (Roof of first plant by water: Power Station No. 2, Niagara Falls Hydraulic Power & Mfg. Co.; second plant: Cliff Paper Co.)" 8x10 inch glass transparency, Detroit Photographic Company. View full size.
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Meta’s director of AI alignment falls for OpenClaw

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Summer Yue is the Director of AI Alignment at Meta. She came over when Meta bought 49% of Scale AI and brought over anyone at Scale worth hiring.

“AI alignment” is a great term to put in a title. It was invented by Eliezer Yudkowsky’s AI doomsday cranks. It means an actually-intelligent robot that’s sufficiently controlled that we can use it as our slave.

The term has been softened a bit to mean “AI that doesn’t screw up totally,” but the appeal of robot slaves is what “aligned AI” really means. We don’t have intelligent AI, but this is apparently job number one if we do get it. Anyway, building the robot slave is Yue’s job.

Yue has a years long track record as a machine learning researcher. She knows her stuff — or she should know it. Specifically, she should know enough not to do what she claims she did Sunday night: [Twitter, thread, archive]

Nothing humbles you like telling your OpenClaw “confirm before acting” and watching it speedrun deleting your inbox. I couldn’t stop it from my phone. I had to RUN to my Mac mini like I was defusing a bomb.

Yue posted screenshots too. The bot is deleting all her email before February 15th that isn’t in a “keep” list. She tells it to stop and it keeps going! “STOP, OPENCLAW!” Oh no!

What happened? The bot had an instruction not to do anything unless told to. But the chatbot’s context window got too big, so OpenClaw summarised the context window! And chatbots don’t actually summarise text — they shorten it. So that instruction got … shortened.

What really happened was that someone who is fully equipped to know better was surprised when her AI agent — a class of software that does not work reliably and cannot work reliably — messed up.

To be clear — this is all assuming this story is what it’s presented as. The total substance of this story is six tweets and three screenshots. Neither Yue or Meta have answered any of the many press queries.

The story also matches a common pattern of AI promotion — where AI boosters talk about their bot going Sorcerer’s Apprentice and really screwing something up badly as if that’s an achievement. It’s how they say: my bot is so powerful, that next model bro, it’ll be awesome. This shows how much we need AI alignment!!

Yue doesn’t tweet much. She tweets every two to three months and they’re very corporate sort of tweets. Her last tweet was October. Suddenly there’s six tweets just on this single alleged personal incident.

It’s worth asking if this … happened. Or, if something like it did happen, how involved Meta’s marketing department was in this public tweet and its followups.

This is not a misfortune befalling some random person — this is the director of AI alignment at Meta.

I’m not the only one to wonder about this. PCGamer also suggests: “Of course, there’s always the possibility none of this is real at all.” [PCGamer]

But against that, we have an extensive list of previously smart people who used the chatbot once and it blows their tiny minds, and they start saying it’s good, AI is fine, you can uh run it locally, all you AI haters are purity culture shills for Big Not-Dumbass. Some of them start talking about their coding agent like it’s their girlfriend. Who they completely control.

So it’s not clear that Summer Yue’s inbox was in fact eaten by a vibe-coded pile of trash. But it’s stupid enough to be entirely plausible. Because the chatbot keeps rotting brains, and particularly brains that work in AI.


It’s pledge week at Pivot to AI! If you enjoyed this post, and our other posts, please do put $5 into the Patreon. It helps us keep Pivot coming out daily. Thank you all.

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mkalus
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Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Cow

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Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
This is when she calls the cops.


Today's News:
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Amazon Change Means Wishlists Might Expose Your Address

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Amazon Change Means Wishlists Might Expose Your Address

Amazon is telling people who use its wishlists feature to switch to post office boxes or non-residential delivery addresses if they want to ensure their home addresses remain private, as part of a change in how it processes gifts bought from third-party sellers. The change is especially concerning to many sex workers, influencers and public figures who use Amazon wishlists to receive gifts from fans and clients. 

First spotted by adult content creators raising the alarm on social media, the changes open anyone who uses wishlists publicly to increased privacy risk unless they change how they receive packages.

In an email sent to list holders, Amazon said beginning March 25, it will reveal users’ shipping addresses to third-party sellers. The platform added that gift purchasers might end up seeing your address as part of this process, too. 

Before this change, the only information visible to sellers and gift purchases was the recipients’ city and state.

“We're writing to inform you about an upcoming change to Amazon Lists. Starting March 25, 2026, we will remove the option to restrict purchases from third-party sellers for list items. When this change takes effect, gift purchasers will be able to purchase items sold by third-party sellers from your lists and your delivery address will be shared with the seller for fulfillment. This change will provide gift purchasers with access to a wider selection of items when shopping from your lists,” Amazon said in the email. “Important note: When gifts are purchased from your shared or public lists, Amazon needs to provide your shipping address to sellers and delivery partners to fulfill these orders. During the delivery process, your address may become visible to gift purchasers through delivery updates and tracking information. To help protect your privacy, we recommend using a PO Box or non-residential address for any list you share with public audiences.”

If you have public wishlists, you can manage individual list settings here and select "manage list." From there you can change your list privacy settings to private or shared to limit who has access, or remove your shipping address entirely by selecting "none" from the dropdown menu.

Most of the popular shipping methods in the US, including UPS, Fedex, and the USPS, don’t show full addresses as part of package tracking. But if a third-party seller shares a gift recipient’s home address with a buyer as part of the tracking process, Amazon is saying that’s out of the platform’s control. And some of those delivery services send photos as part of the tracking process for proof of delivery, which could include more information about one’s home or location than they would want a gift sender to see. 

“Those who do a range of work where privacy concerns are top of mind would be left to wonder what problem Amazon is solving with this change,” Krystal Davis, an adult content creator who posted about receiving the email from Amazon, told 404 Media. “Those who use these lists as an opportunity to allow fans to show support and offset expenses will lose that option. The alternatives to Amazon wishlist are significantly lacking.”

Many online sex workers use Amazon wishlists to receive gifts from subscribers and fans. It’s a practice that’s gone on for years. Revealing one’s full address to buyers — especially if they don’t realize this change has gone into effect, or missed the email sent by Amazon with the warning to switch to a P.O. box — puts their safety at serious risk. And like so many privacy and security issues that affect sex workers first, anyone could potentially be affected; lots of people use public wishlists who might want to keep their location private, and should consider checking their settings or switching to a non-residential address if they want to maintain that privacy.

Amazon Change Means Wishlists Might Expose Your Address
Screenshot via Amazon showing the "Manage List" page, with the option to share shipping address with sellers grayed out and a notice: "This setting will no longer be supported starting February 25, 2026. After this date, third-party sellers will receive your shipping address to fulfill orders. You can review of update your lists' shipping address on this page."

Amazon provides conflicting information on when and how this change will go into effect. The email sent to wishlist holders says it will start on March 25, 2026, but as of writing, a notice on the “Manage List” settings page said starting February 25, third party sellers will see users’ shipping addresses. Amazon confirmed to 404 Media that the option to restrict purchases from third-party sellers for list items is being removed on March 25, one month from today.

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