AI is at your command. Your command is confusing AI. (What if it is more common than this article suggests?)

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2026/05/22/google-search-bar-ai-broken-disregard-ignore-dismiss/90219026007/

Why is everyone Googling 'disregard'? It's breaking Google

On May 22, when users searched a variety of command words, like "disregard," "ignore," "dismiss," "stop" and "start," Google Search, instead of presenting the typical list of blue links, responded like an AI chatbot, ready to begin or end a command from the user.

For example, when users Googled, "disregard," the Google Search AI Overview result is, "Understood. I have disregarded your previous prompt. How can I help you today?" The response was followed by a large blank space before the traditional list of blue links users are familiar with.

Subtle but interesting.

https://thenextweb.com/news/ai-era-consumer-trust-verification-marketing-shift

The Rise of LLMs Is Not an Accident

… I remember the era when a celebrity’s face on a television screen was essentially a guarantee. Brand loyalty tracked closely with fan loyalty. If your brand ambassador had a devoted following, that following would follow them to your product. It was a simple, time-tested formula: attention creates association, association creates purchase. And it worked, consistently, for decades.

When the internet arrived, it digitized that predictability rather than dismantling it. Google and Yahoo turned discovery into a structured, keyword-driven system. Users searched, engines returned ranked results, and businesses that showed up at the top of those results won the customer. For the better part of a decade, through multiple algorithm updates, through the rise of paid search, through the SEO arms race, the core principle held: be visible, and you will be chosen.

Both eras rewarded the same thing: reach. Who could get in front of the most people, most often? That question shaped marketing strategy for nearly thirty years.

What Has Actually Changed

The change I am describing is not about which platform is winning or losing. It runs deeper than that, it is about how people make decisions.

You need to understand the underlying structure…

https://www.bespacific.com/the-hidden-way-dictatorships-are-shaping-what-ai-tells-you/

The hidden way dictatorships are shaping what AI tells you

Vox – no paywall: “….AI models learn by identifying patterns within enormous bodies of text. This widely-understood fact has an underappreciated consequence: LLMs don’t necessarily give the same answers in every language — certain phrases or arguments may appear more regularly in Japanese training data than in the English kind. This is not inherently a problem. But some languages are spoken overwhelmingly in a single country with an authoritarian government. In those cases, state-scripted media may comprise a large percentage of publicly available training data. After all, regime aligned media tends to produce a lot of text. And unlike many scientific journals and for-profit news outlets, propaganda rags rarely have paywalls. Given these realities, LLMs could theoretically end up unwittingly parroting pro-regime arguments to users in authoritarian nations. To test this hypothesis, a large team of university AI researchers conducted several different studies, most using China as a test case…”

A rare sign of rationality?

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/21/trump-ai-order-sacks-00933295

Trump yanked AI order after David Sacks raised industry concerns

Thursday’s abrupt postponement of President Donald Trump’s much-awaited executive order on artificial intelligence came after former AI czar David Sacks voiced industry concerns about the measure to Trump, according to a senior White House official and two people familiar with the matter.

Some actual numbers!

https://www.bespacific.com/these-5-charts-show-how-chatgpt-is-flooding-our-lives/

These 5 charts show how ChatGPT is flooding our lives

Washington Post [no paywall ] – “Self-filed lawsuits. New books. Scientific papers. See the data behind the surge. The impact of ChatGPT on society can be summed up with a single word: more. Since OpenAI’s artificial intelligence tool debuted in late 2022, anyone can rapidly churn out reams of text resembling academic papers, legal documents, poems and computer programs. And people are doing exactly that. A growing body of evidence suggests books, self-filed lawsuits and other kinds of written documents are proliferating at breakneck speed. (The Washington Post has a content partnership with OpenAI.) Our world is built on an assumption that effort signals value — that a book, a lawsuit or a scientific paper carries weight partly because a human labored to create it. AI is eroding that relationship, shifting a new burden onto the people forced to sift through the deluge. Here are five ways ChatGPT has flooded our lives…”

What is persuasive?

https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/is-ai-mastering-the-art-of-persuasion#!

Is AI Mastering the Art of Persuasion?

Kellogg’s Jake Teeny and his colleague developed a framework to help us better understand how generative AI is being used to personalize messages to people’s personalities, preferences, and needs. The framework establishes four categories for research on the topic: the different ways generative AI can be used to gather personal information, the different types of personal information gathered, strategies for personalizing messages based on this information, and the ways these messages are delivered.

The world as it is…

https://thenextweb.com/news/chatbots-midterms-2026-news-accuracy-information-integrity

ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Grok are not ready to brief American voters

A new generation of voters will ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok how to vote, where the polling station is, and who is telling the truth. The published research is consistent: the models cannot reliably answer those questions. The election will arrive anyway.

I missed predicting the block but the lawsuit was inevitable.

https://www.npr.org/2026/05/19/nx-s1-5821265/minnesota-ban-prediction-markets

Minnesota becomes first state to ban prediction markets

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has signed the nation's first law banning prediction market sites from operating in the state, and in response, the Trump administration has sued, teeing up a legal battle over the most far-reaching crackdown on popular services like Kalshi and Polymarket.

It comes as states confront a growing standoff with the Trump administration over how to regulate the industry, which allows people to bet on virtually anything.

The new state law makes it a crime to host or advertise a prediction market, which it defines as a system that lets consumers place a wager on a future outcome, like sports, elections, live entertainment, someone's word choice and world affairs.

Loss of direction or doubt that direction will result in action?

https://www.barrons.com/articles/stock-market-trump-iran-things-to-know-today-c6e3e276

Stock Markets Now Shrug at Trump’s Iran Rhetoric. That’s a Big Worry.

Negotiations and threats, threats and negotiations. Markets are getting tired of the apparent lack of progress around the U.S.-Iran peace talks and that’s creating a risk of an eventual sharp jump in oil prices, which would roil bond and stock markets.

… After a period when oil prices—and therefore other assets—would respond to Trump’s every utterance, now the reaction is largely a shrug. The risks of a complete loss of faith in a peaceful resolution are rising.

(Related)

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/no-deal-no-exit-how-us-iran-standoff-risks-fresh-conflict-2026-05-18/

No deal, no exit: How US-Iran standoff risks fresh conflict

… Calls for a fresh strike are growing louder in the U.S. ‌and Israel, with some officials arguing that increased pressure could weaken Tehran's leverage and force Iran back to the negotiating table.

"There is one major problem with this theory: We have already tested it, repeatedly, and Iran did not capitulate," said Danny Citrinowicz, a senior researcher on Iran at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies and former head of the Iran branch in Israeli Defense Intelligence.

News.

https://fpf.org/blog/colorado-revises-its-ai-act-what-changed-and-why/

Colorado Revises Its AI Act: What Changed and Why

On May 15, Governor Polis signed SB 189, revising the Colorado AI Act (CAIA) after two years of intense negotiations and national debate over the original 2024 law’s approach to AI regulation. The revised law, the Colorado ADM Act (CADMA), reflects a fundamental shift in approach: shifting from an algorithmic discrimination framework to a transparency-focused one, as well as narrowing the scope of covered AI systems, streamlining disclosures and consumer rights, and replacing governance requirements with liability allocation under existing anti-discrimination laws. 

This post examines the key changes between CAIA and CADMA, explores the context that drove these revisions, and analyzes their practical implications. Side-by-side legislative comparison chart below.

Perhaps it’s not the Terminator we should worry about. (“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves”)

https://www.derekthompson.org/p/why-the-whole-world-stopped-having

The Global Fertility Crisis Is Worse Than You Probably Think

Why has the number of births declined everywhere, all at once?

This was the subject of last week’s Plain English episode and a new blockbuster report from the Financial Times’s John Burn-Murdoch. In fact it feels like just about everybody has been taking a crack at this question recently.

Some blame it on technology. One week ago, my feed was flooded with a viral video of Connor Leahy, an AI researcher, speaking about the sterilizing effects of modern technology. Among his friends, “no one’s having kids,” said Leahy, who was 30 at the time. “Do you know how hard you need to abuse a mammal to make them not have children?” If you asked Leahy what the explanation was, “my answer is technology,” he said. “My answer is social media. My answer is AI.”

There is hope… (What if judges banned lawyers for a year if they did the same?)

https://thenextweb.com/news/arxiv-ai-slop-ban-researchers-preprint

ArXiv will ban researchers for a year if they submit papers they did not bother to read

ArXiv will ban researchers for one year if they submit papers with obvious signs of unchecked AI generation, such as hallucinated references or leftover chatbot instructions. The policy, announced by computer science section chair Thomas Dietterich, is the first formal penalty by a major preprint platform for AI-generated slop.

Do tariffs apply?

https://www.ynetnews.com/tech-and-digital/article/by62suvkzg#google_vignette

Trump’s gold-plated T1 smartphone finally ships, and sparks immediate backlash

After nearly a year of delays, silence and revised terms, Trump Mobile has begun shipping its T1 phones, but analysts say the gold-colored device is little more than a cheap Chinese smartphone rebranded for MAGA consumers

Benefit or obligation?

https://www.reuters.com/business/openai-seals-deal-malta-give-all-maltese-access-chatgpt-plus-2026-05-16/

OpenAI seals deal in Malta to give all Maltese access to ChatGPT Plus

U.S. artificial intelligence company OpenAI said on Saturday it had signed a deal ‌with the government of Malta to give all residents access to its ChatGPT Plus service for one year after they follow a course on how to use AI.

• The programme will start in May and is expected to scale up as more Maltese residents complete the course, which will be free.

• It will also be open ‌to Maltese citizens living abroad.

• "We are turning an unfamiliar concept into practical assistance for our families, students, and workers," Maltese Economy Minister Silvio Schembri was quoted as saying in an OpenAI statement.

AI thinks it has all the information it needs.

https://venturebeat.com/technology/the-enterprise-risk-nobody-is-modeling-ai-is-replacing-the-very-experts-it-needs-to-learn-from

The enterprise risk nobody is modeling: AI is replacing the very experts it needs to learn from

For AI systems to keep improving in knowledge work, they need either a reliable mechanism for autonomous self-improvement or human evaluators capable of catching errors and generating high-quality feedback. The industry has invested enormously in the first. It's giving almost no thought to what's happening to the second.

I’d argue that we need to treat the human evaluation problem with just as much rigor and investment as we put into building the model capabilities themselves. New grad hiring at major tech companies has dropped by half since 2019. Document review, first-pass research, data cleaning, code review: Models handle these now. The economists tracking this call it displacement. The companies doing it call it efficiency. Neither are focusing on the future problem.