Black Mirror was a warmup act

Breaking, worrisome news

A very short story, in three acts

Act I: OpenAI pivots into hardware

Two days ago, Sam Altman bought Jonny Ive’s startup, and the two were so proud of the deal they put out something that looks a wedding announcement.

One key goal is to make an AI-powered gadget called io.

Altman is quite enthusiastic:

The idea, it would seem, is for OpenAI to build a little AI-powered gadget that you wear all the time, maybe like a necklace or pendant.

A camera and microphone. You would be monitored all the time. Everything you say, everything you do, and not just recorded, but analyzed, interpreted and turned into data, which of course OpenAI train their models on. (Didn’t I tell you OpenAI was gonna shift into surveillance?)

Dictators everywhere will love it.

The wedding-style announcement of the two shiny happy technologists reminds me of the happy, waving fireman in Blue Velvet.

Act II: Anthropic’s latest model Claude 4 has some quirks

Blackmail, you say? What does that mean? Here’s an excerpt from Anthropic’s report:

Act III: You connect the dots

This doesn’t seem like this is going to turn out well.

But in case you need a little more to worry about, there’s always this interesting article, which shows how the software that will fuels these new little gadgets can be pretty persuasive. (Presumably the more so, if it knows more about you.)

He who controls the necklace shall rule.

LLMs will know everything you say, and be in perfect position to use that knowledge to talk you into almost anything.

As Mor Naaman’s work shows, most people won’t even know what hit them.

Gary Marcus hates to say Orwell told you so.