Really a story about how, if you ignore all laws and regulations, you too can build a billion dollar revenue scam company at the expense of others easier than ever before.
Hey Gary, thanks for putting that together. Fabulous review of the situation! When I saw that article come across my email feed there was part of me that was inspired. But by the time I got to the end of the article, it felt like something wasn't passing the smell test. I set the article down. Haven't looked back since then but it was fresh in my mind. I'm glad you did the deep dive. As for the New York times, oh my word 🙃 Love to hear who their three sources were for the basis of the article.
I am concerned about the NYTimes--my hope is that it was a one-off situation that will be rectified and where it makes everyone involved better at what they at least intend to do--excellent journalism. We cannot verify everything for ourselves, the world is big, and so we all need to be able to trust someone and even some institution, even though mistakes will be made from time to time--publicly corrected hopefully. Without that, all that is rightly named progress is lost and the corrupters will corrupt everyone to death, including themselves.
For instance, tell me how the oil, gas, and polluters and 'takers' of this world are going to avoid other takers and their own and their families' pollution?
Larry Jewett: Yes, I was going to check the "like" heart, but then I remembered that I also know that we cannot know, as in personally verify, everything we need to know. Trust, then, becomes the interim and necessary (in my view) state that exists between my own verifications and those of intelligent and reasonable people I have found, in my experience, whom I can trust--again in the interim. Otherwise, pure pessimism and skepticism, even nihilism and solipsism are not good resting places either.
No telling what's going to transpire when "healthcare" functions as a for-profit entity. AI or no AI, someone will rip off consumers and probably end up killing a naive desperate "patient".
Vin LoPresti: . . . and THAT'S the fundamental problem with privatization and the killing of everything PUBLIC, as is going on in every institution mainly via the GOP and Heritage Foundation--including education for several decades now. (See the Diane Ravitch blog and her writings on this extremely important issue of the privatization of education)--you might as well go ahead and call it, in Orwellian doublespeak: education as ideological propaganda.
I see no evidence that it's limited to the organizations you name. I see no push back from the Dems, for example. I was an educator, at a private institution of higher ed, but I had enough interaction with public secondary teachers to get a first-hand feel for what a morass that was/is/can be. May as well put handcuffs on those folks. Science curricula are nothing if not constrained, i.e., protected from creativity that might improve them. All one need do is enumerate the scientific misconceptions that college freshmen carry into their introductory courses: a revelation about the moribund public ed. to which you allude.
Vin LoPresti: That someone "sees no evidence" in this case only means to me that a person is not looking for it or is already averse to understanding it. If you don't know anything but a few instances about it, don't bash it.
Also, evidence abounds for decades of the forces for self-interested and anti-democratic privatization, and particularly against public education--including the draining of funding for public education, and giving it to private entities who grab the money and run (often closing in mid-term), and with no public oversight for private schools that rightly comes down hard on public institutions (especially K-12) so that situations occur as what you refer to in your note. The hidden mantra is: "Badmouth the enemy and you are partway there."
Teacher-bashing, union bashing, secular-anything-bashing, as if "secular" means "anti-my religion;" picking out the worst situations in any, like focusing on a single school in a crime-infested neighborhood, as if there were no connection between the broader social situation and public institutions; or like taking a welfare mom as example, then painting the entire picture of welfare with that boogieman paintbrush.
The documentation is overwhelming but still gets missed by those who just don't want to hear it, especially lobbyist-corrupted politicians (some, not all).
It's a firestorm of bad logic, however, not to mention having its roots in racism and various forms of the elitist opposition (don't educate "those black people," or women, or now its immigrants, whatever. If you're white, you're in, unless you disagree with xxx or you live in a 'blue' state. Besides Ravitch's work, if you want documentary references, I'll be glad to provide them for you.
But giving an isolated version of a badly run public school doesn't cut it for judging all, nor for covertly or openly slamming the very IDEA of PUBLIC EDUCATION--because the alternatives for education in a democracy are only workable in similarly isolated situations (many Catholic schools give great private education but also because in addition to opt-in theology, they stick with good curricula that are identical with the educational province of a good secular education.)
Corporations which claim quasi-public identities are at the least suspect for "fox in the chicken house" status. Many see public-anything as undercutting their profit motive (like the U.S. Post Office). What you get for democracy where there is no public education is corporate propaganda and rejection of "those people" from even becoming educated.
Corporations have for decades now put their bells and whistles, lobbyists, direct money handouts, and other nefarious attractions, against public education--for their own range of also nefarious intentions. public is structurally a threat to private. OMG, someone might have to play by the rules and be regulated. (Grab your pearls, please.) I've been watching this movement for years--there is not much left to question about it.
That's quite a jeremiad. However, I have no idea why you feel the idea to lay it on me. I completely agree about the pauperization of public ed., indeed most public institutions by this capitalist, neofeudal dystopia. I just think your original comment focusing on Heritage & GOP was a bit narrow. The political system, in this country knows plenty of conspirators to privatize everything —irrespective of political, philosophical, theological, or other label.
Regulation? A joke, if simply because it's theater. Oh we have regulation; accompanied by regulatory agencies without teeth, able only to assess fines, which of course corporations long ago wrote into their budget lines as part of their cost of doing business.
And Geez, I wasn't bashing anyone I was exemplifying. My experience is extensive in this arena, having not sat on my bloody hands, but rather written and delivered with a colleague NSF-funded integrated physical-biological curricula designed to unearth the misconceptions to which I alluded -- and engage students in thinking-aloud paired problem solving with instructors and grad students listening. So I dug deeply into those trenches. Save your "bashing" critiques for someone else. Thanks.
Garafalo, A.R. and V. LoPresti (1986), “An Integrated College Freshman Natural Science Curriculum,” Journal of Chemical Education, 63(10), 854–857.
Vin . . . I appreciate your reply--and the brevity of my earlier comments was not meant to be exclusive of other same and similar problematics--I've been at it for so long I'm a bit of a long-term reformed smoker about it. I meant not to misconstrue your note or offend.
As an aside, I also taught teachers (mostly K-12, but not only that) for years and actively participated on the National Literacy Association's blog. The "in almost every case" scene was that teachers and administrators project their own good meaning about a democratic/public education of EVERYONE onto EVERYONE, even onto those who qualify for corporate monster-hood by slithering their way into the consciousness of well-meaning but naive educators who tend to think (as any good projector does) that everyone thinks like they do . . mainly that ALL children deserve an education, regardless of pretty-much any X one can bring to it.
To get back to Gary's note, it seems there is probably a lack of intelligent political-ethical education stirring around in some of the AI camps.
Addendum to Vin: My own pushback was/is not against science (nononono) but rather the replacement of even more necessary humanities, arts, social sciences, history, etc., with a "science-only" curriculum: aka STEM badly applied. I think that presently we are suffering the effects of that extreme "either-or" view of things, from all sides.
Another nail in the coffin of OpenAI, Anthropic and their ilk, I sure hope so. They are collateral damage, but boy, do they deserve it! Parading scammers as their poster child, without the slightest background checking. I guess the talented Mr. Altmann found himself quite at home with this Mr. Matthew Gallagher, fraudsters in spirit.
They took a break from sane-washing Trump?
next NYT needs to do a glowing report on the use of AI by tai chi companies
Sorry but no, they're just working extra hard.
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
Really a story about how, if you ignore all laws and regulations, you too can build a billion dollar revenue scam company at the expense of others easier than ever before.
Good job everyone!
Shame on NYT for pumping an AI fraud. Mainstream media seems to be nothing but propaganda these days.
The same week the NYT referred to NATO as the "North American Treaty Organization"
Undoubtedly using a chat bot to write their stories
Hey Gary, thanks for putting that together. Fabulous review of the situation! When I saw that article come across my email feed there was part of me that was inspired. But by the time I got to the end of the article, it felt like something wasn't passing the smell test. I set the article down. Haven't looked back since then but it was fresh in my mind. I'm glad you did the deep dive. As for the New York times, oh my word 🙃 Love to hear who their three sources were for the basis of the article.
other people did most of the work; in this case I was just collating :)
This idea it was 5 years of work compressed into two months is in itself hilarious. People have been executing similar scams in weeks even without AI.
Small point of clarification: that YouTuber is called Coffeezilla. Voidzilla is his secondary channel (both channels are excellent)
Does make you wonder why NYT is pushing this narrative....
T his is not just sloppy reporting
Defending the capitalist scammers, is why. See: https://theplanningmotivedotcom.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/fog-of-economics.pdf
I am concerned about the NYTimes--my hope is that it was a one-off situation that will be rectified and where it makes everyone involved better at what they at least intend to do--excellent journalism. We cannot verify everything for ourselves, the world is big, and so we all need to be able to trust someone and even some institution, even though mistakes will be made from time to time--publicly corrected hopefully. Without that, all that is rightly named progress is lost and the corrupters will corrupt everyone to death, including themselves.
For instance, tell me how the oil, gas, and polluters and 'takers' of this world are going to avoid other takers and their own and their families' pollution?
It has always been the case to some degree, but In the age of AI, one can not trust anything or anyone.
One must verify everything.
And certainly NOT use AI to do the verifying
Larry Jewett: Yes, I was going to check the "like" heart, but then I remembered that I also know that we cannot know, as in personally verify, everything we need to know. Trust, then, becomes the interim and necessary (in my view) state that exists between my own verifications and those of intelligent and reasonable people I have found, in my experience, whom I can trust--again in the interim. Otherwise, pure pessimism and skepticism, even nihilism and solipsism are not good resting places either.
I would call it realism.
Unfortunately, that is the situation we now find ourselves in and we have to deal with it
Great info. But again not surprised even a bit.
Quick, get him on the cover of Forbes before its too late!
Too late for who?
We need the "before" picture so we can put it next to the mugshot "after", otherwise we'll have to use AI to generate a fake cover.
No telling what's going to transpire when "healthcare" functions as a for-profit entity. AI or no AI, someone will rip off consumers and probably end up killing a naive desperate "patient".
Vin LoPresti: . . . and THAT'S the fundamental problem with privatization and the killing of everything PUBLIC, as is going on in every institution mainly via the GOP and Heritage Foundation--including education for several decades now. (See the Diane Ravitch blog and her writings on this extremely important issue of the privatization of education)--you might as well go ahead and call it, in Orwellian doublespeak: education as ideological propaganda.
I see no evidence that it's limited to the organizations you name. I see no push back from the Dems, for example. I was an educator, at a private institution of higher ed, but I had enough interaction with public secondary teachers to get a first-hand feel for what a morass that was/is/can be. May as well put handcuffs on those folks. Science curricula are nothing if not constrained, i.e., protected from creativity that might improve them. All one need do is enumerate the scientific misconceptions that college freshmen carry into their introductory courses: a revelation about the moribund public ed. to which you allude.
Vin LoPresti: That someone "sees no evidence" in this case only means to me that a person is not looking for it or is already averse to understanding it. If you don't know anything but a few instances about it, don't bash it.
Also, evidence abounds for decades of the forces for self-interested and anti-democratic privatization, and particularly against public education--including the draining of funding for public education, and giving it to private entities who grab the money and run (often closing in mid-term), and with no public oversight for private schools that rightly comes down hard on public institutions (especially K-12) so that situations occur as what you refer to in your note. The hidden mantra is: "Badmouth the enemy and you are partway there."
Teacher-bashing, union bashing, secular-anything-bashing, as if "secular" means "anti-my religion;" picking out the worst situations in any, like focusing on a single school in a crime-infested neighborhood, as if there were no connection between the broader social situation and public institutions; or like taking a welfare mom as example, then painting the entire picture of welfare with that boogieman paintbrush.
The documentation is overwhelming but still gets missed by those who just don't want to hear it, especially lobbyist-corrupted politicians (some, not all).
It's a firestorm of bad logic, however, not to mention having its roots in racism and various forms of the elitist opposition (don't educate "those black people," or women, or now its immigrants, whatever. If you're white, you're in, unless you disagree with xxx or you live in a 'blue' state. Besides Ravitch's work, if you want documentary references, I'll be glad to provide them for you.
But giving an isolated version of a badly run public school doesn't cut it for judging all, nor for covertly or openly slamming the very IDEA of PUBLIC EDUCATION--because the alternatives for education in a democracy are only workable in similarly isolated situations (many Catholic schools give great private education but also because in addition to opt-in theology, they stick with good curricula that are identical with the educational province of a good secular education.)
Corporations which claim quasi-public identities are at the least suspect for "fox in the chicken house" status. Many see public-anything as undercutting their profit motive (like the U.S. Post Office). What you get for democracy where there is no public education is corporate propaganda and rejection of "those people" from even becoming educated.
Corporations have for decades now put their bells and whistles, lobbyists, direct money handouts, and other nefarious attractions, against public education--for their own range of also nefarious intentions. public is structurally a threat to private. OMG, someone might have to play by the rules and be regulated. (Grab your pearls, please.) I've been watching this movement for years--there is not much left to question about it.
That's quite a jeremiad. However, I have no idea why you feel the idea to lay it on me. I completely agree about the pauperization of public ed., indeed most public institutions by this capitalist, neofeudal dystopia. I just think your original comment focusing on Heritage & GOP was a bit narrow. The political system, in this country knows plenty of conspirators to privatize everything —irrespective of political, philosophical, theological, or other label.
Regulation? A joke, if simply because it's theater. Oh we have regulation; accompanied by regulatory agencies without teeth, able only to assess fines, which of course corporations long ago wrote into their budget lines as part of their cost of doing business.
And Geez, I wasn't bashing anyone I was exemplifying. My experience is extensive in this arena, having not sat on my bloody hands, but rather written and delivered with a colleague NSF-funded integrated physical-biological curricula designed to unearth the misconceptions to which I alluded -- and engage students in thinking-aloud paired problem solving with instructors and grad students listening. So I dug deeply into those trenches. Save your "bashing" critiques for someone else. Thanks.
Garafalo, A.R. and V. LoPresti (1986), “An Integrated College Freshman Natural Science Curriculum,” Journal of Chemical Education, 63(10), 854–857.
Vin . . . I appreciate your reply--and the brevity of my earlier comments was not meant to be exclusive of other same and similar problematics--I've been at it for so long I'm a bit of a long-term reformed smoker about it. I meant not to misconstrue your note or offend.
As an aside, I also taught teachers (mostly K-12, but not only that) for years and actively participated on the National Literacy Association's blog. The "in almost every case" scene was that teachers and administrators project their own good meaning about a democratic/public education of EVERYONE onto EVERYONE, even onto those who qualify for corporate monster-hood by slithering their way into the consciousness of well-meaning but naive educators who tend to think (as any good projector does) that everyone thinks like they do . . mainly that ALL children deserve an education, regardless of pretty-much any X one can bring to it.
To get back to Gary's note, it seems there is probably a lack of intelligent political-ethical education stirring around in some of the AI camps.
Addendum to Vin: My own pushback was/is not against science (nononono) but rather the replacement of even more necessary humanities, arts, social sciences, history, etc., with a "science-only" curriculum: aka STEM badly applied. I think that presently we are suffering the effects of that extreme "either-or" view of things, from all sides.
If you think students were unprepared for higher ed in the past, just wait for the crowd who have been using AI for the last few years.
They will be lucky if they can spell their name and if they can avoid using the word “like” for every other word (the way Sam Altman does.)
You're correct, I'm sure. Gratefully, I have departed those trenches.
Well done gary. I was skeptical of the piece but the NYT is a trusted brand. Discouraging that. They didn’t at least disclose the legal issues
Just move the money to the crypto world and you have a pop up fraud engine that, upon detection, can fold into the impenetrable ether easily.
In case you needed more reason to suspect the internet...
Great job catching this.
I should know by now not to bother with anything from The New York Times.
Another nail in the coffin of OpenAI, Anthropic and their ilk, I sure hope so. They are collateral damage, but boy, do they deserve it! Parading scammers as their poster child, without the slightest background checking. I guess the talented Mr. Altmann found himself quite at home with this Mr. Matthew Gallagher, fraudsters in spirit.
The chatbots are coming home to roost