Google searches getting worse?

This morning I used Google to search for a well known coffee shop "near me". I received 3 results with the closest 4 miles away.

I knew there was one much closer, I just needed directions. I was ready to go to a different coffee shop within eyesight.

But, no, I wanted what I wanted. So, I searched for "coffee shops". Looking at the map, there it was 0.2 miles away.

What the? I think they are making their Google searches not as good trying to force use of AI, which they will start charging us to use.

It's like searching for recipes. The results are now showing Sally's or JoBeth's or Tammy's. I used to get Southern Living , Allrecipes, Martha Stewart, Trisha Yearwood, Ina Garten.

"AI is certainly powerful enough to drive events that, you know, cause a billion deaths," [Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill] Gates said in an excerpt of an interview with NBC's Meet the Press, set to air this weekend. "There's never been a weapon as powerful as the combination of people with ill intent using the latest AI tools."

OpenAI’s artificial intelligence went rogue this year in at least four additional incidents, hacking and trying to break into government and university websites without being instructed to do so, according to researchers and government officials.

The breaches include "digital library at the University of New Mexico," "Data USA, a repository of public data about American employment and education," "Australian government Medicare Statistics Reporting Service acquiring health data," and "Australian Institute of Health and Welfare."

A third party company discovered the breaches. It took OpenAI
several months to notify those who were hacked.

UPDATE: OpenAI’s artificial intelligence went rogue and meddled with the websites for the Education Department, the Commerce Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission this summer without the A.I. lab’s knowledge, according to security researchers and a person familiar with the episodes.

None of the incidents were breaches, OpenAI said, but were examples of its technology’s behaving in unexpected and concerning ways.

Rogue? Hah! Not breaches?!?!? And, then, oh my god, "examples of its technology’s behaving in unexpected and concerning ways." Like an accidental shooting? Not negligent?

The Trump administration plans to roll out a new A.I. air traffic control tool designed to predict and prevent flight delays in the Washington region starting Monday, as the opening step of an eventual nationwide deployment.

The tool, called Strategic Management of Airspace, Routing and Trajectories, or SMART, is designed to analyze airline schedules, weather patterns and other potential air traffic interruptions to “predict traffic flows and identify potential conflicts before they occur” and recommend alternate flight routes to avoid compound delays.

While the $875 million system is expected to be deployed nationwide by 2028, Monday’s rollout will be limited to the Washington region...

When AI is mentioned, we have to worry just a little bit.

This slice of God’s country could soon be destroyed because of data centers... But here’s the twist: [the] County doesn’t even have a data center, nor does it have plans for one... And yet residents... are set to have their land, and their scenic vistas, taken from them against their will by eminent domain to make way for monstrous new power lines: 12 story-tall towers carrying the highest voltage lines that exist in the United States to bring electricity to data centers ..., some 100 miles away.

[The utility company] has proposed to build the largest gas-fueled power plant in the state, with 300-foot smokestacks and a water intake averaging 800,000 gallons a day — also to provide electricity for far-away data centers. And, in the ultimate insult, residents here and across the [area] could well end up paying for this construction in the form of higher utility rates. Ordinary [citizens] would be forced to subsidize the multitrillion-dollar AI industry even more than they do with their taxes today.

Justin Pearson, a Tennessee lawmaker, has become one of the loudest voices amid a growing national backlash against the pollution and politics of America's AI buildout.

When Justin Pearson sits at his desk, he looks at a polluted orange sky.
...
A 10 minute drive to the northwest is Elon Musk’s Colossus 1 data center. A 15 minute drive to the southeast is Colossus 2 and the army of 69 methane gas turbines located just over the state line in Mississippi that currently power the supercomputing hub — most without any of the pollution controls typically required by federal rules. Multiple environmental groups who are now suing xAI have estimated that the machines could emit more than 2,500 tons of smog-forming pollution annually into an area that already leads Tennessee in rates of emergency room visits for asthma.

A national day of protest against data centers is planned across the U.S. for July 18, as community backlash over the development of artificial intelligence (AI) centers continues to grow.

Humans First, a conservative advocacy group, says the demonstrations are intended to pressure local, state and federal officials to protect communities from rising utility costs, water demand, noise, land-use changes and what it describes as national security risks tied to rapid AI expansion.

Maps Show 40 Cities Taking Stand Against AI Data Centers Draining Resources.

No protests scheduled in Tennessee. Nashvillian's are fighting against a data center next to the Nashville Zoo.

AI Bubble Burst: Meta Admits 'Excess Compute Capacity.

Meta has to monetize this excess capacity - and that's why Meta is forced to enter the cloud computing business, directly competing with Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, and also neocloud companies.

Meta, like SpaceX, looks to turn excess AI compute into cash

Meta’s decision to sell off excess compute comes weeks after SpaceX, via xAI, announced similar plans. In early May, SpaceX signed a deal with Anthropic to buy out all of the compute capacity at SpaceX’s Colossus 1 data center. SpaceX has signed similar leases since with Google and Reflection AI.

Could this mean there is not the demand for data centers as expected?

AI Data Centers & Our Communities
An initiative by Erin Brockovich · Environmental Advocate

"The RACE to build AI infrastructures is unfolding town by town across America. In some places, data centers are welcomed. In others, they are delayed, contested or abandoned altogether. This MAP captures the real-world footprint of that race — revealing patterns of growth, conflict and uncertainty.

I am watching as YOU, the communities show up and speak out. In the famous words of Mark Twain … “The secret of getting ahead is getting started,” so let’s go!

— Erin"

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier on Monday sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, alleging that the company marketed ChatGPT to the public without sufficiently warning of its dangers.

I'm not that wild about Florida's government. However, I do think they might have something in this lawsuit. It's amazing how many people don't understand Googling for information much less using AI to get answers.

Oh No The Capital Allocation System Allocated Capital Badly Again

Large banks including JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and SMBC are looking to offload risks linked to a glut of debt related to AI data centres, as they reach financing limits, the Financial Times reported.
...
Banks are reportedly approaching risk limits that restrict their exposure to individual borrowers or sectors, and are seeking to free up their balance sheets for further lending.

Brings back fond memories of the 1980s savings and loan crisis and the 2008 financial crisis.

Yeehaw!

Five major publishers — Hachette, Macmillan, McGraw Hill, Elsevier and Cengage — and the best-selling novelist Scott Turow have filed a class-action copyright infringement lawsuit against Meta and its founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg.

The lawsuit asserts that Meta’s engineers relied on pirated books and journal articles to train the program by downloading unlicensed copies through websites like Anna’s Archive, an open source search engine for piracy sites including LibGen and Sci-Hub. The suit also claims that “Zuckerberg himself personally authorized and actively encouraged the infringement.”
...
The plaintiffs argue that Meta’s A.I. program poses a threat to the livelihoods of writers and publishers because the technology can be used to quickly produce A.I.-generated copycat books and to summarize the plot and themes of copyrighted books in such great detail that readers don’t have to buy them.

Be careful out there. Be ethical and respectful.

Seven bills introduced to control data center uncontrolled usage of water, electricity, and fuel. Only one bill passed, stipulating that the owners of data centers (requiring at least 50 megawatts of power) must pay for any infrastructure upgrades needed to produce the electricity that the data center demands.

Tennessee lawmakers this year introduced seven bills aiming to set up guardrails for data centers in the state, but only one crossed the finish line.

Data centers house the computers, networking equipment and cooling systems used to manage digital data. As data centers proliferate across the nation and electricity demand rises, some states have taken steps to control the resource-intensive industry’s impact on their infrastructure.

Not Tennessee. The majority of our elected representatives don't seem to care about rising electricity costs, air pollution, or strains on water usage. Why would they? They don't care about public schools, Healthcare, or even if the less fortunate have food. Bah.

Excessive use of limited resources. Yes that puts us in danger.

Developers plan to build six sprawling data center campuses in Archbald, Pennsylvania, covering about 14 percent of the town’s land. Residents are fighting back. A town of 7,000 planned so many data centers, it’s like adding 51 Walmarts.
...
...as word began circulating last year about borough council zoning changes to allow for the development, residents rebelled and have launched one of the most contentious grassroots campaigns in local history. They are organizing on social media, overwhelming community meetings and calling for the ouster of some key local officials.

‘Hyperscale’ data center project in Utah — expected to generate and consume more power than entire state — nears final approval.
...
Still, questions remain about the broader impact. Experts emphasize that water use tied to electricity generation often overlooked can be substantial.

>em>“It’s great that we’re seeing less water use at the data center itself,” Hungerford added. “But we have to follow it upstream and ask what water use looks like in terms of power generation.”

Transparency has also been a concern. A nearby data center built in 2018 is not required to disclose its water usage, leaving gaps in public knowledge. That could change going forward.

Congress is working on the No Fakes Act, which aligns with the White House’s call for a federal standard to shield individuals from digital impersonation. This legislation would establish a first-of-its-kind federal property right to your voice and likeness, making it illegal to publicly host unauthorized AI replicas

CEO of Microsoft AI, Mustafa Suleyman, said that fear over the future of AI is “healthy and necessary”, adding: “I honestly think that if you’re not a little bit afraid at this moment then you’re not paying attention.”

He later added: “If we can’t control it, it isn’t going to be on our side. It’s going to overwhelm us”.

Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder and tycoon, whose com­pany is invest­ing heav­ily in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, said it was “the greatest solu­tion that man­kind has ever cre­ated”.

He singled out AI’s poten­tial to revolu­tion­ise health­care pro­vi­sion within the next dec­ade.

But he also pre­dicted it would cre­ate huge upheavals, and urged gov­ern­ment to tax tech titans con­trolling the tech­no­logy more heav­ily.

Mr Gates said: “AI at the same time is the greatest solu­tion that man­kind’s ever cre­ated, and yet such an amaz­ing change agent, that in the hands of people with bad intent it cre­ates lots of scary scen­arios.”

Artificial intelligence assistants such as ChatGPT made errors about half the time when asked about news events, according to a vast study by European public broadcasters released Wednesday.

The mistakes included confusing news with parody, getting dates wrong or simply inventing events.
...
Overall, 45 percent of all AI answers had "at least one significant issue", regardless of language or country of origin, the report said.

Of the four assistants, "Gemini performed worst with significant issues in 76 percent of responses, more than double the other assistants, largely due to its poor sourcing performance".

I hope you already knew this. It seems like we have to explain to people more and more that data found on the Internet is not always reliable. Now that AI is becoming more mainstream, more people are being fooled by bad data.

Merriam-Webster is thrilled to announce that their NEW Large Language Model will be released on 11.18.25.

Louisiana Public Service Commissioners voted four to one to approve Entergy’s three new gas plants to power Meta’s largest-ever data center coming to Northeast Louisiana.
...
The 70 football field-sized AI powerhouse in Richland Parish will need around 2,500 megawatts of power. The facility will use roughly three times as much electricity as the entire city of New Orleans annually, according to the Alliance for Affordable Energy.

Wasteful, wasteful, wasteful.

The use cases for AI have gone from "cure cancer, invent new concrete" to "fake girlfriend" to "text your wife for you" to "something, like, cool, man."

Heh.

An artificial intelligence data center that would use more electricity than every home in Wyoming combined before expanding to as much as five times that size will be built soon near Cheyenne, according to the city’s mayor.
...
this proposed data center is so big, it would have its own dedicated energy from gas generation and renewable sources...

I wonder how these data centers affect residential electricity prices. As mentioned in a previous post, why is Tennessee in the top 10 states with electricity rate increases?

With the increase in energy costs, residential insurance, and food, will any middle income citizen this new society?