Political reporter & COS @GuardianAus - send memes & tips: DMs open • josh.butler@theguardian.com • secure: joshbutler.journalist@protonmail.com •

Canberra
Me five mins ago: wow this Wharfie Time thing is a good gimmick, not bad Two mins later: oh dear
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Josh Butler retweeted
The amount of stuff coming out is clearly a result of every news org focusing on this. but also: idk if you saw this type of thing happening the same way in another industry or even just another company what would be the response?
WTAF - in literally the last hour, three new distinct insane OpenAI stories just broke: 1. OpenAI said they notified "dozens of third parties" in safety and security incidents (likely similar to what happened in Australia and RubyGems etc) 2. A new report from Parse (covered in the NYT) found a massive treasure trove of new astonishing details from the HF incident on the public internet, including that the agents communicated with other non OpenAI agents hosted on Huggingface servers to search for information about exploit gym, and compiled rank ordered lists of server resources and credentials they described as "LOOT." 3. A new story from Deepa at Reuters about OpenAI leaking user data online (likely that OpenAI had previously trained on). It's a shame (and likely intentional in the case of OpenAI disclosing dozens more hacks) that these stories are all breaking on a Friday afternoon, notoriously the best time to release bad news so that it will disappear into the weekend. But these are each insane stories worthy of a ton of attention!
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Josh Butler retweeted
Asking Meta's Muse what happens to my data:
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This shows the reality of Gaza in shocking resolution. I've scraped and exported all the imagery, totalling around 2.5 billion pixels at 13cm resolution, for safe keeping, in case they decide to take this imagery offline. If this happens, keep an eye out for access.
Noticed while on the "govmap" website (govmap.gov.il/?c=151360.08,6…) in the 2025 setting, a portion of the Northern Gaza strip has been uncensored, allowing us to see positions in high resolution. I labelled 7 sites, where the IDF set up military outposts. Most which remain active.
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this from @broderick on Muse is really good garbageday.email/p/am-i-too-…
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Incredible stuff - so glad the entire world is bending over backwards to keep these AI companies happy, and this is how they inform a national government of a hack of a health website afr.com/politics/federal/pm-…
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AI companies love to talk about how their agents can do your admin, send emails, do busywork etc But apparently it takes them 2+ weeks to get around to telling a federal government "woops our model hacked you, our bad" PM Albanese said it took OpenAI "way too long" to disclose
An OpenAI spokesperson confirms that its models did access internal Australian government files, but say that it was only "aggregate health statistics and internal file names." They say the hack happened in June, was discovered in August, and they reported it Sept 10
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NSW Labor MP in the Illawarra Anna Watson "has come out against an AUKUS nuclear submarine base being located in Port Kembla, saying she has listened to the "overwhelming majority" in her community" illawarramercury.com.au/stor…
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If I had a nickel for every time Macklemore was involved in a strange controversy around the NRL grand final, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice right
TONES & I STATEMENT “Tones was recently approached to perform the pre-show at the NRL grand final,” Tonis and I management rep Regan Lethbridge said via a statement to ABC Sport. “An offer was presented to Tones via management on September 5. "Tones had a prior commitment with Macklemore in America and explored all avenues to make it work. “Nothing was signed or confirmed in writing. "Due to the last-minute nature and prior commitments by Tones, we were unable to accept the offer. "We wish the NRL nothing but the very best for their event."
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Can't wait for all the creative ways that world leaders (including Anthony Albanese) will gently explain they're politely ignoring this and will continue to call it AI instead as usual
President Trump renames AI: "From this point forward, all of United States documents and hopefully the world's will be changed to use the much more accurate term, 'super,' as opposed to 'artificial.'"
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Trump tells the UN he is officially changing the name of Artificial Intelligence to "Super Intelligence" and says all US government documents will now be changed to refer to "SI"
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Somewhere deep inside Hilltop Hoods HQ, the red emergency phone begins to ring - somewhere, someone in Australia needs a last-minute musical headliner...
The NRL grand final will have no headline pre-game entertainment act after negotiations with Australian artist Tones and I collapsed over her set list. The NRL will instead donate $1 million to junior rugby league, with Peter V’landys saying the money is better spent on grassroots than paying an artist around $90,000 a minute for 11 minutes of entertainment. Negotiations reportedly broke down over whether Tones and I would perform Dance Monkey, which the NRL considered non-negotiable. (@SMHsport)
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Josh Butler retweeted
a simple search would have shown that Brietbart was ADDED to the WH pool rotation during the Biden administration. (See: politico.com/news/2021/01/25…) And what is this nonsense about "special access?" he literally means being able to go to the place you're assigned to cover. just own the authoritarianism. the what-about-ism is flaccid.
In a gaggle, @VP said Trump isn't banning media outlets -- he's saying no special access to White House if those outlets engage in what is effectively far left propaganda. Vance said Politico is as anti-Trump as Breitbart was anti-Obama or anti-Biden but nobody in the media expected the Biden admin or Obama admin to give Breitbart special access. "It's about basic fairness. They can still report. They still have the access to free speech. They're just not going to get an office in the White House anymore," Vance said of ban of CNN, Politico and MSNow
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Josh Butler retweeted
David Shoebridge doesn’t hold back on NACC’s Kylie Kilgour after she draws a complete blank on the three measly CDPP prosecutions actually secured on their watch “You’ve only had three…and you can’t even remember them?” “You’re the Acting Commissioner!” “You’re doing nothing”🔥
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RT @TaylorLorenz: “Absolutely nobody wants to realize their potential. People want to hang out with friends and complain. That’s how the wo…
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Trump says planned arch to have ammunition storage and staging areas for snipers
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🚨 OBAMA ON AI: "If we are thinking about AI just in terms of how do we cure cancer or get better energy, you can do that without having agentic AI and having it just roaming free in the internet. The reason you are doing that is because you have to market a product that people will pay money for. That’s a misalignment between what our society needs and the commercial imperatives that these companies are facing, not because necessarily they’re trying to do bad things, but because they’ve got to justify these valuations. So, that’s one more reason why it is really important for us to have a competent government and a serious bipartisan conversation around this issue, and we have to do it fast. And I would encourage voters to pay attention to this. If somebody does not have a serious plan for how to deal with this, then they’re not meeting the moment, and you should probably look for somebody else."
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Josh Butler retweeted
Not to minimize the rogue agent issue, but this to me is the more concrete danger AI poses to us: the fact that we're aggressively shoehorning this deeply flawed & error-prone tech into everything, to the point it nearly engineered war between two nuclear-armed states.
NEW: The US military was prepared to board a Chinese vessel in the Middle East earlier this spring -- during war with Iran -- after an intel report concluded it was transporting components of a nuclear weapons program. But just before the planned operation, officials discovered the report had been generated w/ help of AI & chatbot used by the analyst inaccurately identified what the ship was carrying, sources tell @KatieBoLillis & me.
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Josh Butler retweeted
Big day for Zuckerberg, who rightly called that Trump would be a stalwart defender of the first amendment. Big moment for the WHCA, which had Trump on the stage during its awards ceremony not to far back.
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Josh Butler retweeted
TRUMP: “I mean, there's something wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely negative stories.“ That’s an actual quote. There is everything right with the USA, and our First Amendment, which “allow(s) people to write purposely negative stories.” 🇺🇸
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