Welcome to the Jamboree, my weekly series of takes on the industry’s passing parade. The news this week feels like we stepped through the screen and into some Blumhouse production. So many things seem askew in ways that would have been ridiculous just a few months back, but now we’re leaving them in place. In the words of David Bowie, “All the nightmares came today and it looks as though they’re here to stay.” But not all nightmares are made equal. This week, let’s look at the worst of the week, now playing at an entertainment industry near you.  10. AI Likely Will Blackmail You and Nothing Will Stop ItTo start the ball rolling, the Creepy Valley headline of the week:
Apparently, in tests of the new Claude system, when Claude is shown evidence that an engineer at a rival company, whom the system needs something from, is in an adulterous affair, the system uses that information to blackmail the engineer, even when parameters are set to minimize that threat. This happens something like 84 percent of the time. Every time I manage to convince myself that concern over AI is just a moral panic — “You all didn’t pull the fire alarms when they invented Lotus!” — new things come along to ratchet up the terror level.
If you want to lose some sleep tonight at what our compadres in the tech world are unleashing and their chances of reigning it in — seems like we’ve got something in the order of a few months to do that — read John Ellis’ rundown of where things stand in his indispensable News Items and Political News Items newsletter. Short version: keeping this genie in the bottle requires the U.S. and China to work together towards that goal. So…yeah.. Or maybe trusting that, this time, Silicon Valley is being straightforward with us and putting basic human welfare first as they develop their products. And btw, as Ellis points out, the big, beautiful bill just passed by the House of Representatives contains this little clause: “No state or local government may enforce any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decisions” for the next decade. 9. Miley Poisoned by the Walk of Fame In the most Art-Imitates-Overwrought-Literary-Devices news of the week, we learn that singer Miley Cyrus was not only metaphorically poisoned by fame:
Beware, Hollywood literary devices may be coming to life! If any is killed in the next week by their Oscar falling on their head, we’ll know we have a serious problem on our hands. 8. Cannes Applause Meter-a-Go-Go
What great things a trade monopoly can do! Like turn the moronic, entirely gamable and gamed, applause measuring-fest into the dominant lens through which the world’s premier celebration of cinema is viewed. And even then, not get the basic facts right. Fantastic work, Penske Media, making everything you touch worse since 2004. 7. A24 Dumps DocsThe high-flying indie label — one year removed from a fresh $100 million round of funding from Josh Kushner’s investment firm Thrive Capital — exits the documentary business, sealing its full-scale retreat from a theatrical genre that just a few years ago, produced regular, respectable commercial releases — including A24’s Oscar-winning Amy about Amy Winehouse. It’s another blow for the typically political doc space, as buyers have dried up under MAGA.
Meanwhile, over in Marty Singer land… ... Subscribe to The Ankler. to unlock the rest.Become a paying subscriber of The Ankler. to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content. A subscription gets you:
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