Weekly Review 29 May 2026

Some interesting links that I Tweeted about in the last week (I also post these on Mastodon, Threads, Newsmast, and Bluesky):

1. AI generated legal filings threaten to overwhelm courts and cause legal costs to explode: https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/mit-expert-ai-generated-lawsuits-spike
2. The data centres used by AI are increasingly unpopular with the people living in the areas they are built: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/the-ai-industry-is-failing-to-make-its-case-to-the-neighborhoods-its-trying
3. Replacing public servants with AI is going to cost New Zealand a lot of money, maybe more than cutting jobs will save: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/595847/replacing-public-servants-with-ai-could-come-with-hidden-costs-critics-warn
4. Speech and language processing with AI is going to make shared offices even more unbearable: https://www.computerworld.com/article/4175881/ai-will-kill-the-skill-of-typing.html
5. Network upgrades are an important part of an organisation preparing for AI: https://www.informationweek.com/it-infrastructure/is-your-network-infrastructure-ready-for-ai-workloads-
6. AI washing of products and services continues: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/may/24/ai-washing-pr-firms-scrambling-rebrand
7. AI generated code is causing more failures and rising costs for customers: https://www.theregister.com/ai-ml/2026/05/20/ai-code-boom-drives-production-failures-higher-spending/5243787
8. The first AI Maori speech model was developed by the late Mark Laws in the late 90s. Almost 30 years later, they are still being improved: https://spectrum.ieee.org/indigenous-ai-voice-models-maori
9. Don't use AI to create your legal submissions. It won't end well: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/legal-fail-dont-use-ai-to-sue-facebook-users-for-calling-you-a-bad-date/
10. Use AI to create jobs and assist your workers, not replace them: https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360982091/open-letter-nicola-willis-ai-should-create-jobs-not-cut-them
11. Watermarking technologies for AI generated media are gaining traction: https://arstechnica.com/google/2026/05/googles-synthid-ai-watermarking-tech-is-being-adopted-by-openai-nvidia-and-more/
12. If the New Zealand government wants to start replacing public servants with AI, they should really have a good idea of what AI can do: https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360981025/government-wants-replace-8700-public-servants-ai-heres-what-ministers-think-robots-do
13. Slow down, you don't need to rush to bring AI into your organisation: https://www.theregister.com/ai-ml/2026/05/17/enough-with-the-ai-fomo-go-slow-mo-says-domo-cdo/5240840
14. AI coding agents are going to devastate the web dev industry: https://www.devclass.com/devops/2026/05/22/web-devs-sleeping-with-the-enemy-ai-is-doing-their-job-and-they-worry-its-after-their-desk-too/5244552
15. A significant portion of Britain's population think AI, especially AI-caused lob losses, will lead to civil unrest: https://www.theregister.com/ai-ml/2026/05/19/1-in-5-brits-think-ai-layoffs-could-trigger-civil-unrest/5242444
16. University students are using AI more, employers want graduates with AI skills, and students are anxious about the effect AI is having on the job market: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/student-success/life-after-college/2026/05/22/3-takeaways-ai-and-entry-level-jobs
17. The move towards open source AI for robots: https://spectrum.ieee.org/open-source-robot-ai-platforms
18. An overview of what AI tokens are: https://www.computerworld.com/article/4175277/the-world-of-ai-tokens-and-why-they-matter.html
19. Five things you can do with a local LLM AI: https://www.kdnuggets.com/5-cool-things-i-did-with-local-language-models
20. Academics shouldn't be using AI to do any part of their papers, let alone complain that they now have to check what it generates: https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/academics-meltdown-ai-hallucinations-research
21. Developments in using AI for drug development: https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/05/two-ai-based-science-assistants-succeed-with-drug-retargeting-tasks/
22. Open AI models are becoming more important: https://www.computerworld.com/article/4172545/why-open-ai-models-are-gaining-ground-on-llms.html
23. Gen Z is skeptical of AI, and this is a problem for recruitment: https://www.informationweek.com/machine-learning-ai/gen-z-is-booing-ai-why-it-s-a-workforce-problem-for-cios
24. AI is producing unrealistic expectations around cosmetic surgery: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/may/23/rise-in-plastic-surgeons-asked-to-create-ai-face-cosmetic-surgery
25. AI companies are following the example of tobacco and oil companies, and attempting to control the regulatory process: https://www.theregister.com/ai-ml/2026/05/18/big-ai-is-subverting-regulations-just-like-tobacco-and-oil-firms/5241910
26. Starbucks is scrapping its AI inventory tool after serious failures: https://dataconomy.com/2026/05/22/starbucks-ai-inventory-tool-scrapped/
27. The tech debt of AI generated code is building up, and developers are going to bear the pain of it: https://www.theregister.com/ai-ml/2026/05/16/ai-generated-code-is-pain-waiting-to-happen/5241574