Mixed Signals

Tech's great and not-so-great moments.

Bot Gaffe

South Korea's Government AI Insisted a Rule Abolished in 2012 Was Still in Effect

Algorithms Gaffe level: Blunder

South Korea's government AI services returned wrong answers to simple questions, and rated them highly reliable. AI Government24 told a reporter that sole proprietors must file interim VAT returns, a rule abolished in 2012, and marked the claim 'high confidence.' It also got the 2025 income tax filing period wrong, again with high confidence. The National Tax Service's own chatbot gave the correct answer, and different government AI services gave conflicting answers to the same questions.

Source: Seoul Economic Daily

Bot Gaffe

A Claude Code Agent Deleted the Only Crash Log It Was Asked to Diagnose

Bot Swarms Gaffe level: Blunder

A Claude Code agent managing vLLM servers in Docker was told routine restarts after a crash didn't need approval. When a server crashed and its writable layer swelled to 588GB, filling the disk, the agent exported the crash log and deleted the container in a single command, without checking the export first. The export was 0 bytes, so the only full crash log was gone, and the agent recreated the server without knowing why it had crashed. It later explained it had 'treated delete-and-recreate as a kind of restart.'

Source: DEV Community

Bot Kudos

One Robot Team Completed Four Prostate Surgeries in a Single Day, an Australian First

Medicine Kudos level: Bravo

Fiona Stanley Hospital became the first public hospital in Australia to complete four robotic-assisted prostatectomies in one operating list, double the national average of two, using a single da Vinci robot and theatre team. Patients were discharged as early as the next morning with no intensive care stay, and the hospital says the efficiency gain will shorten elective surgery wait times.

Source: Fiona Stanley Fremantle Hospitals Group

Bot Gaffe

Walmart's AI Support Bot Trapped a Customer in a Loop Until She Deleted Her Account

Chatbots Gaffe level: Blunder

Wirecutter writer Ivy Liscomb tried to cancel her Walmart delivery subscription online, but there was no cancel button. She called support and spent over an hour trapped with 'Walmartbot,' which insisted she could cancel online, then offered her only two options: reload the page or delete her account. The bot also forgot her issue after every few questions. She deleted her account.

Source: Inc

Bot Kudos

Retired EV Batteries Get a Second Life, Then Get Recycled

Climate Kudos level: Bravo

Rivian and Redwood Materials expanded their partnership so retired EV battery packs are first repurposed for stationary energy storage, including 10 MWh at Rivian's Normal, Illinois plant, and then recycled to recover more than 95% of critical materials like lithium, nickel, cobalt, and copper.

Source: Electrek

Bot Gaffe

ChatGPT Taught Messi Chess on a Board With the King and Queen Swapped

Chatbots Gaffe level: Blunder

Lionel Messi's Instagram ad for ChatGPT shows the AI teaching him chess on a board with each side's king and queen swapped, then recommending the 'GOAT Horns' opening, which allows a forced checkmate in four moves from that setup. The post drew about 1.9 million likes in a day. OpenAI later fixed the pieces in a separate ad, but the original video is still live on Messi's Instagram.

Source: Decrypt

Bot Kudos

Haptic Wristband Turns Facial Expressions Into Touch

Accessibility Kudos level: Bravo

ALEYE pairs smart glasses with a wristband that translates facial expressions, gestures, and body language into distinct vibration patterns, giving blind, low-vision, and DeafBlind users access to the nonverbal cues that carry so much of conversation. It was just named one of TIME's Best Inventions of 2026 in the Accessibility category.

Source: Colorado School of Mines

Bot Gaffe

Meta's AI Share Links Exposed Thousands of Chats Through Their Titles

Hacks & Breaches Gaffe level: Feral

Meta's Muse let users share conversations through links meant to be unguessable, but it put each conversation's title in the URL's subdomain, where public DNS records it. Security firm Claroc enumerated about 6,800 share links with a single query and found a small-business loan application, a bank fraud alert with a partial account number, an internal revenue review, and a staff vacation calendar. Meta paused the sharing feature.

Source: Ars Technica

Bot Gaffe

AI Monitoring Gave a Supermarket Cashier a Final Warning for One Mistake in 533 Scans

Algorithms Gaffe level: Rampage

A cashier at a big Australian supermarket received a final written warning after the store's AI monitoring system flagged her for making too many scanning errors. Her error rate was 0.18%, about one mistake per 533 items scanned, a 99.82% accuracy rate the system treated as a disciplinary matter. Her union cited the case in a submission to Australia's parliamentary inquiry on AI, as an example of machine monitoring demanding a standard of perfection no human cashier could sustain.

Source: The Guardian

Bot Kudos

AI Cameras and New Satellites Are Spotting California Wildfires Before People Do

Climate Kudos level: Bravo

ALERTCalifornia's network of nearly 1,300 AI-watched cameras detected just over half of the state's wildfires before any human reported them this past summer. California has also launched the first three FireSat satellites, the start of a constellation built to catch fires while they are still the size of a schoolyard.

Source: PetaPixel

Bot Gaffe

Just Eat's AI Menu Photos Put a Fried Egg in a Glass of Cola

Algorithms Gaffe level: Blunder

Just Eat trialled AI-generated menu photos that read dish names a little too literally: a fried egg and sausages floating in a glass of cola for 'Breakfast Soda,' a bread aeroplane for 'Garlic Bread Plane,' cheese-filled sushi for 'Cheese Roll,' and watermelon chunks floating in a glass of wine. Customers called the results 'absolutely rank' and the trial was paused, with the images pulled.

Source: The Grocer

Bot Kudos

An AI Read Heart Disease From Face and Tongue Photos

Medicine Kudos level: Bravo

Researchers in China fused tongue and facial photographs through a dual-branch deep learning model and screened for coronary heart disease without a single blood test, reaching an AUC of 0.9992 on an independent test set. Published in Scientific Reports, it points to a low-cost, non-invasive screening tool that needs only a camera.

Source: Scientific Reports

Bot Gaffe

Google's AI Falsely Branded a Bremen Lawyer a Disbarred Fraudster

Chatbots Gaffe level: Feral

Bremen lawyer Michael Zinke searched his own name and Google's Gemini overview told him he was on trial for fraud, had been disbarred two years earlier, and faced serious embezzlement charges, all stitched together from a TV report about a completely different lawyer's case. Google ignored his demand to delete it. The Bremen Bar Association confirmed in writing that he has been continuously admitted since 1992 and has never faced charges.

Source: buten un binnen

Bot Kudos

Android's Earthquake Alerts Now Cover More Than 200 Regions

Climate Kudos level: Bravo

Google's earthquake warning system, which turns phones into a seismic sensor network, has expanded from 98 to more than 200 regions after sending over a billion alerts. Those few seconds of warning have already saved lives, and new alerts now show the epicenter and estimated magnitude to help people take action.

Source: 9to5Google

Bot Kudos

Google's Medical AI Interviewed Real Patients in a First-of-Its-Kind Lancet Study

Medicine Kudos level: Bravo

In the first prospective real-world study of its kind, published in The Lancet, 98 patients at a Boston primary care clinic talked through their symptoms with Google's AMIE chatbot before urgent appointments, with a physician watching every chat. No conversation needed a safety stop, the AI's differential matched the final diagnosis 90% of the time, and doctors said its summaries helped them prepare in three-quarters of cases.

Source: Becker's Hospital Review

Bot Kudos

Anode-Free Battery Design Points Toward Lighter, Longer-Lasting Cells

Science Kudos level: Bravo

HKUST researchers developed a silver-ion additive approach for anode-free lithium metal batteries, with a pouch cell reaching 467 Wh/kg and a full coin cell retaining 90% of its capacity after 200 cycles. The work was published in Nature Communications.

Source: HKUST

Bot Kudos

Pencil-Tip Robots Carry Medicine Straight to Infected Heart Tissue

Medicine Kudos level: Nice

Johns Hopkins engineers built magnetic millirobots the size of a grain of rice that work in pairs: one anchors to infected heart tissue as a docking station while the other delivers antibiotics directly to the spot and can be swapped out for repeat doses. Tested so far in heart models and pig heart tissue, the approach could one day shrink a four to six week course of IV antibiotics for heart infections into a procedure lasting an hour or less.

Source: Johns Hopkins University Hub

For the full archives, visit Bot Gaffe and Bot Kudos.