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A 50-megawatt AI project just died in a barangay hall.

A Norwegian firm withdrew its 50-megawatt AI data center proposal in Oton, Iloilo three days after residents rejected it, a Sainsbury's face scanner had an innocent shopper walked out of the store, and 404 Media tracked a rare book to an Amazon facility that cuts spines off to feed AI training.

01Top Story

Oton killed its 50-megawatt AI plan

The Norwegian firm behind a 50-megawatt AI data center on 10 hectares in Oton, Iloilo pulled its proposal on Monday, three days after residents rejected it and its executive cursed at reporters and walked out of the public consultation.

why it matters
Site scouts are shopping Tarlac, Cavite and Panay right now, and a barangay consultation just stopped one of them cold.
Read at GMA Network
02Surveillance

A face scanner threw out a shopper

Sainsbury's has paused the face-scanning system Facewatch in its East Dulwich store after two managers refused to serve Matt Arnold, walked him out, and left a red circle around his face on the shop's monitor.

why it matters
The chain says the system is 99.98% accurate and every match is checked by a trained manager. It still took a full day and a head-office apology to undo.
Read at The Guardian
03Amazon

Amazon is shredding rare books

404 Media hid a tracking device inside a rare book, sold it, and followed it to an Amazon facility in Las Vegas where books have their spines cut off and are scanned to train AI, then destroyed.

why it matters
Anything printed before 2022 is proof no machine wrote it, which is exactly why old paper is now worth buying by the pallet.
Read at 404 Media
04Australia

A $3.48M report cited fake papers

The $3.48 million trial used to justify Australia's under-16 social media ban links to academic articles that do not exist, and its authors admit ChatGPT was used in editing while denying it invented the citations.

why it matters
That report cleared the way for a national ban that took effect in December, which is a heavy load for footnotes nobody checked.
Read at The Guardian
05Apps

A librarian wrote the AI off switch

A free guide at NoToAI.org lists the exact menu taps that switch AI off in the apps that added it uninvited, covering Adobe Acrobat, Android, Gemini, Windows and more, written from questions asked at a library help desk.

why it matters
It is the only thing in today's five you can act on in the next ten minutes, and it costs nothing.
Read at librarian.net

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