| The daily disasters, glitches, and money pits of the AI boom. |
| WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2026 |
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| DAMAGE REPORT |
| How millions get wasted by AI. |
| $6.5B | AI data center lease Fermi couldn’t close by its October 31 deadline |
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| 45 of 203 | AI asylum summaries that failed the UK Home Office’s first check |
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| €40M+ | assets seized in Albania’s tender probe at the agency that built its AI minister |
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| $116M | what HP paid for the remains of Humane, the AI Pin maker that raised over $230 million |
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| TODAY'S DISASTER |
| Albania’s AI Minister Was Meant to End Rigged Tenders. Prosecutors Charged the Agency That Built Her |
| Do you remember when a country made a chatbot a cabinet minister? I do. |
| In September 2025, Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama gave an AI avatar named Diella one job… cleaning up public tenders. He promised tenders “100 percent free of corruption.” And a month later he joked she was pregnant with 83 digital children. |
| So how’s she doing? Let me show you… |
| In August, the news site BIRN asked Albania’s Public Procurement Agency. Its director, Reida Kashta, said the AI system was still in progress… they’d just drafted the terms for a tender to build it. |
| But Albania’s prosecutors didn’t wait for the robot. On December 16, 2025, the anti-graft office SPAK charged eight people in a tender-rigging case. One was Mirlinda Karçanaj, who ran AKSHI, the agency that built Diella. In April, SPAK seized more than €40 million in assets… and the case is still open. Diella’s own contract isn’t part of it. |
| Nobody taught Diella to read a tender file. She’s a face and a voice. And actress Anila Bisha, whose face it is, says she never agreed to play a minister. |
| So who caught the rigging? Not Diella. SPAK did, after about a year of legwork. |
| AI CAUGHT LYING |
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| Here’s one number before the cases. Canada alone had 234 court decisions with AI-invented law by October 19, in Damien Charlotin’s database… and only the US has more. Let me show you three fresh ones. |
| Start in British Columbia. On October 22, the Property Assessment Appeal Board ruled on Amit Kapur’s $5,409,000 home in the town of Sidney. He cited a section of the Assessment Act that was repealed in 2024… plus a subsection that doesn’t exist. The assessor suggested an AI tool wrote it. And Panel Chair Larry Dybvig still set the value at $4,900,000, the number the assessor asked for. |
| Then California. Lawyer Angelina Mariscal sued the Etiwanda School District with Title IX claims that don’t exist, like “Coercion and Fear-Mongering.” She admitted using AI to draft it. On October 26, Judge Michelle Williams Court ordered her to report herself to the State Bar by November 13. |
| And last, on October 28, a federal court up in Northern California. Cutera’s lawyers filed a motion that cited cases Magistrate Judge Thomas Hixson just couldn’t find. Their lawyer blamed Legora, an AI drafting tool. But the judge let it go with a warning… and this time, no fine. |
| AI CASH BURN |
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| Fermi’s $6.5 billion AI lease blew past its October 31 deadline. |
| In August, Fermi signed TensorWave, an AI cloud company, to a 15-year lease on 222 megawatts of power. The closing date had already slid once. Then October 31 came and went… with project financing and board approvals still missing. So the stock fell 7.03% to $2.05. |
| And on October 16, two weeks before the deadline, Fermi told the SEC it had paid its lenders $25 million in fees. What for? To get rid of a rule that said it had to sign a 400-megawatt tenant by November 10. Would you lend to that landlord? I wouldn’t. |
| Step back and the pattern holds. Chegg, the homework-help company, booked $46.5 million in sales last quarter… down 40% in a year. Its CEO, Dan Rosensweig, says AI hit the business hard… and he’s guiding to $38 million to $40 million next quarter. And when Dun & Bradstreet asked 10,000 companies in 32 countries about AI, just 28% said they see broad or strong returns. But 65% plan to spend more. |
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| AI ROLLBACK TRACKER |
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| › California’s Judicial Council dropped its plan for AI translation at every court counter in the state on October 15. More than 30 courts had tried the tool since 2021, and the trial ended in April 2026. Legal aid groups looked at the transcripts and found “DUI” turned into “IUD”… and “no contest” into “no competition.” So now it wants a review. |
| › Eskasoni School Board in Nova Scotia dropped the face scanners it put in this spring to clock in its teachers. Staff had to look at a wall tablet at the start and end of each day. The union asked where the face data went… and who could see it, and whether anybody had agreed to it. They got the news by email on day one. |
| › France pulled its Lucie chatbot in January 2025, about two days after it went live. Linagora’s government-backed bot called cow’s eggs a healthy food… got math wrong and offered a recipe for meth. Linagora said it got carried away with its own excitement. |
| › Humane switched off every AI Pin it ever sold on February 28, 2025. Humane had raised more than $230 million, and the pin cost $699 at launch. But refunds went only to buyers from the last 90 days. And owners were told to stop using the charging case, because Humane worried about battery fires. |
| AI VIDEO SLOP |
| The week in machine-made video. Watch the hands. |
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| ► X, NO VIEW COUNT PUBLISHED |
| An X account passed off an old AI clip as an Iranian strike on a US carrier. The blurry 14-second video had been online since at least May 28, more than five months before the post. AI or Not scored it 99% likely AI… and Lead Stories called it on Tuesday. Lead Stories › |
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| ► X AND INSTAGRAM, NO VIEW COUNT PUBLISHED |
| A deepfake showed Bhagwant Mann drunk. The face of Mann, Punjab’s chief minister, was pasted onto a man in a 2017 Facebook video. But the people behind him are blurred. BOOM and The Quint both flagged it… and Hive scored it 98.9% likely AI for The Quint. The Quint › |
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| ALSO MAKING THE ROUNDS |
| Two deepfakes claimed India and Russia fell out at last week’s G20 meeting in Atlanta. Lawyer Prashant Bhushan shared the Sergey Lavrov one… and BOOM matched both clips to the original footage. |
| Front Line Action, a PAC aligned with Sen. Ted Cruz, ran an AI ad against Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. It shows him laughing at game cards that say “Death to America.” AFP says the family photo in the ad is fake too. Front Line has spent over $92,000 against him. |
| Tom Tiffany’s “Don’t Fear the Mailman” ad for Wisconsin governor has rust on a mailbox in one shot… and none in the next. Tomas Dodds at UW-Madison spotted it. The Daily Beast says the ad skips the AI notice state law requires. |
| And here’s one from May. A viral clip of “Hajj 2026” crowds carried a tiny Veo logo in the corner, the mark of Google’s video generator. Lead Stories found it. |
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| AI IMAGE SLOP |
| Pictures a computer drew, and a brand paid for. |
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MURAL ARTS PHILADELPHIA
A CHICAGO TOWER
IN A PHILLY SKYLINE |
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| Mural Arts Philadelphia picked fence banners with a Chicago tower in the Philly skyline. Three of Kelley Prevard’s four designs show a building like the Willis Tower where Liberty Place should be. Jacob Fuller flagged them on X… and a Pangram scan found AI in all four. Inquirer › |
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| Spokane’s City Hall sent out an AI flyer to promote the Clocktower chime for the Fourth of July. It copied a sticker by artist Matthew Clinard, who spotted it online. The mayor’s office pulled it and said sorry to him. Days earlier, a Spokane police photo of a rescued dachshund turned out to be AI too. The officer’s gun looks like a pirate’s flintlock. Spokesman-Review › |
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| A Thai restaurant’s delivery-app banner gave its shrimp faces. The faces sit on the tails. A Reddit user caught it while ordering dinner online… and the r/mildlyinfuriating crowd piled on. The Cool Down › |
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| BEST OF THE COMMENTS |
| Three people who said it better than we could. |
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| Albania made an AI avatar its minister for clean tenders. |
| “Diella does not solve corruption.” |
| Klevis Balliu, an opposition MP, talking to BIRN in August. An interview, so there’s no like count. |
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| Mural Arts Philadelphia picked banners an AI scan flagged in all four designs. |
| “very indicative of AI slop” |
| Tuhin Chakrabarty, a Stony Brook computer science professor, to The Philadelphia Inquirer. No like count. |
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| A Nova Scotia school board made teachers scan their faces twice a day. |
| “We’re very happy that our voice was heard” |
| Jonathan Cox, the teachers’ union president, to CBC after the scanners came out. No like count. |
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| Found a comment worth printing? Hit reply and send me the screenshot. |
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| Let me tally up today’s letter… |
| Diella was supposed to clean up Albania’s tenders, and SPAK’s prosecutors did the cleaning by hand. California’s court translator turned a DUI into an IUD, and legal aid lawyers kept the transcripts. A deepfake got Bhagwant Mann drunk… and BOOM dug up the 2017 Facebook video it came from. And Legora drafted cases for Cutera’s lawyers that Judge Thomas Hixson couldn’t find anywhere. |
| Four machines. Four people with their eyes open. Here’s what I believe: the machine never checks its own work… so a person has to. |
| Keep a hand near the switch. |
| Gus Lehman |
| EDITOR, ARTIFICIAL INCOMPETENCE |
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| SOURCES: Balkan Insight/BIRN on Diella (Aug 14) · OCCRP and Shteg.org on AKSHI (Aug 11) · Albanian Daily News on the SPAK charges (Dec 16, 2025) · Wikipedia on the AKSHI case and Diella · Vox News on the Bisha suit (Feb 23) · OECD AI Incidents Monitor · Fermi 8-K exhibit and Oct 16 8-K · Moneycheck on the missed Fermi deadline (Nov 3) · Tech Times on the Open Rights Group report (Oct 28) · TechCrunch on Humane (Feb 18, 2025) · HAQQ tally of Charlotin data (Oct 19) · Kapur v. Area 01, BC PAAB (Oct 22) · Chechitelli v. Etiwanda School District, C.D. Cal. (Oct 26) · Farhat v. Cutera, N.D. Cal. (Oct 28) · Chegg Q3 release (Nov 3) · Dun & Bradstreet survey (Oct 28) · Times of San Diego on the court translation tool (Oct 24) · CBC on Eskasoni (Oct 28) · The Register on Lucie (Jan 29, 2025) · AAP FactCheck · Lead Stories · The Quint and BOOM · IBTimes UK and AFP · The Daily Beast and Isthmus · The Philadelphia Inquirer · The Spokesman-Review · The Cool Down · Images: AAP/Facebook, Lead Stories, The Quint, City of Spokane via The Spokesman-Review, Reddit via The Cool Down |
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| ARTIFICIAL INCOMPETENCE |
Sent every weekday morning.
Nothing here is investment advice. Do your own homework. |
