One small misstep for man...
Chris Dillon attempts to take the place of Buzz Aldrin and walk on the moon
How hard can it be to fly a spaceship?
Chris Dillon, still on a high from last week’s PastMaster adventure, steps back into the time machine to try and join Neil Armstrong on the moon landing.
But what’s the best way to get past Nasa security and sneak aboard Apollo 11?
In this episode our pet AI Claude has a field day trying to understand the difference between a disguise and a doppelgänger.
Tune in on Monday 17th February to find out how it all goes down.
So many buttons… So tempting to press them…
When AI and reality collide
Unnerving: a poster for ‘Willy’s Chocolate Experience’
It’s coming up to the anniversary of the AI-inspired debacle that was ‘Willy’s Chocolate Experience’. For anyone not familiar it was a grisly bit of grifting that used AI to mock up some images and words full of spelling mistakes advertising a sort of confectionery paradise (or ‘pasadise of sweet teats’, if you will).
Parents arriving with their children at the venue, a dilapidated warehouse in Glasgow, described it as being like the set of a horror movie. There was no chocolate whatsoever and children were rationed to one jelly bean each. There’s an excellent recap of the whole sham here.
It’s a salutary lesson that the products of AI still need a steady human hand on the tiller to avoid ending up in a hole.
AI in the news
My robot counsellor
Young people in China are turning to AI chatbot DeepSeek for words of comfort and wisdom, according to a BBC report.
User Holly Wang (not her real name) claims it’s much better at therapy than the paid-for services she’s tried and that its words have been so moving it has brought her “to tears”.
If you ever get bored of telling a real person how you feel, it’s good to know you can always turn to a warm hearted large language model for understanding and guidance.
PLAY YOUR OWN GAME OF PASTMASTER
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As a thank you for your support, we'd like to invite you to play your own game of PastMaster.
Follow the link here to get the actual prompt we designed to launch the game.
We'd love to hear what adventures you go on so please do send us your funniest explorations!
UNTIL NEXT TIME
Tan and the PastMaster crew.
PS if you’ve got any suggestions for what you’d like to see the PastMaster team try next, get in touch:
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