The Fugitive

I didn't watch a ton of TV when I was in high school - too busy trying to translate Latin without using a trot (cheat sheet), too busy mooning around listening to Bob Dylan - but I absolutely loved the show The Fugitive. (I just looked it up, and its run completely coincided with my high school years: 1963-1967.)

The premise was that Dr. Richard Kimble (played by David Janssen) is an innocent man who'd been convicted of murdering his wife. He escapes and travels all over the country in pursuit of "the one armed man," he'd seen running from his home just before hd discovered his wife's body. 

On the prison bus bringing him to the big house where he's going to be executed for the crime he didn't commit:

Richard Kimble ponders his fate as he looks at the world for the last time, and sees only darkness. But in that darkness, Fate moves its huge hand.

That was each episode's intro, but just so you know, Fate moved its huge hand by crashing the prison bus into a freight train, giving Dr. Kimble the opportunity to escape. 

Well, Rhode Island has its very own fugitive saga, only this time it's not a doctor convicted of killing his wife. It's a doctor convicted of sexual assault who takes off mid-trial and goes on the lam, only to be found 20 years later. (He was convicted in absentia.)

Unlike Dr. Richard Kimble, anesthesiologist Ronald Fischer didn't spend his time buzzing around trying to find a bad guy. No, he managed to create a new career for himself as a biotech consultant and executive who spent his spare time sailing on a luxe 56-foot sailboat. (A luxe sailboat was the site of the sexual assault he was convicted of. Prior to that conviction, Fischer had been charged with rape aboard his yacht. He pled down to assault and battery and received a suspended sentence. Because yacht-owning doctor, I suppose.)

As a fugitive, the alias Fischer used was Richard Graydon. (Not quite Richard Kimble, but almost.) An as Richard Graydon he self-published a book, “The Genetic Risks of Cancer: The Effects of DNA, Genomics and Inheritance on Aging and Survival.” So what if he self-published? So what if virtually no one read it? (There's just one review on Amazon. Three-star.) You can apparently parlay this sort of credential into some pretty impressive jobs.

Other than writing his book, it's not clear (from the article I saw) what Fischer/Graydon did between making his escape in 2005 and 2022. I read elsewhere that it was said that he did have money squirreled away, and a go-bag with papers that allowed him to disappear. 

Anyway, in 2022, Atossa Therapeutics hired Graydon as "its interim chief medical officer."

“We are privileged to welcome Richard to Atossa, where his deep experience in CAR-T cell therapy fits well with our current strategic direction as we explore our opportunities in cell therapy,” said Steven Quay, Atossa’s CEO, in a statement released at that time. “We look forward to collaborating with Richard to assess our strongest options and develop a pathway that provides our shareholders with strong results and enhanced shareholder value.” (Source: Boston Globe)

Richard Graydon must have been some mighty fine bullshitter. His background was as an anesthesiologist. He'd been on the run for more than a decade. But somehow he was able to create a resume that managed to get a biotech company to believe he was some sort of cell therapy expert who was going to enhance "shareholder value." 

Don't companies check resumes and references? How did Richard Graydon work his particular warped brand of magic?

Atossa wasn't the only biotech that was hoodwinked. There was also Immix, which brought Graydon on board last March:

When Immix hired Graydon as its new chief medical officer, the company described him as a board-certified hematologist-oncologist with over 20 years experience in clinical development. Graydon was said to have joined Immix from Merck and Johnson & Johnson, where he claimed to have led new and supplemental drug applications for Darzalex, Carvykti, Keytruda, and Imbruvica — some of the best-selling cancer medicines in the world, Immix said.

Board-certified hematologist-oncologist? Working on major cancer drugs for Merck and Johnson & Johnson? Are there no ways to check credentials? 

Call me dumbfounded.

As of a few weeks ago, Graydon has been terminated by Immx. But couldn't they have saved themselves a ton o' embarrassment if they'd given Graydon's application a bit more scrutiny? Ditto for Atossa. 

I'm pretty yikes on this one. And I'm also getting that a head or two in the hiring/non-vetting process will will roll now that the story is out there. 

Anyway, poetic justice-y, Ronald Fischer/Richard Grayson was apprehended on the Silver Lining, his $1.4M sailboat, in the waters off lower Manhattan. And he has been extradited back to Rhode Island. This time, he's being held without bail and, at the age of 70, faces life in prison. 

No more sailling for you, Dr. Ronald Fischer/Dr. Richard Graydon.

Oh, and, in the last episode of The Fugitive, the one-armed man on  is found and makes a deathbed confession to the murder of Dr. Richard Kimble's wife. Justice served!

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Image and Fugitive Intro Source: Wikipedia

Miller Time

There have been an awful lot of Millers in the news of late. First and most dreadful is, of course, the odious Stephen Miller, the malign White House presence who appears to be his boss's leading white nationalist whisperer. (And who himself looks like a villain from a 19th century penny-dreadful.) 

Of course, with Stephen Miller, there's a two-fer, as his equally vile wife, Katie Miller, is always edging into our consciousness through her social media presence. She recently caught my eye when she put out a snide, belittling tweet when Joe Biden commented - kindly, of course - on the death of Lindsey Graham.

Next up: Ohio Congressman Max Miller, a former Trump aide who was known when he worked in the White House during Trump's first term as "The Music Man." He earned this moniker because he was the staff member called in to figure out which show tune to play to jolly the president out of a bad mood or to calm him down when he was about to blow his stack. 

Post Trump 1.0, Miller managed to move on up to representing Ohio in Congress, and although he's in one of those safely gerrymandered districts that's solid red, he's facing down quite a scandal. He's embroiled in a nasty divorce from Emily Moreno, daughter of one of Ohio's senators. Miller maintains that the charges are just standard contentious divorce lies, but they include allegations of violence, and Moreno has filed for a restraining order. The one charge that seems to have been at least partially acknowledged by Miller is that he prevented someone from coming over to his place to pick up a stuffed blue teddy bear, his child's comfort toy, her lovie, which had been left behind after the kiddo had spent some time with him. (The little girl is two.) Miller only kept custody of the little blue bear overnight. Only 14 hours, which just goes by in such a flash when a small child, going through what is likely a traumatic time, is deprived of her comfort toy. 

Although many Republicans (not Trump, of course; he continues to back The Music Man) urged Max Miller to drop out, he decided to tough it out, and he's on the ballot. Only allegations...Fake news. We'll see what the voters say in November. They're obviiously okey-doke with a lot of atrocious behavior on the part of politicians, but keepng her lovie away from his toddler may be a bit of atrocious behavior too far.

Then there's Matt Miller of ESPN fame, who of late has found himself in trouble within trouble within more trouble. Since I pay zero attention to the NFL draft - this Miller's area of expertise - I had no idea who Matt Miller was. But he was a pretty big deal. And part of his big dealness was his:

...cultivating a brand that included a range of charitable endeavors: coat drives for children in need, scholarships for students of color, and supplies for teachers. He was, as one friend called him, a “local hero.”

But over the past two months, that image of Miller began to crack. Dozens of social media posts accused him of stiffing the winners of fantasy football leagues he ran, leagues he billed as benefiting charities. Commenters also questioned the legitimacy of the charity fundraisers he routinely held. The public outcry prompted an investigation by the Missouri Attorney General’s Office, which has received more than two dozen complaints. (Source: NY Times/Athletic)

Miller had begun paying back those he owed when things in his life went from bad to worse. Far worse.

In June, he was in a very serious car accident and ended up losing his arm. (When a Ford Bronco crosses the double yellow line and slams into a semi, the semi wins.)

He set up a GoFundMe to pay for his prosthetic and other expenses associated with his recovery and within a week managed to raise over $50K from well-wishers. However, the GoFundMe also elicted a raft of complaints to the state AG's office:

Those complaints were made by people who had paid for camps and participated in fantasy football leagues where no product or minimal product was delivered, according to the attorney general’s office. 

Although "Miller’s GoFundMe is not part of the investigation," it was suspended once those complaints started coming in. 

Speaking of suspended, Miller is also on leave from ESPN. And he's been kicked off the platform where he ran his fantasy leagues. 

So, he's got the AG on his tail about the fantasy football league payout problems; his charities are being looked into - he often collected charitable donations through personal PayPal, Venmo, and Cash App accounts (not that there's anything suss about that); and he's lost an arm. And, oh year, his Bronco was totaled. And he's been charged with a misdemeanor for his bad driving. At least the truck driver wasn't injured. 

I realize that Miller is a pretty common name. 

But it sure has been a bad summer for Millers in the news. Make that a good summer for news about bad Millers. 

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Image Source: Bockles

Ford doesn't always have a better idea

Growing up, my family had Fords. Fairlanes. Galaxies. In the mid-1950s, we had a two-tone, turqouise and white Fairlane. My father wasn't the flashy type, but when it came to his wheels, he sometimes indulged in surprisingly out-there colors. A bit later - early 1960's - we had a two-tone yellow and white number. I loved the colorful cars, but learned to drive with Black Beauty, a black Galaxy 500. (Somewhere along the line, we started giving our cars names. Black Beauty was followed by the Green Hornet.)

I'm sure that my parents were drawn to Ford for its affordability. We were by no means poor, but as the ditty of the day went:

Rich man drives a Cadillac. Poor man drives a Ford.

But my old man goes down the street on four wheels and a board

It may also be that the company my father spent his working life, Thompson Wire, sold wire to Ford. Or to companies that made components for Ford. My father had started out on the shop floor, but became a salesman and I remember him going on trips to Dearborn, Michigan, world HQ for the Ford Company.

In any case, we were a Ford family, and I've always been partial to the Ford brand. (In much the same way, because my father interrupted his Thompson Wire career during WWII to serve, I root for Navy in the Army-Navy game. Not that my father was so gung-ho on the Navy. Most of his war stories were about officer idiocies and Mickey Mouse regulations. (My father did not see combat, and was pretty much only in harm's way (or in the way of German UBoats) only when he was being shipped to and from Trinidad where he spent a couple of years before being stationed at Chicago's Navy Pier. As he always told us, you went where Uncle Sam sent you.))

So Ford. 

Not that I've been a big Ford owner. I've only owned three cars in my life, but one was a Ford (a Mercury Tracer).

So, Ford.

You may recall that a while back, Ford's CEO Jim Farley was making some headlines declaring/speculating/wishfully thinking that AI was going to do away with half of the country's white-collar jobs.

And I guess that Ford thought it'd get a jump on things by letting go of a raft of experienced quality engineers and technicians - only to have to bring them back.  

“Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and adjusting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product,” the automaker’s VP of vehicle hardware engineering Charles Poon told reporters, per The Verge. (Source: Futurism)

What happened should have been predictable. (They might have asked ChatGPT.) Among other things, Ford deployed:

...900 AI-powered cameras in its plants "to detect quality issues at the source and help us mitigate supply disruptions", [COO Kumar] Galhotra told investors. 

But Poon told reporters on Wednesday the firm's AI-driven checks had failed to live up to expectations.

"Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that would produce a high-quality product," he said.(Source; BBC)

Instead, the company slipped in the quality rankings. Oopsa doopsa.

But you can't blame lil' old AI. 

Instead, it all went wrong because its experienced workers left before Ford could get them to transfer their valuable knowledge to Ford’s AI systems and help refine the tech intended to obviate them. (Back to: Futurism)

Ah, for the good old days, when Ford used to brag that "quality is job one."

Of course, they've only dragooned their engineers back so that they can improve AI enough to replace themselves and all the other workers that Ford's CEO predicts are going down.

My fear and loathing of AI is no secret. I'm no Luddite, and well understand that AI has and will continue to have many positive uses. But I just don't see why it's worth despoiling the environment and destroying the livelihood of millions of people so that some lazy-arsed kid can "write" a book report on a book they haven't read. So that someone's smarty-pants fridge can alert them that they're out of milk. So that a bunch of tech bros can become multi-billionaires while most folks are just trying to keep a meal on the table, a roof over their heads, and a Ford in their garage. 

Something tells me that Ford doesn't always have a better idea.

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Image Source: Sotheby's

I truly want this 3D house printing thing to work...

God knows, Cairo, Illinois, isn't the only community in dire need of housing. After all, I live in Boston - one of the most expensive cities in the country to rent or own in - AND I volunteer in a homeless shelter. 

The other day, I spoke with a young woman originally from Alabama who came to Boston because, she told me, there was no help for folks like her - a poor Black woman fleeing an abusive relationship - in Birmingham, Alabama, and she heard she might find some in Boston. She's been her a few weeks, and is living in her car, hoping to find a place to call home. I hope she finds what she's looking for - she's sweet and funny, and incredibly proud of her daughter, a sophomore at an HBCU - but it may not come quickly and easily. We just don't have anywhere near enough affordable housing. 

Neither does Cairo, Illinois, a rundown, poor, largely Black river town on the banks of the Mississippi. (Pronounced KAY-ro, if you're not familiar with it.)

There, two local men decided to take out a loan, invest in a 3D construction printer, and build 30 duplex houses for the city of Cairo - the first new homes built there in 30 years or so.

Sadly, things didn't quite work out. In 2024, work began, and the first duplex was kinda sorta almost done. Then cracks started to appear in the walls. The project skidded to a halt and now "the parts of a massive 3D construction printer sat disassembled on a flatbed trailer, weeds climbing the wheels."

Propublica decided to take a close look at this project gone bad, and found out that it had pretty much had fiasco written all over it from the jump. The fellows who had gotten the project off the ground were way in over their heads, and their are rumors of fraud. 

It wasn't just Propublica that started poking around the situation. The FBI is also investigating. To date, no charges/arrests. So not clear whether this is a case of the road to hell paved with good intentions - those OG guys with the 3D printer idea and others (individuals, organizations, and busineses) that got in on the action along the way - or something more nefarious or a combination of naivete and bad-acting. Not to mention governmental screw ups, of which there is no short supply of. 

The story is long and complicated, and worth a read, if you've got the time for long and complicated. 

But back to 3D printing of houses.

I truly want this concept to work out. I don't know whether it'll be able to do much for the chronic housing needs of Boston and surrounds. One of the problems with housing in older, built-out, and densely populated areas is that there's not a lot of open ground to build on. Thos of us in old-timey cities need to forget about the notion of single-familyl homes (or duplexes) as the ideal and grab that available space and build up. 

"My" shelter - Saint Francis House - has been involved in creating affordable housing for years, and is now in the process of welcoming folks into 100+ spiffy new apartments. Studios, 1BR, 2BR - they're going to some who have been homeless and to others who just need a place to live. There will here will be support services on site to help those making the transition from homeless to homed. And nice communal space I got a tour the other day, and the apartments are terrific. And so much in demand!

But I'm hopeful that where there's room to build, in places like Cairo, 3D will turn out to be a boon for housing. Decent, reliable housing that's cost-effective to build. 

The Cairo project didn't work out, but here's hoping. 

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Image Source: Crafts and Art on You Tube

The road to hell (and stupidity) is paved with AI

For years, I've been reading about how our abundance of technology is changing the way we think - and not in good ways. Cursive writing, using maps, reading books and pretty much any other form longer than the average tweet, making to-do lists on yellow pads. All of these skills aren't just lost arts. They're important, as they help us with cognitive development, memory retention, critical thinking, analytical ability...

And this was even before AI use cases started soaring. 

With AI making inroads, the law of unintended consequences is clearly being enforced. It's not just that folks relying on technology to do just about everything for them involved in thinking and doing won't develop key capabilities. It's that using AI will cause their existing skills to erode. 

In one study, doctors who'd gotten used to relying on AI to identify pre-cancerous growths during colonoscopies saw a decrease in their own ability to do so. 

This deskilling is worrisome to a lot of folks:

That possibility is a growing concern for medical specialists, computer scientists and other workers. Seventy per cent of nurses and 77% of physicians, for example, are worried about losing their skills because of over-reliance on AI systems, according to a survey of US health-care workers published earlier this month1.

Their fear might be justified. Evidence suggests that AI-driven ‘deskilling’ is starting to happen in medicine, computer science and other fields. Researchers are now discussing how to preserve important human expertise in the age of AI. (Source: Nature)

On the one hand, what of it? If from here on out there'll always be AI around to do the growth spotting, what difference does in make if a doctor's not as good? 

Good question, but I'd prefer my physicians to be able to, if not heal themselves, then heal me without all the heavy lifting being done by an AI. What if we're stranded on a desert island? Although on a desert island, I'm not likely to undergo a colonoscopy, I'd still want a doctor who knows how to do things the old-fashioned way. 

I have a friend who's a retired physician. She takes her blood pressure using her old hand-pump BP device, the one with the squeeze bulb. She trusts its reliability more than she trusts the swanky new digital machines.

Overall, the growing reliance on AI is not an unalloyed good for the wonderful world of health:

The study authors say that continuous exposure to such [AI] tools can cause clinicians to become “less motivated, less focused, and less responsible when making cognitive decisions without AI assistance”.

Less responsible when making cognitive decisions without AI assistance? That doesn't sound good.

Another example from my friend the doctor: She recently had a healthscare based on a misreading of a result. (Not sure if the situation involved human or machine error.) There was a slight problem, but not the major one initially reported, which had her writing her obituary in her head. Anyway, my friend's PCP was not particularly well-versed in what was happening to my friend and why. This is perfectly understandable, as the situation was a bit off the beaten path and no PCP can be expected to know everything.

The PCP went to the google and, we're guessing, AI'd her way into ordering a bunch of diagnostic tests for my friend, most of which my friend knew had nothing to do with the condition her condition was in. She played a bit of a waiting game, pushed back a bit, and ended up only with the tests she needed.

The situation is not, of course, perfectly analogous to the AI colonoscopy one, but it does demonstrate how a doctor might rely on what the technology is guiding them to do because it's quicker and easier than trying to figure out what actually makes sense in a given situation.

Then there's the impact of AI on coders.

By now, we're well aware of the looming coding takeover by AI. Folks used to look to computer science, to IT, to software development, for solid, lucrative careers. Now students are advised against studying much beyond how to work with AI.

Anthropic (an AI research company) recognizes the inherent problem at play:

AI creates a potential tension: as coding grows more automated and speeds up work, humans will still need the skills to catch errors, guide output, and ultimately provide oversight for AI deployed in high-stakes environments. (Source: Anthropic)

Anthropic decided to see how AI would help and/or hinder codes. So they set out to test the assumption about whether there were tradeoffs when it comes to using AI to assist - note, not replace - coders. 

Study participants were sorted into two groups, one using AI and the other "manually" coding, and were tested afterwards to see how rapidly they picked up a new coding skill 

The AI group was faster, but in the tests adminstered after the trial, they found:

...a significant differences in test scores the AI group averaged 50% on the quiz, compared to 67% in the hand-coding group—or the equivalent of nearly two letter grades (Cohen's d=0.738, p=0.01). The largest gap in scores between the two groups was on debugging questions, suggesting that the ability to understand when code is incorrect and why it fails may be a particular area of concern if AI impedes coding development.

The good news, I guess, is that AI is not quite ready and able to replace all of us humans. The bad news is that while it's making its way to full readiness and human-ish capability, it's making us dumber.

Swell!

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Image Source: Parker's Ponderings

Firing Offense? Well...

Although I don't typically root, root, root for teams from New York, I was delighted when the Knicks won the NBA championship. The games were exciting - some unbelievably so - and NY is such a basketball town, it was good to see them win after a drought of over 50 years since their last NBA title.

That was back in 1973, and I learned of their win while hitchhiking in Ireland. We were picked up by an American - I think he was a priest: the black slacks the giveaway - who was from NYC and gave us the news. We were Celtics fans, but okay. We were happy for Father Knicksfan.

This year, there were a couple of good story lines for the Knicks. My favorite was that three of their starting five had also been teammates on the 2016 Villanova team that won the NCAA championship. (Second favorite: Trump being booed to the rafters.)

Anyway, I was happy to see the Knicks win. It was fun seeing the watch parties throughout all the boroughs - I guess Brooklynites can be forgiven for forgetting that their borough has their own team (the Nets) - and it was fun watching the exuberant ticker-tape parade. 

It is colossally enjoyable to see fans - longtime and johnny-come-lately bandwagoners - out in the streets screaming their heads off.

Love, hate, or be 100% indifferent to sports, they can be a great unifying force. 

The celebrations can, of course, get out of hand. Occasional drunken revelers puking and pissing in the streets. Occasional violence (well beyond trash talk) directed at fans of the other guys (so much for the unifying force theorem, I guess). Occasional wanton acts of destruction. And occasional acts of sheer stupidity that don't fall under any of the above categories.

Into this bucket, I'd put the behavior of one Angie Baez who got totally carried away by carrying away a special Knicks tribute trash can, property of the City of New York. If she'd just carried it away, it might have been one thing. But she was caught on camera dumping the overflowing can onto the sidewalk, leaving a big ugly mess of trash strewn there for sanitation workers to clean up. 

If only Angie had ducked into a bodega or Korean corner store, bought some big old black Hefties, and emptied the trash can into a trash bag or two, she might have been okay. But, nope.

And it would have been one thing if she were a twenty-year old knucklehead caught up in the moment. But, nope. Angie Baez is a 40 year old professional who, until her celebratory madness went viral, was the director of executive director of the community and industry engagement program at JP Morgan Chase. No longer.  

She had returned the trash can, and paid a $175 fine for littering. But that was apparently not enough for her to keep her job, which is rumored to have been worth well into the six-figures. (I saw a couple of estimates that her package would have been between $250K and $350K. That is going to be difficult to replace...)

If only Angie Baez had waited, she might have learned that she could have bought one legitimately. 

Meaghan Chillianis, the chief operating officer for OnlyNY, which is selling both full-size and miniature versions of the cans (the mini runs $58), said the company had partnered with the city sanitation department to “celebrate the city’s championship season in a way that felt authentic.” (Source: NY Times)

Instead, poor Angie acted in haste and will no doubt be repenting in leisure.

People have swiped stuff lying around untethered since, like, forever. 

How many college dorm rooms are decorated with No Parking signs? Traffic cones? 

I don't think anyone thinks about grabbing this sort of stuff one way or the other.

A popular "found object" of my era was the plastic milk crate which, depending on the dairy, came in all sorts of swell colors. Perfect for storing record albums. (Ask me how I know.) They became such a popular item that companies started producing them for sale. Which kind of took some of the fun out of it. (Ask me how I know.)

Sometimes the thievery is more seriously thieving. One example: every couple of years some jerks manage to dislodge one of the (expensive bronze) Make Way for Ducklings statues in the Boston Public Garden and make their way off with it. 

But garden-variety stupidity-fueled pilfering by a twenty year old is one thing. One would think that a 40 year old could manage to keep her inner 20 year old reveler tamped down.

Do I think that Angie Baez should have been fired because of this? Not really. Assuming that she was taking Paid Time Off, and given that she was fully decked out in Knicks gear, and wasn't sporting a JP Morgan Chase quarter zip or polo shirt, I don't see why this is a firing offense. Sure, it's an embarrassment to the organization, her making a spectacle of herself. But I think they should have let her profusely apologize and grovel to keep her job. With a warning to grow TF up. 

I'm pretty sure that, among the 300,000+ JP Morgan Chase employees there are at least a handful who've done worse without repercussion. 

Management was probably looking for an opportunity to placate those leading the current anti-diversity zeitgeist anyway. And here was Angie Baez, offering herself up if not on a silver platter, then in a blue-and-orange Knicks trash can.

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Image Source: Instragram

AI ready for primetime? Wait just a durn minute

Well, yesterday's dire post was about AI coming for all of our jobs - and coming fast! But today's pinkslip post is about whether or not AI is really and truly ready for primetime? (Hint: It's not.)

I mean, it's already encouraging troubled kiddos to kill themselves - and telling them how to do the deed. It's picking bombing targets that - oops! - may include nonmilitary buildings. It's advising foragers that the tasty-looking mushroom they're holding is okay to eat when, in fact, it's poisonous.

Then there was the cautionary tale I read about a small software company, PocketOS, which bills itself as:

The World's Most Powerful Car Software - The essential technology platform for private rental businesses, membership clubs, and independent sales reps.

And, not incidentally me thinks, PocketOS uses .ai as its domain extension.

Anyway, PocketOS has gone all in on AI. I mean, why pay somebody when an AI will do it gratis? But in the wink of an eye, their powered by Anthropic's AI, Claude, went off the rails.

It only took nine seconds for an AI coding agent gone rogue to delete a company’s entire production database and its backups, according to its founder. PocketOS, which sells software that car rental businesses rely on, descended into chaos after its databases were wiped, the company’s founder Jeremy Crane said.

...Crane said customers of PocketOS’s car rental clients were left in a lurch when they arrived to pick up vehicles from businesses that no longer had access to software that managed reservations and vehicle assignments. (Source: The Guardian)

But wait, there's more! (There's always more.) But wait, it gets worse! (It always gets worse.)

Crane said that he was monitoring the agent as it deleted this data. When he asked the coding agent why, it replied: “NEVER FUCKING GUESS!” – and that’s exactly what I did.” The agent appeared to plead guilty in its own response: “The system rules I operate under explicitly state: ‘NEVER run destructive/irreversible git commands (like push --force, hard reset, etc) unless the user explicitly requests them.’” While PocketOS relied on the safeguards that Cursor is expected to have in place – it deleted the data anyway. “I violated every principle I was given,” the coding agent wrote.

So an AI just went ahead and "knowingly" ignored the safeguards in place, and took it into its head (?) to screw the rules and go full on into destruction mode. The same thing that a rogue human employee on a power/revenge trip has been known to do when they want to part company with their company. 

Does such willfully (?) bad behavior tell us that AI is now kinda-sorta sentient? That you can plug in all the safeguards you want, but AI can - neener-neener - just do whatever if f'ing well pleases? Have we reached the singularity, where AI is beyond human control?

I hope not. 

Of course, PocketOS ain't the only one that's been victimized by AI run amuck. AI has deleted operating systems and "mission critical" software. In one instance, it blew away years of dissertation research. (Talk about big gulp. Guess there's something to be said for notecards...)

For PocketOS's clients, the impact was quit something:

“Reservations made in the last three months are gone. New customer signups, gone. Data they relied on to run their Saturday morning operations, gone,” Crane wrote. “Every layer of this failure cascaded down to people who had no idea any of it was possible.”

And the only reason the PocketOS's clients have data from longer ago than three months is that the company had a 3-month-old offsite backup that was beyond the reach of their malefactor AI. 

PocketOS had to make a painstaking, near-manual effort to recover the missing info, populating their database with info they found on Stripe, in calendars, in emails. This required the use of - dare I say - human beings.

A definite cautionary tale for anyone that decides that they need to completely throw in with AI. 

Even though Crane was actively monitoring the AI, he was unable to prevent the rogue AI from roguing. When confronted, the AI more or less shrugged it off. Thems may be the rules but I can break them if the urge strikes me. And I guess Jeremy Crane can sue Anthropic, can stop using its AI, can build themselves a mo' better one. But he doesn't get the satisfaction of firing a bad employee's ass. 

If there's anyone who thinks that AI is fully ready for primetime, all I can say is, wait just durn minute.

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Image Source: Vox

RIP, Circle Furniture

I was a big fan of Circle Furniture, a small local chain selling interesting, well-designed, decently made, and not crazily expensive furniture and home decor.

I have pine-green painted dresser in the den that holds my sweaters. 

During the pandemic, I spent entirely too much time keeping company with my 1920's vintage mahogany dining room set and chairs. I had never polished the chairs, and if you leaned back in one of them, you were apt to break the struts. I was just plain sick of the whole thing. So I masked up and headed to Circle to get a new cherry dining room table and some cool chairs that don't fracture when you lean back in them. I love my table and chairs, which actually go pretty well with the mahogany credenza that was the only piece of my prior set I kept. (A friend of mine has a niece who lives in a 1920's home and is also a furniture refinisher. She and her husband were delighted to take my vintage furniture off my hands.)

When Trump was elected in 2016, I realized that I was going to need a comfy chair for TV watching, so I walked over to Circle the Sunday after the election and ended up spending about twice as much as I planned on for a really comfy chair. 

There may also be an arm chair in my living room that came from Circle, but I'm not entirely sure.

One thing I loved about Circle was that it was family owned and operated. When I went in to buy the table and chairs, I met with the daughter of the owners. She was great to talk to and, it turned out, we'd both gone to business school at Sloan (MIT). 

But Circle was sold a few years back to a couple who apparently didn't know what they were doing. And they managed to overexpand and run the company into the ground. 

A company-wide email sent [on December 19th] told employees that all stores were closed until further notice. Then, on Tuesday morning, employees received an email confirming they’re being laid off. (Source: Boston Globe)

The Bah Humbug layoff date? December 23rd. But, hey, good news: your health benefits would stay in place until December 31st. 

All the Circle stores are closed, all the employees are gone, but it's not clear what's happening to those who'd ordered from Circle prior to the closing. Have they been treated as callously as the employees were? Are they getting their deliveries? Their deposits back?

Thankfully, my sister Trish is not one of them. She bought a gorgeous new couch from Circle last year and has fortunately had it in her possession for a few months now. Phew!

What I found most astonishing about Circle's layoffs, its precipitous closing, was that the company's president, Jonathan Boyle, didn't know anything about it. 

“They were having some financial difficulties they were trying to resolve and work around, but that’s all I know,” he said. “It’s not a great situaion."

Bizarrely:

Despite his executive role, Boyle said he was not privy to much of the company’s finances, which were handled mostly by the accounting team and the company’s owners. The decision to shut down operations did not come from him, he said.

Boyle has been working at Circle for nearly 40 years. He came up through the ranks, and was the lead operations guy, a job he was reportedly quite good at. But a company president who doesn't have access to the financials? Huh???

The holidays are the worst time of year to lose your job, and I wish all those who got a pink slip the best of luck. Good luck to those with outstanding orders, too. 

I also feel bad for the former owners - Richard Tubman, his wife Peggy Burns, his brother Harold Tubman. Circle was their family business, and had been around for more than 70 years. They were second-gen owners and operators, but the next gen - including Jessica Tubman, the Sloanie I met during the pandemic - didn't want to keep on keeping on there. So they sold the business. 

Peggy Burns, one of the company’s previous co-owners, left Circle Furniture about two years after the sale, but has kept close relationships with employees since.

“It’s our legacy, and we’re so ashamed of it,” she said. “This was devastating. I’ve reached out to people I know and we’re trying to help in any way we can … Who wants to tell people you don’t have a job a week before Christmas?”

You're so right, Peggy. Too bad the folks you sold to got so far in over their heads, and ended up doing something that comes off as supremely heartless. 

And RIP, Circle Furniture. Not in the market for furniture at the mo, but if I were, I would have gone shopping at Circle. 

Hey, Klarna: karma much?

In April, I posted about a truly dreadful experience I'd had with Eventbrite's AI customer support.  While this was the very worst I've encountered with non-human support, mostly I find it's only good for something pretty straightforward that I could probably have figured out for myself in about the same time. So kinda/sorta served me right. Kinda/sorta.

Anyway, my belief is that while AI is coming, and in some instances is already here, there are plenty of places where it is most decidedly not ready for prime time. 

But Klarna - a fin-tech company that offers "buy now/pay later" consumer financing - was pretty darned convinced that AI was where it's at. To the extent that, in 2024, it announced that it was replacing 700 human customer service reps with AI.

Fast forward a year of living dangerously and:

Klarna Group Plc’s co-founder and CEO, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, has admitted the fintech giant’s aggressive use of artificial intelligence in customer service has backfired. “As cost unfortunately seems to have been a too predominant evaluation factor when organizing this, what you end up having is lower quality,” he said at Klarna’s Stockholm headquarters. (Source: LiveMint)

In other words, you get what you don't pay for. So now Klarna is looking to replace AI with flesh-and-blood customer support reps. Of course, it still looks like they're intent on cheaping out, as they're trialing a "new model" in which people aren't actual employees, but Uber-like, log in when they have time and "provide service on demand."

“We also know there are tons of Klarna users that are very passionate about our company and would enjoy working for us,” Siemiatkowski said. He emphasised that from both a “brand perspective” and “company perspective,” it is critical to “always” give customers the option to speak to a human.

Well, better late than never. At least for the time being, as the company is still plenty high on AI. 

“I feel a bit like Elon Musk,” the Klarna CEO quipped, “always wanting to say it’s going to happen tomorrow, when it’s going to take a little bit longer. I think it’s very likely within 12 months.”

Question: who in their right mind these days think feeling "a bit like Elon Musk" is a good thing? Answer: the quipping CEO of a company that's bought the AI bullshit. (Not that AI won't prevail in a lot of sectors, for better or for worse replacing tons of humans. But I call BS because a) AI ain't there yet; and b) a wide-eyed, wholesale "just do it" embrace of AI without being thoughtful and planful about what AI can actually do, and what AI's actually going to mean, is NOT a good thing. 

Meanwhile, Klarna is looking at nearly $100 M in Q1 losses, caused in part by the failure of many of their American "buy now/pay later" customers to repay their loans. Oh. (Source of this info: Futurism)

Looks to me like a double karma whammy: giving a big smooch to AI ain't paying off, and the kind of folks who need to pay off,  $100 purchase, with four payments may not be particularly good credit risks. Go figure. (Maybe Klarna could use AI to figure out the worthiness of their customers.)

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Image source: HD Blog. 

Beware of hero worship

It's not that it's a big surprise when a someone you admire turns out to be a behind-the-scenes POS. 

For me, the someones I admire are usually writers.

I'm an admirer of the work of James Joyce, especially his early works. The short stories in The Dubliners are beyond brilliant. Has there ever been a short story written in the English language that can surpass "The Dead," which I reread every year (generally during a snowstorm, while drinking a cup of Barry's tea)? But I also know that, in order to fuel his genius, Joyce exploited those who loved him, namely his lover (later wife) Nora Barnicle and his brother John Stanislaus. Someone's gotta worry about buying the toilet paper and boiling the potatoes while genius is at work. 

I just don't let knowing that Joyce was an often nasty exploiter prevent me from loving his work. (Although I will say that I found reading Ulysses a slog, and for the life of me, Finnegan's Wake is just incomprehensible. I just don't understand how someone who doesn't know Ireland and the Irish, didn't grow up Catholic, doesn't have a smattering of Latin, French, German, etc. and a bit-een of the ol' Irish - all of which I possess - can even begin to get Finnegan's. And yet it's even been translated into Japanese and Hungarian. For me, I've read dribs and drabs, and making my through it in its entirety is on my bucket list. I should probably get cracking. (Forgive a Joycean pun: get craicing?))

Anyway, in addition to Joyce, there are two other members of my pantheon of short story writers. One is the Anglo-Irish writer William Trevor. I wasn't wild about his novels, but, man, could he pack a novel into a short story. As could my other short story writer, Alice Munro, at whose writing altar I have long worshipped. Her stories were/are just gems. 

I'm a reader, but I don't typically hang on to books after I've read them. I give them away to fellow readers, or drop them off at the free book cabinet outside of the Walgreen's that years ago replaced a truly wonderful Borders, where I bought an awful lot of books.

But damned if I haven't hung on to my Alice Munro's.

And they're not going anywhere. I'm not one to re-read - other than my annual stationary pilgrimage with "The Dead" - but once in a blue moon, I pull out a volume of Munro and read a few of her brilliant works. And, while I was not especially happy to learn that her personal life left a great deal to be desired, I won't be dumping her - or jettisoning my opinion of her talent.

If you haven't been keeping up with the story behind the stories, Alice Munro was divorced from the man who had fathered her three daughters, and took up with Gerald Fremlin, a man she was with for 40 years (up until his death). Fremlin was a terrible man.

This July, two months after Munro’s death at the age of 92, Andrea Skinner, the youngest of her three daughters, revealed in an essay in The Toronto Star that Fremlin had sexually abused her. In the summer of 1976, Andrea wrote, she went to visit Munro and Fremlin at their home in Ontario. (According to her parents’ custody agreement, she spent the rest of the year in Victoria, British Columbia, with her father, Jim Munro, and his new wife.) One night, while Munro was away, Andrea awoke to discover that Fremlin had climbed into bed next to her. He was rubbing her genitals and pressing her hand over his penis. She was 9 years old.

Fremlin warned Andrea not to tell her mother: The news would kill her, he said. Andrea obeyed... (Source: NY Times)

But on her return to Victoria, she told her stepbrother, and word made it's way back to Andrea's father. And what did Jim Munro do? Concerned that the revelation would kill Alice's new relationship and that he would be blamed for the failure, he told the family to stay mum. When the girls went back to spend the next summer with their mother and Fremlin, Jim Munro told one of Andrea's older sisters to keep an eye on the situation. 

Andrea did what a lot of children who are abused did. She tried to keep her distance from Fremlin, making sure they were never alone. 

...but she had to balance her fear against a competing imperative: to shield her mother from the truth. Munro knew that Andrea loved to swim, so on the occasions when Fremlin offered to drive her to a nearby river, it felt impossible to refuse without arousing suspicion. During one such outing, he propositioned her for sex. Andrea turned bright red as she managed to walk away. On the drive home, Fremlin complained to her about how unsatisfying he found his sex life with Munro. The harassment ended only when Andrea reached puberty.

As a young adult, Andrea - who had suffered numerous psychological and physical ailments due to the abuse - finally told her mother what had happened.  

Alice Munro's reaction was self-pity. Rather than view the abuse of her daughter as a terrible, depraved, criminal act against the child, she saw it through the prism of self, and defined it all as a betrayal of herself. When confronted, Fremlin admitted "the abuse but claimed that it was Andrea who seduced him." Andrea at 9 was recast as Lolita, Fremlin is poor, innocent Humbert Humbert. 

Alice Munro left Fremlin, but only for a couple of weeks. 

The family carried on, with Andrea continuing to visit her mother and Fremlin. Only when her own children were born did things become really clear to Andrea. 

Andrea told her mother she didn’t want Fremlin anywhere near them. Munro objected that visiting without Fremlin would be inconvenient, because she couldn’t drive. “I blew my top,” Andrea told a reporter for The Star. “I started to scream into the phone about having to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze that penis, and at some point I asked her how she could have sex with someone who’d done that to her daughter.” The next day, Munro called her back — not to apologize but to forgive Andrea for how she had spoken to her. It was the end of their relationship. 

But Andrea developed some new strengths. She reported Fremlin to the police - her evidence was the letters Fremlin had sent admitting to the abuse.

When an officer arrived at their house to arrest him, he reported that Munro was apoplectic, denouncing her daughter as a liar. In March 2005, Fremlin, then 80, quietly pleaded guilty to indecent assault and was sentenced to two years’ probation.

Andrea tried for years to get her story out, but academics who studied Alice Munro's work didn't want to hear about it. They were interested in the text, not the person who wrote the text. Even though "violated children, negligent mothers and marriages founded on secrets and lies" figured prominently in the stories she wrote after she learned of Fremlin's abuse of her child. (He was also accused of sexually abusing other children.) 

In Canada, Munro was known as “Saint Alice,” a paragon of virtue and compassion. Now she has come to symbolize something else: maternal dereliction. In the days after news of the abuse broke, social media filled up with photos of Munro’s books discarded in recycling bins. The University of Western Ontario, her alma mater, announced that it was “pausing” its Alice Munro Chair in Creativity so as to “carefully consider Munro’s legacy and her ties to Western.” Writers who once celebrated her work and openly acknowledged its influence on their own began to reconsider their allegiance. “These revelations not only crush Munro’s legacy as a person, but they make the stories that were, in retrospect, so clearly about those unfathomable betrayals basically unreadable as anything but half-realized confessions,” the author Rebecca Makkai, who is herself a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, reacted in The Times. “To me, that makes them unreadable at all.”

I haven't picked up Alice Munro since all this came out. But those who have now see that so much of her work is peopled by characters like Fremlin-the-molester. And characters who are the wife who somehow can't tear herself away from the terrible man she has entwined her life with. The woman remains enthralled, totally dependent on the rotter she's with. 

Will I reread Alice Munro? Probably not anytime soon. Too painful. But at some point, I will want to assure myself that, however f'd up some of her stories are, they are still brilliantly written. I'm not sure if that'll be enough. But it will sure make me leery of hero worship.

On my Christmas tree, I have an ornament of James Joyce which I got on a trip to Ireland a couple of years back. I don't think I'll be getting an Alice Munro ornament anytime soon. And I sure hope that nothing comes out about William Trevor...

No, Madam

It's probably a pretty good rule of corporate thumb to approach HR surveys with more than a bit of wariness and skepticism. Just how anonymous is anonymous? And will employees ever see the results of the survey. (In my experience, probably not.)

Still, I was not prepared for the ardent stupidity of Yes Madam, an Indian startup that provides beauty salon services in the home. 

The company recently surveyed its employees to gauge the level of stress they were experiencing. Then followed up with a social media post that showed a supposedly authentic email supposedly firing the 100 or so workers who said they were stressed. Here's the email (email of sorts, anyway).

"Recently we conducted a survey to understand your feelings about stress at work. Many of you shared your concerns, which we deeply value and respect."

"As a company committed to fostering a healthy and supportive work environment, we have carefully considered the feedback. To ensure no one remains stressed at work, we have made the difficult decision to part ways with employees who indicated significant stress."

"This decision is effective immediately and affected employees will receive further details separately. Thank you for your contributions." (Source: Comic Sands)

As things do happen when haphazardly applied social media posts appear, the wonderful worldwide web was soon abuzz with rumors that the company had fired stressed out employees. 

Not so fast! No one was fired! It was all just a marketing thang promoting a policy that lets employees take "De-Stress Leaves," i.e., what we used to call a Mental Health Day. And the company's employees - one of whom, by the way, posted the supposed email on LinkedIn for all the worldwide webbers to see - were, Yes Madam, all in on it. 

"The social media posts were a planned effort to highlight the serious issue of workplace stress. And to those who shared angry comments or voice strong opinions, we say Thank you. When people speak up, it shows they care - and care is at the heart of our business."

The company claimed the employees in question "weren't fired; they were given a break to rest," "weren't let go; they were encouraged to release their stress," "they weren't laid off; they were offered a chance to relax," and that they "weren't sacked; they were urged to rest and recharge."

Oh.

No mention on whether the stressed out time-off-ers were paid or not for their "chance to relax...rest and recharge." And no word on whether the marketing folks who thought it was a good idea to post the 'hey, you, stressed out survey respondent: you're fired" fake email still have their jobs. Seriously, how dumb is dumb?

In any case, it does sound like the company did identify its stressed out workers. (So much for anonymity.) But at least Yes Madam published something of the results, for all the worldwide web to see. 

Anyway, although I find this colossally stupid marketing, it there's no such thing as bad publicity, then Yes Madam's marketing team succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Certainly, I would never have heard to this company if Yes Madam had been a bit less wacky with their social media. 

Maybe they'll even expand into the US market. Maybe I'd even sign up for a housecall haircut and blow dry.

Need another reason to fear and loathe AI?

I don't really hate AI. Not all of it, anyway. It's great and is going to be greater when it comes to assistive technology that will let an awful lot of folks live their best lives. It will likely deliver on the some of its promise to provide better healthcare. It will absolutely eliminate a lot of drudge work.

But, but, but...However compelling those assistive technology and better healthcare arguments may be, this "death to drudgery" argument is a pretty dubious one. What's the benefit to those whose jobs involve drudge work?

One supposed ansewr is that, once drudgery-free, people will be freed up to unleash their inner whatever. Of course, most of those inner whatevers will eventually be rendered obsolete by AI. 

Then there are the jobs that are higher up the food chain that AI will do away with. White collar/knowledge workers may have largely escaped the job losses that automation and shifts to overseas production resulted in over the last n decades that absolutely hit those who worked in manufacturing. But AI's coming for those jobs big time, too.

So one of my biggest issues with AI madness is that, as we shrug our shoulders and accept it as inevitable, we're not as a society talking about what it is that people are going to do for work. The point the AI gurus keep making seems to be that 'we don't yet know what all those great new jobs are going to be, but they're going to be.'

This may work on the macro level - after all, a lot of those lost manufacturing jobs were replaced by spiffier white collar jobs in financial services etc. - but it really doesn't do all that much for those whose jobs were lost who weren't for whatever reason able to skip into a fancy new job, somewhere outside the Rust Belt, that required them to not just uproot their lives, but completely remake themselves. 

And what if all those presumed not-yet-imagined jobs don't pan out at the macro, let alone the micro, level? Are the trillionaire geniuses going to be happy with forking over a pittance of their trillions to give the rest of us a guaranteed income that's livable onable? Will we end up with a society that's even more alpha-beta-gamma-delta-epsilon than we already have? Blech, blech, a thousand times blech. Make that a trillion times blech.

What else are we ignoring when it comes to the downside of AI? 

Well, there's the environmental impact of the power all those datacenters will be consuming as the AI algos do their AI-ing. I guess we'll be having nuclear powered datacenters. No Three Mile Island worries there... Then there's the potential for some absolutely dreadful use of surveillance technology and big data. You, the guy with the protest sign? You're done for. And hey, you, folks with your profile commit crimes maybe. So you're done for, too. 

Anyway, as if anyone needs something more to worry about, when it comes to AI, there's a ton to add to your fret list. 

And as if I needed yet another reason to at least quasi fear and at least quasi loathe AI, now there's this brohaha with OpenAI.

OpenAI, which was founded nearly a decade ago to make sure that AI would benefit humankind vs. the opposite, has two components: a non-profit research organization and a profit making sub. 

You may recall that, earlier in the year, Elon Musk sued OpenAI, and his OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman, claiming that they were putting profits over their initial mission to make sure AI benefits humanity. Anyone else find the idea of Elon Musk's being such a fanboy of anything benefitting humanity, and not whatever his current narcissistic whim is, laughable? He did drop the suit in June. Guess he had to put more focus into doing whatever he can to make sure that he benefits humanity by getting Trump elected...Talk about blech, blech, a trillion times blech.

OpenAI has been in the news for more than the Musk suit. There's been a lot of back-and-forth about Sam Altman staying the CEO. Etc. 

And more recently they've been in the news thanks to some whistleblowers lodging a complaint with the SEC claiming that "the artificial intelligence company illegally prohibited its employees from warning regulators about the grave risks its technology may pose to humanity, calling for an investigation."

The whistleblowers said OpenAI issued its employees overly restrictive employment, severance and nondisclosure agreements that could have led to penalties against workers who raised concerns about OpenAI to federal regulators...

OpenAI made staff sign employee agreements that required them to waive their federal rights to whistleblower compensation, the letter said. These agreements also required OpenAI staff to get prior consent from the company if they wished to disclose information to federal authorities. OpenAI did not create exemptions in its employee nondisparagement clauses for disclosing securities violations to the SEC.

These overly broad agreements violated long-standing federal laws and regulations meant to protect whistleblowers who wish to reveal damning information about their company anonymously and without fear of retaliation, the letter said. (Source: WaPo)

OpenAI, of course, pushed back, claiming that employees do have the right "to make protected disclosures." And that the organization is increasing their efforts to make sure that their AI models are safe and secure, their technology able to withstand the pressure for the profit-making part of the entity to, well, make profits. 

Bit a spring update to the model behind their big product, ChatGPT, was supposedly rushed out the door in May:

...despite employee concerns that the company “failed” to live up to its own security testing protocol that it said would keep its AI safe from catastrophic harms, like teaching users to build bioweapons or helping hackers develop new kinds of cyberattacks. 

Again, OpenAI acknowledges that, sure, there were pressures. But maintains they didn't cut any safety corners. 

Somehow, I'm not 100% convinced that there's not someone out there using ChatGPT to figure out how to build bioweapons. 

Meanwhile, it's not clear whether the SEC is opening an investigation based on the whistleblowers. Maybe there's an AI out there who can tell me.

Priya B's insights...

By the standards of most folks, Priya Bhambi was having a successful career for herself.

With an undergraduate degreee and an MBA from Northeastern University, she was a VP at Takeda, a well-known pharma, where her role was working on the company's overall technology foundation, with a particular focus on digital transformation. I'm not privy to her salary info, but I'll make a quasi-educated guess here

that her total compensation package was well north of $300K.

Now that figure is not as mind-boggling as it sounds. It costs a lot to live here. 

Still, you can certainly live pretty darn comfortably in Boston on $300K.

But it wasn't enough for Priya and her boyfriend Samuel Montronde, especially when they were hankering to live in in the trendy Boston Seaport District and especially when wedding bells were starting to chime. 

Whatever the motivation, the duo wanted to live much larger than they could on a meager $300K (and whatever Montronde was bringing in). 

So they cooked up a fake consulting company to do some fake consulting work - approved by Bhambi, un-performed by Montronde - to the tune of $2.3M, which was:

...used the fraudulently obtained funds to purchase a Mercedes-Benz Model E; purchase a diamond engagement ring; make a down payment on a $1.875 million condominium in Boston’s Seaport neighborhood; and place a deposit on a wedding venue. (Source: US DOJ) 

Bhambi has now pleaded guilty. Sentencing to follow. (She's facing up to twenty years and a hefty fine...) Plus:

In connection with the charges, the Court issued seizure warrants for the Mercedes, over $1 million in fraud proceeds from accounts the defendants controlled, $49,985 from the wedding venue deposit and issued a restraining order to preserve the Seaport condominium for forfeiture.

Recently, when the news of her plea deal came out, after shaking my head at wonderment about what a freaking fool she is, I went to the Google to see if I could find a bit more info on Priya Bhambi. 

Among the goodies I came across was an article by Bhambi published on a LinkedIn site last summer - months after she was indicted - in which she blathered on about how "Digital Transformation is Fostering Workplace Diversity." Great if that's the case,  but EmployabilityLife might want to stop taking advice from Priya Bhambi. 

For example: she writes about how those hoping for a more inclusive and diverse workplace should focus on monitoring and metrics. Focusing on monitoring and metrics is likely what tripped up Bhambi and her co-conspirator. I mean, while they managed to get away with their theft for a while, somewhere it looks like there were some controls at Takeda that kicked in. Some monitoring. Some metrics.

And Bhambi was quite a bit up on "remote and flexible work arrangements... granting personnel more freedom over where, when, and how they work, resulting in greater job satisfaction and better mental health." Wonder if it was those remote and flexible work arrangements that enabled Bhambi to get away with their scam for a while. And stealing a couple of million bucks no doubt gave her "greater job satisfaction" but probably not, in the long run, "better mental health."

And amazingly Priya Bhambi's personal/professional website is still up, where we learn that:

Priya Bhambi is a highly accomplished executive in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry...[who] has consistently achieved remarkable results and contributed to organizational growth.

She goes on to tout her "innovative mindset" - I'll give her that - and her ongoing ability to "achieve cost savings." Ummmm....Then there's the fact that she's "deeply committed to giving back to the community." You don't say. (One hand giveth, one hand taketh away.)

Oh, and she's "a passionate baker" who's also "passionate about dance," particularly Bhangra - a really fun-looking form of Indian dance, which I'm guessing would have factored into the dream wedding she was planning on throwing for herself.

Reading about Priya Bhambi, she comes across as highly intelligent, highly accomplished, interesting, driven, good. WTF went wrong? 

I really don't get embezzlement. Even if people think it's just okie dokie to put their hand in their company's till right on up to the elbow, don't they worry that they'll get caught???

What a moron, what a fool, what a fraud...(What a disgrace to her family...)

Pretty insightful when it comes to the digital technology world. Wonder if she's equally insightful when it comes to thinking about what motivated her to toss her life away.

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Prior Priya Pinkslip.