Deloitte Australia will refund part of a $440,000 AUD government contract after admitting it used GPT-4o to produce portions of a welfare compliance report riddled with fabricated citations, Ars Technica’s Kyle Orland reported. The “Targeted Compliance Framework Assurance Review,” commissioned by the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, included false references to legal scholars and even a fabricated judicial quote. After Sydney University’s Chris Rudge and Lisa Burton Crawford flagged the anomalies, Deloitte quietly updated the 273-page report to acknowledge use of a “generative AI large language model (Azure OpenAI GPT-4o) based tool chain.” While Deloitte claims only “a small number of corrections,” Rudge argued that “you cannot trust the recommendations when the very foundation of the report is built on a flawed, originally undisclosed, and non-expert methodology.” The case brings to light the rising accountability risks of AI-assisted workforces.
-EDITOR·OP_DAILY SHARE TO X
Late September, Dave Chappelle opened the Riyadh Comedy Festival by joking it was “easier to talk” in Saudi Arabia than in the U.S., a line that landed as fifty top comedians, from Kevin Hart to Bill Burr, performed under censorship clauses banning political or religious jokes. As John Jamesen Gould writes, the event is less about entertainment than legitimacy: part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030, an effort to rebrand Saudi Arabia through sports, arts, and celebrity engagement. Offers reportedly reached $1.6 million per set, and some comedians balked or were cut; Tim Dillon, for instance, after joking about slavery. Critics like David Cross called it “blood money,” while Gould frames the festival as a case study in “soft power through normalization,” where autocracies buy credibility from icons once known for “speaking truth to power,” until the price is right.
-EDITOR·OP_DAILY SHARE TO X
At Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, one artifact is still financially alive: a 1648 Dutch water bond that continues to pay annual interest. Issued by the Hoogheemraadschap Lekdijk Bovendams to fund dike repairs, the goatskin document promised 5% interest in perpetuity, later reduced to 2.5%. Timothy Young, curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts, recently collected 12 years of back interest worth €136.20 from Stichtse Rijnlanden, the bond’s successor authority. “Here we have something very old and constant,” Young told Yale News, calling it a teaching tool in an era of financial flux. Acquired in 2003, the bond exemplifies the Netherlands’ early financial sophistication and the stability of its semi-autonomous water boards. As finance scholar Geert Rouwenhorst noted, it’s “an extremely early example of a security that was issued without maturity and still pays interest,” a living relic of a Golden Age.
-EDITOR·OP_DAILY SHARE TO X
Opendoor CEO Kaz Nejatian has hinted that the digital real estate platform could soon enable home purchases using Bitcoin. Responding to a user on X, Nejatian wrote, “We will. Just need to prioritize it,” sparking speculation that the San Francisco–based firm may integrate digital asset payments into its home-buying system. As Micah Zimmerman reports, Opendoor’s model, where the company purchases and resells homes itself, could allow Bitcoin payments to be converted internally into fiat, simplifying compliance and tax issues. The move would place Opendoor alongside firms like Christie’s International Real Estate, which launched a crypto division in California, and Grupo Murano, which has begun shifting treasury assets into Bitcoin. With the Federal Housing Finance Agency recently directing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to recognize regulated crypto holdings in mortgage assessments, the digital asset industry may be edging closer to mainstream real estate.
-EDITOR·OP_DAILY SHARE TO X
