What a coincidence that these horseshit AI stories are are coming thick the same day OpenAI's IPO is filed...
this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2026
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Uhhh no? This is machine vision not generative and not at all related to OpenAI….
Do you think 90% of people understand or care what the difference is? They see "AI" and think it's synonymous with any of the big LLM providers. The point of PR pieces is to push public opinion in a certain direction regardless of the facts.
Paranoia and Ignorance are a dangerous combo
Why was this guy's house full of mosquitos?
Don't ask questions you are not sure you want to know the answers to.
So are these for sale and just wear mirrored sunglasses. 😎
This is neat but also stupid. If a laser has enough power to fry a mosquito, it can also fry your retina.
Yes, I’m aware he added a safety system. That’s one layer of Swiss cheese in the safety system. It’ll work flawlessly until it doesn’t. How are potential reflections handled?
Meanwhile, God who deliberately gave us a spare eye for this exact reason
~~God~~Odin
Do not look at laser with remaining eye...
Send two to: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Having lived in Florida, it's worth the risk.
Could run it similar to those disinfecting light bulbs (only when the room is not occupied)
How do you ensure that the room is empty, 100% of the time? Those disinfecting light bulbs don't have the same level of risk as this laser system.
Perhaps a second laser defense system can be installed to ensure people stay out of the original room?
I like the way you think. I think more of life's second-order problems should be solved with blinding lasers.
But if the laser is blind, how will it hit the mosquitoes?
Have it spray tear gas first. But wait, then the laser won't be able to penetrate the cloud. Maybe we could add a quadcopter drone to clear a path to the mosquito for the laser to fire. But then we'll need a system so the drone doesn't run into a human choking on tear gas, and the drone can't see because of the limited visibility, could we use infrared sensors I wonder? /s
This is a stupid system. I love engineers, but they tend to uh... overengineer things like this.
I think we're overthinking this a bit. I have one simple question. Hear me out. Can a mosquito survive a nuclear blast? I'll let you sit with that a minute.
"Nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure" has always been my policy for spiders, mosquitoes and ticks, so I'm looking forward to World War 3 going nuclear. I'm just a bit concerned that the "from orbit" part implies I'm supposed to be up there when it happens, and while I understand the basic mechanics of how to get there, I'm not sure how I'm going to handle the logistics after that point.
Or set fire to delicate fabrics, wallpaper, or other potentially flammable surfaces a mosquito might be near or on.
I don't think a reflection would be coherent enough to carry enough energy to cause damage.
Personally, I'd just wear laser goggles while the system was operating.
It doesn't need to be coherent, just needs enough joule. The prior commenter is right, if it can fry a mosquito even a reflection will damage eyes
I will 100% kickstarter this.
I'd just stick screens on one's windows and maybe use DEET if you're really at the height of mosquito season in a bad area.
Like, this has a DSLR camera, a GPU constantly churning away, a laser...
Oh you sweet summer child.
Getting DEET at a high enough concentration to be effective is difficult as hell, Zero, countem fuckin zero OTC bugsprays offer it higher than 15 percent, and 20-25 percent is where it actually starts to matter. Further, that's only a deterrent, and I have been in places where the swarm is so thick you kill bunches just by clapping.
We're not even getting into the midges, which are small enough to breeze through mosquito netting
I was actually thinking about it for population control because it could be running almost constantly. And energy wise, I'm not really concerned. I'm on solar+batteries, and anything I can do to prevent juice going to HECO is worth it to me.
If you want population control, just get some buckets and put some water and a mosquito dunk in them. The mosquitos will be attracted to the stagnant water but all the eggs will get eaten by bacteria.
This is also how mosquito magnets work. Release CO~2~ and an attractant, catch the fuckers in a bag, and they dessicate. Unfortunately, it doesn't need lasers and can't shoot your eye out. I'm sure it's also more expensive, I mean profitable.
TIL about mosquito dunks
I'm highly skeptical of this thing's ability to detect and locate a mosquito in 3d space over any kind of range using pictures of mosquitos on his arm as a training set.
Comes out of the first live test run with a shit ton of laser burns on his arm.
"I think I've pinpointed the problem."
AI: "Great news! I've found the mosquito! I'll shoot it with the laser now."
Inventor: "Oww! That was my arm!"
AI: "You're absolutely right! My mistake. Let me scan again... Okay I've definitely identified the mosquito this time! Shooting laser now..."
Inventor: "DAMN IT, THAT'S THE EXACT SAME ARM, AGAIN!"
Depending only on a second vision system as a safety interlock seems... foolhardy, to say the least. A laser strong enough to instantly fry a mosquito is likely also strong enough to instantly make you blind.
This idea was tried previously. If done right, it doesn't take much energy to damage a mosquito's wings.
Secondly, a laser is only a real issue for vision if the eye focuses on it. With a continuous beam, it would be instinctive, making it dangerous. If the pulse is short enough however, the eye won't have time to focus and so the power will be safely spread out, even inside the eyeball.
Per a quick search, 500mW is the threshold where a laser can start doing damage faster than your blink reflex and reflections are also dangerous (IIRC this is the bottom end of class 4 lasers). Most of the projects I'm finding online that are similar to this one are around 1W, so double the threshold.
That's not necessarily the "instantly blinding" territory I suggested, but even a short exposure will cause damage.
hahaha... I like that 😃
This is not novel. This has been done 100x in the past. It doesn't work.
But this time there's AI involved... so we can also boil the oceans!
I'd boil an ocean to exterminate all mosquitoes
There's AI and then there's AI. Unless you think the system is talking the mozzies to death, get a grip.
You think he DIDN'T use a multimodal ML model to feed it images plus text prompts?
It worked insofar as it killed all the mosquitoes. Whether it'll end up burning his house down in the long run is still up for debate.