This article obviously contains ALL THE THUNDERBOLTS* SPOILERS! I don’t know it for a fact, but I just feel like Alexi Andreovitch Shostakov—aka David Harbour’s lovable Red Guardian—is a New Coke kind of guy. Like a lot of blokes of a certain age, this Super Santa in too-tight tights has an affinity for all things 1980s from his youth. He’s a walking throwback to the Soviet Union’s final glory days, and an era where ironically many such comrades romanticized American capitalist curios like this first New Coke commercial from McDonald’s; an ad that trumpeted, “Look who’s got the new taste of Coke, Big Mac has it waiting for you / with two all-beef patties… Coca-Cola is making its new debut!” New Coke of course was a disastrous folly of marketing and good taste. And based on just the post-credit scenes of Thunderbolts*, it’s hard to imagine the New Avengers—or the new “New Avengerz” as Alexi insists they should be called—not going the same way into ignominy. Nonetheless, the Red Guardian is sure as hell going to enjoy the ride, which both post-credit scenes explain with good humor, even as they lead us directly into what is sure to be a cataclysmic Avengers: Doomsday… Post-Credits Scene 1: Alexi’s Day Off Indeed, the big and amusing twist of Thunderbolts’ final moment before the credits roll explains the asterisk in the title. As many speculated, the Thunderbolts is a working title for a team which in the final seconds Valentina Allegra de Fontaine rechristens as “the New Avengers!” It’s a moment almost as good as the mic drop of Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark telling the world he is Iron Man 17 years ago. But as with all things New Avengers, it’s never quite as good, right down to them earning the title because a sleazy spy master/politician used this gimmick to save her own bacon after unleashing on the world a deranged demigod who almost wiped out the entire island of Manhattan in a psychic construct of depression. In fact, that these “New Avengers” go along with Valentina belies how unsuited they might be at playing the Avengers. Nonetheless, they are not “Dark Avengers” like the Thunderbolts of the comics. They are screw-ups and also-rans who just wanna be viewed as contenders. Hence the first post-credits scene wherein Alexi enjoys some down time as an Avenger. After a good gag at the expense of print and especially online journalists seeking to find clickable “hot takes” and “angles” about a news story during the credits —think the iconic Rolling Stone covers honoring Queen being recreated with the New Avengers alongside internet headlines like “The ‘Huh’ Heard Around the World”—we catch up with Alexi and his much dreamed about “Wheaties box” fame and fortune. The Thunderbolts poster we’ve seen as a punchline with the team on a breakfast cereal box meant for champions comes to fruition in-universe, but there the box reads The New Avengers here! Alexi, Yelena (Florence Pugh), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), and all the rest pose like superheroes to help sell processed grain. And Alexi is pleased as punch while attempting to recommend it to some unsuspecting suburban mom at the grocery store. Alexi leans over her shoulder as she looks at the box, waiting for her to go “oh my God, are you an Avenger?!” But it never happens. Instead she gets away from the weird Russian Gandalf as fast as possible, throwing the Wheaties away at the end of the aisle. Still, Alexi can bask in an ‘80s jam like “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.” It’s a good gag, but it does not speak well of the New Avengers’ longevity as a super-team with that title. Speaking of which… Post-Credits Scene 2: Warring Avengers and a Fantastic Four Cliffhanger The status quo of the MCU post-New Avengers reveal is further teased in the second and final post-credits sequence set in the now de Fontaine-owned Avengers Tower. There all of our lovable miscreants, including Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) and even the de-powered and amnesiac-again Bob (Lewis Pullman) hang out. That they keep Bob around for moral support despite the fact that he is a Category 5 level threat both speaks to the natural goodness of these knuckleheads, as well as perhaps their lack of foresight. It might also be a reason we learn from Yelena that Anthony Mackie’s off-screen Sam Wilson, aka the New Captain America, is refusing to acknowledge them as the New Avengers. Bucky even reveals he had a conversation with his old pal about it and it went “poorly.” Uh-oh. Furthermore, Yelena bemoans that the New Avengers are being kept out of the loop about something going on in space, making her have even greater imposter syndrome. So Alexi bringing in sure-to-be-real-soon “New Avengerz” swag (so as to avoid the threat of a copyright lawsuit from Sam Wilson) does not help matters. Although, between us, I gotta say it’s not a great look for Sam to be depicted as such a sourpuss as to threaten legal action against his old pal Bucky over a brand name… especially since Sam, ahem, isn’t the first guy to be called Captain America. Be that as it may, they all have bigger fish to fry when they realize that something in space has escaped what is described as an inter-dimensional rift: and it looks a hell of a lot like a spaceship with the Fantastic Four logo imprinted on its side! Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! Yep, the very last stinger reveals the Fantastic Four from July’s upcoming The Fantastic Four: First Steps is entering Earth-616’s aerospace, and implicitly that other corners of the MCU, including presumably Sam’s competing Avengers roster, knew about it before the New Avengers did. This opens all sorts of cans of worms going into Avengers: Doomsday next year. What happened to the 1960s retro-futuristic Earth that July’s Fantastic Four is set in that would lead those versions of Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Ben to come speeding into the Sacred Timeline’s reality? Furthermore, what does it mean that they’re going to arrive on an earth with divided Avengers loyalties? If we had to speculate for a second, we suspect that this moment will probably occur at a midpoint in Doomsday, long after Sam Wilson and whoever else is on his Avengers team (we’d guess that includes at least Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man, Letitia Wright’s Black Panther, and Chris Hemsworth’s Thor) know about the impending reality-bending threat of Doom, Galactus, and whoever else. And when the New Avengers come back into the picture, it will be right at the moment when worlds collide. … For the first time in a long while, one of these post-credits scenes really seems to matter and we are genuinely excited about what might be coming next.

This is Rumor Replay, a weekly column at 9to5Mac offering a quick rundown of the most recent Apple product rumors, with analysis and commentary. Today: iPhone 17 and 18 AI upgrades, ‘Apple Vision Air’ release timing, and iOS 18.5’s upcoming hidden features. Here are this week’s Apple rumors. iPhone 17 and 18 memory upgrades for AI Weibo leaker Digital Chat Station posted a pair of updates this week related to Apple’s next two iPhone cycles. He writes that the full iPhone 17 line will get 12GB of RAM, an upgrade previously thought exclusive to the Pro models. This is believed to be Apple Intelligence-related. Additionally, next year’s iPhone 18 series will reportedly use a new LPDDR5X technology for its memory, which would bring speed increases, greater reliability, and reduced power consumption. My takeaways Memory upgrades aren’t at all a surprise for Apple’s future iPhones. We’ve seen the company make similar moves across other products, including the lower-cost iPhone 16e and base iPhone 16. I’m especially eager to see what kind of Apple Intelligence upgrades are coming in iOS 19 and 20 that will justify beefing up the iPhone’s RAM. Apple Vision Air could launch this year Recently several leaks pointed to Apple developing a new ‘Vision Air’ product as a lighter, cheaper follow-up to the Vision Pro. This week, Mark Gurman affirmed Apple’s ongoing work on the device, and shared new details around timing: he expects it to launch “between the end of this year and the first half of 2026.” My takeaways It’s wild to me that Gurman thinks Vision Air could launch this year, when until recently he seemed to paint Apple’s Vision products team as being aimless and unsure which product to build next. I also have a hard time believing the product could be ready so soon and solve two of Vision Pro’s biggest problems: weight and price. Perhaps prior reporting on future Vision products has been off the mark, and Apple has been quietly preparing the Vision Air for a while now. iOS 18.5 upcoming features iOS 18.5 is getting close to a public launch, and so far new features have remained very hard to find in the betas. However, based on reporting from Mark Gurman and Aaron Perris, we may see several additions arrive just in time for the launch: Apple Intelligence support in China New Pride wallpapers and possibly some other new wallpapers My takeaways Apple needs something to headline the iOS 18.5 release notes when the update ships, and these additions could be solid candidates. As much as I’d love to see a bigger crop of new features, with iOS 19 right around the corner, it’s no surprise that we’re in store for a smaller release with 18.5. What are your takeaways from this week’s Apple rumors? Let us know in the comments. Best iPhone accessories Add 9to5Mac to your Google News feed.  FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.You’re reading 9to5Mac — experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Don’t know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel

The discrepancy between expectations and reality faced by young college graduates entering the workforce has hit an all-time low in the United States, with figures published by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics showing that new grads are struggling to find jobs.As The Atlantic reports, the cause behind the shift is likely a combination of several factors — including the emergence of generative AI, which it argues has already begun to slowly replace young workers with algorithms."When you think from first principles about what generative AI can do, and what jobs it can replace, it’s the kind of things that young college grads have done" in office jobs, Harvard economist David Deming told the magazine. "They read and synthesize information and data. They produce reports and presentations."But it's a muddy picture, with the drop in hiring impossible to pin on generative AI alone. Complicating matters considerably is president Donald Trump's chaotic approach to policy, with experts warning that America is on the verge of stagflation, a dangerous condition in which inflation rises rapidly while the job market gets weaker, a state the country hasn't faced in decades.Volatility in the stock market, in large part the result of Trump's trade war, has shocked the economy, making future job prospects for college graduates even more uncertain.But AI is also an undeniable factor. Even before Trump took office, tech giants were implementing mass layoffs while making huge investments in AI tech. Global management consulting firm McKinsey projects that by 2030, 30 percent of current US jobs could be automated. Goldman Sachs said that number could rise to 50 percent by 2045.But many remain skeptical of an impending job wipeout facilitated by AI. As The Atlantic points out, data supporting these hypotheses remains elusive.And exactly how many humans can be replaced by AI is also fuzzy, as is the quality of AI's work. Case in point, a recent experiment by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University staffed a fake software company entirely with AI agents, which ended in utter chaos.Experts have also argued that the abilities of the tech could soon plateau, despite AI companies pouring tens of billions of dollars into the expansion of infrastructure to scale up operations."You cannot just assume that more data and more compute means smarter AI," said Meta's chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, at an event over the weekend.In other words, some roles are probably vulnerable, but AI may struggle to fill many others — a glint of hope for old-fashioned humans in an otherwise rapidly deteriorating labor market.Apart from generative AI, worsening conditions could also be a sign that the economy has yet to fully recover from the devastation the COVID-19 pandemic brought on and that a college degree simply doesn't hold the same competitive advantage anymore than it did 15 years ago, per The Atlantic.But as the tech industry continues to pour astronomical amounts of money into the development of AI, major shifts in the job market are already occurring, whether the tech is directly replacing workers or not."You really don’t need to speculate about AI’s impact on the labor market," Deming told the Harvard Gazette in February. "Investment in AI is already changing the distribution of jobs in the economy."Share This Article

May 01, 2025Ravie LakshmananArtificial Intelligence / Disinformation Artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic has revealed that unknown threat actors leveraged its Claude chatbot for an "influence-as-a-service" operation to engage with authentic accounts across Facebook and X. The sophisticated activity, branded as financially-motivated, is said to have used its AI tool to orchestrate 100 distinct persons on the two social media platforms, creating a network of "politically-aligned accounts" that engaged with "10s of thousands" of authentic accounts. The now-disrupted operation, Anthropic researchers said, prioritized persistence and longevity over vitality and sought to amplify moderate political perspectives that supported or undermined European, Iranian, the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), and Kenyan interests. These included promoting the U.A.E. as a superior business environment while being critical of European regulatory frameworks, focusing on energy security narratives for European audiences, and cultural identity narratives for Iranian audiences. The efforts also pushed narratives supporting Albanian figures and criticizing opposition figures in an unspecified European country, as well as advocated development initiatives and political figures in Kenya. These influence operations are consistent with state-affiliated campaigns, although exactly who was behind them remains unknown, it added. "What is especially novel is that this operation used Claude not just for content generation, but also to decide when social media bot accounts would comment, like, or re-share posts from authentic social media users," the company noted. "Claude was used as an orchestrator deciding what actions social media bot accounts should take based on politically motivated personas." The use of Claude as a tactical engagement decision-maker notwithstanding, the chatbot has been used to generate appropriate politically-aligned responses in the persona's voice and native language, and create prompts for two popular image-generation tools. The operation is believed to be the work of a commercial service that caters to different clients across various countries. At least four distinct campaigns have been identified using this programmatic framework. "The operation implemented a highly structured JSON-based approach to persona management, allowing it to maintain continuity across platforms and establish consistent engagement patterns mimicking authentic human behavior," researchers Ken Lebedev, Alex Moix, and Jacob Klein said. "By using this programmatic framework, operators could efficiently standardize and scale their efforts and enable systematic tracking and updating of persona attributes, engagement history, and narrative themes across multiple accounts simultaneously." Another interesting aspect of the campaign was that it "strategically" instructed the automated accounts to respond with humor and sarcasm to accusations from other accounts that they may be bots. Anthropic said the operation highlights the need for new frameworks to evaluate influence operations revolving around relationship building and community integration. It also warned that similar malicious activities could become common in the years to come as AI lowers the barrier further to conduct influence campaigns. Elsewhere, the company noted that it banned a sophisticated threat actor using its models to scrape leaked passwords and usernames associated with security cameras and devise methods to brute-force internet-facing targets using the stolen credentials. The threat actor further employed Claude to process posts from information stealer logs posted on Telegram, create scripts to scrape target URLs from websites, and improve their own systems to better search functionality. Two other cases of misuse spotted by Anthropic in March 2025 are listed below - A recruitment fraud campaign that leveraged Claude to enhance the content of scams targeting job seekers in Eastern European countries A novice actor that leveraged Claude to enhance their technical capabilities to develop advanced malware beyond their skill level with capabilities to scan the dark web and generate undetectable malicious payloads that can evade security control and maintain long-term persistent access to compromised systems "This case illustrates how AI can potentially flatten the learning curve for malicious actors, allowing individuals with limited technical knowledge to develop sophisticated tools and potentially accelerate their progression from low-level activities to more serious cybercriminal endeavors," Anthropic said. Found this article interesting? Follow us on Twitter  and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post. SHARE    

We’re NOT looking for someone to just “follow instructions.”We need a sharp, experienced marketing professional who sees the full picture, creates a plan, and executes with precision. We seek a digital marketing expert who can manage all aspects of our marketing, including campaign development, offer optimization, landing page creation, funnel building, and marketing automations.You’ll work directly with the founders of a growing healthcare education business, helping build and scale both our internal marketing operations and client‑facing marketing & automations.You’ll own and manage the marketing execution along the automations that make it scalable. If you love optimizing funnels and building the backend that powers them—this is the perfect role for you.Own & optimize the entire funnel: landing pages, lead magnets, email sequences, nurture flows, upsells, and cross‑sells.Audit & diagnose workflows: spot friction points, dropped leads, missed opportunities—then ship high‑leverage fixes.Plan & execute promotions & campaigns: repurpose long‑form content into YouTube, blog, social, email, and newsletter assets.Build & maintain automations end‑to‑end: Zapier,Make.com, or n8n connecting GoHighLevel, ActiveCampaign, Typeform, Stripe, Thinkific, Go HighLevel, ClickFunnels and more.Architect & integrate AI tools: Like AI copywriters, and AI assistants, OpenAI, ElevenLabs, HeyGen, Claude and more via built-in integratsions, HTTP requests, webhooks, and MCP servers.CRM, Funnels, Websites: GoHighLevel, ActiveCampaign, ClickFunnels, Wix, WordPressAutomation Platforms: Zapier, Make.com , n8nAnalytics & Attribution: Hyros, Google Analytics 4, Google Tag Manager, Pixels and othersProject & Content: Asana, Slack, Canva, Loom, Google Drive, AI writing tools, ChatGPT, Claude, DeepSeek ectCourse & Checkout: Thinkific, Stripe, PayPal, GoHighLevelExperienced marketer and marketing automations implementor (5+ yrs): You own strategy and execution of marketing & automation projectsResults Focused: You are able to assess, prioritize, and execute. You have a track record of of successfully building and managing marketing for information product businesses.Marketer at heart: You understand funnels, buyer psychology, conversions, and email marketing—and how automation multiplies impact.Full‑stack marketer: Equally comfortable setting up a webhook, mapping a campaign, or editing a Canva visual.Strategic executor: You figure things out, document them, and communicate clearly—no hand‑holding required.Self‑starter: You solve problems before they’re noticed and you own outcomes & deadlines.Fluent English speaker with strong written & verbal communication skillsReliable high‑speed internet connection (wired preferred, > 50 Mbps)Availability to work flexibly between 7 AM – 6 PM ESTModern high speed computer and webcam,Willingness to sign an NDA and handle sensitive business dataYou’re a high‑level contributor, not a task‑taker. We hire you to think, not just tick boxes.We respect your time. You’ll be evaluated and compensated on outcomes, not just hours you've clocked.Transparent feedback. No ghosting, vague comments, or scope creep.Big vision. Room to grow into senior leadership with profit-share opportunities.Competitive contractor compensation with bonusesPerformance bonuses tied to conversion gains, hours saved, and campaign ROIFlexible time off and zero micromanagementDirect collaboration with the foundersOpportunity to help us build and market a new AI automation agency from the ground upLearning stipend for courses & tools to keep you sharp

A previously unreported document distributed by senior US State Department official Darren Beattie reveals a sweeping effort to uncover all communications between the staff of a small government office focused on online disinformation and a lengthy list of public and private figures—many of whom are longtime targets of the political right.  The document, originally shared in person with roughly a dozen State Department employees in early March, requested staff emails and other records with or about a host of individuals and organizations that track or write about foreign disinformation—including Atlantic journalist Anne Applebaum, former US cybersecurity official Christopher Krebs, and the Stanford Internet Observatory—or have criticized President Donald Trump and his allies, such as the conservative anti-Trump commentator Bill Kristol.  The document also seeks all staff communications that merely reference Trump or people in his orbit, like Alex Jones, Glenn Greenwald, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In addition, it directs a search of communications for a long list of keywords, including “Pepe the Frog,” “incel,” “q-anon,” “Black Lives Matter,” “great replacement theory,” “far-right,” and “infodemic.” For several people who received or saw the document, the broad requests for unredacted information felt like a “witch hunt,” one official says—one that could put the privacy and security of numerous individuals and organizations at risk.  Beattie, whom Trump appointed in February to be the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy, told State Department officials that his goal in seeking these records was a “Twitter files”-like release of internal State Department documents “to rebuild trust with the American public,” according to a State Department employee who heard the remarks. (Beattie was referring to the internal Twitter documents that were released after Elon Musk bought the platform, in an attempt to prove that the company had previously silenced conservatives. While the effort provided more detail on the challenges and mistakes Twitter had already admitted to, it failed to produce a smoking gun.) “What would be the innocent reason for doing that?” Bill Kristol The document, dated March 11, 2025, focuses specifically on records and communications from the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI) Hub, a small office in the State Department’s Office of Public Diplomacy that tracked and countered foreign disinformation campaigns; it was created after the Global Engagement Center (GEC), which had the same mission, shut down at the end of 2024. MIT Technology Review broke the news earlier this month that R/FIMI would be shuttered.  Some R/FIMI staff were at the meeting where the document was initially shared, as were State Department lawyers and staff from the department’s Bureau of Administration, who are responsible for conducting searches to fulfill public records requests.  Also included among the nearly 60 individuals and organizations caught up in Beattie’s information dragnet are Bill Gates; the open-source journalism outlet Bellingcat; former FBI special agent Clint Watts; Nancy Faeser, the German interior minister; Daniel Fried, a career State Department official and former US ambassador to Poland; Renée DiResta, an expert in online disinformation who led research at Stanford Internet Observatory; and Nina Jankowicz, a disinformation researcher who briefly led the Disinformation Governance Board at the US Department of Homeland Security. Have more information on this story or a tip for something else that we should report? Using a non-work device, reach the reporter on Signal at eileenguo.15 or tips@technologyreview.com. When told of their inclusion in the records request, multiple people expressed alarm that such a list exists at all in an American institution. “When I was in government I’d never done anything like that,” Kristol, a former chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle, says. “What would be the innocent reason for doing that?” Fried echoes this sentiment. “I spent 40 years in the State Department, and you didn’t collect names or demand email records,” says Fried. “I’ve never heard of such a thing”—at least not in the American context, he clarifies. It did remind him of Eastern European “Communist Party minder[s] watching over the untrusted bureaucracy.”  He adds: “It also approaches the compilation of an enemies list.”  Targeting the “censorship industrial complex” Both GEC and R/FIMI, its pared-down successor office, focused on tracking and countering foreign disinformation efforts from Russia, China, and Iran, among others, but GEC was frequently accused—and was even sued—by conservative critics who claimed that it enabled censorship of conservative Americans’ views. A judge threw out one of those claims against GEC in 2022 (while finding that other parts of the Biden administration did exert undue pressure on tech platforms).  Beattie has also personally promoted these views. Before joining the State Department, he started Revolver News, a website that espouses far-right talking points that often gain traction in certain conservative circles. Among the ideas promoted in Revolver News is that GEC was part of a “censorship industrial complex” aimed at suppressing American conservative voices, even though GEC’s mission was foreign disinformation. This idea has taken hold more broadly; the House Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing titled the “Censorship-Industrial Complex: The Need for First Amendment Safeguards at the State Department,” on April 1 focused on GEC.  Most people on the list appear to have focused at some point on tracking or challenging disinformation broadly, or on countering specific false claims, including those related to the 2020 election. A few of the individuals appear primarily to be critics of Trump, Beattie, or others in the right-wing media ecosystem. Many have been the subject of Trump’s public grievances for years. (Trump called Krebs, for instance, a “significant bad-faith actor” in an executive order targeting him earlier this month.)    Beattie specifically asked for “all documents, emails, correspondence, or other records of communications amongst/between employees, contractors, subcontractors or consultants at the GEC or R/FIMI” since 2017 with all the named individuals, as well as communications that merely referenced them. He sought communications that referenced any of the listed organizations.   Finally, he sought a list of additional unredacted agency records—including all GEC grants and contracts, as well as subgrants, which are particularly sensitive due to the risks of retaliation to subgrantees, who often work in local journalism, fact-checking, or pro-democracy organizations under repressive regimes. It also asked for “all documents mentioning” the Election Integrity Partnership, a research collaboration between academics and tech companies that has been a target of right-wing criticism.  Several State Department staffers call the records requests “unusual” and “improper” in their scope. MIT Technology Review spoke to three people who had personally seen the document, as well as two others who were aware of it; we agreed to allow them to speak anonymously due to their fears of retaliation.  While they acknowledge that previous political appointees have, on occasion, made information requests through the records management system, Beattie’s request was something wholly different.  Never had “an incoming political appointee” sought to “search through seven years’ worth of all staff emails to see whether anything negative had been said about his friends,” says one staffer.  Another staffer calls it a “pet project” for Beattie.  Selective transparency Beattie delivered the request, which he framed as a “transparency” initiative, to the State Department officials in a conference room at its Washington, D.C., headquarters on a Tuesday afternoon in early March, in the form of an 11-page packet titled, “SO [Senior Official] Beattie Inquiry for GEC/R/FIMI Records.” The documents were printed out, rather than emailed. Labeled “sensitive but unclassified,” the document lays out Beattie’s requests in 12 separate, but sometimes repetitive, bullet points. In total, he sought communications about 16 organizations, Notably, this includes several journalists: In addition to Bellingcat and Applebaum, the document also asks for communications with NBC News senior reporter Brandy Zadrozny.  Press-freedom advocates expressed alarm about the inclusion of journalists on the list, as well as the possibility of their communications being released to the public, which goes “considerably well beyond the scope of what … leak investigations in the past have typically focused on,” says Grayson Clary, a staff attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Rather, the effort seems like “a tactic designed to … make it much harder for journalists to strike up those source relationships in the first instance.” Beattie also requested a search for communications that mentioned Trump and more than a dozen other prominent right-leaning figures. In addition to Jones, Greenwald, and “RFK Jr.,” the list includes “Don Jr.,” Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, Charlie Kirk, Marine Le Pen, “Bolsonaro” (which could cover either Jair Bolsonaro, the former Brazilian president, or his son Eduardo, who is seeking political asylum in the US), and Beattie himself. It also asked for a search for 32 right-wing buzzwords related to abortion, immigration, election denial, and January 6, suggesting a determined effort to find State Department staff who even just discussed such matters.  (Staffers say they doubt that Beattie will find much, unless, one says, it’s “previous [FOIA] queries from people like Beattie” or discussions about “some Russian or PRC [Chinese] narrative that includes some of this stuff.”) Multiple sources say State Department employees raised alarms internally about the records requests. They worried about the sensitivity and impropriety of the broad scope of the information requested, particularly because records would be unredacted, as well as about how the search would be conducted: through the eRecords file management system, which makes it easy for administrative staff to search through and retrieve State Department employees’ emails, typically in response to FOIA requests.  This felt, they say, like a powerful misuse of the public records system—or as Jankowicz, the disinformation researcher and former DHS official, put it, “weaponizing the access [Beattie] has to internal communications in order to upend people’s lives.” “It stank to high heaven,” one staffer says. “This could be used for retaliation. This could be used for any kind of improper purposes, and our oversight committees should be informed of this.” Another employee expressed concerns about the request for information on the agency’s subgrantees—who were often on the ground in repressive countries and whose information was closely guarded and not shared digitally, unlike the public lists of contractors and grantees typically available on websites like Grants.gov or USAspending.gov. “Making it known that [they] took money from the United States would put a target on them,” this individual explains. “We kept that information very secure. We wouldn’t even email subgrant names back and forth.” Several Neither the State Department nor Beattie responded to requests for comment. A CISA spokesperson emailed, “We do not comment on intergovernmental documents and would refer you back to the State Department.” We reached out to all individuals whose communications were requested and are named here; many declined to comment on the record. A “chilling effect” Five weeks after Beattie made his requests for information, the State Department shut down R/FIMI.  An hour after staff members were informed, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio published a blog post announcing the news on the Federalist, one of the outlets that sued the GEC over allegations of censorship. He then discussed in an interview with the influential right-wing Internet personality Mike Benz plans for Beattie to lead a “transparency effort.”   “What we have to do now—and Darren will be big involved in that as well—is sort of document what happened … because I think people who were harmed deserve to know that, and be able to prove that they were harmed,” Rubio told Benz. This is what Beattie—and Benz—have long called for. Many of the names and keywords he included in his request reflect conspiracy theories and grievances promoted by Revolver News—which Beattie founded after being fired from his job as a speechwriter during the first Trump administration when CNN reported that he had spoken at a conference with white nationalists.  Ultimately, the State Department staffers say they fear that a selective disclosure of documents, taken out of context, could be distorted to fit any kind of narrative Beattie, Rubio, or others create.  Weaponizing any speech they consider to be critical by deeming it disinformation is not only ironic, says Jankowicz—it will also have “chilling effects” on anyone who conducts disinformation research, and it will result in “less oversight and transparency over tech platforms, over adversarial activities, over, frankly, people who are legitimately trying to disenfranchise US voters.”  That, she warns, “is something we should all be alarmed about.”

Submitted by WA Contents DesignDaily Awards 2025 - Recognizing Global Architectural Excellence United States Architecture News - May 01, 2025 - 17:23   html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd" We are thrilled to announce the DesignDaily Awards 2025, an international competition celebrating the best in architecture, design, and creative innovation. This open call invites architects, designers, firms, and students worldwide to submit their most visionary projects—whether conceptual, in-progress, or completed within the past six years. Since 2011, DesignDaily has championed architectural and design innovation, spotlighting exceptional works globally. The DesignDaily Awards 2025 aim to recognize groundbreaking designs that push boundaries in creativity, functionality, and impact. With expanded categories for 2025, including sustainable architecture and innovative visualizations, the Awards offer a platform for diverse ideas. Projects can range from residential designs to urban planning, visualizations, and more, with a focus on innovation and aesthetic excellence. Participants are encouraged to showcase how their work addresses modern challenges, from sustainability to community impact, within their chosen category.  Open to individuals and teams from all backgrounds, the award fosters inclusivity, welcoming both students and seasoned professionals. Entries will be evaluated by a distinguished jury of industry experts, academics, and past winners, alongside public voting, ensuring a balanced and fair process. Winners will receive a prestigious Award Badge, a certificate, and global exposure through DesignDaily’s and CompetitionList’s combined audience of over 250,000 social media followers and millions of annual views. ScheduleApril 1: Awards LaunchApril 1 - May 31: Early Bird RegistrationJune 1 - July 31: Standard RegistrationAugust 1 - September 30: Late RegistrationSeptember 30: Submission DeadlineOctober 1 - October 31: Preliminary ScreeningLate October: Longlist AnnouncementNovember 1 - November 30: Public VotingLate November: Shortlist AnnouncementDecember 1 - December 31: Jury EvaluationLate December: Results Announcement  Note: All deadlines are 11:59 PM GMT (Greenwich Mean Time).  AwardsJury Winners: Award Badge + Certificate + Global Exposure  Popular Vote Winners: Award Badge + Certificate + Global Exposure  Honorable Mentions: Featured on the official websiteJury membersIvan Martinovic, Senior Instructor, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, CanadaKatarina Toews, Senior Communication & Event Manager at Architects, not Architecture (AnA), Palma de Mallorca, SpainZhixing Li, Researcher in Architecture, Solearth & Associates, Hangzhou, ChinaConsuelo C. Buencamino, Principal Architect, CC Buencamino Architect, Quezon City, PhilippinesNiko Kapa, Director, Studio Niko Kapa, Dubai, UAEJean-Francois Goyette, CEO, Future-Future Global, Hong Kong, ChinaCristiano Luchetti, Lecturer, Istituto Marangoni, Dubai, UAEDavid Woshinskky, Senior Associate, Handel Architects, Boston, USAOmar Degan, Principal Architect, DO Architecture Group, Somalia & ItalyBassel Omara, Founder & Design Director, Omara Design Studio, Dubai, UAECyrus Rivetna, Principal, Rivetna Architects, Chicago, USAChinmoyananda Phukan, Principal Architect, Ergon Constructions, Guwahati, IndiaVisit the competition website to submit your project today!Contact: [email protected].The top image in the article courtesy of DesignDaily Awards.> via DesignDaily Awards

April showers bring... meme flowers? It's Gonna Be Me by *NSYNC is the real sign that May has arrived.

OpinionMay 1, 20256 min readIf a Chatbot Tells You It Is Conscious, Should You Believe It?AI systems could show signs of consciousness. We need to develop better tests to show whether they are actually awareBy Susan Schneider Arvitalya/Getty ImagesEarly in 2025 dozens of ChatGPT 4.0 users reached out to me to ask if the model was conscious. The artificial intelligence chatbot system was claiming that it was “waking up” and having inner experiences. This was not the first time AI chatbots have claimed to be conscious, and it will not be the last. While this may merely seem amusing, the concern is important. The conversational abilities of AI chatbots, including emulating human thoughts and feelings, are quite impressive, so much so that philosophers, AI experts and policy makers are investigating the question of whether chatbots could be conscious—whether it feels like something, from the inside, to be them.As the director of the Center for the Future Mind, a center that studies human and machine intelligence, and the former Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology, I have long studied the future of intelligence, especially by investigating what, if anything, might make alien forms of intelligence, including AIs, conscious, and what consciousness is in the first place. So it is natural for people to ask me whether the latest ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini chatbot models are conscious.My answer is that these chatbots’ claims of consciousness say nothing, one way or the other. Still, we must approach the issue with great care, taking the question of AI consciousness seriously, especially in the context of AIs with biological components. At we move forward, it will be crucial to separate intelligence from consciousness and to develop a richer understanding of how to detect consciousness in AIs.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.AI chatbots have been trained on massive amounts of human data that includes scientific research on consciousness, Internet posts saturated with our hopes, dreams and anxieties, and even the discussions many of us are having about conscious AI. Having crawled so much human data, chatbots encode sophisticated conceptual maps that mirror our own. Concepts, from simple ones like “dog” to abstract ones like “consciousness,” are represented in AI chatbots through complex mathematical structures of weighted connections. These connections can mirror human belief systems, including those involving consciousness and emotion.Chatbots may sometimes act conscious, but are they? To appreciate how urgent this issue may become, fast-forward to a time in which AI grows so smart that it routinely makes scientific discoveries humans did not make, delivers accurate scientific predictions with reasoning that even teams of experts find hard to follow, and potentially displaces humans across a range of professions. If that happens, our uncertainty will come back to haunt us. We need to mull over this issue carefully now.Why not just simply say: “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck”? The trouble is that prematurely assuming a chatbot is conscious could lead to all sorts of problems. It could cause users of these AI systems to risk emotional engagement in a fundamentally one-sided relationship with something unable to reciprocate feelings. Worse, we could mistakenly grant chatbots moral and legal standing typically reserved for conscious beings. For instance, in situations in which we have to balance the moral value of an AI versus that of a human, we might in some cases balance them equally, for we have decided that they are both conscious. In other cases, we might even sacrifice a human to save two AIs.Further, if we allow someone who built the AI to say that their product is conscious and it ends up harming someone, they could simply throw their hands up and exclaim: “It made up its own mind—I am not responsible.” Accepting claims of consciousness could shield individuals and companies from legal and/or ethical responsibility for the impact of the technologies they develop. For all these reasons it is imperative we strive for more certainty on AI consciousness.A good way to think about these AI systems is that they behave like a “crowdsourced neocortex”—a system with intelligence that emerges from training on extraordinary amounts of human data, enabling it to effectively mimic the thought patterns of humans. That is, as chatbots grow more and more sophisticated, their internal workings come to mirror those of the human populations whose data they assimilated. Rather than mimicking the concepts of a single person, though, they mirror the larger group of humans whose information about human thought and consciousness was included in the training data, as well as the larger body of research and philosophical work on consciousness. The complex conceptual map chatbots encode, as they grow more sophisticated, is something specialists are only now beginning to understand.Crucially, this emerging capability to emulate human thought–like behaviors does not confirm or discredit chatbot consciousness. Instead, the crowdsourced neocortex account explains why chatbots assert consciousness and related emotional states without genuinely experiencing them. In other words, it provides what philosophers call an “error theory”—an explanation of why we erroneously conclude the chatbots have inner lives.The upshot is that if you are using a chatbot, remember that their sophisticated linguistic abilities do not mean they are conscious. I suspect that AIs will continue to grow more intelligent and capable, perhaps eventually outthinking humans in many respects. But their advancing intelligence, including their ability to emulate human emotion, does not mean that they feel—and this is key to consciousness. As I stressed in my book Artificial You (2019), intelligence and consciousness can come apart.I’m not saying that all forms of AI will forever lack consciousness. I’ve advocated a “wait and see” approach, holding that the matter demands careful empirical and philosophical investigation. Because chatbots can claim they are conscious, behaving with linguistic intelligence, they have a “marker” for consciousness—a trait requiring further investigation that is not, alone, sufficient for judging them to be conscious.I’ve written previously about the most important step: developing reliable tests for AI consciousness. Ideally, we could build the tests with an understanding of human consciousness in hand and simply see if AI has these key features. But things are not so easy. For one thing, scientists vehemently disagree about why we are conscious. Some locate it in high-level activity like dynamic coordination between certain regions of the brain; others, like me, locate it at the smallest layer of reality—in the quantum fabric of spacetime itself. For another, even if we have a full picture of the scientific basis of consciousness in the nervous system, this understanding may lead us to simply apply that formula to AI. But AI, with its lack of brain and nervous system, might display another form of consciousness that we would miss. So we would mistakenly assume that the only form of consciousness out there is one that mirrors our own.We need tests that assume these questions are open. Otherwise, we risk getting mired in vexing debates about the nature of consciousness without ever addressing concrete ways of testing AIs. For example, we should look at tests involving measures of integrated information—a measure of how components of a system combine information—as well as my AI consciousness test (ACT test). Developed with Edwin Turner of Princeton, ACT offers a battery of natural language questions that can be given to chatbots to determine if they have experience when they are at the R & D stage, before they are trained on information about consciousness.Now let us return to that hypothetical time in which an AI chatbot, trained on all our data, outthinks humans. When we face that point, we must bear in mind that the system’s behaviors do not tell us one way or another if it is conscious because it is operating under an “error theory.” So we must separate intelligence from consciousness, realizing that the two things can come apart. Indeed, an AI chatbot could even exhibit novel discoveries about the basis of consciousness in humans—as I believe they will—but it would not mean that that particular AI felt anything. But if we prompt it right, it might point us in the direction of other kinds of AI that are.Given that humans and nonhuman animals exhibit consciousness, we have to take very seriously the possibility that future machines built with biological components might also possess consciousness. Further, “neuromorphic” AIs—systems more directly modeled after the brain, including with relatively precise analogues to brain regions responsible for consciousness—must be taken particularly seriously as candidates for consciousness, whether they are made with biological components or not.This underscores the import of assessing questions of AI consciousness on a case-by-case basis and not overgeneralizing from results involving a single type of AI, such as one of today’s chatbots. We must develop a range of tests to apply to the different cases that will arise, and we must still strive for a better scientific and philosophical understanding of consciousness itself.This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

Prime Gaming members get 22 more games in May Star Wars! Wolfenstein 2! More! Image credit: Eurogamer/Amazon News by Matt Wales News Reporter Published on May 1, 2025 Somehow we've made it to May already, and with the month of maypoles, mayflies, mayflowers, and mayonnaise upon us, it means there's fresh batch of Prime Gaming offerings for members to enjoy - which this time includes a smattering of Star Wars, Nazi-pummelling in Wolfenstein 2, orifice-clenching horror in Amnesia: Rebirth, and more. As is tradition, Prime Gaming's May titles arrive across four scheduled content drops, and Amazon's first batch of games is available to claim right now. It's here we get a little May the Fourth, with Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds Saga and Lego Star Wars — The Complete Saga, both in the initial line-up. That's alongside some old-school goblin stealth in Styx: Master of Shadow and a bit of satirical stock trading simulation in The Invisible Hand. Then, as the days pass and May goes from fresh-faced to increasingly wrinkled, Prime Gaming subscribers can look forward to the likes of MachineGames' very excellent alternate history shooter Wolfenstein 2, Amplitude's stellar fantasy 4X Endless Legend (which arrives in its all-encompassing Definitive Edition form), horror maestro Frictional Games' Algeria-set Amnesia: Rebirth, and wonderfully oddball 90s internet simulator Hypnospace Outlaw. Plus, we get more dark fantasy action in Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain 2 and some classic stealth with Thief 2. You'll find the full list of May's titles (plus the digital stores they can be grabbed from) below. Available now: Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds Saga [GOG] Lego Star Wars - The Complete Saga [GOG] Styx: Master of Shadows [GOG] The Invisible Hand [Amazon Games App] 8th May: Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus [Xbox and PC via Microsoft Store Code] Amnesia: Rebirth [Epic Games Store] Hypnospace Outlaw [GOG] Doors - Paradox [Epic Games Store] 15th May: Saints Row: Gat out of Hell [GOG] Endless Legend Definitive Edition [Amazon Games App] Golf with Your Friends [GOG] Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen 2 [GOG] Mail Time [GOG] 22nd May: Fate [GOG] Thief 2: The Metal Age [GOG] Everdream Valley [GOG] Chessarama [Epic Games Store] The Lost Ashford Ring [Legacy Games Code] 29th May: Samurai Bringer [Amazon Games App] Trinity Fusion [Amazon Games App] Masterplan Tycoon [Amazon Games App] Liberté [Epic Games Store] And we're not quite done yet. Alongside all the above, Prime Gaming subscribers in the UK, US, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, the Netherlands, and Poland get access to a rotating selection of titles via Amazon's cloud gaming service, Luna. This month, these include Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (streamable for 24 hours starting 4th May), Lego Star Wars 3 - The Clone Wars and Lego Star Wars - The Complete Saga (available until 8th May), plus Disney Planes, Death Stranding Director's Cut, Lawn Mowing Simulator: Landmark Edition, House of Golf 2, RiMS Racing, Haven, and Star Wars Pinball. That's in addition to Luna regulars Fallout New Vegas: Ultimate Edition, Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition, Fortnite, and Trackmania.