Under ice What did the snowball Earth look like? Entire continents, even in the tropics, seems to have been under sheets of ice. John Timmer Nov 13, 2024 12:25 pm | 25 Artist's impression of what a snowball Earth would look like with our continents in their current configuration. Credit: MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Artist's impression of what a snowball Earth would look like with our continents in their current configuration. Credit: MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreBy now, it has been firmly established that the Earth went through a series of global glaciations around 600 million to 700 million years ago, shortly before complex animal life exploded in the Cambrian. Climate models have confirmed that, once enough of a dark ocean is covered by reflective ice, it sets off a cooling feedback that turns the entire planet into an icehouse. And we've found glacial material that was deposited off the coasts in the tropics.We have an extremely incomplete picture of what these snowball periods looked like, and Antarctic terrain provides different models for what an icehouse continent might look like. But now, researchers have found deposits that they argue were formed beneath a massive ice sheet that was being melted from below by volcanic activity. And, although the deposits are currently in Colorado's Front Range, at the time they resided much closer to the equator.In the icehouseGlacial deposits can be difficult to identify in deep time. Massive sheets of ice will scour the terrain down to bare rock, leaving behind loosely consolidated bits of rubble that can easily be swept away after the ice is gone. We can spot when that rubble shows up in ocean deposits to confirm there were glaciers along the coast, but rubble can be difficult to find on land.That's made studying the snowball Earth periods a challenge. We've got the offshore deposits to confirm coastal ice, and we've got climate models that say the continents should be covered in massive ice sheets, but we've got very little direct evidence. Antarctica gives off mixed messages, too. While there are clearly massive ice sheets, there are also dry valleys, where there's barely any precipitation and there's so little moisture in the air that any ice that makes its way into the valleys sublimates away into water vapor.All of which raises questions about what the snowball Earth might have looked like in the continental interiors. A team of US-based geologists think they've found some glacial deposits in the form of what are called the Tavakaiv sandstones in Colorado. These sandstones are found along the Front Range of the Rockies, including areas just west of Colorado Springs. And, if the authors' interpretations are correct, they formed underneath a massive sheet of glacial ice.There are lots of ways to form sandstone deposits, and they can be difficult to date because they're aggregates of the remains of much older rocks. But in this case, the Tavakaiv sandstone is interrupted by intrusions of dark colored rock that contains quartz and large amounts of hematite, a form of iron oxide.These intrusions tell us a remarkable number of things. For one, some process must have exerted enough force to drive material into small faults in the sandstone. Hematite only gets deposited under fairly specific conditions, which tells us a bit more. And, most critically, hematite can trap uranium and the lead it decays into, providing a way of dating when the deposits formed.Under the snowballDepending on which site was being sampled, the hematite produced a range of dates, from as recent as 660 million years ago to as old as 700 million years. That means all of them were formed during what's termed the Sturtian glaciation, which ran from 715 million to 660 million years ago. At the time, the core of what is now North America was in the equatorial region. So, the Tavakaiv sandstones can provide a window into what at least one continent experienced during the most severe global glaciation of the Cryogenian Period.Obviously, a sandstone could be formed from the fine powder that glaciers grind off rock as they flow. The authors argue that the intrusions that led to the hematite are the product of the massive pressure of the ice sheet acting on some liquid water at its base. That, they argue, would be enough to force the water into minor cracks in the deposit, producing the vertical bands of material that interrupt the sandstone.There are plenty of ways for there to be liquid water at the base of the ice sheet, including local heating due to friction, the draining of surface melts to the base of the glacier (we're seeing a lot of the latter in Greenland at present), or simply hitting the right combination of pressure and temperature. But hematite deposits are typically formed at elevated temperatures (in the area of 220 C), which isn't consistent with either of these processes.Instead, the researchers argue that the hematite comes from geothermal fluids. There are signs of volcanic activity in Idaho that dates from this same period, and the researchers suggest that there may have been sporadic volcanism in Colorado related to this. This would create fluids warm enough to carry the iron oxides that ended up deposited as hematite in these sandstones.While this provides some evidence that at least one part of the continental interior was covered in ice during the snowball Earth period, that doesn't necessarily apply to all areas of all continents. As Antarctica indicates, dry valleys and massive ice sheets can coexist in close proximity when the conditions are right. But the discovery does provide a window into a key period in the Earth's history that has otherwise been quite difficult to study.PNAS, 2024. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2410759121 (About DOIs).John TimmerSenior Science EditorJohn TimmerSenior Science Editor John is Ars Technica's science editor. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemistry from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. When physically separated from his keyboard, he tends to seek out a bicycle, or a scenic location for communing with his hiking boots. 25 Comments Prev story

A perforated pebble from the Nahal Ein Gev II archaeological site, which may be an ancient spindle whorlLaurent DavinA set of 12,000-year-old pierced pebbles excavated in northern Israel may be the oldest known hand-spinning whorls a textile technology that may have ultimately helped inspire the invention of the wheel.Serving as a flywheel at the bottom of a spindle, whorls allowed people to efficiently spin natural fibres into yarns and thread to create clothing and other textiles. The newly discovered stone tools represent early axle-based rotation technology thousands of years before the first carts, says Talia Yashuv at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. AdvertisementWhen you look back to find the first vehicle wheels 6000 years ago, its not like it just came out of nowhere, she says. Its important to look at the functional evolution of how transportation and the wheel evolved.Yashuv and her colleague Leore Grosman, also at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, studied 113 partially or fully perforated stones at the Nahal Ein Gev II site, an ancient village just east of the Sea of Galilee. Archaeologists have been uncovering these chalky, predominantly limestone artefacts probably made from raw pebbles along the nearby seashore since 1972.3D scanning revealed that the holes had been drilled halfway through from each side using a flint hand drill, which unlike modern drills leaves a narrow and twisting cone-like shape, says Yashuv. Measuring 3 to 4 centimetres in diameter, the holes generally ran through the pebbles centre of gravity. Keep up with advances in archaeology and evolution with our monthly newsletter.Sign up to newsletterDrilling from both sides would have helped balance the stone for more stable spinning, says Yashuv. Several of the partially perforated stones had holes that were off-centre, suggesting they might have been errors and thrown out.The team suspected that the stones, weighing 9 grams on average, were too heavy and ugly to have been beads and too light and fragile to be used as fishing weights, says Yashuv. Their size, shape and balance around the holes convinced the researchers that the artefacts were spindle whorls.To test their hypothesis, the researchers created replicat whorls using nearby pebbles and a flint drill. Then they asked Yonit Kristal, a traditional craftsperson, to try spinning flax with them.She was really surprised that they worked, because they werent perfectly round, says Yashuv. But really you just need the perforation to be located at the centre of mass, and then its balanced and it works.If the stones are indeed whorls, that could make them the oldest known spinning whorls, she says. A 1991 study on bone and antler artefacts uncovered what may be 20,000-year-old whorls, she adds, but the researchers who examined them suggested the pieces were probably decorative clothing accents. Even so, it is possible that people were using whorls even earlier, using wood or other biological materials that would have since deteriorated.The finding suggests that people were experimenting with rotation technology thousands of years before inventing the pottery wheel and the cart wheel about 5500 years ago and that the whorls probably helped lead to those inventions, says Yashuv.Carole Cheval at Cte dAzur University in Nice, France, is less convinced, however. Whorls work more like a top than a wheel, she explains.And while the artefacts might very well be whorls, the study lacks microscopic data that would reveal traces of use as yarns would have marked the stones over time, Cheval says.Trace analysis was beyond the scope of the current study, says Yashuv.Ideally, researchers studying ancient whorls would be skilled in spinning themselves which the study authors were not, says Cheval. It really changes the way you think about your archaeological finds, she says.Journal reference:PLOS One DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0312007 Topics:archaeology

Leader and EnvironmentFood production is responsible for more than a third of greenhouse gas emissions. To get everyone the food they need in a warming world, governments worldwide must invest in securing our food systems 13 November 2024 Shutterstock/KzenonThere are two monumental problems with the worlds food system. Firstly, hundreds of millions of people cant afford to buy enough nutritious food to stay healthy. Secondly, it is incredibly destructive. We are still razing rainforests to make way for ranches, and both conventional and organic farms produce all kinds of pollutants, with food systems generating more than a third of greenhouse gases.As the world soars past a 1.5C rise in temperature (see 2024 is set to be the first year that breaches the 1.5C warming limit), things could get much worse. But there is plenty we can do, from eating less meat to reducing food waste (see Is the climate change food crisis even worse than we imagined?). With the amazing advances in genetic technologies in recent years, there is also huge scope to improve the plants and animals that provide our food. We can make them more nutritious, healthier, better able to cope with changing conditions and less susceptible to diseases that are thriving as the world warms. We should also be able to create plants that need less fertiliser and capture more of the suns energy.It is astounding that most countries arent investing heavily in improving cropsAdvertisementThe benefits from all this would be enormous: more food from less land, lower prices, reduced greenhouse gas emissions and less chance of viruses such as H5N1 bird flu causing another pandemic.So it is astounding that most countries arent investing heavily in improving crops. There is some private investment, but those companies are unlikely to make their technologies freely available, slowing their adoption.We are also restricted by the notion that more natural means of farming are better, with opposition to genetically modified (GM) crops making it difficult and expensive to get them approved.This is starting to change, with many countries making it easier for gene-edited crops and animals to get to market, but we need more action and fast.The idea that organic food is better for the planet and GM foods are worse for it is a false narrative that hides a much more unpalatable reality: that continuing as we are will lead to even more destruction and increased hunger.Topics:

Ben Zhao remembers well the moment he officially jumped into the fight between artists and generative AI: when one artist asked for AI bananas. A computer security researcher at the University of Chicago, Zhao had made a name for himself by building tools to protect images from facial recognition technology. It was this work that caught the attention of Kim Van Deun, a fantasy illustrator who invited him to a Zoom call in November 2022 hosted by the Concept Art Association, an advocacy organization for artists working in commercial media. On the call, artists shared details of how they had been hurt by the generative AI boom, which was then brand new. At that moment, AI was suddenly everywhere. The tech community was buzzing over image-generating AI models, such as Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and OpenAIs DALL-E 2, which could follow simple word prompts to depict fantasylands or whimsical chairs made of avocados. But these artists saw this technological wonder as a new kind of theft. They felt the models were effectively stealing and replacing their work. Some had found that their art had been scraped off the internet and used to train the models, while others had discovered that their own names had become prompts, causing their work to be drowned out online by AI knockoffs. Zhao remembers being shocked by what he heard. People are literally telling you theyre losing their livelihoods, he told me one afternoon this spring, sitting in his Chicago living room. Thats something that you just cant ignore. So on the Zoom, he made a proposal: What if, hypothetically, it was possible to build a mechanism that would help mask their art to interfere with AI scraping? I would love a tool that if someone wrote my name and made a prompt, like, garbage came out, responded Karla Ortiz, a prominent digital artist. Just, like, bananas or some weird stuff. That was all the convincing Zhao neededthe moment he joined the cause. Fast-forward to today, and millions of artists have deployed two tools born from that Zoom: Glaze and Nightshade, which were developed by Zhao and the University of Chicagos SAND Lab (an acronym for security, algorithms, networking, and data). Arguably the most prominent weapons in an artists arsenal against nonconsensual AI scraping, Glaze and Nightshade work in similar ways: by adding what the researchers call barely perceptible perturbations to an images pixels so that machine-learning models cannot read them properly. Glaze, which has been downloaded more than 6 million times since it launched in March 2023, adds whats effectively a secret cloak to images that prevents AI algorithms from picking up on and copying an artists style. Nightshade, which I wrote about when it was released almost exactly a year ago this fall, cranks up the offensive against AI companies by adding an invisible layer of poison to images, which can break AI models; it has been downloaded more than 1.6 million times. Thanks to the tools, Im able to post my work online, Ortiz says, and thats pretty huge. For artists like her, being seen online is crucial to getting more work. If they are uncomfortable about ending up in a massive for-profit AI model without compensation, the only option is to delete their work from the internet. That would mean career suicide. Its really dire for us, adds Ortiz, who has become one of the most vocal advocates for fellow artists and is part of a class action lawsuit against AI companies, including Stability AI, over copyright infringement. But Zhao hopes that the tools will do more than empower individual artists. Glaze and Nightshade are part of what he sees as a battle to slowly tilt the balance of power from large corporations back to individual creators. It is just incredibly frustrating to see human life be valued so little, he says with a disdain that Ive come to see as pretty typical for him, particularly when hes talking about Big Tech. And to see that repeated over and over, this prioritization of profit over humanity it is just incredibly frustrating and maddening. As the tools are adopted more widely, his lofty goal is being put to the test. Can Glaze and Nightshade make genuine security accessible for creatorsor will they inadvertently lull artists into believing their work is safe, even as the tools themselves become targets for haters and hackers? While experts largely agree that the approach is effective and Nightshade could prove to be powerful poison, other researchers claim theyve already poked holes in the protections offered by Glaze and that trusting these tools is risky. But Neil Turkewitz, a copyright lawyer who used to work at the Poking the bear The SAND Lab is tight knit, encompassing a dozen or so researchers crammed into a corner of the University of Chicagos computer science building. That space has accumulated somewhat typical workplace detritusa Meta Quest headset here, silly photos of dress-up from Halloween parties there. But the walls are also covered in original art pieces, including a framed painting by Ortiz. Years before fighting alongside artists like Ortiz against AI bros (to use Zhaos words), Zhao and the labs co-leader, Heather Zheng, who is also his wife, had built a record of combating harms posed by new tech. When I visited the SAND Lab in Chicago, I saw how tight knit the group was. Alongside the typical workplace stuff were funny Halloween photos like this one. (Front row: Ronik Bhaskar, Josephine Passananti, Anna YJ Ha, Zhuolin Yang, Ben Zhao, Heather Zheng. Back row: Cathy Yuanchen Li, Wenxin Ding, Stanley Wu, and Shawn Shan.)COURTESY OF SAND LAB Though both earned spots on MIT Technology Reviews 35 Innovators Under 35 list for other work nearly two decades ago, when they were at the University of California, Santa Barbara (Zheng in 2005 for cognitive radios and Zhao a year later for peer-to-peer networks), their primary research focus has become security and privacy. The pair left Santa Barbara in 2017, after they were poached by the new co-director of the University of Chicagos Data Science Institute, Michael Franklin. All eight PhD students from their UC Santa Barbara lab decided to follow them to Chicago too. Since then, the group has developed a bracelet of silence that jams the microphones in AI voice assistants like the Amazon Echo. It has also created a tool called Fawkesprivacy armor, as Zhao put it in a 2020 interview with the New York Timesthat people can apply to their photos to protect them from facial recognition software. Theyve also studied how hackers might steal sensitive information through stealth attacks on virtual-reality headsets, and how to distinguish human art from AI-generated images. Ben and Heather and their group are kind of unique because theyre actually trying to build technology that hits right at some key questions about AI and how it is used, Franklin tells me. Theyre doing it not just by asking those questions, but by actually building technology that forces those questions to the forefront. It was Fawkes that intrigued Van Deun, the fantasy illustrator, two years ago; she hoped something similar might work as protection against generative AI, which is why she extended that fateful invite to the Concept Art Associations Zoom call. That call started something of a mad rush in the weeks that followed. Though Zhao and Zheng collaborate on all the labs projects, they each lead individual initiatives; Zhao took on what would become Glaze, with PhD student Shawn Shan (who was on this years Innovators Under 35 list) spearheading the development of the programs algorithm. In parallel to Shans coding, PhD students Jenna Cryan and Emily Wenger sought to learn more about the views and needs of the artists themselves. They created a user survey that the team distributed to artists with the help of Ortiz. In replies from more than 1,200 artistsfar more than the average number of responses to user studies in computer sciencethe team found that the vast majority of creators had read about art being used to train models, and 97% expected AI to decrease some artists job security. A quarter said AI art had already affected their jobs. Almost all artists also said they posted their work online, and more than half said they anticipated reducing or removing that online work, if they hadnt alreadyno matter the professional and financial consequences. The first scrappy version of Glaze was developed in just a month, at which point Ortiz gave the team her entire catalogue of work to test the model on. At the most basic level, Glaze acts as a defensive shield. Its algorithm identifies features from the image that make up an artist's individual style and adds subtle changes to them. When an AI model is trained on images protected with Glaze, the model will not be able to reproduce styles similar to the original image. A painting from Ortiz later became the first image publicly released with Glaze on it: a young woman, surrounded by flying eagles, holding up a wreath. Its title is Musa Victoriosa, victorious muse. Its the one currently hanging on the SAND Labs walls. Despite many artists initial enthusiasm, Zhao says, Glazes launch caused significant backlash. Some artists were skeptical because they were worried this was a scam or yet another data-harvesting campaign. The lab had to take several steps to build trust, such as offering the option to download the Glaze app so that it adds the protective layer offline, which meant no data was being transferred anywhere. (The images are then shielded when artists upload them.) Soon after Glazes launch, Shan also led the development of the second tool, Nightshade. Where Glaze is a defensive mechanism, Nightshade was designed to act as an offensive deterrent to nonconsensual training. It works by changing the pixels of images in ways that are not noticeable to the human eye but manipulate machine-learning models so they interpret the image as something different from what it actually shows. If poisoned samples are scraped into AI training sets, these samples trick the AI models: Dogs become cats, handbags become toasters. The researchers say only a relatively few examples are enough to permanently damage the way a generative AI model produces images. Currently, both tools are available as free apps or can be applied through the projects website. The lab has also recently expanded its reach by offering integration with the new artist-supported social network Cara, which was born out of a backlash to exploitative AI training and forbids AI-produced content. In dozens of conversations with Zhao and the labs researchers, as well as a handful of their artist-collaborators, its become clear that both groups now feel they are aligned in one mission. I never expected to become friends with scientists in Chicago, says Eva Toorenent, a Dutch artist who worked closely with the team on Nightshade. Im just so happy to have met these people during this collective battle. Images online of Toorenent's Belladonna have been treated with the SAND Lab's Nightshade tool.EVA TOORENENT Her painting Belladonna, which is also another name for the nightshade plant, was the first image with Nightshades poison on it. Its so symbolic, she says. People taking our work without our consent, and then taking our work without consent can ruin their models. Its just poetic justice. No perfect solution The reception of the SAND Labs work has been less harmonious across the AI community. After Glaze was made available to the public, Zhao tells me, someone reported it to sites like VirusTotal, which tracks malware, so that it was flagged by antivirus programs. Several people also started claiming on social media that the tool had quickly been broken. Nightshade similarly got a fair share of criticism when it launched; as TechCrunch reported in January, some called it a virus and, as the story explains, another Reddit user who inadvertently went viral on X questioned Nightshades legality, comparing it to hacking a vulnerable computer system to disrupt its operation. We had no idea what we were up against, Zhao tells me. Not knowing who or what the other side could be meant that every single new buzzing of the phone meant that maybe someone did break Glaze. Both tools, though, have gone through rigorous academic peer review and have won recognition from the computer security community. Nightshade was accepted at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, and Glaze received a distinguished paper award and the 2023 Internet Defense Prize at the Usenix Security Symposium, a top conference in the field. In my experience working with poison, I think [Nightshade is] pretty effective, says Nathalie Baracaldo, who leads the AI security and privacy solutions team at IBM and has studied data poisoning. I have not seen anything yetand the word yet is important herethat breaks that type of defense that Ben is proposing. And the fact that the team has released the source code for Nightshade for others to probe, and it hasnt been broken, also suggests its quite secure, she adds. At the same time, at least one team of researchers does claim to have penetrated the protections of Glaze, or at least an old version of it. As researchers from Google DeepMind and ETH Zurich detailed in a paper published in June, they found various ways Glaze (as well as similar but less popular protection tools, such as Mist and Anti-DreamBooth) could be circumvented using off-the-shelf techniques that anyone could accesssuch as image upscaling, meaning filling in pixels to increase the resolution of an image as its enlarged. The researchers write that their work shows the brittleness of existing protections and warn that artists may believe they are effective. But our experiments show they are not. Florian Tramr, an associate professor at ETH Zurich who was part of the study, acknowledges that it is very hard to come up with a strong technical solution that ends up really making a difference here. Rather than any individual tool, he ultimately advocates for an almost certainly unrealistic ideal: stronger policies and laws to help create an environment in which people commit to buying only human-created art. What happened here is common in security research, notes Baracaldo: A defense is proposed, an adversary breaks it, andideallythe defender learns from the adversary and makes the defense better. Its important to have both ethical attackers and defenders working together to make our AI systems safer, she says, adding that ideally, all defenses should be publicly available for scrutiny, which would both allow for transparency and help avoid creating a false sense of security. (Zhao, though, tells me the researchers have no intention to release Glazes source code.) Still, even as all these researchers claim to support artists and their art, such tests hit a nerve for Zhao. In Discord chats that were later leaked, he claimed that one of the researchers from the ETH ZurichGoogle DeepMind team doesnt give a shit about people. (That researcher did not respond to a request for comment, but in a blog post he said it was important to break defenses in order to know how to fix them. Zhao says his words were taken out of context.) Zhao also emphasizes to me that the papers authors mainly evaluated an earlier version of Glaze; he says its new update is more resistant to tampering. Messing with images that have current Glaze protections would harm the very style that is being copied, he says, making such an attack useless. This back-and-forth reflects a significant tension in the computer security community and, more broadly, the often adversarial relationship between different groups in AI. Is it wrong to give people the feeling of security when the protections youve offered might break? Or is it better to have some level of protectionone that raises the threshold for an attacker to inflict harmthan nothing at all? Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, an associate professor of applied mathematics and computer science at Imperial College London, says there are plenty of examples where similar technical protections have failed to be bulletproof. For example, in 2023, de Montjoye and his team probed a digital mask for facial recognition algorithms, which was meant to protect the privacy of medical patients facial images; they were able to break the protections by tweaking just one thing in the programs algorithm (which was open source). Using such defenses is still sending a message, he says, and adding some friction to data profiling. Tools such as TrackMeNotwhich protects users from data profilinghave been presented as a way to protest; as a way to say I do not consent. But at the same time, he argues, we need to be very clear with artists that it is removable and might not protect against future algorithms. While Zhao will admit that the researchers pointed out some of Glazes weak spots, he unsurprisingly remains confident that Glaze and Nightshade are worth deploying, given that security tools are never perfect. Indeed, as Baracaldo points out, the Google DeepMind and ETH Zurich researchers showed how a highly motivated and sophisticated adversary will almost certainly always find a way in. Yet it is simplistic to think that if you have a real security problem in the wild and youre trying to design a protection tool, the answer should be it either works perfectly or dont deploy it, Zhao says, citing spam filters and firewalls as examples. Defense is a constant cat-and-mouse game. And he believes most artists are savvy enough to understand the risk. Offering hope The fight between creators and AI companies is fierce. The current paradigm in AI is to build bigger and bigger models, and there is, at least currently, no getting around the fact that they require vast data sets hoovered from the internet to train on. Tech companies argue that anything on the public internet is fair game, and that it is impossible to build advanced AI tools without copyrighted material; many artists argue that tech companies have stolen their intellectual property So far, the creatives arent exactly winning. A number of companies have already replaced designers, copywriters, and illustrators with AI systems. In one high-profile case, Marvel Studios used AI-generated imagery instead of human-created art in the title sequence of its 2023 TV series Secret Invasion. In another, a radio station fired its human presenters and replaced them with AI. The technology has become a major bone of contention between unions and film, TV, and creative studios, most recently leading to a strike by video-game performers. There are numerous ongoing lawsuits by artists, writers, publishers, and record labels against AI companies. It will likely take years until there is a clear-cut legal resolution. But even a court ruling wont necessarily untangle the difficult ethical questions created by generative AI. Thats why Zhao and Zheng see Glaze and Nightshade as necessary interventionstools to defend original work, attack those who would help themselves to it, and, at the very least, buy artists some time. Having a perfect solution is not really the point. The researchers need to offer something now because the AI sector moves at breakneck speed, Zheng says, means that companies are ignoring very real harms to humans. This is probably the first time in our entire technology careers that we actually see this much conflict, she adds. On a much grander scale, she and Zhao tell me they hope that Glaze and Nightshade will eventually have the power to overhaul how AI companies use art and how their products produce it. It is eye-wateringly expensive to train AI models, and its extremely laborious for engineers to find and purge poisoned samples in a data set of billions of images. Theoretically, if there are enough Nightshaded images on the internet and tech companies see their models breaking as a result, it could push developers to the negotiating table to bargain over licensing and fair compensation. Thats, of course, still a big if. MIT Technology Review reached out to several AI companies, such as Midjourney and Stability AI, which did not reply to requests for comment. A spokesperson for OpenAI, meanwhile, did not confirm any details about encountering data poison but said the company takes the safety of its products seriously and is continually improving its safety measures: We are always working on how we can make our systems more robust against this type of abuse. In the meantime, the SAND Lab is moving ahead and looking into funding from foundations and nonprofits to keep the project going. They also say there has also been interest from major companies looking to protect their intellectual property (though they decline to say which), and Zhao and Zheng are exploring how the tools could be applied in other industries, such as gaming, videos, or music. In the meantime, they plan to keep updating Glaze and Nightshade to be as robust as possible, working closely with the students in the Chicago labwhere, on another wall, hangs Toorenents Belladonna. The painting has a heart-shaped note stuck to the bottom right corner: Thank you! You have given hope to us artists. This story has been updated with the latest download figures for Glaze and Nightshade.

Teaching robots to navigate new environments is tough. You can train them on physical, real-world data taken from recordings made by humans, but thats scarce and expensive to collect. Digital simulations are a rapid, scalable way to teach them to do new things, but the robots often fail when theyre pulled out of virtual worlds and asked to do the same tasks in the real one. Now theres a potentially better option: a new system that uses generative AI models Researchers used the system, called LucidSim, to train a robot dog in parkour, getting it to scramble over a box and climb stairs even though it had never seen any real-world data. The approach demonstrates how helpful generative AI could be when it comes to teaching robots to do challenging tasks. It also raises the possibility that we could ultimately train them in entirely virtual worlds. The research was presented at the Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL) last week. Were in the middle of an industrial revolution for robotics, says Ge Yang, a postdoc at MITs Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, who worked on the project. This is our attempt at understanding the impact of these [generative AI] models outside of their original intended purposes, with the hope that it will lead us to the next generation of tools and models. LucidSim uses a combination of generative AI models to create the visual training data. First the researchers generated thousands of prompts for ChatGPT, getting it to create descriptions of a range of environments that represent the conditions the robot would encounter in the real world, including different types of weather, times of day, and lighting conditions. These included an ancient alley lined with tea houses and small, quaint shops, each displaying traditional ornaments and calligraphy and the sun illuminates a somewhat unkempt lawn dotted with dry patches. These descriptions were fed into a system that maps 3D geometry and physics data onto AI-generated images, creating short videos mapping a trajectory for the robot to follow. The robot draws on this information to work out the height, width, and depth of the things it has to navigatea box or a set of stairs, for example. The researchers tested LucidSim by instructing a four-legged robot equipped with a webcam to complete several tasks, including locating a traffic cone or soccer ball, climbing over a box, and walking up and down stairs. The robot performed consistently better than when it ran a system trained on traditional simulations. In 20 trials to locate the cone, LucidSim had a 100% success rate, versus 70% for systems trained on standard simulations. Similarly, LucidSim reached the soccer ball in another 20 trials 85% of the time, and just 35% for the other system. Finally, when the robot was running LucidSim, it successfully completed all 10 stair-climbing trials, compared with just 50% for the other system. From left: Phillip Isola, Ge Yang, and Alan YuCOURTESY OF MIT CSAIL These results are likely to improve even further in the future if LucidSim draws directly from sophisticated generative video models rather than a rigged-together combination of language, image, and physics models, says Phillip Isola, an associate professor at MIT who worked on the research. The researchers approach to using generative AI is a novel one that will pave the way for more interesting new research, says Mahi Shafiullah, a PhD student at New York University who is using AI models to train robots. He did not work on the project. The more interesting direction I see personally is a mix of both real and realistic imagined data that can help our current data-hungry methods scale quicker and better, he says. The ability to train a robot from scratch purely on AI-generated situations and scenarios is a significant achievement and could extend beyond machines to more generalized AI agents, says Zafeirios Fountas, a senior research scientist at Huawei specializing in braininspired AI. The term robots here is used very generally; were talking about some sort of AI that interacts with the real world, he says. I can imagine this being used to control any sort of visual information, from robots and self-driving cars up to controlling your computer screen or smartphone. In terms of next steps, the authors are interested in trying to train a humanoid robot using wholly synthetic datawhich they acknowledge is an ambitious goal, as bipedal robots are typically less stable than their four-legged counterparts. Theyre also turning their attention to another new challenge: using LucidSim to train the kinds of robotic arms that work in factories and kitchens. The tasks they have to perform require a lot more dexterity and physical understanding than running around a landscape. To actually pick up a cup of coffee and pour it is a very hard, open problem, says Isola. If we could take a simulation that's been augmented with generative AI to create a lot of diversity and train a very robust agent that can operate in a caf, I think that would be very cool.

Rachael Ray says she doesn't regret not having kids even though she was "bashed for it" over the years.Instead, the celebrity chef said on her podcast that she prefers the company of her dog.And it's not just her millennials these days are choosing to raise pets over kids. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. Rachael Ray, 56, doesn't regret her decision to not have kids.On Tuesday's episode of her podcast, "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead," the celebrity chef and TV host spoke to guest Bob Harper, a celebrity trainer from "The Biggest Loser," about dealing with the societal pressure to have children.When Harper said he chose not to have kids of his own, Ray shared the same sentiment: "Me too. And boy, did I get bashed for it over the decades."Instead of having kids, both Ray and Harper said they preferred raising dogs."They never talk back, they always want to hug you," Ray said, adding that pets bring her "a ray of light.""It's that unconditional love, but it really gets you through dark days. Like for me, if I have the absolute worst day, or I'm sick as a dog as the expression goes the thing that makes me feel best is to go home and literally climb into bed under a blanket with my dog," Ray said.The celebrity chef also spoke about dealing with the death of her dogs, Boo and Isaboo, whom she shared with her husband John Cusimano."They were everything to us, and they both lived a very long life. One was over 13, one was over 15," Ray said, adding that she and her husband then decided to adopt their current dog, Bella.She said she believed that raising an animal can make a person "a better human.""I don't understand folks that are not into having an animal in their lives, because it just makes you happier and better," Ray said. "And you have all this love in your life all the time, no matter what."During a 2009 interview on ABC's "Nightline," as reported by The Wall Street Journal, Ray said she doesn't feel like she's missing out just because she doesn't have kids."I think that I'm 40 years old, and I have an enormous amount of hours that have to be dedicated to work," Ray told ABC journalist Cynthia McFadden, who pressed her about her decision to be child-free. "For me personally, I would need more time to feel like I'd be a good mom to my own child. I feel like a borderline good mom to my dog. So I can't imagine if it was a human baby... I feel like it would be unfair, not only to the child but to the people I work with."The decision to be child-freeA 2021 Pew Research study found that more and more Americans aren't interested in having children.Part of that is due to rising childcare costs: According to Business Insider's estimates, parents could spend at least $25,714 caring for a child this year, up 41.5% from 2016.Instead, more millennials are choosing to raise pets instead of kids, pampering their furry companions with artisan treats, clothes, and even expensive overseas vacations.Even in China, which is experiencing a shrinking population, the urban pet population is expected to surpass the number of toddlers by 2030.A representative for Ray did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider outside regular hours.

Amid rising costs, Saudi Arabia is scaling back Neom plans to focus on sports venues.Neom's plans include a stadium for the 2034 World Cup and a winter sports resort.The new city faces financial challenges, leadership changes, and scrutiny over human rights issues. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. Saudi Arabia is changing plans for mega-city Neom to cut costs and prioritize building for international sporting events.The Middle Eastern country will focus on completing a 1.5-mile stretch of development, including a stadium expected to host soccer's 2034 World Cup, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the project.Plans for Neom were changed in September and October to integrate the World Cup stadium, a source told the news outlet. Another priority is completing a mountain resort slated to host the Asian Winter Games in 2029.The report comes two days after Neom said, without giving a reason, that its longtime CEO abruptly left the project.Reuters reported that Neom officials close to the ex-CEO might also leave the company soon.Earlier this month, Neom hosted a professional triathlon and men's 33 basketball.Neom did not immediately reply to a request for comment.Scaling back a big visionThe $500 billion mega-project was slated to house 9 million people about the same population as New York City. It includes several regions, including The Line, a proposed 106-mile horizontal structure clad in mirrors.Neom was planned to accommodate some 1.5 million people by 2030, but that number is thought to have been scaled back considerably as costs for the project have ballooned. Estimates for Neom have swelled to as much as $1.5 trillion.The city is a key part of Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 project that aims to diversify the kingdom's economy away from oil by launching new industries and attracting more tourists.The megacity has faced a series of issues since its inception, including financial problems and construction delays. Last month, a Neom official said that Saudi Arabia is using one-fifth of all the steel produced in the world, a statement Business Insider could not independently verify.Governments and human rights groups have also scrutinized alleged human rights abuses, including of migrant workers building Neom. In July, Saudi Arabia rejected allegations that three men were sentenced to death because theycriticized evictions to make way for the Neom project. It said that the men were connected to two terrorist organizations.

Some 110 years ago, a picturesque new road known as Roosevelt Boulevard began ferrying vehicles across the nascent but burgeoning neighborhoods of North and Northeast Philadelphia. At first, traffic was light, but it rapidly thickened as car ownership rose and the surrounding area developed. By the 1950s, when the boulevard expanded to meet the new Schuylkill Expressway, it was lined with row houses and shops. Today, what was initially a bucolic parkway has become a traffic-snarled, 12-lane thoroughfare snaking its way through neighborhoods that house 1 in 3 Philadelphians.It is, by all accounts, a mess. Dubbed the corridor of death, Roosevelt Boulevard has been named the most dangerous street in the city (and among the most dangerous in the nation). In 2022, 59 pedestrians were killed there. Residents want to get across the street to the pharmacy to get their medication or get across the street to the supermarket, Latanya Byrd, whose niece and three nephews were killed in a crash on the boulevard in 2013, said in a video produced by Smart Growth America. It may take two, maybe three lights, for them to get all the way across. Its not just pedestrians who loathe Roosevelt Boulevard. People who walk, drive, or take public transit are all pretty badly screwed, Philadelphias public radio station declared in 2017. Aware of the roads shortcomings, city officials have long sought design changes that would reduce crashes. But they are powerless to act on their own, because the boulevard is controlled by the state of Pennsylvania.That situation is common across the United States, where many of the most deadly, polluting, and generally awful urban streets are overseen by state departments of transportation (DOTs). Often they were constructed decades ago, when the surrounding areas were sparsely populated. Although only 14 percent of urban road miles nationwide are under state control, two-thirds of all crash deaths in the 101 largest metro areas occur there, according to a recent Transportation for America report. In some places, this disparity is widening: From 2016 to 2022, road fatalities in Austin, Texas, fell 20 percent on locally managed roads while soaring 98 percent on those the state oversees. Related:The country is littered with roads that are a legacy of the past, that dont work very well, and that drive people crazy, said US Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), who calls them legacy highways.Instead of fixing such roadways, state officials tend to keep them as they are, citing limited resources or a need to maintain traffic speeds. In doing so, they constrain the capacity of even the most comprehensive local reforms to respond to urgent problems like car crash deaths, which are far more widespread in the US than among peer countries, or unreliable bus service. Unless state DOTs recognize that a successful urban road must do more than facilitate fast car trips, that problem will persist. Why we have state highwaysIn the early 1900s, states from coast to coast created transportation agencies to build smooth, wide roads that enabled long-distance car trips. New high-capacity roadways traversed forests and farmland, often terminating at what was then the urban edge. When Americans went on a car-buying binge after World War II, states like Michigan widened their highways with the goal of keeping traffic moving quickly, a prime directive for engineers. High-speed roadways fed rapid suburbanization, with new developments mushrooming on the city periphery. Columbus, Ohio, for instance, roughly doubled in population from 1950 and 2000, while its land area quintupled. Sprawling cities in the South and Southwest emerged seemingly overnight, while new suburbs encircled older metropolises in the North.In these newly urbanized areas, state highways that had previously meandered through the countryside were now lined with retail and housing. Their designers had initially paid little attention to transit, sidewalks, or tree cover features that are often afterthoughts for rural roads, but crucial in more densely populated areas.As with Philadelphias Roosevelt Boulevard, the width and traffic speed of state roads in urban neighborhoods now frequently clash with local desires for street safety, quality transit service, and pedestrian comfort. But revising them is rarely a priority for state DOTs engaged in a Sisyphean battle against traffic congestion.If a state agencys primary focus is on moving vehicles, theyre looking at reducing delays and building clear zones that remove objects such as trees next to a road, where errant drivers might strike them, said Kristina Swallow, who previously led the Nevada DOT as well as urban planning for Tucson, Arizona. At the local level, youre looking at a bunch of other activities. You have people walking or on a bike, so you may be okay with some congestion, because you know thats what happens when people are coming into an economically vibrant community.City-state tensions over state highways can take many forms. Roadway safety is often a flashpoint, since fixes frequently involve slowing traffic that state officials want to keep flowing. In San Antonio, for instance, the city negotiated for years with the Texas DOT to add sidewalks and bike lanes to Broadway, a state arterial with seven lanes. Last year the state scuttled that plan at the 11th hour, leaving Broadways current design in place. Local efforts to improve transit service can also face state resistance. In September, Madison, Wisconsin, launched its first bus rapid transit (BRT) line, a fast form of bus service that relies on dedicated bus lanes. But much of its route runs along East Washington, an arterial managed by Wisconsin, and the state transportation department prevented Madison from making the entire BRT lane bus-only during rush hour. That could sabotage the new service out of the gate. These dedicated bus lanes would serve the bus best in the heaviest traffic, so its counterintuitive to typical BRT design, said Chris McCahill, who leads the State Smart Transportation Initiative at the University of Wisconsin and serves on Madisons transportation commission. Wisconsins DOT did not respond to a request for comment.The whole point of fast transit programs like BRT is to get more people to ride transit instead of driving, thereby increasing the total human capacity of a road since buses are much more space-efficient than cars. But that logic can escape state transportation executives oriented toward longer, intercity trips instead of shorter, intracity ones, as well as highway engineers trained to focus on maximizing the speed of all vehicles, regardless of how many people are inside them. Even sympathetic state transportation officials may not fix dysfunctional urban roadways due to limited resources and competing needs that include expensive upgrades to bridges and interstates. Critical but relatively small-dollar projects, such as street intersection adjustments that better serve pedestrians or bus riders, can get lost in the shuffle. Lacking the authority to make changes themselves, city officials are stuck. How do you create connected networks when you dont own the intersection, and to fix it you have to compete at the state level with 500 other projects? said Stefanie Seskin, the director of policy and practice at the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO).As an example, Seskin cited the state-controlled St. Marys Street bridge in Brookline, a dense suburb adjacent to Boston. Its the only way to get to and from Boston that isnt on a major, super busy arterial, she said. Its not structurally deficient, but from the position of those walking, biking, and using transit, its just not functioning well. It requires a reconstruction something that Massachusetts has not done.The beginnings of a paradigm shift in transportation policyWith deaths among US pedestrians and cyclists hitting a 40-year high in 2022, a growing number of state DOTs are starting to acknowledge that maximizing vehicle speed is not the only goal that matters on urban roadways. The Pennsylvania DOT, for example, is now working with Philadelphia to at last bring lane redesigns, bus lane improvements, and speed cameras to Roosevelt Boulevard. On the other side of the country, the head of the Washington state DOT has requested $150 million from the state legislature to address the shortcomings of legacy highways. I think there are people in every single state DOT who want to be more proactive and to plan for safer streets for people who are moving, no matter what mode of transportation they use, Seskin told me. I dont think that that was necessarily the case 20 years ago. Still, fixing the deficiencies of state roadways requires a paradigm shift within state DOTs, with senior officials accepting that maximizing car speeds jeopardizes crucial local priorities like accommodating pedestrians, enabling rapid transit service, or supporting outdoor dining. Such nuance can escape state highway engineers trained with a myopic focus on vehicle speed. Many of the people doing roadway design work for states are still stuck in the old model, said Billy Hattaway, an engineer who previously held senior transportation roles in the Florida DOT as well as the city of Orlando.McCahill, of the State Smart Transportation Initiative, empathized with those toiling within state DOTs. Think about their position as engineers, he said. Theyve got their federal highway design guidelines, theyve got their state guidelines. Theyve been conditioned to be conservative and not try new things.Historically, those roadway design guidelines have prioritized free-flowing traffic. Making them more malleable could empower engineers to get more creative. Instead of applying one-size-fits-all rules for elements like lane widths and traffic lights, context-sensitive design encourages engineers working in urban settings to add pedestrian crossings, narrow lanes, and other features that can support local transportation needs. McCahill applauded Floridas DOT for recently rewriting its design guide to incorporate such context-sensitive layouts. Federal money could help finance such redesigns if state officials know how to use it. Theres a lack of knowledge about the flexibility of federal dollars, with misunderstandings and different interpretations, said NACTOs Seskin. Recognizing the issue, over the summer, the Federal Highway Administration published guidance and held a webinar highlighting dozens of federal funding programs available to upgrade legacy highways.Then there is an alternative approach: Rather than revise problematic roads themselves, states can hand them over to local officials, letting them manage improvements and maintenance. Washington state, for instance, in 2011 transferred a 2.5-mile strip of state road 522 to the Seattle suburb of Bothell. But such moves are not always financially feasible. The risk is that when you transfer a highway to local government, you take away the capacity to properly fund it over the long term because the city becomes responsible for upkeep, said Brittney Kohler, the legislative director of transportation and infrastructure for the National League of Cities. Unless the revamped road spurs development that creates new tax revenue, as it did in Bothell, cash-strapped cities may be unable to afford the costs of retrofits and ongoing maintenance.States and cities can work together to fix legacy highways and federal support can helpIn Portland, Oregon, pretty much everyone seems to agree that 82nd Avenue, a major thoroughfare that the state manages, is a disaster. Originally a little-used roadway marking the eastern edge of the city, 82nd Avenue has developed into a bustling arterial. Its been a dangerous eyesore for decades, with potholed pavement, insufficient pedestrian crossings, inadequate lighting, and minimal tree cover, said Art Pearce, a deputy director for the Portland Bureau of Transportation. According to city statistics, from 2012 to 2021, crashes on the thoroughfare caused 14 deaths and 122 serious injuries. At least two-thirds of crash victims were pedestrians, bicyclists, or occupants of cars turning left at intersections without traffic signals. During winter storms, Pearce said state workers would often clear nearby Interstate 205 but leave 82nd Avenue unplowed, leaving the city to do it without compensation. Our priority in snow and ice is to keep public transit moving, and 82nd Avenue has the highest transit ridership in the whole state, he said.Nearby residents and business owners have been begging local officials to revamp 82nd Avenue for decades, said Pearce and Blumenauer (whose congressional district includes Portland). The state was willing to transfer the roadway to the city, but the local officials wanted more than a handshake.We were like, if you give us $500 million, the city will take over 82nd Avenue and fix it, Pearce said. The state officials answered, We dont have $500 million, so hey, good meeting.A breakthrough came in 2021, when the American Rescue Plan Act offered states and cities a one-time influx of federal funding. Matching that money with contributions of their own, the state and city negotiated a transfer of seven miles of 82nd Avenue from the Oregon DOT to Portland. Some $185 million will go toward new features including sidewalk extensions, trees, a BRT line, and curb cuts for those using a wheelchair or stroller. Blumenauer, who said that reconstructing 82nd Avenue has been a personal goal for 35 years, led US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on a tour of the roadway last year.The success story is a bit of a one-off, Blumenauer admits, reliant on stimulus dollars tied to the Covid-19 pandemic. But a dedicated federal funding source could enable similar roadway reboots nationwide.At the moment, President-elect Donald Trump and incoming congressional Republicans show little appetite for transportation reforms, but a golden opportunity will come during the development of the next multiyear surface transportation bill, which is expected to be passed after the 2026 midterms. Although Blumenauer did not run for reelection this month, he said he hopes the future bill will include a competitive grant program that invites state and local officials to submit joint proposals to upgrade state highways in urban areas, with federal dollars acting as a sweetener.Otherwise, these state roads will continue to obstruct urban residents most cherished goals of safety, clean air, and public space. Flourishing cities cannot coexist with fast, decrepit roads. Too many state officials have not yet learned that lesson.Youve read 1 article in the last monthHere at Vox, we're unwavering in our commitment to covering the issues that matter most to you threats to democracy, immigration, reproductive rights, the environment, and the rising polarization across this country.Our mission is to provide clear, accessible journalism that empowers you to stay informed and engaged in shaping our world. By becoming a Vox Member, you directly strengthen our ability to deliver in-depth, independent reporting that drives meaningful change.We rely on readers like you join us.Swati SharmaVox Editor-in-ChiefSee More:

This week, a number of social media users were, once again, disappointed by the selection of a certain man to a coveted position. Actor John Krasinski yes, Jim from The Office was given the title of Peoples Sexiest Man Alive. Its a choice thats less egregious than genuinely perplexing. Its not that Krasinski isnt an objectively handsome man. In his most recent television role on the Prime Video show Jack Ryan, which ended in 2023 he played a buff, butt-kicking CIA agent. Its more that his career has rarely ever required him to display any sort of sex appeal. His most crush-worthy role to date was arguably more than a decade ago on The Office as the funny and approachable Jim Halpert. Since then, the most female attention he gets on social media is when hes posing with his wife, actress Emily Blunt, on a red carpet. Plus, its not exactly his year for visible hotness: His work in 2024 was almost entirely behind the scenes, directing the childrens film IF and producing A Quiet Place: Day One. All this to say, in a pop culture landscape practically infested with internet boyfriends, Krasinski was a baffling choice. Amid look-alike competitions being held for Hollywoods hottest young men across the United States and Europe your Timmy Chalamets, your Paul Mescals the lack of excitement around this issue has never felt so loud. What does it even mean to be Peoples sexiest man alive in 2024, if it means anything at all? And why are we still so invested? For readers who witnessed Patrick Dempsey receive this honor just last year, it must be pointed out that the Sexiest Man Alive issue didnt always feel this arbitrary and untimely. From its (now-cursed) inaugural issue in 1985 with box-office star Mel Gibson up until Channing Tatums spread in 2012, the titular man felt representative of the tastes of the average (straight white) woman. Plus, it was often a star who was dominating at the box office. In the past, the cover served as the ultimate advertising vehicle for it guys who were either newly cementing themselves as full-fledged movie stars, like Brad Pitt in 1995 and George Clooney in 1997, or major celebs reassuring the public that they were still hot commodities, like Harrison Ford in 1998. While these selections have been overwhelmingly white, at least they once felt relevant. People is a stalwart in an industry weathering difficult times, and this special issue is arguably one of the things keeping the magazine on newsstands. According to Digiday, the sexiest man issue has a rate base, or guaranteed circulation, of 3.7 million, compared to a regular issue of the magazine, with a rate base of 3.5 million. Strategically published during the fourth quarter when consumers are doing Thanksgiving and Black Friday shopping, its proven to be a huge cash cow for Peoples parent company, Dotdash Meredith. Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel revealing actor Chris Hemsworths Peoples Sexiest Man Alive cover on Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2014. Adam Rose/Walt Disney Television via Getty ImagesIn the 2010s, though, the issue started to receive some blowback or, more accurately, the advent of social media allowed these complaints to be expressed in a hypervisible way. It wasnt just that only two men of color, Denzel Washington and Keanu Reeves, had received the award until 2016, when Dwayne The Rock Johnson graced the cover. The choosing of celebrities like Adam Levine, a rockstar with a reputation for being a so-called douchebag raised eyebrows in 2013 and also performed relatively poorly on newsstands. His co-star on The Voice, Blake Shelton, has maybe done the most damage to the issues reputation. The unveiling of his cover in 2017 sent the internet into hysterics for days. John Legend (another judge on The Voice) in 2019 felt almost equally random. Even Benny Blancos appearance in the current issue as an honorable mention was strongly objected to online. Year over year, the Sexiest Man Alive has become less of a trusted assertion and more of a platform for debate.The details of the selection process for this issue have largely been kept under wraps. In a 2012 interview with USA Today, former editor Julie Jordan said People temperature-checks in a few ways, including asking female celebrities, consulting focus groups, and observing social media. There are constant rumors, including in Krasinskis case, that the title can be bought or won by a convincing publicist. Its easy to forget, though, that the selected men also have to be willing to participate in this extremely public form of objectification. The less impeachable Ryan Gosling reportedly turned down the offer twice. Even with an increasingly questionable reputation, social media has remained invested in this frivolous honor, particularly this year. Maybe its because People did a good job of incessantly teasing the reveal on social media with the help of dominant X accounts like FilmUpdates and PopCrave. Maybe its because the public needed a distraction from a much more crucial and devastating election. In the midst of political tumult, Krasinski is ultimately a safe, fairly inoffensive option, a celebrity that millennials obsessed with The Office have a level of affinity for. Despite questions about his political affiliation, he hasnt been mired in any real controversy. Whatever relevance the title holds, the sport of debating and crowning famous men as sexy and hot has never really gotten old. Like awards shows, its one of the last examples of celebrity monoculture for consumers to collectively engage with. In an overly skeptical social media landscape, it also seems as though half of the fun of the issue is negotiating whether the awarded person is a genuine attempt to reflect consumers taste or some elaborate PR play being fed to us. However meaningless the issue has become these days, its been successful in producing two things: revenue and a good, hollow debate. Youve read 1 article in the last monthHere at Vox, we're unwavering in our commitment to covering the issues that matter most to you threats to democracy, immigration, reproductive rights, the environment, and the rising polarization across this country.Our mission is to provide clear, accessible journalism that empowers you to stay informed and engaged in shaping our world. By becoming a Vox Member, you directly strengthen our ability to deliver in-depth, independent reporting that drives meaningful change.We rely on readers like you join us.Swati SharmaVox Editor-in-ChiefSee More: