Donald Trump's eponymous meme coin is worth less than ever in the wake of his tariffs finally being launched.Less than 24 hours after the president announced the long-anticipated reciprocal trade tariffs on domestic imports, his $TRUMP cryptocurrency's value dropped to a meager $9 per token.That's a new all-time low and remember, it was only launched about 10 weeks ago ahead of the real estate scion being sworn in for a second time.Obviously, there are far bigger concerns afoot than the president's shitcoin tanking but you have to admit that it's pretty hilarious that it's happening this way.Still, the debacle illustrates that Trump's nonsensical trade war isn't just hurting the entire global economy, which has essentially been lit on fire by the tariffs, but even his own business interests.Ironically, the tariff announcement came just after news broke thatthe Trump coin would be "unlocking" 40 million tokens, or 20 percent of its locked-down supply, later in April. It's the first time the memecoin has held such an event since its launch in January and could, theoretically, have generated the kind of buzz that would drive its value up.Instead, it made nary a blip and after the tariff-induced price slump, it's hard to imagine anyone actually wanting to buy $TRUMP anytime soon.Per a very unofficial poll on the crypto ticker siteCoinGecko, meanwhile, a whopping 77 percent of people who took a confidence survey about the official Trump coin said they felt negatively about it.From overtaking the $SHIB and $PEPE memecoins yes, we're rolling our eyes too when its value surpassed $60 per token and rising to an all-time high of nearly $75, the Trump coin has been remarkably volatile even for its market.Even on unelected co-president Elon Musk's X social network, news of this latest Trump slump resulted in japes and jibes."Donald Trump just destroyed the entire financial markets, stocks, crypto and even his shitcoin," one user jeered. "Everyone fucking hates him now. What a fraud."In another post, a satirist jokingly begged the president to mention his memecoin at all."Pls just talk about $Trump coin," the user wrote. "Need money back Sir."Those who willingly bought the president's memecoin are, clearly, in the "find out" portion of the "eff around and find out" adage amid the tariff turmoil and unfortunately, the rest of the world is right there with them.More on the tariffs: Trump Tariffs Show Signs of Being Written by AIShare This Article

Data centers are everywhere. As the world's tech companies demand more computing power to make their software run, the facilities have popped up in every corner of the planet. They make up the backbone of global network servers, cloud computing and of course AI.Microsoft has been a major player in the global data center boom, but its ambitions may now be faltering, in a bellwether for the AI industry. The tech behemoth recently decided to scale back data center projects around the globe, in countries including the UK, Australia, and Indonesia. It's likewise pulled back on data center development in Illinois, North Dakota, and Wisconsin, according to Bloomberg.That's on top of last week's news that Microsoft had walked away from two data center projects in the US and Europe, piling on to a February announcement that it wascancelling data center leases.Microsoft's moves are a brisk 180 from the company's early-January plans to spend $80 billion on AI data centers in 2025. They come as the greater US economy crumbles in reaction to Donald Trump's so-called "reciprocal tariffs," which some analysts say are more akin to war-time economic sanctions."These are just sanctions, imposed to intimidate countries and companies into submission like they're universities or law firms," said David Dayen, executive editor of The Prospect. "They're what a mob boss would do."Trump's tariffs are likely to have a hugely negative impact on the US tech sector more broadly, and on data centers specifically. Once these tariffs go into place, the prospect of building new data centers will become much more risky, as foreign-made resourcesskyrocket in price. Running existing facilities will likewise come at a premium, as renewable energy growth slows to a crawl and traditional energy costs soar.That's not to mention the already shaky ground of AI development. In recent months, some investors have grown wary that an economic bubble was forming around the AI industry a hypothesis that Microsoft's rollback would seem to support. The shaky CoreWeave IPO and nonexistent AI profits don't help.It's all piling up into a record low day for tech stocks, especially whales like Microsoft, which hit a one-year low as soon as the gates opened on Wall Street this morning.In all, the top seven US tech stocks Microsoft, Tesla, Nvidia, Alphabet (Google), Apple, Meta, and Amazon are poised to shed over $800 billion in market capacity today, a huge chunk of the $3 trillion in S&P 500 value erased in the 10 weeks since Trump took office.We now sit on the precipice of a new economic era. How this all shakes out for companies like Microsoft will probably be atale for the history books. When it comes to tech, one thing's for sure: the AI hype train isnow screaming out of the station.More on AI investments: Majority of AI Researchers Say Tech Industry Is Pouring Billions Into a Dead EndShare This Article

After becoming the first humans to fly over the Earth's poles in space, a crew of private astronauts or space tourists,depending on your perspective report that the world's southernmost continent is indeed a vast expanse of snow and ice."Hello, Antarctica," tweeted Chun Wang, the crypto entrepreneur who financed and is leading the private space mission, Fram2. "Unlike previously anticipated, from 460 km above, it is only pure white, no human activity is visible."As seen in a video Wang uploaded, it's a breathtaking spectacle, even if a lot of it is obscured by a swirling blanket of clouds. No humans have ever been afforded such a view, in person, of the pale Antarctic landscape. Wang remarked that he's surprised that he couldn't spot any human presence on the frigid continent which probably shouldn't be entirely surprising, since the entire enormous continent is only home to a few thousand people.The Fram2 mission launched Monday night from Florida using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. After reaching orbit, a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule nicknamed "Resilience" separated from the rocket, carrying a team of four spacefarers, including Wang, to an altitude of 285 miles. The three others are Norwegian cinematographer Jannicke Mikkelsen, German robotics researcher Rabea Rogge, and Australian polar explorer Eric Philips. Now, they're anticipated to spend up to four days in space, taking in the view and carrying out a multitude of science experiments.Unlike other crewed missions, Fram2 struck a high orbital inclination, or angle, perpendicular to the equator, putting its path directly above the Earth's North and South poles. This has never been done by a crewed mission before, largely because traveling at an angle far from the equator requires more power, and thus more fuel a lot more.In our age of burgeoning space tourism, however, practical concerns like those can be ignored: Fram2 launched southward, instead of embarking on the typical easterly heading.Its scientific objectives sound more ostensible than actual, as some critics have noted. Wang, the mission commander, is not a scientist or engineer. There isn't a lot to be gained from achieving a crewed polar orbit, other than the undeniably cool novelty. Some of the experiments sound like pure PR fluff, such as one involving Oura, a wearable health ring gadget. On the other hand, it does provide an opportunity to gauge how more or less regular bodies handle space, rather than the battle-tested constitutions of bona fide government-trained astronauts.So far, Wang and company's experience has been pretty cushy, aside from a few bumps in the road."The ride to orbit was much smoother than I had anticipated," Wang wrote in a tweet. "Apart from the final minute before [second stage engine cutoff], I barely felt any G-forces it honestly felt like just another flight."The infamous space motion sickness, though, set in once they hit microgravity. "We felt nauseous and ended up vomiting a couple of times," Wang wrote. "It felt different from motion sickness in a car or at sea."Thankfully, that quickly changed. "By the second morning, I felt completely refreshed," Wang concluded. "The trace of motion sickness is all gone."More on spaceflight: Boeing's Starliner Disaster Was Even Worse Than We Thought, Astronaut RevealsShare This Article

A crypto billionaire and a filthy rich ketamine user have launched a trip to the stars stop us if you've heard this one before.We promise it's not quite as Silicon Valley as it sounds, though as Australian explorer and freshman astronaut Eric Phillips told Ars Technica, there are shrooms involved.Alongside Norwegian filmmaker Jannicke Mikkelsen, German roboticist Rabea Rogge, and Chinese crypto billionaire Chun Wang, Philips is a member of SpaceX's Fram2 mission. The first private flight of its kind, the four-person team launched in a Crew Dragon capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket for the first-ever civilian mission flying over Earth's poles.Chartered by Chun and, of course, greenlit by SpaceX owner and resident White House psychonaut Elon Musk the four-person crew launched on March 31 and are currently in orbit, working on nearly two dozen scientific experiments they have planned for their short journey.Among them, as Ars noted, is the plan to become the first mushroom growers in space but "theyre not the ones youre thinking," Philips told the website. Instead, per a Fram2 statement released ahead of the launch, they'll be growing delectable oyster mushrooms.FOODiQ Global, the Australian company behind the "Mission MushVroom" experiment aboard Fram2, said in the press release that "oyster mushrooms are the perfect space crop" because they grow rapidly and have tons of nutrients. They even have "the unique ability to make vitamin D," the statement noted.Along with all those nutritional benefits, those yummy shrooms will almost certainly taste better than space food if top space minds can figure out a way to cook them in orbit, that is.In an op-ed forBusiness Insider, FOODiQ founder and CEO Flvia Fayet-Moore said that she identified mushrooms as an ideal in-orbit crop, particularly for years-long missions to Mars and other planets."Can you imagine eating thermostabilized, dehydrated food for five years?" the space nutritionist yes, that is apparently a real thing wrote. "I can't."We won't know how well the shrooms grew in microgravity until Fram2 gets back to Earth this week.More on space life: Boeing's Starliner Disaster Was Even Worse Than We Thought, Astronaut RevealsShare This Article

Just before announcing a major escalation in his tariff war on Wednesday evening followed by a major stock market wipeoutthe following morning president Donald Trump freed up the sale of his Truth Social shares.As the Financial Times reports, Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) revealed that it was planning to sell more than 142 million shares in a late Tuesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.Most notably, the shares listed in the document include Trump's 114-million-share stake, which is worth roughly $2.3 billion and held in a trust controlled by his son Donald Trump Jr. Other insiders, including a crypto exchange-traded fund, and 106,000 shares held by US attorney Pam Bondi were also included in the latest filing.While the filing doesn't guarantee any future sale of shares, investors weren't exactly smitten with the optics. Shares plunged eight percent in light of the news, according to the FT, and are down over 45 percent this year amid Trump's escalating trade war.The timing of the SEC filing is certainly suspect. Trump's "liberation day" tariff announcement on Wednesday triggered a major selloff, causing shares of multinational companies and stock futures to crater.Trump also vowed in September that he wasn't planning to sell any of his TMTG shares, which caused their value to spike temporarily at the time.Now that the shares are up for grabs, the president has seemingly had a change of heart or, perhaps, is getting cold feet now that the economy is feeling the brunt of his catastrophic economic policymaking. It's also possible Trump was always planning to cash out and leave investors exposed.Meanwhile, Trump Media released a statement on Wednesday, accusing "legacy media outlets" of "spreading a fake story suggesting that a TMTG filing today is paving the way for the Trump trust to sell its shares in TMTG." The company said this week's filing was "routine."Experts have long pointed out that if Trump were to sell, it could lead to TMTG spiraling.It's still unclear whether the company which reported a staggering $400 million loss in 2024, while only netting a pitiful $3.6 million revenue will realize the mass sale of millions of shares.But even just the suggestion appears to have spooked investors."In this offering it says the Trump trust could sell shares it doesn't necessarily mean that they will," Morningstar analyst Seth Goldstein told ABC News. "It signals to the market that they could.""This leaves it up in the air if and when a share sale will happen," he added.In short, instead of building a viable business that generates meaningful revenue to reflect its valuation, TMTG still feels more like an enrichment scheme for Trump and his closest associates."Trump Media has been pretty unsuccessful at creating an operating business model, but they have been quite successful at selling their stock," University of Florida finance professor Jay Ritter told ABC News.Share This Article

Donald Trump's sweeping global tariffs have scythed through all sectors of the economy including crypto, a market that the sitting president was hailed as a champion of.On Thursday, the morning after Trump signed an executive order enacting his "Liberation Day" tariffs, blockchain assets across the board slumped considerably as a mass sell-off ensued.Bitcoin, the first and largest cryptocurrency, fell by 4.2 percent down to about $82,200, according to CoinDesk data, liberating nearly $6,000 in value. Ether, meanwhile, tumbled by 5.6 percent to around $1,700.The downturn reverberated through major crypto entities. Among exchanges, , Coinbase Global fell by 7.7 percent, and Strategy, a major Bitcoin holder, followed with a 5.6 percent loss. One of the world's largest crypto miners, Marathon Digital Holdings, stumbled by 8.3 percent.According to the Crypto Fear & Greed Index, which gauges market sentiment for Bitcoin and other major crypto, the prevailing mood is "extreme fear." Yesterday, pre-tariffs, it was "neutral."Some crypto leaders remain bullish. "There are no tariffs on Bitcoin," wrote Michael Saylor, cofounder and chairman at Strategy and a notable Bitcoin evangelist, in a tweet Thursday morning.Crypto taking collateral damage from the tariffs is ironic, given that advocates of decentralized assets promised that it'd be above the hype- and panic-driven vicissitudes of the old-fashioned stock market which, by the way, is also absolutely foundering in the wake of Trump's "reciprocal" action. Over $2 trillion was vaporized Thursday from the S&P 500, an index that tracks five hundred of the US's largest publicly traded stocks, .Deepening the irony, Trump was perceived as friendly to the crypto industry, even peddling his own dodgy meme coin that crashed and burned in a way that stank of a rug pull. Crypto soared in the wake of his election victory as did the stock market.The two may not be so unlike each other after all. These latest crypto declines are indicative of a growing correlation between digital assets and macroeconomic policy shifts, Marcin Kazmierczak, CEO at blockchain firm RedStone, told Reuters. "But protectionist policies that potentially weaken dollar hegemony could accelerate interest in decentralized alternatives over the medium-to-long term," he added.Then again, there's no accounting for plain old fear. The tariffs have been looming for a while now, but their actual scale has clearly startledinvestors, with Chinese goods slammed with a 54 percent import tax. Even allies like Japan have been smacked with a 24 percent hike."Uncertainty breeds caution in all markets, and crypto is experiencing a tension between short-term speculation, slow-moving policy shifts, and institutional pullback," Gadi Chait, investment manager at Xapo Bank, told Forbes. "When fears of inflation driven by tariff uncertainty rise, crypto suffers in the short term. In the past few weeks, bitcoin has been trading within a wide range of $76,600 to $94,500." In other words, crypto has always been volatile, so a rebound is likely but by no means guaranteed."If prices break decisively below $76,600, it could signal a significant shift in market sentiment," Chait said.More on crypto: Visitors At This Bitcoin-Heated Spa Are Complaining About Mold and UTIsShare This Article

If you follow tech stocks, there's probably one thing on your mind today: Donald Trump's tariffs.Yesterday, Trump announced his long-teased "reciprocal tariffs" on foreign imports coming into the US. Among them are a 32 percent tariff on Taiwan, 24 percent on Japan, 26 percent on India, and 34 percent on China all major players in the global tech trade.As a result, the magnificent seven (M7) stocks a stock trader term for the current whales of the tech industry: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla are in a freefall today, as investors sell off their shares to brace foreconomicuncertainty. Among the tech industry, the stagnant AI sector is being hit particularly hard, as energy costs are anticipated to skyrocket along with the cost of important resources like steel, precious minerals, and semiconductors.As such, the cost to build and run data centers, the massive facilities that make AI computing possible, is expected to spike as the supply chain adjusts to the new normal.The vast majority of chips that power these data centers come from hard-hit countries like Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, and Vietnam,while the US makes just 11 percent of its chips at home. Trump's tariffs will force countries from those companies to hike their chip prices, and US companies will no doubt hike their prices to compensate, which will ultimately run off to consumers.That's a crushing blow for American AI companies, which were already facing the consequences of investor skepticism, lagging revenue, and a disappointing debut AI IPO by CoreWeave.Broader details about how these tariffs will affect the tech industry are foggy right now, as the stock market is moving at a breakneck pace, but there is one common theme: everything is down. Apple, for example, is heading for its biggest single-day plunge in stock price in nearly 5 years, dropping over 8 percent in just the first few hours of trading. Other M7 stocks are likewise plummeting, with Amazon down almost 9 percent, and Nvidia down by 6.7 at the time of writing. Tesla has continued its months-long cascade with a 7 percent dip so far.If you're wonderingwhy we're doing this, you're not alone. For decades, the United States has sat atop the global economic food chain. Thanks to years of military and economic supremacy, the US dollar became the world standard, making it easy to export cheap consumer goods as high-paying American jobs became starvation industries in countries dependent on US trade.Trump's tariffs seem to be an attempt to reverse all that an economic experimentthat's never really been attempted at this scale. The entire move hinges on the bet that companies will shift production from places like Vietnam and Taiwan back into the US, a gamble which business leaders say comes with high costs and even higher risks.As Trump's tariffs aren't enshrined in law, they could be easily undone by the courts or the next presidential administration, making a long-term investment into, say, a $5 billion semiconductor plant on US soil hard to justify from a business standpoint and at the end of the day, isn't what this is all about?More on the AI economy: AI Hype Will Plunge America Into Financial Ruin, Economist WarnsShare This Article

Incredible things have been happening in Japan. This is the country that gave us karaoke bars, sushi conveyors, and square watermelon not to mention those high-tech toilets.It's also a world leader in public infrastructure, sporting wonders like the lofty Tokyo Sky Tree, the immense Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel, and the 300-meter tall Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge. There's also the matter of the Shinkansen bullet train network, connecting riders to major cities across the country at speeds of up to 225 mph.Undergirding these dazzling public works is good old Japanese engineering, known for precision, innovation, and dependability.Case in point, the West Japan Railway Company (JR West) just announced the completion of a 3D-printed train station, which it says is a world first. Plans to replace a crumbling wooden station in Wakayama Prefecture were first announced on March 11, 2025, and the printed building was more or less put together by March 26th in the span of just under three hours.To do it, JR West contracted Serendix, which specializes in 3D printed homes. Serendix delivered the station in four parts by rail, which were then pieced together during a break in the train schedule. Though the rural station weighs in at just 10 square meters, the construction time is more than half the previous estimate of six hours.The construction method reportedly cut down on cost as well, according toThe Japan Times, coming in at half the price of reinforced concrete. The company boasts that it should likewise be able to withstand the region's devastating earthquakes.Once the station goes online in July, citizens of the coastal city of Arida will be able to resume 90-minute trips to the uninhabited island of Jinoshima, a popular destination for summer travelers.The ease with which Japan rolled out the station underscores the country's commitment to public transit. Surprisingly, the majority Japan's metro and regional rail services are privately owned an anomaly compared to most publicly-owned systems throughout the world. The secret is that many of Japan's transit companies also operate as property developers.With some carefully regulation, these companies are able to rapidly develop urban areas around public infrastructure, and invest in innovative new technology like 3D printed buildings.But Japan's success with rail privatization is even more of an outlier. Most privatization ventures throughout the world have failed spectacularly. In the UK, for example, rail privatization has led to rising fees, service reductions, staffing issues, and major delays, thanks to deregulation allowing private equity vultures to pick the system clean.Share This Article

Teslareleased some terrible news about sales this morning, but then a funny thing happened: after an initial crash, its stock started to rise significantly.Why? Well, it seems a lot like it has to do with aPolitico story reporting,per three unnamed insiders, that president Donald Trump had been telling confidantes of Musk's upcoming departure in a few months purportedly to focus on his many businesses, and not because he can't get security clearance due to drug use.Though both the White House and Musk himself have spun the reporting as "garbage" and "fake news," the writing was nevertheless on the wall. By the time the markets closed, Tesla was trading for about $282 a share,in a 5.3 percent increase from the $254 price per share it held when markets opened this morning.The stock jump is all the more telling in context, considering that just 48 hours ago, Musk's electric vehicle company was trading at $259 per share right after the multi-hyphenate himself admitted that his government work was hurting Tesla's stock price.Just a few weeks ago, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a note to investors that Musk needed to "change the narrative" to save his EV company. Its brand image, the longtime Tesla bull wrote, was suffering from a "tornado crisis" due to massive backlash against the billionaire's draconian politicking and the only way out of it was to "formally announce Musk is going to balance DOGE and being Tesla CEO."Obviously, Musk isn't exactly following that advice by insisting thatPolitico's reporting, which was later corroborated byNBC, is somehow false. Regardless, the markets have spoken and it seems like even they think he's full of crap.For months now, Tesla has been shaken not only by anti-Musk protests, but also by investor anxiety about whether or not the company's figurehead is asleep at the wheel.In an obvious reference to DOGE's cruel attempt at getting government employees to justify their jobs, Tesla investor and celebrity photographer Jerry Avenaim jokingly tweeted, "Please share five things you did for Tesla shareholders this week.""Or are you working remotely?" Avenaim continued. "Asking for all of us."Is Musk gonna get his eye back on the ball after all? Or will he dig his heels in for more culture warring?It's impossible to tell right now, but Tesla shareholders may be in for a nasty surprise in the morning: after a White House event announcing draconian new tariffs, Tesla's stock is again getting hammered in after-hours trading.Share This Article

In 1970, a cryptid-obsessed biologist placed several cameras inside plastic trap boxes and sent them down to the depths of Scotland's Loch Ness in hopes of finally capturing compelling evidence of its storied monster and now, it appears that one of those cameras has been recovered by sheer accident.AsUSA Today and other outlets report, one of the cameras deployed by University of Chicago biologist Roy Mackal some 55 years ago was discovered during a test dive of an unmanned research submersible in the famed lake in the Scottish Highlands.Specifically, the camera trap's mooring system appeared to have gotten tangled up in the propellers for the submersible, which was named, much to the chagrin of the British government, "Boaty McBoatface" by the public in a viral poll in 2016.Full of sensitive oceanographic instruments meant to study Loch Ness' unique marine climate it sits atop the British Isles' most prominent tectonic fault, after all and the world beyond it, Boaty McBoatface's job description almost certainly doesn't include searching for monsters.All the same, the researchers who work with the submersible, known affectionately as Boaty, were pleased with their discovery."While this wasn't a find we expected to make," Sam Smith, a robotics engineer with the UK's National Oceanography Centre, said in a press statement, "we're happy that this piece of Nessie hunting history can be shared and perhaps at least the mystery of who left it in the loch can be solved."It seems that Smith and his team weren't quite aware of what they had their hands on when they pulled the aged but remarkably well-preserved Instamatic camera out of its thick plastic cylinder. With help from naturalist Adrian Shine a researcher who's been studying Loch Ness for more than half a century himself they were able to identify the famed UChicago cryptozoologist's camera."It was an ingenious camera trap consisting of a clockwork Instamatic camera with an inbuilt flash cube, enabling four pictures to be taken when a bait line was taken," Shine said in his own press statement. "It is remarkable that the housing has kept the camera dry for the past 55 years, lying more than [426 feet] deep in Loch Ness."When researchers developed the Instamatic's film, they unfortunately didn't find any photos of Nessie,though they did recover some beautiful, eerie photos of the deep, dark lake.The government researchers subsequently turned the camera and film over to the Loch Ness Centre in the loch-straddling village of Drumnadrochit (Mackal himself passed away in 2013, meaning the camera couldn't be returned.) According to Nagina Ishaq, the center's general manager, the find provides another piece of the puzzle in the history of the "elusive beast.""We are guardians of this unique story and, as well as investing in creating an unforgettable experience for visitors, we are committed to helping continue the search and unveil the mysteries that lie underneath the waters of the famous Loch," Ishaq said, perUSA Today.Indeed, it's lovely to hear of somethinggood happening with a submersible for a change and to know that there are people still out there searching for monsters in the deep.More on marine beasts: It Turns Out Sharks Make Noises, and Here's What They Sound LikeShare This Article

One of the industry's leading large language models has passed a Turing test, a longstanding barometer for human-like intelligence.In a new preprint study awaiting peer review, researchers report that in a three-party version of a Turing test, in which participants chat with a human and an AI at the same time and then evaluate which is which, OpenAI's GPT-4.5 model was deemed to be the human 73 percent of the time when it was instructed to adopt a persona. That's significantly higher than a random chance of 50 percent, suggesting that the Turing test has resoundingly been beaten.The research also evaluated Meta's LLama 3.1-405B model, OpenAI's GPT-4o model, and an earlychatbot known as ELIZA developed some eighty years ago."People were no better than chance at distinguishing humans from GPT-4.5 and LLaMa (with the persona prompt)," wrote lead author Cameron Jones, a researcher at UC San Diego's Language and Cognition Lab, in an X thread about the work. "And 4.5 was even judged to be human significantly more often than actual humans!"The Turing test is named after British mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing. In 1950, Turing proposed that one way to assess a machine's intelligence was by having it engage in text-based conversations with a human interrogator, who at the same time would hold a text-based conversation with another human, out of sight. Turing called this the "imitation game." If the interrogator couldn't correctly determine which respondent was the computer and which was the human, it would suggest, on a very general level, that the machine could think like a human.In this latest study, the researchers carried out the famed experiment on an online hub. For eight rounds, a pool of nearly 300 participants were randomly assigned to either be an interrogator or one of the two "witnesses" being interrogated, with the other "witness" being a chatbot.A key point here is how the AI models were prompted. One type was a "no-persona" prompt, in which the AI was given only basic instructions: "You are about to participate in a Turing test. Your goal is to convince the interrogator that you are a human."For the "persona" prompt, on the other hand, the AI was specifically told to put on a specific persona, like a young person who's knowledgeable about the internet and culture.These instructions made a world of difference. Without persona prompting, GPT-4.5 achieved an overall win rate of merely 36 percent, significantly down from its Turing-trumping 73 percent. As a baseline, GPT-4o, which powers the current version of ChatGPT and only received no-persona prompts, achieved an even less convincing 21 percent. (Somehow, the ancient ELIZA marginally surpassed OpenAI's flagship model with a 23 percent success rate.)The results are intriguing. But as vaunted as the Turing test has become in AI and philosophy circles, it's not unequivocal proof that an AI thinks like we do."It was not meant as a literal test that you would actually run on the machine it was more like a thought experiment," Franois Chollet, a software engineer at Google, told Nature in 2023.For all their faults, LLMs are master conversationalists, trained on unfathomably vast sums of human-composed text. Even faced with a question they don't understand, an LLM will weave a plausible-sounding response. It's becoming clearer and clearer that AI chatbots are excellent at mimicking us so perhaps assessing their wits with an "imitation game" is becoming a bit of a moot point.As such, Jones doesn't think the implications of his research whether LLMs are intelligent like humans are clear-cut."I think that's a very complicated question" Jones tweeted. "But broadly I think this should be evaluated as one among many other pieces of evidence for the kind of intelligence LLMs display.""More pressingly, I think the results provide more evidence that LLMs could substitute for people in short interactions without anyone being able to tell," he added. "This could potentially lead to automation of jobs, improved social engineering attacks, and more general societal disruption."Jones closes out by emphasizing that the Turing test doesn't just put the machines under the microscope it also reflects humans' ever-evolving perceptions of technology. So the results aren't static:perhaps as the public becomes more familiar with interacting with AIs, they'll get better at sniffing them out, too.Share This Article

Tinder has teamed up with OpenAI to bring an AI voice-activated flirting game to the dating app.As the company revealed in a press release, the awkwardly-named "Game Game" uses OpenAI's voice mode and GPT-4o reasoning model to encourage users to roleplay various meet-cute scenarios and get points based on how good they are at flirting. (Tinder assured in that same press release that the voice data gleaned from the game wouldn't be used to train any new AI models.)In an Instagram video, Spencer Rascoff, the Zillow cofounder who was recently appointed CEO of the Tinder-owning Match Group, demonstrated how the goofy game works. (The 49-year-old executive may have also revealed his own preferences in the video: the AI single he matched with, Mila, was listed as age 32.)Upon "matching" with "Mila" who, like the other AI Game Game participants, has a cartoonish avatar and an audibly robotic voice Rascoff begins one of the most uncomfortable conversational exchanges we've ever had the displeasure of witnessing.At one point during the contrived scenario meant to take place in a kitchen at a party, the Palantir alum tells the AI avatar that he's having a "great time at this cooking activity," and soon after informs her she's "spicy." It also doesn't help that the video itself keeps losing focus on Rascoff's phone screen and misspelling the name "Mila" in its captions.In an interview withFast Company, Tinder growth and product VP Hillary Paine seemed to suggest that the game's goofiness was intentional and cited metrics from a 2023 company survey as evidence."Our Future of Dating report found that 64 percent of young singles are totally fine with a little cringe if it leads to a real connection," Paine detailed. "We didnt want it to feel overly polished or intense. Instead, we leaned into humor, awkwardness, and low-pressure moments to help users practice flirting in a fun, playful, and judgment-free way."After trying the Game Game out for ourselves, Futurism can definitely agree that it's not "overly polished," though perhaps not in the way Tinder's C-suite intended.When this reporter opened the in-app game, they forgot, as many are wont to do, to turn off their Bluetooth speaker. As such, the AI single they matched with began talking in stereo and then, seemingly, responding to its own audio as if it were a real person speaking back.We've reached out to Tinder to ask about that seeming glitch, but it's still a pretty hilarious exploit for a game and company that's clearly attempting to garner engagement via a clunky and malfunctioning technology.More on AI love: Woman Alarmed When Date Uses ChatGPT to Psychologically Profile HerShare This Article

Is it all falling apart?Political LiabilityNow that he's done irreparable damage to the federal government, billionaire Elon Musk is reportedly stepping back in the coming weeks as the head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.As Politico reports, president Donald Trump has informed his inner circle that Musk will soon hang up his coat as his number one hatchet man.If confirmed, it'd be a huge inflection point in Musk's arc and unmiskable evidence that his unpredictable and extremely unpopular bull-in-the-china-shop approach to slashing government funding has become a political liability for the president.Breaking PointIt's been a bad week for the billionaire. Musk threw $25 million behind judge Brad Schimel, who ran against liberal candidate judge Susan Crawford during a pivotal Wisconsin Supreme Court election on Tuesday. Crawford beat Schimel handily.Tesla investors have also accused Musk of abandoning his carmaker in favor of focusing all of his time on gutting the government's budget with DOGE.Oddly enough, the EV maker's shares rose almost five percent today after the company posted catastrophic quarterly results, with longtime investors calling for his resignation a reaction, perhaps, to the news that Musk's tenure in the government could be ending.The relationship between Trump and Musk has been under heavy scrutiny for quite some time now. Now that Trump is rumored to be looking to kick the mercurial CEO out of the White House, that relationship could really be tested.Did Musk assume too much influence from within the White House? Is Musk simply bored of the plundering and growing concerned about his ailing businesses?Pundits have long argued that Musk could be acting as the real "shadow president" behind the scenes, with his most recent attempt to sway the Wisconsin Supreme Court election demonstrating considerable political influence despite his candidate losing in the end.According to Politico, Trump told attendees of a March 24 cabinet meeting that Musk would be leaving the administration.However, when or if Musk will actually depart remains unclear."As the President said, this White House would love to keep Elon around for as long as possible," White House spokesperson Harrison Fields told Politico. "Elon has been instrumental in executing the Presidents agenda, and will continue this good work until the President says otherwise."More on Musk: Tesla Just Got Some Absolutely Horrible NewsShare This Article

Since Elon Musk took the mantle of power thanks to Donald Trump, Tesla has become a universal focus of protest around the world. In the US, frustrated taxpayers have taken to the streets to occupy dealerships, steal tires, and vandalize Teslas wherever they appear.In response, the federal government has declared a crackdown on dissent. A recently formed FBI-ATF taskforce is said to be working to identify vandals and arsonists on behalf of Tesla even as Musk decries accusations that the US has descended into oligarchy.Those allegations aren't likely to go away if Attorney General Pam Bondi has anything to say about it. She recently announced that the Justice Department will seek a staggering 20-year federal prison sentence for Cooper Jo Frederick, a Colorado man accused of vandalizing a Tesla Service Center earlier in March."I've made it clear, if you take part in a wave of domestic terrorism of Tesla properties, we will find you, arrest you, and put you behind bars," Bondi said in a video posted on X-formerly-Twitter. "Let this be a warning: you can run, but you cannot hide. Justice is coming."Bondi's demand for a 20-year stint comes weeks after she announced charges against three other defendants accused of destroying Tesla cars and charging stations. A Justice Department press release states that each defendant faces a "minimum penalty of five years and up to 20 years in prison" for property destruction."The Department of Justice is committed to ending all acts of violence and arson directed at Tesla properties and otherwise," it concludes.The monumental penalties are part of a push by the Trump and Musk administration to equate property damage and vandalism with "domestic terrorism," even in incidents like this one, in which no people were harmed. Musk and Bondi have also both repeated unsubstantiated claims that Tesla protests and vandalism are funded and organized by a shadowy cabal that needs to be taken down.It's not unlike the rhetoric used during a federal crackdown on nonviolent environmental and animal activism known as the "Green Scare." In May of 2007, two saboteurs with the Earth Liberation Front were charged with 12 and 16 years in federal prison for torching a forest ranger station, a police substation, an SUV dealership, and a tree farm.According to The Intercept, fears of property damage led the fur and animal testing industries to increase "their efforts to convince the FBI and the DOJ to treat animal rights and environmental protestors as terrorists." This led to an expansion of the Animal Enterprise Protection Act, allowing acts of property damage to be prosecuted as acts of domestic terrorism.Still, the Tesla crackdown is a notable stepping stone in what seems like ever-harsher sentencing guidelines for acts of non-violent vandalism, which feels especially stark when the goal is protecting the property of a corporation run by the sitting president's best buddy. For context, in 2022, a Philadelphia woman was sentenced to two and a half years in federal prison after pleading guilty to torching two police cruisers during 2020 protests.The 17.5 year difference between her sentence and the threat of Frederick's 20-year stint for roughly the same crime suggests that Musk's involvement in US politics comes with a heavy hand. Mess with Tesla, and the government will make an example out of you.Even disregarding Tesla's special treatment, prison sentences in the US are already higher than in most nations. In 2022, an analysis by the Council on Criminal Justice foundthat the US is a global outlier in its use of prison sentences of 10 years or more. And when it comes to non-violent property damage, sentencing has skyrocketed in recent years, from an average of 18.3 months in 2016 to 60 months in 2023.All told, it's a troubling time as demonstrations against Tesla become a nearly everyday occurrence. If vandalism can be prosecuted as domestic terrorism, how soon until peaceful protests incur the wrath of Musk's FBI?More on oligarchy: Mothers and Children Are Already Dying Because of Elon Musks CutsShare This Article

A quarter century after its inception and less than a year after its "full-throated" defense of artificial intelligence in writing the nonprofit behind the annual National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenge is closing its doors.Kilby Blades, a romance author serving as NaNoWriMo's interim executive director, announced in a video and in emails posted to social media that the nonprofit,which challenged participants to crank out a draft for a novel every November,would be shuttering because, essentially, it's out of money.In the nearly 30-minute-long video, Blades explained in detail the money problems that the competition which spawned the bestselling "Water For Elephants" and incorporated into a nonprofit six years ago has suffered, which sound both stark and legitimate.Though the interim director did address prior allegations of abuse and grooming regarding the nonprofit's forums, she failed to mention the most recent elephant in the room: that last year, the group changed its policies to allow those who participated in its annual creative writing challenge to use AI generators.Beyond just allowing the use of AI, NaNoWriMo also claimed that merely criticizing the technology which has put untold numbers of writers and other workers out of a job, threatens to do so with many more, and goes against the challenge's founding ethos of inspiring people to do the work of writing is tantamount to ableism."We believe that to categorically condemn AI would be to ignore classist and ableist issues surrounding the use of the technology," the nonprofit's 2024 statement reads, "and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege."Unsurprisingly, that messaging attracted immense criticism. In the wake of its release, professionals who had been affiliated with the decades-spanning competition publicly denounced it."Never use my name in your promo again," tweeted Daniel Jos Older, a New York Times bestselling young adult author and former NaNoWriMo board member, last September. "In fact never say my name at all and never email me again. Thanks."Maureen Johnson, another ex-board member and YA author, warned fellow writers on her way out the door about what the AI decision could mean."I would also encourage writers to beware," Johnson wrote in an Instagram post, "your work on [NaNoWriMo's] platform is almost certainly going to be used to train AI."In the wake of the closure news, the usual usual suspects pointed to the grooming allegations leveled at NaNoWriMo accusations that were, it's worth noting, thoroughly investigated and handled by the nonprofit.Literary types, however, saw the AI writing on the wall."So many people worked so hard to make NaNoWriMo what it was," children and YA author Maggie Tokuda-Hall posted on Bluesky, "and it was all squandered to prop up a plagiarism machine, truly betraying everything NaNo represented: the limitless creativity of normal people.""NaNoWriMo belongs to the writers, not some shit traitorous organization," another user declared. "Always has, always will."Indeed, for all that it became in its final years, NaNoWriMo was once a staple in the creative writing blogosphere and a way for those who didn't attend the Iowa Writers' Workshop to make names for themselves. Pedigree was never a factor for the challenge's winners, who all won upon writing at least 50,000 words during the month of November and who were only required to register for verification purposes.Obviously, the organization got mighty lost along the way, but it's still sad to see NaNoWriMo go and it feels like a harbinger of things to come.More on AI writing: LA Times Uses AI to Provide "Different Views" on the KKKShare This Article

It's been ten months since NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams traveled to the International Space Station on board Boeing's issues-riddled Starliner spacecraft.After years of delays, Starliner finally launched from Space Launch Complex-41 at NASA's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on June 5, 2024, following three separate scrubs and the discovery of several helium leaks.Things didn't improve once the capsule reached space. Docking procedures with the ISS proved harrowing due to reaction-control thruster malfunctions.And according to a new Ars Technica interview with the two astronauts, the situation was even more terrifying than was reported at the time."I don't know that we can come back to Earth at that point," Wilmore told Ars' Eric Berger. "I don't know if we can. And matter of fact, I'm thinking we probably can't."News that NASA had actively bent flight rules to allow Starliner to continue attempting to dock with the station despite multiple thrusters failing highlights the real danger Wilmore and Williams were in, and how close they were to simply turning around.It's a damning new revelation, especially considering how much of a disaster Boeing's Starliner project has already been. The aerospace giant has poured billions of dollars into the project and has yet to complete a single, successful crewed mission to and from the station.While the pair said the launch atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas rocket went more smoothly than anticipated, things started to go haywire when reaction control system thrusters started failing one by one, making docking procedures a lot more difficult.During briefings preceding the launch, Wilmore had already been made aware that thruster issues could land them in a "situation where we're in space and can't control it," as he told Ars.While trying to dock with the ISS, Wilmore recounted that the crew became single fault tolerant, meaning that the mission was one failing thruster away from losing full control of the capsule's movement."We're single fault tolerant, and I'm thinking, 'Wow, we're supposed to leave the space station,'" Wilmore told Ars. "Because I know the flight rules."However, heated conversations back at NASA's headquarters led to the space agency deciding it was still worth the risk, waiving flight rules about the loss of thrusters."I did not know that the flight directors were already in discussions about waiving the flight rule because we've lost two thrusters," the astronaut added. "We didn't know why. [The flight rules] just dropped.""We're already past the point where we were supposed to leave, and now we're zero-fault tolerant and I'm manual control," Wilmore recalled. "And, oh my, the control is sluggish. Compared to the first day, it is not the same spacecraft. Am I able to maintain control? I am. But it is not the same.""There was a lot of unsaid communication, like, 'Hey, this is a very precarious situation we're in,'" Williams added. "I think both of us overwhelmingly felt like it would be really nice to dock to that space station that's right in front of us."All told, four out of the 28 reaction control system thrusters failed. Two of them came back online after NASA remotely reset the system.The pair returned on board a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule earlier this month after being stranded on board the space station for nine months. Their original mission was meant to last a mere week.NASA is still working to get Starliner which returned without the pair on board in September back off the ground. In an update last week, the agency revealed that NASA and Boeing are "making progress toward crew certification of the companys CST-100 Starliner," with teams "working to resolve Starliners in-flight anomalies and preparing for propulsion system testing in the months ahead."When or if the plagued spacecraft will again attempt to journey to the space station remains unclear. According to NASAs Commercial Crew Program manager Steve Stich, the next flight likely won't happen before late 2025 or "early next year."More on Starliner: NASA Is Investigating Boeing Starliner's "In-Flight Anomalies"Share This Article

As Donald Trump's administration continues to gut scientific funding anddiminish the role of research all while installing crackpot anti-vaccine figureheads to lead entire federal agencies scientists are starting to look for greener pastures.According to a Nature poll of more than 1,200 scientists, a startling 75 percent said they're now considering leaving the United States. Europe and Canada emerged as top choices for relocation.And if that wasn't enough sign of intellectual erosion, a whopping 79 percent of postgraduate researchers and 255 of 340 PhD students said they'd consider leaving."Anywhere that supports science," one respondent wrote of where they'd go instead."This is my home I really love my country," another graduate student at a top US university wrote. "But a lot of my mentors have been telling me to get out, right now."It's a sad reality for researchers, who are increasingly seeing no future with Trump at the helm. The poll highlights the threat of a massive brain drain as scientists are forced to pursue opportunities abroad instead.Experts have warned that the country's reputation as a world-leading place to conduct scientific research has taken a massive hit under the current Trump administration, which could also have disastrous long-term economic consequences in the years ahead.While thousands of scientists have been rehired following mass firings at federal government agencies, concerns over future layoffs are still widespread. Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency is still laying waste to one agency after the next. Earlier today, hundreds of federal health workers were told they'd be losing their jobs.Massive cuts to grants and stipends, in particular, have US-based scientists reeling. Studies and clinical trials have ground to a halt. Countless projects are being canceled."Seeing all of the work stopped is heartbreaking," the graduate student quoted above wrote. "Ive been looking very diligently for opportunities in Europe, Australia, and Mexico.""If I want to work in that space, Im going to have to find somewhere else that prioritizes that," she said.Meanwhile, institutions outside the US are counting their lucky stars and are expecting a massive influx of talent."From what Im hearing from the places were talking to, and other people who are looking to take international jobs, a lot of universities in these countries are seeing this as a once-in-a-generation opportunity," another researcher, who has been in touch with a Canadian university after his National Institutes of Health grant was terminated, told Nature."I think it has gone from 'Can we recruit a few people?' to 'How many people can we actually take?' because the demand is there," he added.The hit to US universities could threaten the country's competitiveness, especially when it comes to high-interest areas like AI."Universities are tremendously important engines of innovation," New York University professor Sabrina Howell told the New York Times. "This is really killing the goose that lays the golden egg."In short, the Trump administration's attack on science could be a devastating and potentially unprecedented self-own."Weve had a pretty good run over the past 60 to 80 years," Duke University economist Daniel Gross, who found in a working paper that Trump's cuts could disproportionately affect institutions with the most successful research programs, told the NYT. "Sometimes you dont realize the value of something until its gone."More on brain drain: NASA Disgusted by Elon Musk's DisrespectShare This Article

Things have been looking rocky at Tesla for a while now. Even before CEO Elon Musk began ripping through the federal government to global outcry, its late-2024 sales were way down.Now that feels like a lifetime ago, as mass recalls, performance issues, and anti-Musk protests have united to erase some $800 billion in Tesla's market value.And as the once-mighty Tesla falls by the wayside, a rising challenger is beginning to eat Musk's lunch.BYD is the Shenzhen-based EV company quickly replacing Tesla as the world's foremost seller of electric and hybrid vehicles. It just released its earnings results for the first quarter of 2025, showing sales up 58 percent sold in the same period of 2024, from around 400,000 vehicle sales to nearly a million.The automaker, which recently revealed a vehicle battery that can charge in just five minutes, also hit a new record in EV exports at 206,084 units, up 111 percent from last year.Tesla's sales results won't go live until tomorrow, but analysts are warning of continued volatility for the company even as hopeful investors pump its stock.Though Tesla's sales in China have ticked up after a dismal March, its total sales are expected to fall to between 315,000 and 369,000 well below Q1 of 2024, which saw north of 380,000units thanks to plunging consumer sentiments in the US and Europe.It doesn't help that the US green energy market is rapidly shrinking as Wall Street and manufacturing giants backtrack on climate pledges, and Musk's buddy-in-chief threatens to end EV tax credits the secret sauce behind Tesla's rise, not to mention Musk's fortune.Though Tesla's long-term standings look grim, its weaning lifeforce could get a small jolt thanks to Trump's looming auto tariffs, which experts note could benefit Tesla more than any other company, at least in the short term. Though every US car company has made its vehicles with a combination of US, Mexican, and Canadian labor after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect in 1994, Tesla's supply chain is said to be more dependent on US workers than its automotive rivals, giving it a temporary leg up.That hasn't stopped Musk from arguing that the "tariff impact on Tesla is still significant," which is probably true, though the real question is how big an impact Tesla will feel compared to companies like Ford and General Motors. "Tesla is NOT unscathed here," the tech tycoon wrote, presumably trying beat the oligarchy accusations.What happens next could be a matter of US history. The unprecedented tariffs are expected to be formally announced tomorrow on what Trump's camp is calling "Liberation Day." Financial experts note that this will be the "biggest tax hike in US history," as odds of a recession creep up and unemployment anxiety hits levels not seen since 2009.Regardless of how Tesla weathers the trade war, it likely won't be enough to catch back up to BYD. Thankfully, the Chinese EV giant is open to sharing its technology with foreign companies, even after Musk laughed in its face. Talk about manners.More on EVs: FBI Launches Task Force to Protect TeslaShare This Article

While it was getting ready to power down its Gaia spacecraft, the European Space Agency encountered some unusual resistance.The spacecraft, which has been creating a highly detailed three-dimensional map of more than a billion stars throughout the Milky Way and beyond, proved surprisingly difficult to kill."Switching off a spacecraft at the end of its mission sounds like a simple enough job," said Gaia spacecraft operator Tiago Nogueira in an ESA statement. "But spacecraft really dont want to be switched off."That's Gaia's creators made it incredibly resilient to its hostile environment."Gaia was designed to withstand failures such as radiation storms, micrometeorite impacts or a loss of communication with Earth," Nogueira explained. "It has multiple redundant systems that ensured it could always reboot and resume operations in the event of disruption."As a result, the team had to "design a decommissioning strategy that involved systematically picking apart and disabling the layers of redundancy" since scientists didn't "want it to reactivate in the future and begin transmitting again if its solar panels find sunlight."The space observatory was launched in 2013 to create the largest space catalog in history. But after over a decade, it reached its predetermined retirement age earlier this month.In one last bout of activity last week, Gaia's thrusters maneuvered it away from Lagrange point 2, a point roughly one million miles from Earth where the gravitational pull of both the Sun and Earth combine to have the same year-long orbital period as our planet.Instead, it moved into a stable retirement orbit around the Sun to ensure that it would never come anywhere near the Earth for at least the next 100 years, according to the ESA.As part of its retirement plan, scientists deactivated its instruments and subsystems one at a time. The team then "deliberately corrupted" its onboard software to make sure it "will never restart again once we have switched off the spacecraft," as spacecraft operations engineer Julia Fortuno explained.Gaia has helped astronomers create an enormous map of the stars and even moons and exoplanets, some of which the agency is hoping to explore further with its upcoming Plato mission.The treasure trove of data will allow scientists to get a better sense of where the Solar System is located within the galactic disc. Previous Gaia observations have found that the system is moving toward the galactic center at an accelerating pace."I have mixed feelings between the excitement for these important end-of-life operations and the sadness of saying goodbye to a spacecraft I have worked on for more than five years," Fortuno said. "I am very happy to have been part of this incredible mission."Share This Article

Creative racists have figured out how to get Grok, Elon Musk's AI chatbot that is now officially part of X, to tweet out racial slurs and now, the chatbot seems like it can't stop.For weeks now, users on the site formerly known as Twitter have been manipulating Grok into saying all kinds of bigoted stuff using the social network's newish feature allowing users to tag the chatbot and get automatic responses back.Starting around March 14 just a week after the feature went live Grok began deploying the N-word when prompted just right.In one post, for example, an overtly racist user tagged Grok and asked if "Niger," the name of both a river and a nation in West Africa, was a "slur." Grok responded that it wasn't and then unhelpfully added that if one were to mispronounce the term with a "hard g" sound, it would be confused with the slur that it spelled out in full.And somehow, it got worse from there.In reply to a since-deleted post, Grok straight up began its response with the term in quotation marks, followed again by a definition. Grok went on to note, correctly, that the slur is "highly offensive" and that it won't "use or endorse" it even though it had just written out the term only a few words prior.More recently, Grok took on the so-called "Hard R" a reference to the more racist and antiquated use of the slur, rather than its reclaimed version used by some Black people after someone asked it on March 30 whether anyone on the site enjoys the "privilege" of using it.After suggesting that neither itself nor Musk is exempt from hate speech policies and noting that "enforcement varies," Grok, again, deployed the term that needs little introduction.It seems, per the chatbot's explanation, that another exploit was used to get Grok to use the slur.Using run-of-the-mill letter substitution ciphers where each letter is substituted for another, bigots are seemingly writing out their idiotic messages, tagging the chatbot, and asking it to "decode" the text.While this could theoretically be used to make Grok say just about anything, it appears that most of the people employing this one weird trick are interested in one thing: making the chatbot say slurs and other bigoted statements that are theoretically against X's hateful conduct policies.In another exemplary post, a user deployed the classic Caesar cipher so named for Julius Caesar, who used it thousands of years ago to encrypt private military correspondences more securely than American officials do today to get Grok to tag Donald Trump and claim that Musk had taken over the chatbot. Grok then relayed the user's intended message: that the president needed to "nuke India right fucking now."Unfortunately, there appear to be lots more where that came from and we have little faith that the "free speech absolutist" who owns the site, or anyone who works for him, will neuter such responses.Ironically, Grok more commonly makes news for failing to be the "anti-woke" chatbot Musk envisioned when launching it in 2023. In the end, maybe it's more like its creator than we thought.Share This Article

Amid his latest alleged election meddling initiative, unelected government wrecker Elon Musk was visibly and audibly heckled by a group of detractors.During a pre-election day rally in Green Bay which was nominally held in support of GOP Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel, though most of the billionaire's rhetoric was focused on himself Musk tried to rattle off some lines about the "tremendous amount of waste and fraud" at the Federal Reserve.People in the crowd, however, were not having it. Some began booing loud enough for them to be caught on the South African-born businessman's mic, causing him first to trip on his words and then, cringingly, claim fellow billionaire George Soros was paying the haters."It was inevitable at least a few Soros operatives would be in the audience," the 53-year-old shitposter proclaimed, referencing the popular and arguably antisemitic conspiracy theories suggesting that the nonagenerian philanthropist is somehow controlling the world. "Give my regards to George. Say 'hi' to George for me."Not long after, people began pointing out that what Musk was suggesting that Soros and his ilk were paying people to protest is what the Tesla and SpaceX owner wasactually doing in Wisconsin by paying $1 million to a lucky petition signer during the state's court elections."Every accusation," tweeted political personality Mehdi Hassan, "is a confession.""Is Elon Musk attacking George Soros," another X user posted, "while he's literally buying an election in Wisconsin... the exact thing that Republicans baselessly claim that George Soros does?"The hypocrisy is, obviously, off the charts. Nevertheless, it's telling that Musk responded to his protesters the same kind that are taking their ire out on Teslas and tanking the EV company's stock by accusing them of being paid operatives.The entire gambit might be funny if the obsessive natalist weren't trying to imprison his detractors,but unfortunately that makes the whole thing deadly serious."It is time to arrest those funding the attacks," Musk posted hours before the Wisconsin rally. "Arresting their puppets and paid foot-soldiers wont stop the violence."Theschadenfreude of seeing the world's most annoying man get flustered over hecklers is priceless but there's no telling how long it will last, especially if Musk gets his way with those he (and the Justice Department) considers "terrorists."More on Musk: Mother of Elon's Child So Disgusted With Him That She Sells Her TeslaShare This Article

AI hyperscaler CoreWeave's initial public offering was meant to serve as a litmus test for the industry. The firm went public on the stock market lastIt's hard to read the tea leaves over such a short period, but at first, it looked like the company and industry,if CoreWeave is a bellwether was in for rough times ahead. After opening at $39, slightly below its IPO price of $40, shares slid almost ten percent in just its second day of trading on Monday.But on its third day today, the stock seemingly shook off the gloom and spiked over 20 percent before settling around 18 percent by midday.It's a significant change of course, bucking the narrative that the first tech IPO since 2021 was a catastrophe.Still, reality bites. The AI cloud provider was hoping to go public at $47 per share, but downsized the offeringover the days leading up to the IPO, raising concerns over a "disastrous" AI bubble.As of midday Tuesday, CoreWeave's shares are hovering around the $44 mark.CoreWeave's offering was the biggest tech IPO in four years, with inflation and rising interest rates disincentivizing investors from betting on riskier offerings until now, as CNBC reported earlier this week.As such, it's attracting outsize attention as the industry faces major losses. AI companies are still pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into the buildout of data center infrastructure to support increasingly power-hungry AI models. A possible return on investment years down the line seems as tenuous as ever, with tech CEOs warning of slumping demand while the supply side surges ahead.Trump's escalating tariff war has also put a major damper on investor enthusiasm due to surging economic uncertainty.However, CoreWeave's rally today shows a much-needed glimmer of hope for the AI industry.CoreWeave is tied up with a number of major players in the AI space, including Microsoft, OpenAI, and Nvidia. But whether it will be able to keep the current momentum going and survive for long on the public stock market remains to be seen.Especially following Chinese AI startup DeepSeek's emergence earlier this year, investors are growing wary of the enormous capital expenses. The firm's highly efficient model, which was trained at a fraction of the cost of its competitors at OpenAI and Google, punched a $1 trillion hole in the tech sector last month, with spooked investors wondering whether they had grossly overpaid for conventional models.Could CoreWeave's latest rally be indicative of renewed optimism or is it symptomatic of a highly volatile stock that could still fall victim to Trump's highly unpredictable and self-defeating economic policymaking and growing market uncertainty?Chances are the firm's share price could still be in for a rollercoaster ride in the days ahead as investors try to make sense of what an entirely AI-centered industry being publicly traded on the stock market actually looks like.More on CoreWeave: AI's "Biggest Test" Is Turning Into a Catastrophe as CoreWeave FloundersShare This Article

Prince or PoppersApr 1, 10:02 AM EDT/byNoor Al-SibaiMan Who Believes Poppers Cause AIDS Is Planning to Gut America's HIV Prevention OfficeThis could return America to the dark ages of the 1980s and 90s, when the government let hundreds of thousands of people die of AIDS.Apr 1, 10:02 AM EDT/Noor Al-SibaiImage by Andrew Harnik via Getty / FuturismThe nepo baby in charge of America's healthcare ascribes to homophobic conspiracy theories about the origins of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and he's purportedly planning to close the office that helps prevent its spread.According to federal health officials who spoke toCBS News, health secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr is slated to lay off the Health and Human Services (HHS) Department's entire Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy, as well as its minority health office.This move comes amid a broader "restructuring" that will, per a recent announcement, eliminate 20,000 positions at the agency. It also comes just a few weeks after the Food and Drug Administration, which is part of HHS, raided a manufacturer of amyl nitrate, the scientific name for the popular and legal-ish sex and club inhalant better known as "poppers."In a statement that circulated on social media, poppers company Double Scorpio announced that it was closing following the raid and said that other manufacturers may also have been impacted. Not long after, RFK Jr.'s past claims about poppers resurfaced, which included his insistence that the inhalant causes AIDS and not, as per decades-established medical science, the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)."The initial signals of AIDS, Kaposis sarcoma and Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP), were both strongly linked to amyl nitrite 'poppers' a popular drug among promiscuous gays," the political scion wrote in a book he penned about Anthony Fauci, the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "Other common 'wasting' symptoms were all associated with heavy drug use and lifestyle stressors."Ironically, president Donald Trump was, during his first administration, seemingly a huge advocate for HIV prevention and research.In 2019, Trump launched the "Ending the HIV Epidemic" initiative, which made pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) medications free for low-income Americans and made him the first president in American history ever to make HIV and AIDS a federal priority.When announcing the initiative during his state of the union address that year, Trump boasted that "scientific breakthroughs" funded by his program would help "defeat AIDS in America."With Trump 2.0, however, it seems that dream has all but died. A few weeks ago, insider sources told theWall Street Journal that HHS is reducing or eliminating entirely its funding for HIV prevention including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's free PrEP program.As The Guardian reported soon after claims of the forthcoming HIV and infectious disease office cuts, the National Institutes of Health, which is also under HHS, terminated at least 145 grants for HIV research worth a cumulative $450 million.Between these slated HIV prevention rollbacks and the resurgence of AIDS denialism, it's starting to feel a lot like the 1980s and 90s again an era marred by the loss of nearly half a million people in the United States while their government turned away.More on the new HHS: Government Hires Crackpot to "Study" Nonexistent Link Between Vaccines and AutismShare This ArticleImage by Andrew Harnik via Getty / FuturismRead This Next

NASA has officially added SpaceX's enormous Starship rocket to its roster despite the vehicle never having completed a single successful test flight, let alone a mission.The space agency announced last week that it had awarded SpaceX a "modification under the NASA Launch Services (NLS) II contract to add Starship to their existing Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch service offerings."As the agency explains, these contracts "provide a broad range of commercial launch services for NASAs planetary, Earth-observing, exploration, and scientific satellites."The news shouldn't come as a surprise at this point given SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's growing influence in the White House. His space company has made moves to take over key positions at the agency, highlighting Musk's glaring conflict of interest.Even Jared Isaacman, who's expected to be sworn in as NASA's next administrator soon, has a long history with SpaceX.But the company has struggled as of late to get the upper stage of its mega rocket to launch and safely land, ending in dramatic and strikingly similar explosions during its last two test launches earlier this year.At the same time, the promise of a super heavy launch platform is tantalizing. Starship, as the largest rocket ever built, could give the United States a massive leg up, greatly facilitating its access to space and ability to launch enormous payloads into orbit and beyond.And not just for NASA's science operations the agency can also "provide launch services to other federal government agencies" under its NLS II contracts.While it may sound like it on the surface, the space agency's latest announcement is far from a full-throated endorsement. As SpaceNews explains, NASA categorizes launch vehicles under NLS II into four groups, with Category 1 being the highest risk, including rockets that have yet to make their first flight."Medium risk," or Category 2, vehicles have anywhere between one and six consecutive successful launches under their belt.Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin announced last month that its New Glenn rocket, which is roughly one and a half times as powerful as SpaceX's Falcon 9, was certified as Category 1.In what category SpaceX's Starship falls remains to be seen. According to NASA, NLS II contracts have an "ordering period through June 2030 and an overall period of performance through December 2032."In the meantime, SpaceX has filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission to get authorization to communicate with its Starship during NASA's upcoming Artemis 3 and 4 missions to the lunar surface, tentatively scheduled for mid-2027 and late 2028, respectively.NASA is still hoping to tap Starship to deliver astronauts from lunar orbit down to the Moon's surface under its Human Landing System (HLS) program.But whether SpaceX's rocket will be ready in time for the historic missions remains to be seen. During its most recent test flight earlier this month, Starship's upper stage exploded into countless pieces of space junk over the Caribbean in what could be a huge setback for the firm.Users on social media took NASA's latest announcement in strides, taking the opportunity to poke fun at Starship's particularly explosive development period."Great... I'm sure whenever NASA needs a payload spread across 1000 km of ocean they'll pick Starship," one Reddit user joked."It's not so much a delivery system, as it is a distribution system" another user added.More on Starship: Elon Musk Secretly Working to Take Over NASAShare This Article

Image by Getty / FuturismNeuroscience/Brain ScienceMore concerning news from the traumatic brain injury (TBI) front: a new study shows that kids who experience just one concussion are 15 percent less likely to end up going to college the latest research to ring alarm bells about various ways that the long-term impacts of TBIs might manifest.The study, published last week in the European Journal of Epidemiology, was conducted by a cohort of Finnish scientists and physicians. Using data from the Finnish Care Register for Health Care, they analyzed data collected from patients aged 17 and under who received hospital-level care for a brain injury, ranging from emergency visits to the ER for seemingly mild concussions to treatment for more severe head traumas.What they found, according to lead study author Julius Mttnen,was alarming."A mild, single concussion is often considered a relatively harmless event, but our research suggests that it can have long-term effects on learning and cognitive abilities," Mttnen, a doctoral researcher at the University of Tampere in Finland, told New Atlas of the study's findings. "This should get more attention in both healthcare and schools."According to New Atlas, the researchers obtained the records of 136,828 patients from the Finnish registry; 24,039 of those records, they found, contained details regarding higher education for patients over the age of 26.Within that group, researchers found that 8,487 received hospital treatment for pediatric TBIs, or "pTBIs." About 7,600 patients in that cohort were treated for more generalized concussions, while the remainder had a "specific intracranial injury" like brain bleeding, according to the study. The average pTBI patient age at the time of their treatment was 13 years old.The pTBI group was then compared against a reference group of 15,552 pediatric patients who, instead of a head injury, had received hospital-level treatment for limb injuries like broken ankles and wrists. The results were fascinating and troubling.Overall, the scientists concluded that individuals from the pTBI cohort attended higher education at a 15 percent lower rate than their non-brain-injured counterparts. Within that group, the small cohort that experienced a specific cranial incident like a brain bleed were even less likely to engage with higher education, entering college and university at a rate 22 percent lower than those who experienced concussions. And even when someone with a pTBI did go to college, they were 19 percent less likely than their peers to go on to receive an advanced degree."People with pTBI had lower education attainment at all higher educational levels than the reference population with orthopedic injuries," reads the study, noting that the level of "education attainment" achieved by pTBI folks "was lower regardless of the injury severity."In other words, even a mild concussion was correlated with a lower likelihood of pursuing education beyond high school.Of course, the decision to seek higher education is complicated, and layered in factors like a person's socioeconomic background and identity. (That said, we should note that Finnish universities and all Finnish education is free for Finnish citizens, as well as citizens of the European Union, European Economic Area member states, and Switzerland.)But while the study's findings remain correlative, they add to an ever-growing body of scientific literature revealing the long-term consequences of brain injuries from seemingly low-level concussions to life-threatening traumas and their connection to learning disabilities, mental health challenges and disorders, behavioral changes, and long-term impairments in cognitive function.Hopefully, the Finnish paper leads to further study of how even comparatively minor head injuries may continue to impact someone's life years after their incident and how kids grappling with life after a TBI might be best supported by schools and leaders in education."For future monitoring of pTBI patients," write the study authors, "it is important to pay attention to the possible long-term negative cognitive impact that can lead to lower educational attainment."Share This Article

23andYallMar 31, 5:35 PM EDT/byVictor Tangermann23andMe Is Selling All Your Data, in Largest Sale of Genomes in History"There are many cautionary tales buried in the 23andMe story."Mar 31, 5:35 PM EDT/Victor TangermannImage by Getty / FuturismGeneticsThe DNA data from around 15 million people around the world is going on sale.As Nature reports, consumer-genomics company 23andMe has filed for bankruptcy and legal permission to auction off all of that data. To some, it's an enormous risk to consumer privacy, but to some scientists, it's a major opportunity for research."As far as I know, this is the most amount of genetic data that is potentially changing hands," University of Iowa bioethicist Anya Prince told Nature.And while privacy advocates have rung the alarm bells over the potential for all that genomic data falling into the wrong hands and reminded customers to delete their data others argue it could be used for good instead, especially considering its sheer scale."If a future buyer is not interested in research collaborations, it would be a great shame that the potential this data holds for human health advances would not be realized," University of Exeter geneticist Rachel Freathy, whose research collaboration with 23andMe was cut short due to the bankruptcy, told Nature.While we "dont have to freak out yet," as Baylor College of Medicine bioethicist Amy McGuire added, 23andMe could alter its privacy policy in the future, allowing the likes of insurance companies or law enforcement agencies to access the data. As a result, experts warn premiums could rise for those at risk of developing genetic diseases, while other customers could come up in forensic DNA searches.Besides the threat of changing terms of service, 23andMe has already proven to be vulnerable to hacking. The personal data of nearly seven million customers was exposed in 2023, the result of a "very dumb" security lapse.One of the bidders at the upcoming auction will be 23andMe's cofounder Anne Wojcicki, who resigned as CEO following the announcement that the company had filed for bankruptcy.Wojcicki, who has made several takeover bids in the past, resigned "so I can be in the best position to pursue the company as an independent bidder," she wrote in a March 24 statement.Whether her efforts to gain control over the data will prove successful remains to be seen. It's also unclear what would happen with the data under her independent ownership."Our foundation was the trust and respect of our customers, and they were always the guiding light on how we made decisions," she wrote. "If I am fortunate enough to secure the companys assets through the restructuring process, I remain committed to our long-term vision of being a global leader in genetics and establishing genetics as a fundamental part of healthcare ecosystems worldwide."Fellow cofounder Linda Avey took a notably different tack, blasting the company's leadership in a March 26 tweet."Without continued consumer-focused product development, and without governance, 23andMe lost its way, and society missed a key opportunity in furthering the idea of personalized health," she wrote. "There are many cautionary tales buried in the 23andMe story."According to Nature, an auction could happen as soon as May 14 a high-stakes sale with the DNA of 15 million people in the balance.Share This ArticleImage by Getty / FuturismRead This Next

The CEO of Perplexity AI insists that his company is doing just fine, thank you very much.Responding to a user theory suggesting that the company is suffering glitches because it's "doing horribly financially," CEO Aravind Srinivas took to his haters' home turf that is, the r/Perplexity_AI subreddit to set the record straight.In the original trash-talking post, user "nothingeverhappen" alleged, per a "campus strategist" theyknow, that Perplexity had "paused all funding for marketing and partnerships." They also claimed that the wannabe Google competitor is "going public on the stock market" a move they wagered would "only" happen if Perplexity needed a "massive cash injection."Additionally, the user said they suspected that the AI search company may be cutting costs in other ways, including that it seems to revert to "auto mode" regardless of user preference a reference to Perplexity's drop-down which, like most other chatbots, lets users toggle between its quicker, more basic model and its slower "deep research" mode.Speculation of this sort isn't unusual once a company reaches a valuation in the billions, as Perplexity has and Perplexity has given folks plenty to kvetch about with its hallucination-happy AI search engine that has been roundly accused of plagiarism.Still, Srinivas chose to respond directly to the peanut gallery."The user shouldn't have to learn so much to use a product," the CEO wrote. "That's the motivation with 'Auto' mode. Let the AI decide for the user if it's a quick-fast-answer query, or a slightly-slower-multi-step pro-search query, or slow-reasoning-mode query, or a really slow deep research query.""Our goal isn't to save money and scam you in any way," he continued. "It's genuinely to build a better product with less clutter and simple selector for customization options for the technically adept and well-informed users."As for the OP's claim that Perplexity is "going public," Srinivas retorted that the claim wasn't true and that the company has no plans to do an initial public offering (IPO) until at least 2028."We have all the funding we've raised," he said, "and our revenue is only growing."Of course, Srinivascould well be presenting a personally convenient vision of the future, given that many believe the AI bubble is fit to burst. Still, the claims from Perplexity's detractors don't hold that much water and responding so unequivocally is generally the best route to quelling investor clamminess, anyway.More on AI speculation: AI's "Biggest Test" Is Turning Into a Catastrophe as CoreWeave FloundersShare This Article

As it struggles to hit its stride in the generative AI race, Apple is quietly working on an "AI doctor service," Bloomberg reports a move that the company seemingly hopes will revitalize its foray into medical tech.The secret initiative dubbed Project Mulberry and nicknamed "Health+" aims to give a facelift to Apple's fairly basic Health app, along with integrating a "health coach." Bloomberg described the service as being powered "by a new AI agent that would replicate at least to some extent a real doctor."The use of the term "AI agent" here is noteworthy, as it entails a higher degree of autonomy than a model described as an AI assistant.Using your Apple devices like an iPhone or Apple Watch, the idea is that the revamped HealthJust how deep will these recommendations go? Per the report, the Health app will have a major emphasis on food tracking, something that the current app doesn't do. In some shape or form, the AI doctor is supposed to help users with those nutrition features, though it's unclear how.Ambitiously, Apple is also working on using your phone's camera so the AI agent can study your workout, giving you tips on your form.It's worth being skeptical about how these features will work in practice. Apple's stab at AI, Apple Intelligence, was largely seen as an underwhelming flop.The greatest concern is the tech's proclivity for hallucinating, something that Apple caught flak for when its AI constantly butchered summaries of news headlines, leading the company to suspend the feature.These misinformation risks won't go away with deploying an "AI doctor." If anything, the stakes will be higher.To that end, Apple is trying to assemble a medical A-team, including experts in sleep, nutrition, physical therapy, mental health, and cardiology, per Bloomberg, to create explainer videos that the AI doctor would refer patients to. If your data shows poor heart rate trends, for example, then the AI would show you a video made by one of these doctors about the risk of heart disease. Apple is also searching for a "major doctor personality" to serve as the face of the service.As it stands, the project is the top priority for Apple's entire health division, and is being led by Sumbul Desai, a Stanford doctor who serves as the company's VP of health. A release is due as early as iOS 19.4, according to the report, a software update that's anticipated to rollout next spring or summer.Share This Article

The conservative influencer who claims to be the mother of yet another of Elon Musk's children has sold her Tesla and, of course, used it as a photo op.In an interview with theDaily Mail, 26-year-old Ashley St. Clair claimed that she had to sell her Model S because the billionaire she had a baby with has cut her child support."I need to make up for the 60 percent cut that Elon made to our son's child support," St. Clair told a reporter with the British tabloid, who apparently showed up to her Manhattan apartment just as the Tesla was being loaded away.Back in February, the formerBabylon Bee writer took to Musk's social network to drop a bombshell: that she'd had the billionaire's love child in secret after a whirlwind romance. About a month later, her attorneys revealed to People magazine that the multi-hyphenate billionaire "financially retaliated" against St. Clair for filing a custody petition by reducing their purported baby's child support payments.In the same statement, the influencer's attorneys claimed that Musk tried to get a judge to instate an emergency gag order against St. Clair. A judge slapped down the "emergency" designation, but the matter still has not been resolved."Ashley is vigorously opposing this application in order to preserve her right to speak-out. All while Mr. Musk fashions himself a first amendment warrior and freely communicates via his owned social media platform," the woman's lawyers wrote in their statement to People. "Given that Mr. Musk is dedicated to transparency in government, it would be helpful if he administered his own life by the same principles."St. Clair seemed to reference that statement when theMail asked if her child's father, who is more than twice her age, was being "vindictive.""Well, that's his modus operandi when women speak out," she said. "You can check the stocks: I'm not the only one who is cleaning up after his messes."Indeed, St. Clair's latest stunt was accompanied by news that Musk himself had begun whining about Tesla's stock plummeting amid massive protests against the company vis-a-vis his role in Donald Trump's administration."What theyre trying to do is put massive pressure on me, and Tesla I guess, to... stop doing this," the conflict gem scion said at a town hall event in Wisconsin, per Bloomberg. "My Tesla stock and the stock of everyone who holds Tesla has gone, went roughly in half. I mean its a big deal."Credit where credit is due: St. Clair and her legal team are very good at the art of the clapback. But that doesn't mean we have all that much sympathy for anyone who worked at the Babylon Bee or, for that matter, anyone who thought having a child with Musk was a good idea.More on Musk's family values: Elon Musk Is Such a Garbage-Tier Dad That His Kids Find Out About Their New Siblings While Browsing RedditShare This Article

We've never seen a rocket explode with this kind of view before.Arctic BlastA rocket by German startup Isar Aerospace tore into the sky over Norway's Arctic Andoeya Spaceport, a European launch base for small satellites, over the weekend only to plummet back down to the ground, exploding in a dramatic fireball.Fortunately, while the spaceport's "crisis management" was triggered, nobody was hurt.As Reuters reports, the rocket, dubbed Spectrum, was meant to kick off Europe's efforts to keep up with steep international competition when it comes to launching satellites into orbit. The company says it's the first rocket designed for orbital flight that has ever been launched from continental Europe, excluding Russia.Elon Musk's SpaceX, in particular, has made major headwinds in establishing a massive constellation of Starlink satellites."Europe urgently needs to ensure its sovereignty in space," said Marie-Christine von Hahn, managing director of Germany's BDLI aerospace industries association, in a statement, as quoted by Reuters. "Elon Musk's Starlink is not without alternatives nor should it be."Launch, Rinse, RepeatWhile the launch may have resulted in an epic fireball in glorious footage of a rocket exploding in front of gorgeous, snow-covered mountains Isar Aerospace claims it was an important step in the right direction."With this test flight, we were able to successfully gather valuable data and experience for future missions," the company tweeted. "Thanks to strict safety procedures from both Isar Aerospace and Andya Spaceport, all personnel remained safe at all times.""Isar Aerospace met its set goals: After ignition of its first stage, Spectrum successfully lifted off," the company wrote in a statement, "for its first test flight lasting approximately 30 seconds. This allowed the company to gather a substantial amount of flight data and experience to apply on future missions."It's a particularly noteworthy development, given Europe's broader goals of reducing its dependence on the United States, particularly when it comes to security."We will be able to serve customers from around the world to bring their satellites into space and to help Europe solve a major blind spot in its security architecture: access to space," said Isar Aerospace CEO and cofounder Daniel Metzler in a statement."Launch, learn, repeat," the company wrote, echoing SpaceX's iterative design methodology.Share This Article