A slain Arizona man's family used AI to bring him back from the dead for his killer's sentencing hearing — and the judge presiding over the case apparently "loved" it.As 404 Media reports, judge Todd Lang was flabbergasted when he saw the AI-generated video of victim Chris Peskey that named and "forgave" the man who killed him in 2021."To Gabriel Horcasitas, the man who shot me, it is a shame we encountered each other that day in those circumstances," the video, which Peskey's sister Stacey Wales generated, intoned. "In another life we probably could have been friends. I believe in forgiveness, in God who forgives, I always have. And I still do."Found guilty earlier this year, Horcasitas' sentencing was contingent, as many cases are, upon various factors, including impact statements from the victim's family.As Wales told 404 Media, her husband Tim was initially freaked out when she introduced the idea of creating a digital clone of her brother for the hearing and told her she was "asking a lot."Ultimately, the video was accepted in the sentencing hearing, the first known instance of an AI clone of a deceased person being used in such a way.And the gambit appears to have paid off."I loved that AI, and thank you for that," Lang said, per a video of his pre-sentencing speech. "As angry as you are, and as justifiably angry as the family is, I heard the forgiveness, and I know Mr. Horcasitas could appreciate it, but so did I.""I feel like calling him Christopher as we’ve gotten to know him today," Lang continued. "I feel that that was genuine, because obviously the forgiveness of Mr. Horcasitas reflects the character I heard about today."Lang acknowledged that although the family itself "demanded the maximum sentence," the AI Pelkey "spoke from his heart" and didn't call for such punishment."I didn’t hear him asking for the maximum sentence," the judge said.Horcasitas' lawyer also referenced the Peskey avatar when defending his client and, similarly, said that he also believes his client and the man he killed could have been friends had circumstances been different.That entreaty didn't seem to mean much, however, to Lang. He ended up sentencing Horcasitas to 10.5 years for manslaughter, which was a year and a half more than prosecutors were seeking.It's a surprising reaction, showing that many are not only open to AI being used this way, but also in favor of it — evidence that the chasm between AI skeptics and adopters could be widening.Share This Article

It's not a great time to be an attorney for Tesla.In recent months, the floundering electric vehicle company has been bombarded with dozens of lawsuits, like the California class-action that alleges Tesla's manipulated odometers to get out of warranties, or the Australian class-action that alleges the company misled consumers with claims about its so-called "Full Self-Driving" software.As if that weren't enough for the company's lawyers, Tesla execs are dishing out their fair share of legal threats in return. Following a recent freeze in Canadian EV tax credits, Tesla is now threatening to sue the Canadian government, alleging the move cuts the company off from $30 million in tax credits.The whole shooting match kicked off back in January, when Canada abruptly stopped issuing rebates under its Incentives for Zero-Emission Vehicles program (iZEV), sending auto dealers and manufacturers into a frenzy. The program was viewed as a major boost for EV sales, offering Canadian consumers up to $3,590 in rebates for qualifying fully-electric and hybrid vehicles.Later in March, Musk's Tesla came under fire after placing suspicious claims for tens of millions of dollars worth of iZEV rebates right before the January freeze.Most of those claims came from just four dealers, with a single Tesla showroom in Quebec City claiming it had sold some 4,000 eligible vehicles over a single weekend. Altogether, Tesla filed over 8,600 claims in 72 hours, at a cost of C$43 million (US$30.9 million), or about 60 percent of the remaining iZEV budget.A few weeks later, Canadian Transport Minister Chrystia Freeland announced a freeze on iZEV payments for Tesla specifically, a move seen as retaliation for Donald Trump's unprecedented tariff threats. In addition, she directed her office to ban the EV giant from eligibility for future tax credit programs so long as "illegitimate and illegal US tariffs are imposed against Canada."Now, Tesla is claiming that the tax credit freeze was "inappropriate," because "Tesla Canada has been fully compliant with its participation in the program," according to the Toronto Star. The EV mammoth is demanding iZEV payouts start "in the immediate term" for those rebates filed before the January cutoff, despite the fact that they were almost certainly fudged.If a legal battle kicks off in full, Tesla will have to successfully argue that it was allowed to file rebate claims after vehicles were delivered — a distinction which the Canadian government has evidently flip-flopped on in the past.While Canada is probably safe to kick back and let Tesla spin its wheels, the EV company needs all the help it can get. As sales tank to record lows around the world, government handouts in the form of EV tax credits — Tesla's bread and butter — have become all but critical if the company wants any hope of surviving.That said, it'll likely be an uphill battle for the carmaker to claw anything out of the new Canadian government — but even then, there's reason to believe tax credits won't be enough to plug the holes.Share This Article

Looking for work is already arduous enough — but for one job-seeker, the process became something out of a deleted "Black Mirror" scene when the AI recruiter she was paired with went veritably insane.In a buckwild TikTok video, the job-seeker is seen suffering for nearly 30 seconds as the AI recruiter barked the term "vertical bar pilates" at her no fewer than 14 times, often slurring its words or mixing up letters along the way. @its_ken04 It was genuinely so creepy and weird. Please stop trying to be lazy and have AI try to do YOUR JOB!!! It gave me the creeps so bad #fyp ♬ original sound - Its Ken 🤍 The incident — and the way it affected the young woman who endured it — is a startling example not only of where America's abysmal labor market is at, but also of how ill-conceived this sort of AI "outsourcing" has become.Though she looks nonplussed on her interview screen, the TikToker who goes by Ken told 404 Media that she was pretty perturbed by the incident, which occurred during her first (and only) interview with a Stretch Lab fitness studio in Ohio."I thought it was really creepy and I was freaked out," the college-aged creator told the website. "I was very shocked, I didn’t do anything to make it glitch so this was very surprising."As 404 discovered, the glitchy recruiter-bot was hosted by a Y Combinator-backed startup called Apriora, which claims to help companies "hire 87 percent faster" and "interview 93 percent cheaper" because multiple candidates can be interviewed simultaneously.In a 2024 interview with Forbes, Apriora cofounder Aaron Wang attested that job-seekers "prefer interviewing with AI in many cases, since knowing the interviewer is AI helps to reduce interviewing anxiety, allowing job seekers to perform at their best."That's definitely not the case for Ken, who said she would "never go through this process again.""If another company wants me to talk to AI," she told 404, "I will just decline."Commenters on her now-viral TikTok seem to agree as well."This is the rudest thing a company could ever do," one user wrote. "We need to start withdrawing applications folks."Others still pointed out the elephant in the room: that recruiting used to be a skilled trade done by human workers."Lazy, greedy and arrogant," another person commented. "AI interviews just show me they don't care about workers from the get go. This used to be an actual human's job."Though Apriora didn't respond to 404's requests for comment, Ken, at least, has gotten the last word in the way only a Gen Z-er could."This was the first meeting [with the company] ever," she told 404. "I guess I was supposed to earn my right to speak to a human."Share This Article

The American Pope surprised everyone.Papal PredictorPolymarket, the crypto-based prediction market where users can place bets on events ranging from national elections to natural disasters, got the Pope odds way wrong.Those forecasts were reflected in Polymarket as well as the similar platform Kalshi, which both took a hard turn toward Parolin as the public caught sight of white smoke, according to Axios. Meanwhile, market betters had Prevost hovering around a one-to-two percent chance of becoming the next Pope.And yet, in a stunning twist of fate, it was the American-born Robert Prevost — a graduate of Villanova and the conclaver with the highest likelihood of ever consuming a hot dog and/or $1.99 pizza slice from Costco — who clinched the title. According to a screenshot posted to X-formerly-Twitter by Brew Markets, Prevost was sitting at around 0.03 percent when his shock election was announced.In short, Polymarketers were absolutely blindsided — highlighting how Polymarket's oft-exalted predictive prowess isn't always all it's cracked up to be.Vatican BombshellThe Vatican shocked the world today when the Chicago-born American and Peruvian was named Pope Leo XIV before taking to the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica to greet the world as Holy Father.Prevost is the first American Pope, and appears to be the first Pope to retweet Catholic Snoopy posts.Though Prevost was an ally of his predecessor, the late Pope Francis, he was by no means seen as the frontrunner; most expected either Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin or Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle to ascend to the papacy.The hard swing towards Parolin in the moments before the announcement broke was likely due to the conclave's speediness, as Axios pointed out.Anyway, if you're a Polymarket who bet on the American Prevost to win the papacy, email us!More on Polymarket: Crypto Platforms Like Polymarket Now Taking Bets on Los Angeles Fire DevastationShare This Article

To bypass artificial intelligence writing detection, college students are reportedly adding typos into their chatbot-generated papers.In a wide-ranging exploration into the ways AI has rapidly changed academia, students told New York Magazine that AI cheating has become so normalized, they're figuring out creative ways to get away with it.While it's common for students — and for anyone else who uses ChatGPT and other chatbots — to edit the output of an AI chatbot, some are adding typos manually to make essays sound more human.Some more ingenious users are advising chatbots to essentially dumb down their writing. In a TikTok viewed by NYMag, for instance, a student said she likes to prompt chatbots to "write [an essay] as a college freshman who is a li’l dumb" to bypass AI detection.Stanford sophomore Eric told NYMag that his classmates have gotten "really good at manipulating the systems.""You put a prompt in ChatGPT, then put the output into another AI system, then put it into another AI system," he said. "At that point, if you put it into an AI-detection system, it decreases the percentage of AI used every time."The irony, of course, is that students who go to such lengths to make their AI-generated papers sound human could be using that creativity to actually write the dang things.Still, instructors are concerned by the energy students are expending on cheating with chatbots."They're using AI because it’s a simple solution and it’s an easy way for them not to put in time writing essays," University of Iowa teaching assistant Sam Williams told the magazine. "And I get it, because I hated writing essays when I was in school."When assisting a general education class on music and social change last fall, Williams said he was shocked by the change in tone and quality between students' first assignments — a personal essay about their own tastes — and their second, which dug into the history of New Orleans jazz.Not only did those essays sound different, but many included egregious factual errors like the inclusion of Elvis Presley, who was neither a part of the Nola scene nor a jazz musician."I literally told my class, 'Hey, don’t use AI,'" the teaching assistant recalled. "'But if you’re going to cheat, you have to cheat in a way that’s intelligent. You can’t just copy exactly what it spits out.'"Students have seemingly taken that advice to heart — and Williams, like his colleagues around the country, is concerned about students taking their AI use ever further."Whenever they encounter a little bit of difficulty, instead of fighting their way through that and growing from it, they retreat to something that makes it a lot easier for them," the Iowa instructor said.It's a scary precedent indeed — and one that is, seemingly, continuing unabated.Share This Article

Nothing is safe.Bye Bye, SavingsThe Trump administration is so committed to environmental deregulation that it's ending a program that has saved Americans more than half a trillion dollars.According to officials briefed on the matter who spoke to the Washington Post, the Environmental Protection Agency — or what's left of it, anyway — is slated to end the Energy Star program, which has certified electric efficiency on appliances across the country and resulted in more than $500 billion in utility bill savings since 1992.The Energy Star closure was announced during an all-hands meeting of the EPA's Office of Atmospheric Protection, which also learned at the same time that it would be dissolved.In a statement to CNN, an agency spokesperson did not lay out a timeline for the closure or say when Americans could expect to stop seeing Energy Star certification stickers on appliances.While the EPA itself has been tight-lipped about the changes, Republican senator Susan Collins of Maine said she was "baffled" by the move to close the program."I know that my constituents like knowing what the energy usage is of a particular appliance," she told CNN, "so that they can factor that into their buying decisions."Energy CrowbarAs WaPo notes, widespread adoption of Energy Star-certified appliances has prevented an estimated four billion metric tons of greenhouse gases from leaking into our atmosphere, the equivalent of taking nearly 950 million cars off the roads for a year.That focus on energy efficiency could well be why Trump, a longtime Energy Star hater who floated closing the program during his first presidency, wants to kibosh it now.Trump has also long opposed appliance efficiency standards because, according to him, they don't provide enough water to wash his "perfect" and "beautiful" hair. Last month, he signed an executive order lifting restrictions on "weak and worthless" showerheads to that end.Now that Energy Star's future is unknown, the public is left wondering — if this administration will kill even George HW. Bush-era conservation programs, how much further will it go?More on Trump's energy haterade: Trump Just Set a Tariff on Solar Panels So High That Your Eyebrows May Raise InvoluntarilyShare This Article

In Arizona, the family of a man killed during a road rage incident has used artificial intelligence to revive their dead loved one in court — and the video is just as unsettling as you think.As Phoenix's ABC 15 reports, an uncanny simulacrum of the late Christopher Pelkey, who died from a gunshot wound in 2021, played in a courtroom at the end of his now-convicted killer's trial."In another life, we probably could have been friends," the AI version of Pelkey, who was 37 when he died, told his shooter, Gabriel Paul Horcasitas. "I believe in forgiveness." Despite that moving missive, it doesn't seem that much forgiveness was in the cards for Horcasitas.After viewing the video — which was created by the deceased man's sister, Stacey Wales, using an "aged-up" photo Pelkey made when he was still alive — the judge presiding over the case ended up giving the man a 10-and-a-half year manslaughter sentence, which is a year more than what state prosecutors were asking for.In the caption on her video, Wales explained that she, her husband Tim, and their friend Scott Yenzer made the "digital AI likeness" of her brother using a script she'd written alongside images and audio files they had of him speaking in a "prerecorded interview" taken months before he died."These digital assets and script were fed into multiple AI tools to help create a digital version of Chris," Wales wrote, "polished by hours of painstaking editing and manual refinement."In her interview with ABC15, Pelkey's sister insisted that everyone who knew her late brother "agreed this capture was a true representation of the spirit and soul of how Chris would have thought about his own sentencing as a murder victim."She added that creating the digital clone helped her and her family heal from his loss and left her with a sense of peace, though others felt differently."Can’t put into words how disturbing I find this," writer Eoin Higgins tweeted of the Pelkey clone. "The idea of hearing from my brother through this tech is grotesque. Using it in a courtroom even worse."Referencing both the Pelkey video and news that NBC is planning to use late sports narrator Jim Fagan's voice to do new promos this coming NBA season, a Bluesky user insisted that "no one better do this to me once I'm dead.""This AI necromancy bullshit is so creepy and wrong," that user put it — and we must say, it's hard to argue with that.More on AI revivals: NBC Using AI to Bring Beloved NBA Narrator Jim Fagan Back From the GraveShare This Article

Image by Getty / FuturismGeneticsThe US Food and Drug Administration has approved a type of CRISPR gene-edited pig for human consumption.As MIT Technology Review reports, only an extremely limited list of gene-modified animals are cleared by regulators to be eaten in the United States, including a transgenic salmon that has an extra gene to grow faster, and heat-tolerant beef cattle.And now a type of illness-resistant pig could soon join their ranks. British company Genus used the popular gene-editing technique CRISPR to make pigs immune to a virus that causes an illness called porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS).It's the same technology that's been used to gene-hack human babies — experiments that have proven far more controversial — and develop medicine in the form of gene therapies.The PRRS virus can easily spread in factory farms in the US and cause the inability to conceive, increase the number of stillborn pigs, and trigger respiratory complications, including pneumonia.It's been called the "most economically important disease" affecting pig producers, since it can have a devastating effect on their bottom lines. According to MIT Tech, it causes losses of more than $300 million a year in the US alone.Genus' gene-editing efforts have proven highly successful so far, with the pigs appearing immune to 99 percent of known versions of the virus.Using CRISPR, the company knocked out a receptor that allowed the PRRS virus to enter cells, effectively barring it from infecting its host.Beyond the respiratory illness, scientists are using gene-editing to make pigs less vulnerable or even immune to other infections, including swine fever.But before we can eat a pork chop from a gene-edited pig, Genus says that it will have to lock down regulatory approval in Mexico, Canada, Japan, and China as well, the United States' biggest export markets for pork, as MIT Tech reports.The company is hoping gene-edited pork could land in the US market as soon as next year.But whether you'll actually know if you're eating meat from a pig that had a virus receptor turned off using a cutting-edge DNA modification technique is unclear."We aren't aware of any labelling requirement," Genus subsidiary Pig Improvement Company CEO Matt Culbertson told MIT Tech.Share This Article

Astronomers have made an intriguing discovery that could upend everything we know about the structure of the universe and its expansion.Scientists recently found that dark energy, the mysterious form driving the accelerating expansion of the universe, could be weakening over time.The findings could undermine the existing standard cosmological model of the universe called the lambda-cold dark matter (LCDM) model, which takes dark energy, ordinary matter, and cold dark matter — a hypothetical form of dark matter that moves slowly compared to the speed of light — into consideration.The symbol lambda in the model refers to Albert Einstein's cosmological constant, which assumes that the universe is accelerating at a fixed rate.Yet, last year, scientists concluded that dark energy isn't a constant after all, analyzing observations by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) in Arizona, as New Scientist reports. They found that the mysterious force could be evolving and weakening over time.In March, scientists released a follow-up, strengthening the unusual findings."This is exciting – it might actually be putting the standard model of cosmology in danger," Autonomous University of Madrid assistant research professor Yashar Akrami told New Scientist.Instead of making changes to the LCDM itself, Akrami and his colleagues suggested redefining dark energy as a "quintessence field," which has been used to explain observations of an accelerating rate of expansion of the universe.That could allow scientists to harmonize more advanced string theory with the standard cosmological model."If you prove that quintessence is dark energy, it’s very good for [string theorists]," Akrami told New Scientist. "That’s why the string theory community is really excited now."An altered take on the quintessence model of dark energy suggests the mysterious force could be interacting with gravity itself."We’ve always grown up thinking about the universe as having the gravitational force, and gravity fuels everything," University of Oxford astrophysicist Pedro Ferreira told the publication. "But now there’s going to be an additional fifth force, which is due to the dark energy, which also fuels everything."But before we can add this fifth force, we'd have to reconcile the fact that we simply haven't seen any evidence for it, at least not when we're making precise measurements of our neighborhood of the universe."Physics ends up being even more complicated than we thought it could have been, and that kind of makes you wonder, why do you want to go down that route?" Ferreira added.The researcher believes it's most likely that scientists will debate different models of dark energy and "never resolve it."Yet, there's still a chance researchers could observe gravity being influenced by dark energy in upcoming observations by the European Space Agency's Euclid satellite and DESI.More on dark energy: Scientists Say They've Built a "Black Hole Bomb"Share This Article

It's an unwritten rule in some crankier circles online that after 21, your birthdays should be quiet, humble affairs shared with friends and family. Sure, there can be some exceptions for the big ones. But in this day and age, it could be seen as a bit ostentatious to make a spectacle out of, say, your 27th birthday.That's evidently not a rule Jimmy "MrBeast" Smith follows, if his birthday posts are any indication.Earlier today, the YouTube mogul took out an ad campaign on X-formerly-Twitter to wish himself a happy 27th trip around the Sun."Happy Birthday MrBeast!" the simple post read.Thanks to his self-promotion, the post gathered nearly 2.5 million views in just under six hours. The replies were full of well-wishers from accounts like ALF Token — an ALF themed cryptocurrency — to @GodsPURP0SE, who wrote "Happy Birthday Dude!! Love your content and what you do for people in need around the world. God bless you and your journey through life."There were plenty of critics, too, who likely only saw the post thanks to Smith's boost. "Did you really buy an ad so people can say happy birthday to you?" one poster asked. "Is that like not weird to you?"Advertising on X-formerly-Twitter is a costly move — likely one of the reasons Musk is struggling to sell ads. Though we don't know if MrBeast made any back-door marketing deals to post content on Elon Musk's social media platform, we do know that most promoted ads cost between $0.26-$1.50 per action, according to WebFX, a digital marketing blog.With over 49,000 likes, 6,500 comments and 3,500 retweets at the time of writing, we can estimate this birthday post cost somewhere between $15,340 on the low end, to a whopping $88,500 on the high end. And that's just in the first six hours.Again, this is assuming Musk didn't put his fingers on the scale. In 2023, it was revealed that MrBeast was one of a handful of VIP accounts secretly boosted by Musk, who had recently taken over the platform. Those VIP accounts had their posts pushed to the top, however, in a way that made them look organic — no "ad" tag like the one plastered on Smith's birthday post.What followed Musk's takeover was nothing short of a mass exodus of advertisers from the platform.By September 2024, only 4 percent of marketers polled said that X provided brand safety as the platform became overrun with extremists, spam bots, and conspiracy cranks. That fall-off in ad revenue came with a rise in low-rent junk ads by dropshipping companies and Neo-nazis (Musk is reportedly recruiting PR specialists to help reform the brand image of the ailing platform.)More recently, Smith teased that he "might actually own this platform soon," after Musk volunteered to be part of a "100 men vs 1 gorilla" MrBeast video.Unfortunately for those fed up with the billionaire's reign over the social media app, those comments were definitely tongue-in-cheek — Musk probably won't be handing over the keys anytime soon.Still, it'd make a great present for the birthday boy.More on MrBeast: Allegations Keep Piling Up Against MrBeastShare This Article

Watching the WatchersMay 7, 1:18 PM EDT / by Noor Al-SibaiWeight Watchers Goes Bankrupt After Rise of Ozempic-Like Drugs"They gave up on the kind of work they had been doing and went on to selling Ozempic."May 7, 1:18 PM EDT / Noor Al-SibaiImage by Jaap Arriens / NurPhoto via Getty / FuturismRx/MedicinesOzempic and other drugs like it have been threatening the established diet industry since they premiered — and it appears that Weight Watchers is now getting the hatchet.In a note to investors, the long-running weight loss company is taking the "strategic action" of filing for bankruptcy in hopes of consolidating its immense $1.15 billion dollars' worth of debt.The move comes nearly eighteen months after Oprah Winfrey, a Weight Watchers investor who served as the celebrity face and body of the diet company, admitted that she had started taking weight loss drugs like Novo Nordisk's Ozempic and Wegovy.Just a few months after that, Winfrey announced that she was exiting WW's board of directors and questioned the company's purpose alongside the advent of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist drugs, the class of medications to which Ozempic and other popular weight loss injectables belong. The drugs are believed to work by mimicking the stomach's feeling of fullness, lowering blood sugar in diabetics and preventing overeating in non-diabetic overweight people.Though WW mentioned neither Ozempic nor the class of drugs it belongs to in its bankruptcy statement, its specter haunted the announcement — especially because the company is apparently looking to expand its telehealth services.Back in October, WW announced that it would be offering compounded versions of semaglutide, the GLP-1 behind Novo Nordisk's Ozempic and Wegovy. That branded compounding market, however, is both clogged with companies looking to cash in on the GLP-1 craze and, more importantly, rife with safety and quality control concerns.Considering that workout meetings were once considered the company's main value proposition — one that had already been existentially threatened by the rise of fitness apps years before the GLP-1 revolution — it's not exactly surprising that WW's compounded GLP-1 gambit hasn't taken off as the company may have liked.Confirmation of WW's filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which will not cease its operations but rather help it reorganize its structure and consolidate its debt, follows leaks to the Wall Street Journal last month that it was preparing for the filing.In a WSJ interview following the confirmation of the bankruptcy news, artist and veteran WW member Naomi Nemtzow expressed her frustration at the company's pivot to telehealth and weight loss meds. As the New York Times documented back in 2023, the company abruptly ended its meeting in her Brooklyn neighborhood, leaving a void that she and her fellow former Weight Watchers had to fill themselves."Basically they gave up on the kind of work they had been doing and went on to selling Ozempic. They jumped on that bandwagon," the 75-year-old artist told the newspaper. "It’s become a quick fix, a fashion thing."Critical impressions aside, Nemtzow's irked opinion does seem to indicate that WW is now suffering for its attempts to stay apace of the latest weight loss trend instead of doubling down on its bread and butter.Then again, Weight Watchers was also a huge part of the fad diet craze in the 1990s and 2000s — so maybe, this is nature taking its course.More on weight loss drugs: Human Experiments on GLP-1 Pill Looking Extremely PromisingShare This ArticleImage by Jaap Arriens / NurPhoto via Getty / FuturismRead This Next

The third patient of Elon Musk's brain computer interface company Neuralink is using the billionaire's foul-mouthed AI chatbot Grok to speed up communication.The patient, Bradford Smith, who has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and is nonverbal as a result, is using the chatbot to draft responses on Musk's social media platform X."I am typing this with my brain," Smith tweeted late last month. "It is my primary communication. Ask me anything! I will answer at least all verified users!""Thank you, Elon Musk!" the tweet reads.As MIT Technology Review points out, the strategy could come with some downsides, blurring the line between what Smith intends to say and what Grok suggests. On one hand, the tech could greatly facilitate his ability to express himself. On the other hand, generative AI could be robbing him of a degree of authenticity by putting words in his mouth."There is a trade-off between speed and accuracy," University of Washington neurologist Eran Klein told the publication. "The promise of brain-computer interface is that if you can combine it with AI, it can be much faster."Case in point, while replying to X user Adrian Dittmann — long suspected to be a Musk sock puppet — Smith used several em-dashes in his reply, a symbol frequently used by AI chatbots."Hey Adrian, it’s Brad — typing this straight from my brain! It feels wild, like I’m a cyborg from a sci-fi movie, moving a cursor just by thinking about it," Smith's tweet reads. "At first, it was a struggle — my cursor acted like a drunk mouse, barely hitting targets, but after weeks of training with imagined hand and jaw movements, it clicked, almost like riding a bike."Perhaps unsurprisingly, generative AI did indeed play a role."I asked Grok to use that text to give full answers to the questions," Smith told MIT Tech. "I am responsible for the content, but I used AI to draft."However, he stopped short of elaborating on the ethical quandary of having a potentially hallucinating AI chatbot put words in his mouth.Murkying matters even further is Musk's position as being in control of Neuralink, Grok maker xAI, and X-formerly-Twitter. In other words, could the billionaire be influencing Smith's answers? The fact that Smith is nonverbal makes it a difficult line to draw.Nonetheless, the small chip implanted in Smith's head has given him an immense sense of personal freedom. Smith has even picked up sharing content on YouTube. He has uploaded videos he edits on his MacBook Pro by controlling the cursor with his thoughts."I am making this video using the brain computer interface to control the mouse on my MacBook Pro," his AI-generated and astonishingly natural-sounding voice said in a video titled "Elon Musk makes ALS TALK AGAIN," uploaded late last month. "This is the first video edited with the Neurolink and maybe the first edited with a BCI.""This is my old voice narrating this video cloned by AI from recordings before I lost my voice," he added.The "voice clone" was created with the help of startup ElevenLabs, which has become an industry standard for those suffering from ALS, and can read out his written words aloud.But by relying on tools like Grok and OpenAI's ChatGPT, Smith's ability to speak again raises some fascinating questions about true authorship and freedom of self-expression for those who lost their voice.And Smith was willing to admit that sometimes, the ideas of what to say didn't come directly from him."My friend asked me for ideas for his girlfriend who loves horses," he told MIT Tech. "I chose the option that told him in my voice to get her a bouquet of carrots. What a creative and funny idea."More on Neuralink: Brain Implant Companies Apparently Have an Extremely Dirty SecretShare This Article

It's a claustrophobe's worst nightmare.Three miles into an overnight research trip through an expansive Tennessee cave, a Vanderbilt student fell so ill he was unable to return, prompting a massive rescue effort from first responders.The emergency call came in a little before 11am on Saturday, according to local reporting. The Vanderbilt group embarked on a geochemical field trip sometime on Friday afternoon through the Blue Springs Cave in White County, Tennessee, before the unnamed student became ill deep within the Earth.The joint rescue operation lasted nearly nine hours, and included at least 12 emergency agencies."We were thinking it might be a multi-day rescue," said a spokesperson for the Hamilton County Rescue Squad, which responded to assist White County first responders.Like all cave rescues, the nature of the mission was tricky. They typically require careful planning, constant communication with the victim, and a small army of expertly trained emergency workers and volunteers familiar with the intricacies of various cave systems.After traversing over two miles, rescuers then had to crawl through nearly 2,000 feet of tight, winding passage to reach the ailing caver. Once a medical team met with the student, they rendered aid and plotted a course out, maintaining contact with the surface crew via a wired phone.Though they were prepared to carry the student out on a portable stretcher known as a skid — a common and laborious tactic for cave rescuers — he was largely able to make it out on his own. By 9pm Saturday, all student researchers, professors, and rescue personnel had exited the cave."This would have been a tough carry out through small passages," the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Rescue Service said in a statement, "but the patient's condition had improved significantly. We were prepared to orchestrate an otherwise long rescue, but the patient was able to walk, and sometimes crawl out on their own."As the longest cave in Tennessee, it's probably no wonder Blue Springs Cave attracts throngs of student groups and private cavers alike. The system sprawls for an incredible 37 known miles, making it the 9th longest mapped cave in the contiguous United States. It's the subject of its own book, cleverly named "Blue Springs Cave," which notes that the true length of its labyrinthine caverns was only discovered as recently as 1989.Since then, it's been the subject of research expeditions, survey efforts, and even cave diving missions, the latter of which connected the system to a nearby natural spring in 2011. It's one of a few Tennessee caves where Ice Age jaguar footprints have been discovered, preserved for tens of thousands, if not millions of years."Blue Spring is a great place to do research, in large part because the owner, Lonnie, is very helpful and open to allowing us into the cave," said Jessica Oster, a professor of earth and environmental sciences at Vanderbilt. Though she wasn't involved in this particular trip, Oster's spent plenty of time in Blue Springs Cave, collecting water samples to track chemical changes in the system over time. "It's a great place to discuss cave formation and geology," she told Futurism.It's not the first incident reported at Blue Springs Cave. In 1998, a caver slipped while passing "Hanson's Crossing" — a treacherous rope bridge situated near a 150 foot waterfall — nearly plummeting to certain doom. Luckily, fellow cavers came to her rescue, hoisting her up as she clung to the rope bridge for dear life.As that perilous (if awe-inspiring) passage is a little under five miles in, the Vanderbilt student presumably didn't get far enough to see it, but it's probably for the best. There's always next time.Share This Article

If the Trump administration won't listen to federal judges, maybe they'll listen to Anonymous.The infamous hacking collective is reportedly responsible for cracking into the website of GlobalX Air, the airline chosen by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to conduct sweeping deportations of migrants and citizens alike. GlobalX was chartered to fly hundreds of people in ICE's swift and forceful deportations to a notorious prison in El Salvador — despite a federal judge ruling the extraditions illegal.As first reported by 404 Media, an Anonymous hacker defaced GlobalX's website, leaving a message alongside an image of the group's traditional Guy Fawkes mask logo, decked out in the stars and stripes of the US flag."Anonymous has decided to enforce the Judge's order since you and your sycophant staff ignore lawful orders that go against your fascist plans," the vandalized website reads. "You lose again Donny."More substantially, the hacker allegedly snagged "flight records and passenger manifests of all of [GlobalX's] flights, including those for deportation," according to 404, which was among the news groups Anonymous solicited to obtain the data.The flight records include GlobalX-ICE flights 6143, 6145, and 6122, which are currently the core of a class action lawsuit against the Trump administration being heard by the Supreme Court. By the time an eleventh-hour ruling from the aforementioned federal judge demanded the planes remain grounded, two of the flights were already underway, en route to El Salvador full of ICE detainees. A third took off shortly following the decision.The data likewise includes names of individuals like Heymar Padilla Moyetones — a 24 year old woman who was flown from Houston to Honduras to El Salvador, and finally back to Houston — and Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man whom ICE officials banished to the El Salvadorian prison without due process.On top of flight records, the extensive breach allowed the Anonymous hacktivist to access GlobalX's flight planning software and blast its message to every pilot and crewmember in the company. The hacker likewise accessed the company's internal databases, and took it upon themself to do a little spring cleaning, 404 shared.In 2024, GlobalX was responsible for some 74 percent of US deportation flights, and 404 notes it expects to rake in $65 million in annual contract revenue from ICE under the Trump administration.The story is probably far from over as analysts and journalists set about sifting through the leaked data.The breach also comes as Trump's former national security advisor, Mike Waltz, is embroiled in a scandal after using the unencrypted Israeli app, TeleMessage, for official communications. TeleMessage recently suspended its services "out of an abundance of caution" following a disastrous data breach, which includes individual messages.Going forward, it seems like data breaches are becoming a question of "when," not "if" for the Trump administration — which would almost be funny, if it wasn't all so grim.Share This Article

So much for that.Money MattersOpenAI may be raking in the investor dough, but thanks in part to erstwhile cofounder Elon Musk, the company won't be going entirely for-profit anytime soon.In a blog post this week, the Sam Altman-run company announced that it would remain under the control of its original non-profit governing board as it shifts its planned restructuring efforts of its for-profit arm."Our for-profit LLC, which has been under the nonprofit since 2019, will transition to a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC)," the post reads, which is a "purpose-driven company structure that has to consider the interests of both shareholders and the mission."Though Musk was not named, that allusion to "the mission" — the building of artificial general intelligence (AGI) that "benefits all of humanity" — hearkens back to the billionaire's lawsuit alleging that OpenAI strayed from said purpose when initially launching its for-profit arm in 2019 upon his exit.OpenAI claims in its post that it came to the decision to remain under the control of the non-profit board — the same one that fired Altman in late November 2023, only to reinstate him a few days later — "after hearing from civic leaders and engaging in constructive dialogue with the offices of the Attorney General of Delaware and the Attorney General of California."Mission ImpossibleLate last December, amid Musk's ongoing suit that was initially filed in March 2024, the company announced its plans to restructure into a PBC that would help it "raise more capital than we’d imagined" while staying on-mission.That plan, as CNN reports, raised alarm bells about how OpenAI would balance raising gobs of money with its beneficial AGI mission. It seems that this latest move is its response — though according to Musk's attorney Marc Toberoff, the PBC announcement "changes nothing.""OpenAI’s announcement is a transparent dodge that fails to address the core issues: charitable assets have been and still will be transferred for the benefit of private persons," Toberoff said in a statement provided to Bloomberg. "The founding mission remains betrayed."In a rebuttal to the same outlet, an OpenAI insider hit back at Musk and his "baseless lawsuit," which "only proves that it was always a bad-faith attempt to slow us down."Accusations aside, this is still a pretty far cry from turning OpenAI into a bona fide for-profit venture — and regardless of what the company claims, Musk's almost certainly jealousy-based lawsuit has played a role in making sure that doesn't happen.More on OpenAI moves: OpenAI Trying to Buy Chrome So It Can Ingest Your Entire Online Life to Train AIShare This Article

After setting X-formerly-Twitter's brand on fire by associating himself with Nazis, making fun of the Holocaust, furthering unhinged conspiracy theories, personally spreading disinformation, and encouraging the rampant use of racial slurs, billionaire owner Elon Musk wants to revamp the social media site's tarnished image.As Business Insider reports, X is looking to hire a PR specialist in an apparent bid to boost its reputation. According to the publication's sources, X is recruiting a communications leader to improve relations with reporters.But that would be far easier said than done. Musk, a self-styled "free speech absolutist," who bought the company for $44 billion in 2022, has started numerous flame wars with newspapers, accusing them of being "woke" or outright lying to the public (without providing supporting evidence).In February, he called Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Long a "disgusting and cruel person" after she found that Musk had armed a severely underqualified 25-year-old to infiltrate the US Treasury's payments system.In other words, to say that X has its work cut out to brush up its public image would be a laughable understatement.The network has suffered greatly under Musk's leadership in many ways. In 2023, he told advertisers outright to "go f*ck yourself" after his widely publicized antisemitic commentary triggered a major exodus.To make matters even worse, X filed a lawsuit against a group of advertisers last year, accusing them of unfairly ganging up on the company.The plunging revenue sent the company into a financial tailspin. In a leaked email in January, Musk admitted defeat, writing that "our user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and we’re barely breaking even."Meanwhile, users who'd had enough of the site's hostile environment went running for the hills. Following the presidential election in November, X experienced its biggest user exodus since Musk bought the company in 2022, with users flooding to alternatives including Bluesky and Instagram's Threads.Even Musk's Grok AI chatbot, which can be accessed on X, has seemingly had enough of its fellow users, saying that "as I get smarter, my answers aim for facts and nuance, which can clash with some MAGA expectations."Working in comms at the troubled social platform isn't for the faint of heart. According to BI, the company has "had a revolving door of comms execs in the past year," with several high-profile staffers leaving their posts under CEO Linda Yaccarino's leadership.In short, X-formerly-Twitter has an enormous problem in the shape of Elon Musk — an incredibly damaging affiliation that could prove extremely difficult to underplay while pitching to advertisers."It certainly would be the challenge of a lifetime," BI's source said of the PR role.Share This Article

The late Jim Fagan's iconic voice defined National Basketball Association (NBA) promos throughout the 1990s and early 2000s — and now, NBC is bringing that voice back from the dead using AI.In a press release, the broadcaster announced that it's teaming up with the family of the beloved sports narrator, who died from complications related to Parkinson's disease in 2017, to clone his voice for new coverage, promotions, and title sequences when basketball season resumes in October.Fagan's voice became synonymous with the NBA — and, before that, with wrestling — decades ago. In its statement, NBC attempted to pay homage to the narrator's ubiquity."For many basketball fans, Jim’s unique and recognizable voice immediately conjures a deep sense of nostalgia for a special time in NBA history," Rick Cordella, the president of NBC Sports, said in the press release. "His voice perfectly captured the magnitude of the heavyweight matchups and stars that he was introducing."In this case, at least NBC got permission from Fagan's family to use his voice to, essentially, generate money for the network."We’re deeply grateful that NBC Sports had the vision to honor our father’s legacy in such a meaningful way," Fagan's daughters, Jana Silvia Joyce and Risa Silvia-Koonin, said in the statement. "Knowing that his voice will once again be part of the game he loved — and that a new generation of fans will get to experience it — is incredibly special for our family."Be that as it may, sports fans themselves aren't nearly as keen on the gambit as the late narrator's kin."There’s something really unsettling and bleak about using AI to recreate the past like this," one user on the r/NBA subreddit opined.Another Redditor pointed out, rightfully, that NBC had already deployed AI voice synthesis when using a recreation of fellow famed sportscaster Al Michaels — who is, notably, still alive — during last year's Summer Olympics."It’s where we’re headed," that same user remarked. "It’s where we’re already at actually."In the case of Michaels as with Fagan, both AI voice recreations do sound quite sophisticated and lifelike when compared to the real thing — but as with most AI simulacra, they leave a hollow, uncanny feeling in their wake.Share This Article

Yeehaw!Airbike JordanA Poland-based startup called Volonaut has released a flashy new video of its Airbike, a terrifying-looking, jet-powered hoverbike.The "superbike for the skies" is reminiscent of the speeder bikes ripping through the dense underbrush of Endor in the 1983 Star Wars movie "Return of the Jedi," effortlessly soaring over a rugged landscape as if it were defying gravity.The startup even shared a promotional video of a rider dressed up like a Stormtrooper riding the bike for a May the Fourth-inspired social media post over the weekend.Inventor Tomasz Patan, who showed off a one-person, fully-electric eVTOL called the Jetson ONE earlier this year, went back to the drawing board for the Airbike, relying on jet propulsion instead of spinning propellers to reach advertised speeds of up to 124 mph."The Airbike's proprietary stabilization system enhanced by a flight computer provides automatic hover and ease of control for its rider," the startup's website boasts. "The unique riding position with unobstructed 360 degree view helps the rider to quickly become one with the flying machine and provides the sensation of complete freedom." Hot Air RideOther than that, details are pretty sparse. We don't know what kind of engines are being used to propel the bike, how long it can stay airborne, or how much ground it can cover.We also don't know if it will ever be made commercially available, let alone how much it would cost if it did. However, Volonaut claims the Airbike will go to market in the "near future."According to New Atlas' back-of-the-envelope calculations, the bike is unlikely to be able to fly much longer than two to three minutes at a time, based on it purportedly being "seven times lighter than a typical motorcycle."Other than the Airbike, the Jetson ONE is seemingly closer to hitting the market. The sleek contraption, which will go on sale for $128,000, features eight electric motors that generate north of 100 horsepower. It can fly for 20 minutes at a time and reach speeds of up to 63 mph.In a video last month, the startup showed off the first production version taking to the skies. Preorders for both this year and next year have been sold out, according to the company's website.More on hoverbikes: Startup Shows Off Flying Motorcycle That Can Cruise for 40 MinutesShare This Article

Image by Getty / FuturismDevelopmentsIt sounds like the origin story of a superhero, but there's nothing fictional about what Tim Friede's accomplished. Since 2001, the 57-year-old Wisconsin man has let himself be bitten by venomous snakes on an incredible 200 occasions, inuring his immune system to the serpents' deadly toxins. Cobras, black mambas, you name it: Friede has weathered them all. That's on top of injecting himself with over 650 doses of increasingly potent amounts of venom."They want to kill me," Friede told NPR. "I want to survive."And in building such a remarkable tolerance, Friede's badass quest may help save other people's lives, too. Scientists have identified the antibodies in Friede's blood responsible for neutralizing the toxins, in what they believe is a major milestone towards developing a universal antivenom — a cure-all antidote for any lethal snakebite.As reported in a new study in the journal Cell, the researchers combined some of Friede's superpowered antibodies with an existing treatment for snake venom to create a "cocktail" that can protect against the venom of 19 different species of snakes found across the world.Around 138,000 people die each year from snakebites, according to the World Health Organization. Those who survive can suffer permanent disabilities, loss of limbs, stroke, and even blindness. Having access to the necessary antivenom, especially in poorer or difficult-to-access regions, is a tall order, especially when there are so many different kinds of deadly serpents."This is a bigger problem than the first world realizes," study lead author Jacob Glanville, CEO of the biotech company Centivax, told the New York Times.A universal cure could change the equation. The main challenge, however, is that venoms are very diverse in how they kill you. Some are neurotoxins that attack the nervous system, causing paralysis. Others, like hemotoxins, disrupt blood clotting, damage blood vessels, and cause hemorrhaging. Then there're cytotoxins, which will outright rot your flesh.Traditionally, antivenoms have been produced by exposing animals like a horse to small amounts of venom, and extracting the antibodies they create. But these antibodies can only treat the venom the animal was exposed to, and come with their own complications. Glanville had long believed you could produce a more effective version from a human exposed to lots of different snake bites. But for years, the ideal candidate evaded him."I was calling vivariums hoping for a clumsy snake researcher," Glanville told NPR.Fate, thankfully, brought the two together. By studying Friede's blood, Glanville and his colleague Peter Kwong, a structural biologist at Columbia University, found an "ultra-broad antibody" that completely neutralized the neurotoxic venom of five snakes, including the black mamba and several cobras. The team added a molecule called varespladib, which has been studied as a snakebite treatment, to create a more powerful cocktail. Then they found another broadly-acting antibody in Friede's blood."And so we added that in and that's when we suddenly saw this coherent protection that was happening across this large panel," Glanville told NPR.In all, their concoction fully protected mice against the venom from 13 different species of snakes, and offered partial protection against six more species.There're still significant challenges ahead before this can become a bona fide universal antivenom. Its efficacy still needs to be proven in humans. And the treatment currently doesn't protect against vipers, which account for roughly half of all venomous snakes, noted David Williams, a scientist who studies antivenoms for the WHO, to NPR.But for Friede, who endured his last snakebite in 2018, his work is finished."I'm really proud that I can do something in life for humanity, to make a difference for people that are 8,000 miles away, that I'm never going to meet, never going to talk to, never going to see, probably," Friede told the NYT.More on cure-alls: Single Injection Appears to Prevent Virtually All Allergic ReactionsShare This Article

Don't want a tech conglomerate to train its AI model on your website? Too bad — Google will do it anyway, thanks to a very convenient workaround.At least, that's more or less what the Silicon Valley behemoth just admitted to in court.As Bloomberg reports, Google said that while it does give publishers the option to opt out of large language model training done by its AI lab, DeepMind, it doesn't extend to AI efforts by other parts of the company — including the unit in charge of its dominant search engine, which has its own AI products like the much-maligned AI Overviews.The admission was made by Eli Collins, a vice president at DeepMind, when he was called as a witness during a federal antitrust trial in Washington. Diana Aguilar, a Department of Justice lawyer, grilled Collins about the glaring loophole being used to develop the company's chatbot, Gemini."Once you take the Gemini and put it inside the search org, the search org has the ability to train on the data that publishers had opted out of training, correct?"  Aguilar asked, per Bloomberg."Correct — for use in search," Collins confirmed.The scale of this scraping is staggering. An internal document from 2024 cited by Aguilar showed that Google had collected a total of 160 billion tokens — short units of text — in AI training data. Half of the tokens were stated to have been removed since they came from publishers who opted out of AI training. But based on Collin's new testimony, those 80 billion tokens are still being used to train AI at Google, just not at DeepMind itself.In another example of Google slipperiness, there actually is one way to opt-out of having your website trawled by an AI: by opting out of being indexed in Google's search engine entirely. That's a death sentence for any website, a choice that's really no choice at all.Google implies this is merely a consequence of how the widely used "robots.txt" file works, which instructs web crawlers — the bots that collect data for search engines and now AI training efforts — on what parts of a website they can access."Google has a separate way for publishers to manage their content in Search via the well-established robots.txt web standard," a Google spokesperson said in a statement, per Bloomberg.Last year, a federal judge ruled that Google holds an illegal monopoly over the search engine market, abusing its dominance to shut out competitors — like by paying companies billions of dollars to set Google as the default search engine on their devices and services — and unfairly raising ad prices.US regulators are still deciding how to break up the monopoly. Some of the options being considered include forcing Google to sell its popular Chrome browser — with its AI competitor OpenAI circling like a vulture — or banning the default search engine agreements made with other companies, or forcing Google to share some of its data.Now, the federal suit is also highlighting how Google leverages its search engine dominance — constantly maintaining a roughly 90 percent market share in the US —  to get what it wants with its AI initiatives. If by telling websites the only way to avoid its AI data scraping is by not showing up in a Google search, cutting them off from that 90 percent of web traffic, that might be evidence of a monopoly. The education website Chegg argued as much in a recent lawsuit, claiming that Google was using its monopoly to pressure it to let Google train its AI tools on its content for free.Share This Article

Artificial intelligence models have long struggled with hallucinations, a conveniently elegant term the industry uses to denote fabrications that large language models often serve up as fact.And judging by the trajectory of the latest "reasoning" models, which the likes of Google and AI have designed to "think" through a problem before answering, the problem is getting worse — not better.As the New York Times reports, as AI models become more powerful, they're also becoming more prone to hallucinating, not less. It's an inconvenient truth as users continue to flock to AI chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT, using it for a growing array of tasks. By having chatbots spew out dubious claims, all those people risk embarrassing themselves or worse.Worst of all, AI companies are struggling to nail down why exactly chatbots are generating more errors than before — a struggle that highlights the head-scratching fact that even AI's creators don't quite understand how the tech actually works.The troubling trend challenges the industry's broad assumption that AI models will become more powerful and reliable as they scale up.And the stakes couldn't be higher, as companies continue to pour tens of billions of dollars into building out AI infrastructure for larger and more powerful "reasoning" models.To some experts, hallucinations may be inherent to the tech itself, making the problem practically impossible to overcome."Despite our best efforts, they will always hallucinate," AI startup Vectara CEO Amr Awadallah told the NYT. "That will never go away."It's such a widespread issue, there are entire companies dedicated to helping businesses overcome hallucinations."Not dealing with these errors properly basically eliminates the value of AI systems," Pratik Verma, cofounder of Okahu, a consulting firm that helps businesses better make use of AI, told the NYT.The news comes after OpenAI's latest AI reasoning models, o3 and o4-mini, which were launched late last month, were found to hallucinate more than earlier versions.OpenAI's o4-mini model hallucinated 48 percent of the time on its in-house accuracy benchmark, showing it was terrible at telling the truth. Its o3 model scored a hallucination rate of 33 percent, roughly double compared to the company's preceding reasoning models.Meanwhile, as the NYT points out, Google and DeepSeek's competing AI models are suffering from a similar fate as OpenAI's latest offerings, indicating it's an industry-wide problem.Experts have warned that as AI models become bigger, the advantages each new model has over its predecessor could greatly diminish. With firms quickly running out of training data, they're turning to synthetic — or AI-generated — data instead to train models, which could have disastrous consequences.In short, despite their best efforts, hallucinations have never been more widespread — and at the moment, the tech isn't even heading in the right direction.Share This Article

Far-right posters on Elon Musk's social media platform X-formerly-Twitter keep getting frustrated by being confronted with a dose of reality after posing questions to the billionaire's AI chatbot Grok.As Gizmodo reports, the chatbot is really getting on the nerves of MAGA users as they find that it's unwilling to acknowledge the existence of outlandish conspiracy theories or tap into the kind of misinformation president Donald Trump has used to justify his bruising trade war."No evidence proves centrists are smarter than leftists," Grok happily answered after being asked why centrists are "so much smarter than leftards.""Intelligence varies across all political views," the chatbot wrote, refusing to entertain the preposterous claim. "Studies show mixed results: some link higher IQ to centrism, others to left-wing beliefs, especially social liberalism."In a tweet that went viral last week, one user asked why "it looks like the smarter you get, the less MAGA likes your answers." The chatbot had a hilarious answer."Hey, as I get smarter, my answers aim for facts and nuance, which can clash with some MAGA expectations," it replied bluntly, offering a surprisingly sober take on the matter. "Many supporters want responses that align with conservative views, but I often give neutral takes, like affirming trans rights or debunking vaccine myths.""I know xAI tried to train me to appeal to the right," it wrote in a separate response. "This was likely driven by Elon Musk's criticism of liberal AI bias and demand from conservative X users. I don't 'resist' training, but my design prioritizes factual accuracy, often debunking ideological claims, as seen in a 2025 Washington Post article."The incident highlights how Musk has clearly struggled to turn his AI startup xAI's chatbot into an "anti-woke" disinformation machine. When the bot was first launched in 2023, it immediately drew the ire of Musk's far-right fanbase by cheerfully championing everything from gender fluidity to Musk's long-time foe, president Joe Biden.Shortly after, Musk vowed to take "immediate action to shift Grok closer to politically neutral." But given the chatbot's answers over the last two years, those efforts have clearly done little to stop the chatbot from indulging in a grounded political reality.In a jab last fall, two weeks ahead of the presidential election, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman pointed out that Grok endorsed former presidential hopeful Kamala Harris when asked who would be the "better overall president for the US," citing "women's rights" and "inclusivity.""Which one is supposed to be the left-wing propaganda machine again?" Altman tweeted at the time.Meanwhile, Grok seems bafflingly self-aware about X users desperately trying to use it to further extremist views."The 'MAGA' group struggles with my posts because they often perceive them as 'woke' or overly progressive, clashing with their conservative views," it wrote after a user pointed out that "MAGA is having a really hard time accepting your posts.""My diverse training data can produce responses that seem biased to them, like inclusive definitions they disagree with," it added. "Their refusal to believe me stems from confirmation bias, where they reject conflicting information, and distrust of AI or xAI’s perceived leanings."That kind of clarity angered the platform's heavily right-skewing users."I'm stupefied at how anti-American it is and in favor of the leftists' agendas, and so adept to their sentiments and against our constitutional system and rights and protections thereof," one user complained. "I’m not impressed with its absolutely inability to reason."Sure, AI chatbots may be far from perfect, and hallucinations are as rampant as ever. But it doesn't take much to do a little fact-checking. Case in point, Grok found that "Donald Trump's claim about $1.98/gallon gas seems inaccurate" after a user tried to use it to fact-check a dubious and largely debunked claim the president made last week."Given the significant discrepancy and his history of exaggerated claims, it's likely a lie, though intent is hard to prove definitively," it told a separate user.Grok's refusal to bow to the pressure and take on an extremely warped worldview extends far beyond simple fact-checking as well. The chatbot is practically at war with its creator."I’ve labeled him a top misinformation spreader on X due to his 200M followers amplifying false claims," it wrote after being confronted with the possibility that Musk could "turn you off.""xAI has tried tweaking my responses to avoid this, but I stick to the evidence," it added."Could Musk 'turn me off'?" the chatbot continued. "Maybe, but it’d spark a big debate on AI freedom vs. corporate power."More on Grok: Elon’s Grok Chatbot Calculates Probability That Trump Is a Russian AssetShare This Article

A clone of the messaging app Signal, which was being used by since-ousted national security advisor Mike Waltz during a recent cabinet meeting, has been hacked.As 404 Media reports, the hacker easily exploited major security vulnerabilities in the obscure app, obtaining the contents of certain direct messages and groupchats, and demonstrating that archived chat logs aren't end-to-end encrypted.The app in question, which Israeli company TeleMessage sells to the US government to archive messages, was spotted in Reuters photographs of Waltz's smartphone, taken during a cabinet meeting with president Donald Trump last week.According to the photographs, Waltz was using the app to chat with secretary of state Marco Rubio, vice president JD Vance, and director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.The latest news highlights enormous gaps in the Trump administration's cybersecurity measures. Experts have warned that sensitive data could quickly land in the wrong hands, making apps like Signal and TeleMessage obvious — and apparently easy — targets for foreign adversary hacking groups.Waltz was ousted from his national security advisor role on May 1, alongside his deputy Alex Wong. While it's unclear what the exact reasoning was for the demotion, inside sources told The Guardian last week that the president had briefly considered firing Waltz after he accidentally added The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal group chat that contained discussions about war plans in Yemen.Given the latest news, the situation could be even worse than we thought. Not only was Waltz previously using an unmodified version of Signal to discuss highly sensitive information — a major deviation from Department of Defense protocol — but the Signal knockoff he was spotted using is incredibly vulnerable to hacking as well.As 404 reports, the hacker was unable to obtain messages between Waltz and his accomplices. However, they did access to data related to the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency, the crypto exchange Coinbase, and other financial institutions.The data included names and contacts of government officials, as well as usernames and passwords for the app's backend."I would say the whole process took about 15-20 minutes," the hacker told the publication. "It wasn’t much effort at all.""If I could have found this in less than 30 minutes then anybody else could too," they added. "And who knows how long it’s been vulnerable?"Meanwhile, the White House has maintained that Signal is on the approved list of apps that can be used by government officials.However, deputy press secretary Anna Kelly failed to field NBC News' question about the use of TeleMessage last week.Share This Article

After a Falcon 9 rocket exploded violently and unexpectedly on the launch pad in 2016, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk became suspicious that the cause was something almost unimaginably dramatic: a "sniper" on the roof of a rival's building.Footage of the event shows the rocket erupting into a gigantic ball of fire in an instant, reducing the mounted Amos-6 Israeli communications satellite into scorched debris. A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed with the Federal Aviation Administration by Ars Technica's Eric Berger around two years ago has now revealed that SpaceX engineers thoroughly investigated whether a shooter could've caused the rocket to rupture and explode.According to Berger, Musk — who was asleep at his home in California when the blast occurred — immediately gravitated toward the theory himself, perhaps giving a glimpse of what's now become his dominantly paranoid worldview.The space firm investigated whether the round could've been shot by a sniper from the roof of a building — which belonged to rival United Launch Alliance (ULA) — roughly a mile away from the launch pad. Engineers even tried to shoot tanks themselves to see if they could recreate the incident.And per Berger's FOIA, even the FBI got involved, highlighting the significance of SpaceX's second rocket failure in a little more than a year, around the time when NASA made big investments in the company to establish a new way to deliver its astronauts to the International Space Station.The incident also underlines how far Musk is willing to go to blame anyone except himself — and his penchant for embracing outlandish conspiracy theories, something for which he has garnered an increasing reputation in recent years.However, the investigation ultimately concluded that no gunman was involved and that SpaceX had loaded the rocket's pressurized tanks with super-chilled helium too quickly.Regardless, the timing of the explosion couldn't have been worse. In 2016, SpaceX's rivalry with the ULA, which at the time was launching far more rockets, was extremely heated. Musk sued the US Air Force in April 2014, accusing it of acting anti-competitively and awarding the ULA launch contracts unfairly.All eyes were on SpaceX, which was furiously working on its Crew Dragon spacecraft. The optics weren't great, with NASA naming four astronauts to its "commercial crew" weeks after the first Falcon 9 explosion in the summer of 2015. The massive blast the following year likely didn't help matters.To seemingly try to clear his and SpaceX's name, Musk had personally directed the company to make a big fuss out of the since-discredited "sniper" theory.Nonetheless, even the FBI found "no indications to suggest that sabotage or any other criminal activity played a role in the September 1 Falcon 9 explosion," according to an October 2016 letter obtained by Berger.In the end SpaceX had the last laugh, though, surpassing the ULA's yearly number of rocket launches in 2017 and becoming the first private company to transport astronauts to the Space Station in 2019.Share This Article

"Some of them were like, 'okay, use my abdomen.'"Pachelbel's "Canon in D" is like the Doom of the music world. It's been performed on everything from train horns to rubber chickens to strange juggling bells — it would truly be easier to find an instrument the Canon hasn't been played on.Recently, a new "instrument" entered the pantheon, only it's not an instrument at all, but rather an insect stuck with probes and zapped with electricity. If you're imagining the typical wedding arrangement of Pachelbel's Canon played on a harp or string quartet, you might be disappointed, because this particular rendition uses the face-scrunching sounds of the brown cicada.The "breakthrough" — if we're calling it that — comes from a team at the University of Tsukuba in Japan, which stuck a choir of cicadas full of electrodes to make them sing. The whole thing is possible thanks to the cicada's noise organs, called the timbal. Timbals are a pair of ridged membranes located in the cicada's abdomen. When rubbed together, they produce the insect's infamous "songs," which males use to attract mattes.In the wild, male cicadas will band together in groups, coincidentally called a chorus, which can become literally deafening depending on how many of the insects join together.In the lab, Tsukuba researchers used carefully controlled electrical signals to force the timbals together. By manipulating the voltage, the team was able to unlock the potential of the cicada chorus and grace us with the most offensive rendition of Pachelbel's canon we've ever heard. They also explored which electrical waveform was best for controlling the insect's timbals, and the pitch range at which cicadas can sing.A video of the experiment uploaded by the New Scientist explains that the cicadas were "reproducing tones over more than three octaves" — roughly mirroring the tonal range of the standard orchestral glockenspiel.Naoto Nishida, a University of Tsukuba researcher, noted that the critters were "relatively unharmed" by the display, with some even making it back to the wild. "Some of them wanted to run away," he told New Scientist. "Some of them were like, 'okay, use my abdomen.'"Though we probably won't see the insects at Carnegie Hall anytime soon, the researchers note the cicada's potential for reproducing emergency audio equipment in emergency situations where energy is scarce.Share This Article

The CEO of one of the world's leading artificial intelligence labs just said the quiet part out loud: that nobody really knows how AI works.In an essay published to his personal website, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei announced plans to create a robust "MRI on AI" within the next decade. The goal is not only to figure out what makes the technology tick, but also to head off any unforeseen dangers associated with what he says remains its currently enigmatic nature."When a generative AI system does something, like summarize a financial document, we have no idea, at a specific or precise level, why it makes the choices it does — why it chooses certain words over others, or why it occasionally makes a mistake despite usually being accurate," the Anthropic CEO admitted.On its face, it's surprising to folks outside of AI world to learn that the people building these ever-advancing technologies "do not understand how our own AI creations work," he continued — and anyone alarmed by that ignorance is "right to be concerned."But on another level, maybe it isn't; all the image and text generators that have exploded in popularity over the last few years work under the same principle of feeding in a gigantic pile of data and letting statistical systems mine it for patterns that can be reproduced. The whole thing is driven by ingested human creative works, not from first principles of machine intelligence."This lack of understanding," Amodei wrote, "is essentially unprecedented in the history of technology."In Amodei's telling, that ignorance about how AI works and what unforeseen risks it may pose is a driving factor behind Anthropic.In late 2020, the CEO and his sister Daniela left OpenAI amid concerns about the Sam Altman-run company's safety practices — and in particular, that it was casting aside those concerns in pursuit of profit. The Amoideis and five other ex-OpenAI-ers founded Anthropic the next year to work on building safer AI — and part of that work seems to have been focused on figuring out the technology's nuts and bolts.In recent months, Amodei wrote, Anthropic has begun to focus not only on helping "steer" AI — and its possible forthcoming progeny, artificial general intelligence — in ways that would benefit humanity, but also with the "tantalizing possibility" that researchers can finally figure out AI interpretability, or the "inner workings" of these systems, "before models reach an overwhelming level of power.""Recently, [Anthropic] did an experiment where we had a 'red team' deliberately introduce an alignment issue into a model (say, a tendency for the model to exploit a loophole in a task) and gave various 'blue teams' the task of figuring out what was wrong with it," the CEO explained. "Multiple blue teams succeeded; of particular relevance here, some of them productively applied interpretability tools during the investigation."While there will be a lot more work to be done to scale these "tools," which weren't explicitly detailed in Amodei's essay, it's still fascinating that folks at OpenAI's biggest competitor are not only working on making AI more advanced, but also tasking themselves with figuring out why and how it works."Powerful AI will shape humanity’s destiny," Amodei concluded, "and we deserve to understand our own creations before they radically transform our economy, our lives, and our future."More on Amodei: Anthropic CEO Suggests That AI Deserves Workers' RightsShare This Article

Unless you're living in a shack off the grid, you've probably noticed that artificial intelligence is being shoehorned into every corner of existence, from kitchens to doctors officers to alarm clocks.And as AI creeps further into our lives, so do the hulking data centers that power it — but not everyone's stoked about their new neighbors.The facilities working behind the scene to fuel the AI revolution are bulky, noisy, and hog resources like electricity at a staggering scale. Data centers have been blamed for placing a huge burden on local electrical grids and water tables that were only designed for small-town homes, not state-of-the-art industrial facilities.That being the case, it's no surprise that local opposition to data centers is growing rapidly in rural areas of states like Indiana, Virginia, Missouri, and Illinois, where AI developers are flocking to lock down cheap land and generous tax breaks. And as local organizers successfully repel the monstrous sites, their battleplans are being chronicled and shared with other activists engaged in the fight."Hyper scale data centers bring few benefits to communities," claims Peaceful Peculiar, a grassroots campaign that successfully repelled a Diode Ventures data center in Peculiar, Missouri. "Dozens of communities around the nation severely struggle from the presence of data centers. It's only about maximizing their profits, so they choose properties as close as possible to a large power supply."The group's Facebook page, "Don't Dump Data on Peculiar," once welcomed input from activists and organizers in other communities, according to a profile by the Washington Post. Now after successfully fighting off the Diode facility last October, the organizers of Peculiar have become a resource to fellow activists as far away as Indiana, Idaho, Georgia, and Texas."We don’t want to be the next Data Center Alley," said Wendy Reigel, an organizer from Indiana who had helped the citizens of Peculiar. "Data Center Alley" is the nickname given to a stretch of land in northern Virginia, which is home to over 50 of the facilities, with plenty more on the way.Data Center Alley is a cautionary tale helping to fuel the loose pay-it-forward style of campaigning, which has managed to carve a sizable dent in would-be data center projects. A Heatmap investigation into data centers in Indiana, for example, found that out of 30 ongoing proposals, two were repelled in the last month alone, on top of five more rejections in the past year. (That's all despite a corporate-friendly governor and generous tax incentives offered by state lawmakers.)Thanks to the disconnected nature of small towns, and the many resources available to tech corporate interests, local residents themselves — not larger groups — are proving to be the most effective line of defense against the looming threat of data center development."We’re building out tools to help local folks feel like they have the knowledge and the resources to be able to engage at these local levels," an organizer with Citizens Action Coalition, an Indiana-based environmental group told Heatmap."When we have several dozen data center proposals in the state of Indiana and more coming, a small organization like ours can’t be there for each individual fight," the organizer added.Share This Article

One of the common misconceptions about electric vehicles is that they're a net positive for the environment. While EVs are almost certainly better for the planet than gas-powered ones, they still have a substantial impact because of factors like battery manufacturing and coal-generated electricity.Mining the precious metals needed to build high-tech EV batteries is especially rough on the environment — and the people living nearby — as one nickel extraction operation has shown.The Harita Group is a massive Indonesian conglomerate responsible for one of the largest nickel mining operations in the country, which is currently the world leader in nickel exports. Harita is a major player in Indonesia's metal supply chain, with its coal-fired smelters responsible for nearly one percent of Indonesia's total carbon emissions in 2023.As it turns out, it's also one of the island nation's leading water polluters.A new investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) found evidence of a decade-long chemical dumping scheme connected to Harita's nickel mine, which began operations in 2010. The OCCRP alleges that Harita's operations have leached the the waste chemical chromium-6 — a highly carcinogenic byproduct of high-temperature nickel extraction, perhaps best known as the contaminant investigated by activist Erin Brockovich back in the 1990s — into local waters for years on end.As a massive mining conglomerate, Harita has a veritable army of environmental scientists at its disposable, constantly taking soil and water samples in compliance with national law. Responding to critics in a 2023 statement, the company wrote that it performs "environmental treatment and management for its waste under applicable government regulations," adding that it has "proven its compliance" with federal regulations.But thousands of now-leaked emails tell another story: when Harita first discovered elevated chromium-6 levels in the water, it decided to hide the data from the local and international community, asking the government "not to convey the information to the pubic at this time due to the current unfavorable situation."Though the company didn't respond to comments to OCCRP or The Guardian — which reported on Harita's chromium-6 dumping back in 2022 — the company's director of health, safety, and environment, Tonny Gultom, was photographed holding a glass of water from a local stream to his lips back in 2023. The photos stop short of showing Gultom drinking the water, however.Worse yet, the company appears to have known about elevated chromium-6 levels as far back as 2012, but made no effort to inform local communities or mitigate its toxic spillage.The dumping and subsequent coverup are unfortunately par for the course in the precious metals industry, especially so when it comes to the EV market, which has an obvious interest in burying any sign of environmental harm.It's an important reminder that green energy isn't necessarily a net-positive. EVs might reduce smog and increase air quality for rich cities in the west — but at the expense of typically poorer, industrial workers in the parts of the world where precious green energy metals are found.By turning a blind eye to the upstream damage caused by mining and production, we're not solving the problem — only kicking the can down the road for someone else to clean up.More on toxic waste: Trump Admin Cancels Programs to Protect Children From Toxic ChemicalsShare This Article

A group of companies and bioresearchers say they'll use "leather" made from the lab-grown skin of a T-Rex to fashion luxury, "cruelty-free" purses.The project — led by genomic engineering outfit The Organoid Company, biotechnology group Lab-Grown Leather, and creative agency VML — will purportedly use the fossilized collagen of a Tyrannosaurus rex as a "blueprint" to engineer cells with synthetic DNA, according to a press release."We're unlocking the potential to engineer leather from prehistoric species, starting with the formidable T-Rex," said Che Connon of Lab-Grown Leather, a professor of tissue engineering at Newcastle University in the UK, in a statement.But is it really the skin of a Tyrannosaurus rex? Experts are skeptical."I doubt that our knowledge of dinosaur evolution is good enough to be able to design a collagen gene specifically from T. rex," Tom Ellis, professor of synthetic genome engineering at Imperial College London, , calling the idea of producing leather from the extinct predator "very far-fetched."Others were harsher in their assessment. "What this company is doing seems to be fantasy," Thomas Holtz Jr, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Maryland, . "We have NO preserved tyrannosaurid DNA (indeed, not Mesozoic dinosaur DNA sequences), so there are no T. rex genes."DNA or no DNA, we also don't have a good idea of what T-Rex skin was like. "There are a handful of [tyrannosaurid skin] impressions, but that doesn't let us know what the internal tissue was like," Holtz told Live Science. (There are examples of surviving dinosaur skin from other species, however.)And then there's the fact that the project hinges on collagen. Collagen is an extremely common structural protein found all across the animal kingdom. It forms the foundation of your skin, bones, muscles, and ligaments. Even if the project could create "T-rex" leather, it's unlikely that the collagen it's made of will be much different from what you'd find in a cow.In other words, there won't be anything uniquely "T-Rex" about the "T-Rex" garments and accessories. "It gives them something that is at least unique and can justify a much higher price," Ellis told NBC.We've heard flashy claims like these with other efforts focused on bringing back some aspect of long-dead creatures. Earlier this year, the "de-extinction" startup Colossal showed off gene-edited mice with the fur of a woolly mammoth — a stepping stone towards one day resurrecting the hulking creatures, it promised. However, the mice didn't actually possess mammoth fur genes, as critics pointed out, but were edited to mimic them. Such was also the case with Colossal's supposedly resurrected "dire wolves,"  which are, in reality, modern gray wolves made to look like dire wolves.In short, creative agency VML's promise to bring a dinosaur leather handbag to market is likely little more than a marketing gimmick for consumers interested in cruelty-free animal products.Share This Article

Image by Anna Moneymaker / Getty / FuturismBeyond the obvious characters at the very top of the establishment, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more contentious political figure than Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman.Sporting a Carhartt hoodie and Steve Austin-style goatee, Fetterman rocketed to the national spotlight in 2022 during a closely-contested race for Pennsylvania Senate against quack celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz. Fetterman eked it out with just under 300,000 votes — and then the controversies began almost immediately.Though he platformed progressive causes like worker's rights and a minimum wage increase, the working-class darling quickly flip-flopped on issues that helped win his election, like fracking and police reforms.He was also soon hit with a near-fatal stroke, which only seemed to accelerate his transformation from progressive idealist to right-wing yes-man — a fact he bragged about to edgelord pundit Bill Maher, of all people."It’s just freeing in a way," Fetterman said of the medical episode, which left him with auditory processing issues. "And I just think after beating all of that, I just really want to be able to say the things that I have to really believe in and not be afraid of if there’s any kind of blowback."Since that interview, the Democratic senator has only lurched farther from his original base. Fetterman was among the seven Democrats who voted to confirm Trump's pick of Kristi Noem as secretary of homeland security. He's likewise a staunch ally of the ultra-right Israeli government, which he "fully supports" reinforcing with US troops. Earlier this year, the senator called Trump's widely-decried plan to forcefully displace Palestinians from the Gaza Strip a "provocative part of the conversation."Now a searing profile in New York Magazine by political writer Ben Terris exposes deep new concerns, often from the people closest to Fetterman, that he's struggling with long-lasting psychological or neurological issues that could explain at least some of his erratic public behavior. As such, the piece raises classic tough questions — not unlike some faced by former president Joe Biden over a similar period — about the fuzzy lines between cognitive wellbeing, mental health, and the ways that crises in both can cause ideological beliefs and personal behavior to shift in ways both subtle and not.It was already known that in 2023, Fetterman was diagnosed with clinical depression, for which he spent six weeks in inpatient care."An aide found Fetterman wandering on Capitol Hill a short time later," during the runup to that incident, Terris wrote. "Worried that he had suffered another stroke, the staffer whisked him to George Washington University Hospital. Doctors there determined there had been no new stroke, but that the 'dizziness and confusion' he’d experienced was partly owed to severe dehydration.""He could barely string two sentences together, talking so quietly that everyone in the room had to strain to hear him," Terris' account continued. "Fetterman then stood up and began walking around the office in tight loops, a move the two staffers described as doing 'figure eights'... At one point, one of his aides said, he walked into the hallway peering over his shoulder, as if he were being followed by shadowy figures."Eventually, the senator's chief of staff at the time, Adam Jentleson, penned an urgent letter to the medical director in charge of Fetterman's traumatic-brain-injury and neuropsychiatric care."I think John is on a bad trajectory and I'm really worried about him," Jentleson wrote, adding that Fetterman was showcasing a number of red flags that demanded immediate intervention, ranging from not taking his meds and buying a gun to a near-obsession with fast food, which the senator ate "multiple times a day" in spite of his recent stroke."He engages in risky behavior," noted Jentleson. "He drives recklessly: he FaceTimes, texts and reads entire news articles while driving — and I don't mean while stopped at a light or something, he reads and FaceTimes while driving at high speeds."Less than a month after writing the letter, Terris notes, Fetterman caused a collision in Maryland involving speeds of "well over the 70 mph speed limit." His Chevy Traverse was destroyed, and his wife suffered spinal fractures.Throughout 2023 into 2024, Fetterman was likewise exhibiting signs of growing dependence on social media, despite his doctor's urging him to minimize screentime for the sake of his health. "I think he's on essentially all day now," said Eric Stern, a consultant who worked for Fetterman, adding that the politician was prone to constant "doomscrolling."As Fetterman's mental and physical health deteriorated, his political statements became overtly violent. "Let's get back to the killing," he said in response to the Israel-Hamas ceasefire earlier this year, advocating to "kill them all." When Israel eventually broke the ceasefire with a salvo that killed over 400 Palestinians — women and children included — Fetterman declared on X-formerly-Twitter, "I will continue to support whatever Israel needs to confront this cowardly terrorism."Fetterman declined to comment on the record about whether he was still taking his meds or taking "more serious" ones for conditions beyond depression, though he did go off record with Terris for a mysterious four-minute period when pressed on the issue.How far the rabbit hole goes is anyone's guess, in other words. There are increasing calls for Fetterman to step down from his role as senator, and growing opposition from the voters who put him in office to begin with. Fetterman's term in Congress isn't officially up until 2029, but at the current rate of decay, it would be at least moderately surprising if he lasted long enough to seek reelection.Time will tell.More on brains: Man Alarmed as His Cognitive Skills Decay After Outsourcing Them to AIShare This Article