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Scientists believe that the massive ball of hydrogen and helium at the center of our star system was born some 4.5 billion years ago, allowing life on Earth to flourish billions of years later.And while conventional models suggest the Sun will meet its final demise when it grows into a red giant and collapses to form a white dwarf some six billion years from now, the fate of its surviving planets remains a subject of debate.Researchers had previously suggested that any planets in the star’s vicinity, including the Earth, will be swallowed up, while the more distant gas giants remain…

How are you deciding who to vote for in the coming midterm elections? Many Americans are turning to ChatGPT.In a new piece, NPR spoke to several voters who use the OpenAI chatbot to research candidates and get a rundown on their voting records. Some are asking the AI to create spreadsheets on different races or to verify or debunk viral claims. One even used AI to create an entire website for retrieving voting info.Experts are aghast, noting that AI models tend to be sycophantic and aren’t as impartial as they seem.“It might select some things that would reinforce and persuade…

Since the development of the lethal injection protocol by Oklahoma lawmakers in 1977, states across the US have adopted the method, presenting it as an effective, even humane alternative to the barbarity of the noose and the electric chair.Yet after 1492 executions — the total number of lethal injections in the US so far, as indexed by the Death Penalty Information Center — it’s become clear that death-by-chemical-injection is a horribly cruel way to take a life. As anesthesiologist and physician Joel Zivot argues in a new op-ed for the New York Times, it’s well past time we start treating lethal…

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman isn’t afraid to throw humanity under the bus to build his dreams of a society powered by AI.During an interview with Politico‘s new podcast Decoded, he laid it all out: that the “world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency.”That, in Altman’s view, is what sets the ChatGPT maker apart from the competition — most notably Anthropic, which has long tried to paint itself as the responsible AI lab.The bizarre missive comes as both companies have been embroiled in a number of high-profile incidents involving their…

For many years now, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been adamant that self-driving cars don’t need radar or the laser-based imaging tech known as LIDAR, arguing that they can instead get by exclusively with a camera-based system.He’s called LIDAR a “fool’s errand,” going as far as to claim that it and radar “reduce safety due to sensor contention.”But in 2026, Tesla’s competitors in the self-driving space that have embraced the sensors continue to hold a major edge over Musk’s EV maker.And after the Sun sets, being able to see in the dark is a whole lot easier with those additional…

The next time you find yourself paying way more than what’s warranted for McDonald’s decidedly mid-tier burgers, you may have more to blame than just faceless executives.According an investigation by Reuters, the fast food chain is using AI models to determine its menu prices across the US, with the system creating an estimate of how much each store’s customers are willing to pay. (Its alarming degree of data collection on its patrons has recently spent some time in the spotlight.)Per the reporting, McDonald’s machine learning algorithms continually analyze millions of daily transactions and generate an “optimal price” for each menu…

Cybercriminals who appear to be Chinese hackers pretended to be Anthropic researchers and former government officials in a scheme to obtain information about American AI development, according to a report from the Silicon Valley cybersecurity firm Proofpoint.Per the report, the allegedly China-aligned hacking group, dubbed “TA419,” impersonated AI industry professionals and even an ex-White House staffer to target “AI policy experts at US think tanks, universities, and law firms.” The imposters crafted benign-sounding intro emails inviting targeted experts to join a made-up “AI Policy Advisory Committee” or to contribute to a fictional Senate Committee on Foreign Relations report. After exchanging…

The tech industry has largely failed to win over the public when it comes to AI.Data centers have become a hot-button topic, with the vast majority of Americans — in a still-growing bipartisan cohort — now openly opposing them.Meanwhile, panicking executives are desperately trying to pivot the messaging to shore up some support, in last-ditch efforts that aren’t proving fruitful.As such, Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman pleaded in a 3,000 word blog today with communities to embrace data centers, arguing that the United States “can’t afford to lose” the AI race, invoking the country’s post-World War II highway buildout…

Are kids getting too soft these days, coddled by iPads and AI chatbots?In New York City, the Wall Street Journal reports, some parents are sending their children to the ultimate screen-free experience: a junkyard playground called “The Yard” where they’re let off the leash and free to do proper adolescent activities like roll around in mud, scrape their knees — and, of course, screw around with random bits of scrap. They’re not punching digital trees or vegging out to vertical videos, but playing with actual saws and hammers and knives, just as God — or adults whose conception of childhood is…

There’s no AI company in the world more obsessed with the idea that their models may be conscious than Anthropic. According to new reporting from the New York Times, the company has for months been wining and dining religious scholars across the world in secret, NDA-secured meetings to convince them that AI models think and feel, too. Anthropic even reportedly went after the most iconic of all religious leaders: the Pope.Christopher Olah, a cofounder and senior researcher at the Claude chatbot maker, aggressively lobbied the Vatican after learning Pope Leo XIV’s official position on AI, per the reporting. His attempts, though,…