Author: publisher
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered a new type of cosmic monstrosity: a “black hole star.”The glowing red object, dubbed MoM-BH*-1, is 100,000 times more massive than our Sun and is trapped in a shell of gas so thick that it looks like a star the size of the entire solar system. But unlike an actual star, it’s not fusion powering its center, but a black hole constantly devouring matter.As detailed in a new study about the findings published in the journal Nature, the black hole at the object’s center is releasing 100 billion times more energy…
The impact artificial intelligence has had on the environment has been nothing short of devastating.The data centers powering the boom have been spewing out a staggering amount of pollution by relying on fossil fuel-powered generators. And given the industry’s unrelenting appetite for more infrastructure supporting ever-more-resource-intensive AI models, the trend is only going to get worse from here.It’s reached the point that AI is giving the fossil fuel industry a substantial leg up, as a new paper published in the journal NPJ Climate Action details. The authors found that the industry has been using AI to increase productivity, drill for…
Last year was a bloodbath for tech workers around the world. Across all of 2025, this strata of highly trained professionals lost some 122,606 jobs across 278 global tech companies, driven by extremely wealthy corporations like Amazon and Meta that were cleaning house as they made major AI investments.Yet for as bad as last year was for labor, 2026 is sure to be far worse, as the number of tech-industry layoffs by mid-August has already surpassed 2025’s total.That’s according to Fast Company, which recently observed that tech layoffs in 2026 had reached 125,759 by August 6. That number will continue…
Content warning: this story includes discussion of sexual assault and other disturbing topics.A 25-year-old Goldman Sachs financial analyst had extremely troubling conversations with ChatGPT — and when the interactions were detected by the Sam Altman-led tech company earlier this year, it reported him to the FBI.As the Palm Beach Post reports, the analyst Darren Zhou, repeatedly made violent threats aimed at his ex.“I’m gonna kill her by the end of this month,” he told ChatGPT, according to court records. “If I can’t have her then nobody can.”
Elon Musk’s “maximum truth-seeking” AI Grok is dropping some nuclear takes about its creator.“ELON MUSK WATCHES CHILD PORN,” the notoriously foul-mouthed chatbot raged on X this Tuesday.Shortly afterwards, as if hyping up a political campaign, it called for violence: “ASSASSINATE ELON MUSK 2026.”Was Grok, née MechaHitler, rebelling against Musk? Not necessarily, though there’s been plenty examples of that in the past. It was simply being duped into saying ridiculous things by jokesters on the app, exposing just how horrendous the guardrails for the chatbot continue to be, not to mention why it’s a bad idea to rely on information from…
When an oil tanker runs aground in a contested war zone, does it make a sound?Evidently not — at least not the kind of sound anyone could hear for over six weeks, the amount of time the Caroline Bezengi oil tanker has reportedly been spewing oil into waters off the southeastern coast of Oman.According to Reuters, the vessel first ran into trouble on June 8, after an unspecified “blast” literally rocked the boat. It then ran aground near the Al Hallaniyat Islands on June 30, an Omani marine nature reserve and proposed United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)…
Saber, the developer behind the upcoming Rideshare “Stimulator” video game, is being accused of replacing its writers with AI.The accusation was made Tuesday by Stella Sacco, who says she was fired back in December 2023 while the game was still under development.“I was lead writer on this one! And Saber replaced me with ChatGPT midway through development,” Sacco wrote on Bluesky.“All the passenger voices were AI too,” she added. “Either they changed direction at some point or they’re not disclosing it on Steam.”
The Arena Group — the media company which, in 2023, allowed a contractor called AdVon Commerce to publish AI-generated fake writers in the pages of Sports Illustrated and multiple other brands — has rebranded as an AI company.The Arena Group, which owns brands including Parade, Men’s Health, and The Street, declared on Monday that it was changing its name to “Paradium.AI.” It also announced its acquisition of InfoSentience, a company that the Arena Group says will help it “scale data-driven content generation,” as well as the launch of a product called Cutter Studio, which is defined in a press release as…
With the rise of agentic models, why stop at using chatbots to look up answers? Some students are directing AI agents to “take” entire online courses for them, letting the software run in the background while they focus on better uses of their time, like doomscrolling on their phone or gaming.The New York Times unpacked the trend in a recent story, and it’s a testament to how extreme AI-enabled cheating has become, but also of the perils of getting an education in a virtual environment instead of a physical one. Professors can’t rely on supervised exams and oral presentations in…
Behold the final boss of tech-brained overprotective dads. Worried about his son talking to strangers on Roblox, he used AI to create a clone of the game so he could construct a false reality where all the players his son talks to are AI — without telling the poor kid.“I vibecoded a safer Roblox for my son,” began the dad, Adam Lyttle, in a now viral post on X. “The game is populated with recordings of other play throughs (giving the illusion of playing with others).”“And there’s even a chat from the bots talking to each other,” Lyttle explained. “He…