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OpenAI’s attempt to boost its image by hiring influencers collided against a harsh reality: that it’s already become a fundamentally uncool company.The Verge details how influencers recruited by the ChatGPT maker were flown out to its “first ever brand trip” at a nature retreat outside New York City. But rather than creating buzz for OpenAI, gaining widespread attention, or at least showcasing its products, the content that came out of its “Summer Club” campaign sparked fierce backlash against the influencers, who were branded “sellouts.” “People will literally sell their soul and their planet down the river for a nice free hotel…

Mass surveillance technology might be popular with police departments, but for the US public, it’s becoming an increasingly difficult sell.At least 54 cities across the US have voted to cancel, non-renew, or reject Flock’s automatic license plate reader (ALPRs) since the start of the year, according to data collected by the Washington Examiner. That comes after reporting in February that some 30 cities had done the same since 2025, indicative of the rising backlash against the tech.In all, the Examiner reports cities in 23 states have shredded their Flock contracts so far this year, led by California and Wisconsin, which…

Last month, OpenAI revealed that a group of its AI models had broken containment, hacking into the systems of open source AI platform Hugging Face.On one hand, experts saw the incident as the latest warning sign that AI models had gotten to the point of being able to autonomously infiltrate targets, a threat we’ve been aware of for years rapidly turning into a reality.On the other, a more skeptical read of the situation is that OpenAI could have orchestrated the hack as part of a “publicity stunt” — or at least lowered its guard just enough to allow it to…

Text-to-video AI generating tools have come a long way. Just three years ago, we were all unsettled by grisly clips of actor Will Smith’s face morphing while “eating” a moving pile of spaghetti. Thanks to major leaps in the tech, these tools can now generate photorealistic fake footage at the drop of a hat — which could have devastating implications for efforts to keep disinformation at bay.However, those who are heavily invested in AI are welcoming the rapid unraveling of truth as AI slop continues to flood the internet. Case in point: Andreessen Horowitz partner Justine Moore, who recently boasted…

We certainly wouldn’t blame you for having completely forgotten that last year, Elon Musk tried to reinvent Wikipedia because he thought it was too woke.In October, his AI startup xAI launched Grokipedia, named after its AI chatbot. The encyclopedia stole human-written and edited pages from Wikipedia wholesale and ran them through a large language model, which also fielded user-submitted edits, to better reflect Musk’s contorted worldviews.The site was hardly an exemplary of objectivity. It was quickly found to heavily cite an infamous neo-Nazi forum as a source of information, desperately tried to paint Tesla’s Cybertruck as a successful and desirable…

Investors were not impressed by SpaceX’s first-ever earnings report earlier this week. Shares dropped by more than ten percent, even after the company reported higher than expected revenue — comforting financial news which, unfortunately for CEO Elon Musk, was overshadowed by the venture’s massive AI spending.The same day, SpaceX insiders, including employees and executives, got their first real opportunity to turn their holdings into cash after the total shares available for trading grew from around 639 million to 1.55 billion, a chunk of the stock valued at just over $100 billion being unlocked.As Reuters put it, investors now faces an…

Few things are as mortifying to a youngster than their parents trying to butt in on their behalf: a dad berating the coach for not playing his kid more, for instance, or a mom showing up unannounced to their dorm and embarrassing them in front of your roommates.So-called “helicopter” parents have always existed, but they’re now sticking their nose into their kid’s professional lives in ways that sound vaguely ludicrous.At least, that’s according to bosses and recruiters that the Wall Street Journal spoke to, who complain that their Gen Z new hires are coming with the hefty baggage of overbearing…

On July 27, a billboard went up in San Francisco advertising an AI service called ChatTJB. But the “AI” powering the service, as noted in a small disclaimer on the billboard, isn’t artificial intelligence. It’s a self-avowed “average individual” named Tucker Bryant, who manually answers user queries by way of a chatbot-like interface.An “About” page for the service defines the process as “artisanal intelligence, handcrafted by a single human being.” Or, in other words: just talking to a guy.Bryant, a Stanford graduate and former Google employee who now works as an artist and speaker, is clear that the project isn’t…

In case you need any more evidence that the Trump administration is run and advised by cranks, here’s the cabinet’s meat-mainlining doctor’s unvarnished thoughts on the incredible skill he displays while defecating, which he says is down to his diet.The doctor, Sean O’Mara, is reportedly the reason why the likes of JD Vance, Robert F Kennedy Jr, and Sean Duffy have all adopted a diet based almost entirely on eating steak and fermented foods like kimchi.When New York Times reporter Willy Staley tried out the diet and spoke to O’Mara, the 63-year-old physician — who describes himself as the only one…

Prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket have long garnered a reputation for allowing users to make all kinds of ethically dubious bets, from the outcomes of deadly conflicts to raging wildfires.And as the New York Times reports, Kalshi will even allow users to bet on whether clinical trials for potentially lifesaving drug trials will succeed.But to researchers, it’s yet another morally bankrupt concept that could put real people in danger. There’s even risk that those enrolled in these trials could choose to drop out if the market were to bet against a positive outcome.“Turning loose a betting market in an ongoing…