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While they’re seemingly still years away from completing actually useful tasks, like cleaning a messy apartment or doing the dishes, humanoid robots have developed plenty of capabilities over the past few years, from sprinting faster than any human ever to performing elaborate dance choreographies.They’ve also been taught how to punch and even kickbox for their human overlords’ amusement, as one man visiting a store in Russia appears to have learned the hard way.A viral CCTV video shows the individual lightly shoving what appears to be a Chinese Unitree G1 humanoid robot. After it recoils slightly, it suddenly starts playing cheesy…

A group of software engineers who say they were fired by their bosses because of AI are giving their former employers a taste of their own medicine. With the powers of spite and friendship, they’ve built “OpenExecutive,” an AI system designed to do the work of a CEO, if not the entire c-suite, TechRadar reports.“Work happens around the clock. Leadership doesn’t scale with it,” a demo video begins, as a stock music track called “Corporate Music Uplifting” plays in the background.The team describes their AI system, perhaps with their tongues in their cheeks, as a “senior advisor with Harvard MBA-level…

Automakers are having an increasingly difficult time convincing their customers that more in-car screens — and the often dodgy software that accompanies them — are a compelling reason to pay a major premium.Virtually every major car company is now installing increasingly enormous screens into the dashboards of its cars, frequently stretching far beyond the driver’s seat and into the passenger area as well.But what’s becoming more and more clear is that practically nobody actually wants any of those purported luxuries in their ride. As a new survey by consumer research firm JD Power goes to show, owners of 2026 model-year…

For seafood lovers, there are few things more appealing than a simple slab of raw tuna — a fish whose fatty, savory, and tender muscle tissue has been a delicacy for thousands of years.Unfortunately for those foodies, fresh raw fish comes with the distinct possibility of parasitic infection. Off the coasts of southern Brazil, that risk is rising, as hauls of the common skipjack tuna come with the near certainty of parasitic contamination.That’s not an exaggeration. According to a new report published in the journal Ocean and Costal Research and flagged by ScienceAlert, a whopping 96 percent of a recent…

A rising Gen Z indie musician known as Betty Hammerschlag has turned out to be a middle-aged man, in an elaborate — and dare we say a bit creepy — deception that fooled everyone from fans to music critics to the artist’s own collaborators.Music journalist Shawn Reynaldo blew open the charade in an exposé published Wednesday in his newsletter First Floor. By all appearances, Hammerschlag presented herself as a young woman still in art school, using pictures of women in her social media posts and promotional materials, and writing in a pointedly whimsical, all-lowercase and flowery emoji-laden style intended to evoke…

If you happen to live in Ohio, Wisconsin, or Kansas, you may soon notice a massive uptick in ads extolling the virtues of AI data centers. That’s not by accident. As Bloomberg reported this week, a group funded by tech industry billionaires called Build American AI is spinning up a massive campaign meant to sway public opinion around data centers in key battleground states.The ad blitz is described as being in the “millions of dollars” range, per Bloomberg, though Build American AI hasn’t disclosed an exact figure.Among the group’s backers are figures heavily invested in continuing the data center boom,…

After health officials in Pennsylvania found that two young children died from measles, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is refusing to count their deaths as being caused by the deadly virus.“This week’s measles outbreaks update will not include the two measles-associated deaths reported by the Pennsylvania Department of Health on Aug. 25,” the CDC posted on its website, in a high unusual announcement.It’s a precedent shattering action. The New York Times called it an “extraordinary move for the CDC,” breaking with the agency’s long-standing procedure of accepting data shared by states.The challenge by the CDC comes amid a…

Three hikers who extensively used Google’s Gemini to plan their trip to the summit of Mount Shasta in California’s Cascade Range had to be rescued by Forest Service rangers when the chatbot’s advice went horribly awry.As the Chicago Tribune reports, the three young men from outside of Sacramento attempted to reach the potentially active stratovolcano’s 14,179-foot peak earlier this week late into the night, despite hikers being advised not to attempt the trek past noon before turning right back.The three “novice hikers” ended up having to descend the steep slopes well into the dark. They called the Siskiyou County sheriff’s…

Apply for just about any office job these days, and there’s a pretty good chance your first round interview won’t be with a human, but with a crummy virtual AI avatar. Though the practice has become widespread throughout HR departments around the world, a new video released by satirical influencer Graham Zip shows just how humiliating the experience can be — and how straying from the system’s comfort zone can cause the bots to melt down completely.On logging into the interview, Graham is welcomed by a virtual avatar of a woman identified as “Dana Whitfield,” which prompts the interviewee to…

Talking to an AI chatbot can feel like confiding in a mirror, a private exchange equivalent to brainstorming in a Word document. Yet when it comes to the most popular AI chatbots, that mirror is really one-way glass — and you might be shocked to learn how many different people can watch from the other side.Since the rise of easily accessible AI chatbots, untold millions of people have happily fed AI models their deepest, darkest secrets. According to a recent survey conducted by browser company DuckDuckGo and flagged by CNET, a full third of all AI users admit to having…