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Hundreds of flights across New Jersey, Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston were delayed Monday afternoon after the US Federal Aviation Administration issued a massive ground stop impacting thousands of travelers — right as the government starts testing an AI air traffic control system, though there’s no current indication that the two incidents are connected.According to early reporting by Reuters, over 600 flights were delayed across Newark and Philadelphia alone, in addition to hundreds more across four other east coast airports. Dozens of imminent takeoffs were likewise aborted across the busy flight corridor when the ground stops — which appeared…

As backlash against its surveillance network refuses to die down, Flock Safety is kicking off an employee buyout program that’ll let workers leave the company with a “generous” severance package, Wired reports.It’s seemingly an admission that the company is in turmoil. Protestors have targeted Flock’s AI-powered license plate scanning cameras so fiercely that many cities and police departments are cancelling or declining to extend their contracts, which could leave the enterprise short of revenue goals, according to Wired‘s sources. It’s either buyouts for the 1,500 worker-strong company, or layoffs.Employees who want to leave are getting a solid deal, at least…

Earlier this month, disillusioned Anthropic employee Jacob Coxon publicly announced he was quitting his job, accusing both his employer and OpenAI of acting irresponsibly.His departure and harrowing warning that there’s a more than ten percent chance of AI “killing all humans” was met with breathless media coverage. While he’s far from the first AI insider to warn that humanity is in grave danger, the timing was particularly noteworthy. The public was already primed to expect the worst after a summer chock full of rogue AI models going on hacking sprees and infiltrating third party companies without their human creators’ knowledge.But…

While the majority of AI leaders seem to agree that we need to take the foot off the AI development pedal or else risk disaster, Wall Street isn’t exactly enthralled by the idea.For years now, analysts have warned that the United States economy is massively overindexed on AI and resting on a staggering amount of debt, with enormous data center projects and eye-bulging capital expenditures fueling fears over a growing bubble.And now that most major frontier AI labs are looking to slow things down, investors are ringing the alarm over a “wobbly house of cards,” as Bloomberg reports.If this house…

The space publication Space Daily, which has been operating for over three decades, has become an unrecognizable shell of its former self after a company called Brown Brothers Media bought it and turned it into a content mill that pumps out misleading and badly sourced AI slop.As a Futurism investigation found, Space Daily is averaging an estimated ten million page views per month. That would be an incredible success story — if it weren’t for the fact that it’s been platforming non-existent experts as puppets to churn out AI garbage.Case in point, one of the website’s authors, “Dr. Katherine Chen,”…

Life got you feeling down? A donkey could be the solution to lifting your spirits.This is the gist of a new study published in the journal Science Reports, which found that teenagers who spent as little as three minutes petting and caressing rescued donkeys and miniature horses immediately felt less anxious, sad, and lonely, while also feeling calmer. It may not literally cure your depression, but the work shows that interacting with these animals can significantly enhance your mood.“It was lovely to see that interacting with nature could make such a positive difference so quickly,” study co-lead author Rebecca Calisi-Rodríguez, an…

What to do about Meta’s AI-powered smart “pervert” glasses? Setting the bar for the rest of us, Australia’s government is considering a “world-leading” ban on the wearable — but certainly not fashionable — pieces of head-mounted spyware that would bar them from being worn in federal workplaces.“Smart glasses can raise legitimate privacy and security concerns, particularly because of their ability to record and capture information, and we need clear and consistent guidance for public servants,” Katy Gallagher, Australia’s public service minister,  said in a statement Thursday, as quoted by Reuters.Gallagher said she was seeking guidance from the public service commission…

Though the price to install new solar panels has been trending downward for a while, it’s officially reached a new milestone: “offensively cheap.”Provocative new reporting by the Financial Times highlighted the new paradigm around photovoltaics, which are disrupting traditional energy networks with a near-infinite supply, resulting in shockingly low prices.As Dave Jones, co-founder of the energy research firm Ember, told the FT, solar panels used to run between $5 and $6 per watt of generation capacity. That was 26 years ago. Today, Jones says solar panels sell for just 12 cents per watt — a price he says is “offensively cheap” considering…

Is this video of a huge drone hovering over a dog and blasting it with water adorable in its canine innocence? Is it dystopian in its implications? You’ll just have to decide for yourself.The viral clip, purportedly filmed in China’s Linyi, Shandong province, is what’s promised on the tin. A quadcopter drone equipped with hoses attachments looms over a chunky little dog and sprays it with water, giving the fellow a little shower. The dog seems to be having a good time, letting itself get soaked and wagging its tail, before shaking itself off and plodding away. Fin.“Nothing in millions…

Inexpenive AI models developed by Chinese companies are taking the United States by storm, as cost-conscious business leaders turn away from far more costly domestic AI.From a business perspective, the incentive to do is clear — it’s all about the bottom-line at the end of the day. China’s open source models are much cheaper to run compared to the ones being developed by frontier labs based in the US, so it follows that businesses would choose the lower-cost option.But as the capabilities of China’s homegrown AI models rise to match those of US models like Claude and ChatGPT, it seems the…