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As generative AI continues to intrude on almost every aspect of our daily lives, students are increasingly starting to feel the effects of over-relying on the tech.Some are going to absurd lengths to use AI to complete their assessments while avoiding being caught cheating. Meanwhile, exam scores are dropping off a cliff as students struggle to get by without using the tech as a crutch.The effects extend far beyond bad grades. Some college students are losing the ability to participate in class discussions, a terrifying consequence of offloading their cognitive facilities to AI.In a report on the state of education…

With anxiety over an AI doomsday reaching a fever pitch, some citizens of the world are no longer asking for regulations.Earlier this week, the offices of two Canadian AI labs were ransacked by what police officers describe as an organized group of vandals. According to the CBC, an office building belonging to Quebec’s Artificial Intelligence Institute (MILA) in Montreal was defaced. Its windows were smashed out and its walls defaced with anti-AI graffiti. Another building nearby, belonging to an unnamed AI company, was also vandalized.Images shared by the CBC show one of the tags spray painted on the building, which…

Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke is getting a first-hand look at the AI-workplace revolution, and it isn’t a pretty sight.New reporting by Fortune revealed the disastrous results of Shopify’s all-out scramble to embrace AI nearly a year ago. After telling workers that using AI tools is a “baseline expectation” in the workplace, Lütke is now changing his tune as workers spew out AI-generated emails, memos, and code without double-checking it beforehand.“We call those ‘slop grenades’ that people toss at each other,” Lütke said in an interview on the Knowledge Project podcast. “That’s definitely a bad thing.”The CEO further explained that the…

Yesterday, Futurism published a months-long investigation into a little-known company called Brown Brothers Media — a sprawling media empire that buys struggling news publications and turns them into AI-powered content mills, while engaging in deeply dishonest practices including the widespread use of fake writers and the mass publishing of fabricated reporting and first-hand accounts.BBM was founded in the early 2020s. At the time, it operated around a limited number of brands, several of which were founded by the Brown brothers — Justin, Lachlan, and Brendan Brown — themselves. Those brands included Brendan’s Global English Editing and Expert Editor, Lachlan’s Hack Spirit, and…

Just so you know where your leaders’ priorities are at, US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that the government will investigate “chemtrails” — a conspiracy theory held by people who would have you believe that the airplanes of the world are secretly seeding our skies with chemicals to change the weather, or maybe biological agents to keep the masses under control.Kennedy made this avowal while giving a keynote speech at none other than the Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine advocacy nonprofit that he helped create (a newsworthy item in itself). Living up to the occasion, his speech was…

With so many talks about AI’s potential to someday wipe out mankind with some spooky bioweapon, it seems many have overlooked the catastrophic risk that AI is actually posing in the here and now.Bombshell new reporting by CNN revealed a horrifying episode stemming from the US Special Operations Command Pacific which almost kicked off World War III. According to the reporting, US military officials aborted a planned raid on a Chinese ship sailing in West Asia after the original intelligence report undergirding the operation turned out to be hallucinated by generative AI.The tragicomedy unfolded like this: a special operations command…

Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities are horrifying for anybody, embodied by deplorable living conditions, torturous treatment, and a sickening lack of quality healthcare. Unfortunately, a record number of pregnant women have been swept up and sent to such facilities — and it’s hard to imagine a worse place to be during the prenatal period.Horrifying new reporting by the Guardian took a hard look at the state of health care for pregnant women and teenagers held in ICE custody. During the first nine months of Trump’s return to the White House, the agency recorded 18 miscarriages from women held in its custody,…

The majority of Americans are harboring some apocalyptic fears about AI.According to a new Politico poll that surveyed over 2,000 adults, about two thirds of the American public believes there’s now at least a “moderate” chance that advanced AI could destroy humanity.Intriguingly, the prevalence of this view extends across political lines, with only slight variation. Americans who voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election were 70 percent likely to view AI as at a moderate or higher existential risk, compared to 60 percent to Trump voters.There’s also a large contingent who’re quite fatalistic about the tech. A full…

For as long as we can remember, Meta has been the tip of the surveillance state spear. The company has amassed an unprecedented amount of intimate data about billions of people — and treated that invasive information with a well-documented level of carelessness.One of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s most beloved pet projects, the company’s camera-adorned and AI Glasses, has brought the company’s shoddy treatment of privacy into stark relief, from data labeler contractors in Kenya watching footage of users getting undressed to failing to take down vile smart glasses-recorded footage of sexual harassment on public streets.Meanwhile, Meta’s platforms are choking the…

The cops who’re using Flock cameras to supposedly track down criminals and stalk their ex-girlfriends alike are quite literally laughing in our faces as they tap into the all-seeing surveillance panopticon.According to a new investigation by the Electric Frontier Foundation, a not insignificant number of police officers are submitting nonsense, joke reasons to officially justify the searches they conduct on Flock systems.One officer with the Lake County, Indiana Sheriff’s Department wrote “LMAO” in the Flock software’s “reason” box, before searching across more than 19,000 cameras in over 1,500 cities and towns.The frivolous reasoning is a case in point of why…