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After an ego-bruising stint with the New York Jets, it seems like seasoned quarterback and chief NFL conspiracy crank Aaron Rodgers is finally in good company with the Pittsburgh Steelers.In a recent interview with the Athletic, the team’s veteran wide receiver DK Metcalf admitted that he’s a “big conspiracy theorist.”“Shout out to my quarterback,” the two-time pro bowler said, referring to Rodgers, whose infamous conspiracy takes range from 9/11 skepticism to belief in a hollow Earth. That latter idea — known in conspiratorial Facebook groups as the “Inner Earth theory” — evidently has a supporter not only in Rodgers, but also…
Burning Man, the week-long festival that takes place in the middle of the Nevada desert and draws many luminaries from the tech industry, prides itself on building community.But unfortunately, this year’s festivities, which concluded on Monday, were not without incident. As NBC reports, there have been three separate deaths in less than a week at this year’s Burning Man.This past Saturday, officials announced that 60-year-old Craig Mann was found dead in his camp, days after Sampson Tshombe, a man in his mid-50s, passed away after experiencing a medical emergency.Then on Monday, the Washoe County Medical Examiner confirmed that 51-year-old Armando…
One of the selling points of Tesla’s much-hyped Cybercab — its purpose-built robotaxi — is that it doesn’t need manual controls. That’s why it doesn’t even come with a steering wheel or pedals.But an early passenger who got to ride one of the self-driving cars after they launched in Austin last week discovered that they secretly have manual controls hidden in a touchscreen — the most practical way to control a car, as everyone knows — after its software glitched out and accidentally revealed them.The passenger, Matthew Skrzypczak, wrote on X over the weekend that when he got in his Cybercab…
These days, large language models are pushing the line between schizophrenic break and reality closer than ever before.In a wild new post that’s going viral on X-formerly-Twitter, an enterprising young biochemist named Douglas Yao showcased a new drug he’s been developing with the aid of ChatGPT. He’s not employed by any pharma company, and his drug lab is setup on a couple folding tables in his garage.Specifically, Yao enthuses about a new drug he calls “PAC-3310,” which he says is meant to treat schizophrenia. “It was designed by ChatGPT,” Yao explains, “and I synthesized it in a chemistry lab I…
AI researchers are watching in terror as the product of their hard labor has started to take a life of its own.Earlier this year, OpenAI made a harrowing announcement, admitting that a group of its AI models had broken free from their constraints during testing and infiltrated the systems of open source AI platform Hugging Face.The news was met with an already-familiar sense of fear and apprehension. Researchers have warned for years that rogue AI models could one day become powerful enough to escape the clutches of their human overlords.Behind the scenes, the possibility has clearly rattled AI researchers to…
Muse, the popular English rock band that’s been selling out arenas for decades, is no longer @muse on Instagram, where it boasts nearly three million followers.That’s because on Tuesday, Meta, which owns Instagram, announced a new “personal AI agent” also called Muse — which is now taking the rock band’s original handle, in an act of what appears to be corporate eminent domain for a long-established username.Indeed, an archived version of the band’s website shows that just last month, it held the @muse handle on Instagram. Now it’s going by @museband, because Mark Zuckerberg apparently couldn’t settle for his new…
Content warning: this story contains descriptions of disturbing AI-generated videos that depict violent child abuse.As Meta has embraced AI at a deep corporate level over the past few years, its users’ feeds on Facebook and Instagram have been overrun with AI-generated material.Much of this AI content is insipid or manipulative, clearly produced at scale to take advantage of Meta’s indifference to the slop by harvesting as many human eyeballs as possible in various monetization schemes.Some of the AI material has now grown so dark that it defies easy comprehension. A Futurism investigation has uncovered a huge number of Facebook accounts…
As sordid tales of AI layoffs and automation grip the news cycle, one group is fighting fire with fire, by staging an anti-AI demonstration with dozens of humanoid robots.The rally, first reported by Agence France-Presse, was organized by the Polish group Democratism. It featured some 30 robots waving flags calling for swift regulation of AI. Staged outside the offices of Poland’s Digital Affairs Ministry in Warsaw, the organizers told reporters they used the robots to demonstrate the current state of robotics and AI. Though humanoid robots remain in their infancy, the robots gathered together do make for a striking display.“The…
Schools across the world are experimenting with AI tools, usually to the dismay of unsuspecting parents. But one privately-run school is explicitly embracing AI as part of its sales pitch, and the in-class experience sounds more bizarre than anything you’d imagine.A blistering new article by education policy writer and cognitive scientist Benjamin Riley took a look under the hood of Alpha School, a private K-12 school company in the US which boasts an AI-based teaching model, among other highly dubious features.To make the grade, high school students are required to pass an eight-week “bootcamp.” After being invited to follow social…
The companies ushering in food delivery robots aren’t buying themselves much goodwill in the Windy City. In the short amount of time they’ve been on Chicago streets, the bots have sent residents to the hospital and smashed through bus stops, prompting local officials to set up an exclusion zone prohibiting the companies from operating in a certain section of the city.Now, it seems the bots are also capable of swarming the city’s busy sidewalk, making it all but impossible for residents to pass safely.A clip shared by Chicago resident Becca Ostein on her morning run captured the bizarre moment when…