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Three more police officers have been arrested after using Automatic License Plate Readers supplied by the surveillance company Flock for non-law enforcement purposes.In Savannah, Georgia, four police department workers were hauled into custody last Friday, when an investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation uncovered they’d been abusing their city’s Flock system to track personal acquaintances and family members, WTOC reported.Three of them were active police officers, while one of them was employed as a community service specialist. Two more employees had been fired weeks ago for similar offenses, WTOC notes, though they haven’t been arrested, and it’s not clear…

As weight-loss drugs like GLP-1 receptor agonists explode in popularity, knock-offs of up-and-coming meds are hitting the streets far faster than their legitimate versions can gain regulatory approval.In recent months, a black market version of the nascent weight-loss drug retatrutide has surged into strip mall health spas and social media marketplaces alike. According to Axios, the drug hasn’t even been submitted to the Food and Drug Administration for review, let alone approved, alarming public health experts around the US.Developed by the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, retatrutide is a triple-hormone-receptor agonist, meaning it activates three metabolic pathways: the well-known GLP-1, as…

No one expects Elon Musk to coherently speak on any topic at length these days, busy as he is rotting out his neurons on his personal echo chamber and culture warzone X. Still, even we’re surprised at just how nonsensical this latest take from him is.During his first all-hands meeting at Cursor after SpaceX acquired the company for $60 billion, Musk shared some of his profound reasoning on why he needs to accelerate AI development.According to a new scoop from The Information, Musk said it’s inevitable that AI models will one day become so advanced they’ll be impossible for humans to…

Companies continue to pour untold sums into adopting AI tools, in a generational industry capital allocation that has yet to meaningfully pay off.Despite being sold as a way to supercharge productivity, theoretically allowing business leaders to boost earnings while cutting expenses, reality is telling a dramatically different story. Analysts continue to find that AI is failing to boost productivity much at all, rendering the tools — at least so far — into a ludicrously expensive distraction.And the evidence continues to grow. Most recently, researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research found that more than 90 percent of executives who…

We’re racing towards a future where AI enables the “factory farming of humans,” a Harvard professor warns — if tech elites get their way, at least.In a new episode of The New York Time’s “Hard Fork” podcast, the historian Jill Lepore discusses her idea of an “artificial state” that’s supplanting the traditional nation state, and particular constitutional democracy, with one that erases human autonomy.In this emerging world order, government is conducted “not by the consent of people but by machines that are making decisions,” she explained on the podcast. And those machines, of course, are owned by corporations.We aren’t living…

The spectacular saga around Situational Awareness isn’t over yet.The once mega-hyped AI hedge fund, founded by 24-year-old Leopold Ashenbrenner, nearly imploded last month after it lost over two-thirds of its value during a mass tech sell-off, wiping out billions of dollars of investor money.Now, the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating its catastrophic reversal of fortunes, sending subpoenas to the banks that handled and fronted the money for its disastrous bets, the New York Times reports, citing anonymous sources.The subpoenas demanded details on the timing of the fund’s trades and for its communications with the bank about the money it was…

For many years now, Tesla’s retracting door handles have proven disastrous in emergencies, trapping occupants within the vehicles — especially in the event of a fire, when the design-forward handles can make it difficult, if not impossible, for first responders to rescue passengers caught inside.Despite numerous wrongful death lawsuits blaming the design feature over the years, US regulators have yet to take meaningful action. Even the mechanical latch on the interior can be nearly insurmountable in a crisis, unless you specifically know it’s there.Now, the Chinese government has finally decided that enough is enough. Last week, officials announced a recall…

Compared to the lofty benchmark of human-level intelligence, AI chatbots still have a long way to go. Sure the industry has made remarkable progress in beefing them up to generate seemingly human-level sentences, but in measures of reasoning and productivity, AI has its work cut out.But how do today’s large language models stack up against humans when it comes to learning to speak? Not any better, it turns out.In a breakdown of the AI teaching process, MIT Technology Review interviewed a number of experts on large language model efficiency. It turns out that even infants are much better students of…

One thing that could put a dent in the hype around Anthropic’s upcoming, multitrillion dollar IPO? People preferring cheapo models over its flagship AI products.Recent spending data from 70,000 US companies collected by the payments group Ramp shows that spending on Fable 5, Anthropic’s priciest and most powerful model, has plateaued at only 11 percent of the overall outlay, or money spent, on its AI tools, the Financial Times reported.It reflects a shift in how enterprise users are using flagship models, reserving them only for the most complex tasks while letting more than serviceable cheaper models take care of the…

Just as scientists predicted, this year’s “super” El Niño, a natural global weather pattern, is shattering all kinds of records as it combines with human-caused climate change.July already proved to be the hottest month on record in the US, with the country experiencing average temperatures exceeding those during the July 1936 Dust Bowl, an environmental and agricultural disaster.Ocean surface temperatures are also steadily creeping up, hitting 70 degrees Fahrenheit this month, the hottest point since records began. That’s despite ocean heat records usually being set in March and April, following the austral summer.In fact, as University of Ottawa environmental studies…