Category Archives: Futurist

To address a growing labor shortage, major convenience store chain Lawson Inc. is introducing a technology that enables remote workers to serve customers using animated avatars.

Sitting in front of computer screens at their homes or offices, workers act as Lawson Avatar Operators (LAOs) to serve customers.

LAOs talk to webcams and their voices and gestures will be reflected on animated characters on screens atLawsonoutlets.

Currently, LAOs are operating at four of the chains stores in Tokyo, Osaka and elsewhere.

Lawson said that on-site workers at these stores can focus on physical tasks such as cooking, cleaning and stocking shelves while LAOs help customers, for example, use the self-checkout machine.

The chain will start a trial to see if a single LAO can deal with three or four outlets during the day as well as short-staffed late night and early morning hours. The pilot program will start as early as August.

Until now, at least two workers would do night shifts together at Lawson outlets, mainly for security reasons. During the trial, one will be replaced by an LAO.

This might put stores at greater security risk, but the chain operator says robberies are on the decline thanks to the introduction of self-checkout machines, which, by design, cannot be unlocked by on-site workers.

Customers can continue to pick up event tickets bought online and drop off parcels at Lawson outlets. Such services will remain the task of on-site workers.

Labor shortages will become more serious in the future, particularly for night shifts, said Lawson President Sadanobu Takemasu. A single LAO manages multiple outlets from home, which means more productivity with lower cost.

Together with self-checkout machines, the avatar technology is expected to help run outlets with fewer workers.

Lawson also hopes the new technology will help recruit more remote workers, including people rearing children or caring for family members at home.

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Lawson addresses labor shortage with futuristic avatars | The Asahi ... -

Image by Stephen Zeigler via Getty Images

When you use a paper straw for drinks, you might think you're being a conscientious citizen of Planet Earth. If so, bad news: a team of scientists say paper straws have more harmful forever chemicals than plastic ones, and at higher concentrations. Well, at least we tried.

Scientists in Belgium discovered that per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or the PFAS known as "forever chemicals," were "more frequently detected in plant-based materials, such as paper and bamboo" versus plastic ones, as detailed in a new paper in the science journal Food Additives & Contaminants.

"Straws made from plant-based materials, such as paper and bamboo, are often advertised as being more sustainable and eco-friendly than those made from plastic," said Thimo Groffen, an environmental scientist at the University of Antwerp who worked on the research, in a blurb about the findings. "However, the presence of PFAS in these straws means that's not necessarily true."

The scientists looked at 39 brands of drinking straws made from five different materials: plastic, stainless steel, bamboo, glass and paper. Within this cohort, scientists detected PFAS in 27 of them.

Paper straws were most likely to test positive for PFAS, with 90 percent of the paper straws having the forever chemicals versus 75 percent in the plastic ones. The paper straws had far higher concentrations of forever chemicals versus plastic.

Almost all the other straws made from different materials also had PFAS, except for stainless steel.

The scientists said manufacturers use PFAS in plant-based straws in order to make them more "water-repellent," but they could also be introduced through contaminated raw materials.

The news shows that it's difficult for consumers to make virtuous or even healthy choices when many of the options on the market are a "pick your poison." It makes any eco-conscious person want to throw their hands up in despair.

The Belgian study corroborates an earlier study from 2021 published in Chemosphere that detected the forever chemicals in paper straws but found plastic straws "had no measurable PFAS."

What's unfortunate about PFAS is that some are water soluble. Yikes. So what's a person to do? Stick with stainless steel? But those are a pain to clean.

Currently, the Environmental Protection Agency aims to get rid of forever chemicals via a whole host of proposed rules and investment dollars. Perhaps in the future, these chemicals will be a thing of the past but meanwhile, every sip is a slow drip of poison.

More on straws: The Anti-Straw Movement Was Dumb, Annoying, and Actually Worked?

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Paper Straws Are Actually Worse Than Plastic Ones, Scientists Say - Futurism

Dirty Secret

Artificial intelligence has a dirty secret that we're not talking nearly enough about.

It's that Silicon Valley AI firms are relying on cheap labor overseas, and tasking them with the grueling labor required to make them actually work and more often than not, their wages and working conditions are poor, the Washington Post reports.

Millions of people in the Philippines are being tasked with labeling images, allowing AI algorithms to make sense of the world. Sometimes they're asked to make sense of chunks of text to make sure AI chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT don't end up spurting out nonsense.

But many of these workers are being exploited and severely underpaid a worrying and often overlooked aspect of the ongoing AI arms race,as debates have focused instead on grabbier issues of potential bias or the possibility of AI going rogue.

According to the report, San Francisco-based startup Scale AI employs at least 10,000 people in the Philippines on a platform called Remotasks. However, according to data and interviews obtained by the WP, the company has often failed to pay them on time (a Scale AI spokesperson told WaPo that "delays or interruptions to payments are exceedingly rare.")

A number of Remotasks freelancers told the newspaper that they were stiffed on payments or never received the money they were initially promised. One 26-year-old worker spent three days on a project, hoping to get $50. He only got $12.

Filipino AI ethicist Dominic Ligot called these new workplaces, which house workers labeling footage or text for AI companies like Scale AI, "digital sweatshops."

Workers also don't have any effective avenues to complain and can simply be "deactivated" if they were to raise their voices.

And it's not just the Philippines. Scale AI is also employing freelancers or "taskers" in Venezuela and India, triggering a "race to the bottom," as the owner of an outsourcing firm told the WP.

In short, while AI has triggered a billion-dollar arms race in the US, those who are actually doing the brunt of the work are often going unnoticed, underpaid, or ignored altogether a wrinkle in the ongoing AI ethics debate that should give anybody pause.

More on AI ethics: The Pope Just Released a Guide to Artificial Intelligence

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AI's Dirty Secret: Poor People in the Developing World Are Doing ... - Futurism

The K-series bikes from BMW Motorrad are by no means ideal for a custom build that leans toward the retro side. However, they are perfectly suited to projects which aim for futuristic looks, and there are plenty of great examples out there. Not many of them are as extensively modified and well put together as the one were about to look at, though.

Photo: Paul van Mondfrans Linden

He tried his hand at modifying the K 1100 RS back in 2022, and the result is quite simply dazzling! Not only did Powerbricks mastermind give it a seductive cafe racer presence, but he also came up with a ton of performance upgrades to match the sharp looks. The engine, suspension, and brakes have all been dialed up to eleven, thus bringing the old '94 MY sport-tourer into the 21st century.

Starting with the rear-end modifications, Tim extended the motorcycles swingarm by 15 millimeters (0.6 inches), which was easier said than done given its Paralever design. The original shock absorber was replaced with a premium G-Racing unit from YSS, featuring full adjustability and a piggyback reservoir. Its upper end connects to a bespoke subframe built from scratch, and theres a gorgeous solo seat placed up top.

The saddle flaunts a mixture of standard black leather and suede, all finished off with stylish honeycomb pattern stitching. A pointy 3D-printed tail section is mounted right behind the seat, and its rearmost tip houses a compact LED taillight. Tim attached a handmade electronics tray to the subframes underside, filling it with a NOCO lithium battery and Motogadgets mo.Unit Blue control module, among other goodies.

Photo: Paul van Mondfrans Linden

Moreover, a custom nose fairing found its way onto the Beemers front end, encircling a Thunderbolt LED headlight from Kosos inventory. The cockpit area is an absolute charm, too, bearing clip-on handlebars and a digital Motoscope Mini dial supplied by Motogadget. Tim recessed the latter into the top clamp for a clean look, then he garnished the clip-ons with an array of top-shelf components.

These include Brembo control levers, a Domino throttle, and new switches, as well as Motogadget bar-end turn signals and Biltwell grips. We still find the factory K 1100 RS fuel tank center-stage, but its been outfitted with a fresh aluminum filler cap and CNC-milled BMW roundels. That just about does it for the machines upper equipment, so lets have a gander at the unsprung side of things.

Photo: Paul van Mondfrans Linden

Now, Tim didnt apply all these upgrades just for the sake of it, but to prepare the K 1100 RS cafe racer for a considerable dose of additional power. The bikes 1,092cc inline-four engine made a respectable 100 hp in its stock configuration, though it could certainly do better on Powerbricks watch. Sir Somers ported the air intakes to let the transverse four-cylinder breathe more freely, and he added a quartet of DNA pod filters for the same purpose.

His grocery list also contained Bosch EV14 fuel injectors and NGK ignition hardware, as well as an aluminum RC Racing radiator to keep things nice and cool. Samco silicon hoses transport the coolant from the engine to the radiator and back, but its the other piece of plumbing that really grabbed our attention from the start. Of course, were talking about the striking pie-cut exhaust system which Tim pieced together in-house.

Built out of stainless-steel, the pipework snakes its way back in a four-into-one configuration, before ending in a stubby aftermarket silencer. Last but not least, the color scheme applied by Powerbrick is both sporty and elegant, employing a dark grey base topped with large white stripes on the bodywork. However, the red highlights are what really makes this thing pop, appearing on various items such as the forks, shock spring, brake lines, and coolant hoses.

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One-Off BMW K 1100 RS Cafe Racer Matches Futuristic Looks With ... - autoevolution

Lionel Messis arrival at Inter Miami has sparked the imagination of architect Jorge Luis Veliz, who has designed a futuristic $50 million mansion fit for the global superstar, reported by goal.com. This innovative concept home takes the form of an M,' incorporating Messi's iconic brand logo and reflecting his meteoric rise in the world of football.

The visionary design encompasses luxury and extravagance on an unprecedented scale. Nestled on a unique ship-shaped island, the three-level mansion offers unparalleled privacy and exclusivity, befitting a player of Messi's stature. The property boasts an array of features that redefine opulence, including a private waterslide, a massive 20-car garage, and a yacht pier.

Inside the mansion, Messi's family would find every conceivable amenity for comfort and entertainment. From a dedicated games room and a state-of-the-art home theater to an expansive swimming pool and a personal football pitch, the residence offers a perfect blend of leisure and sports for Messi and his three sons to enjoy.

Subscribe now toMLS Season Pass and watch every match including the playoffs on Apple TV.

The house's concept aligns with Messi's legacy and his current chapter with Inter Miami, a team co-owned by soccer legend David Beckham. Despite the ambitious design, the cost is reportedly estimated at a staggering $50 million, a figure that reflects both the uniqueness of the project and Messi's astronomical earning power.

As Messi continues to make waves in the United States, his on-field prowess is complemented by the charm of this potential dream home. Although the immediate future might not see Messi residing in this futuristic mansion, the concept serves as a testament to his global impact and the exciting possibilities that lie ahead for him and his family at Inter Miami. The world watches as Messi's journey unfolds, both on the field and in the realm of the extraordinary.

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Inter Miami: Lionel Messi's futuristic $50 million mansion is out of this ... - ClutchPoints

The Big Picture

From filmmaker Gareth Edwards (Rogue One, Godzilla, Monsters), the sci-fi action thriller The Creator (due out in theaters and on IMAX on September 29th) is set in a future that finds the human race and artificial intelligence at war, and one man, an ex-special forces agent named Joshua (John David Washington), caught in between with no clear answers. Grieving after the disappearance of his wife (Gemma Chan) and on a mission to hunt down and kill the Creator that designed the advanced AI, Joshua discovers that the young Alphie (Madeleine Yuma Voyles) has the potential to alter mankind and the world.

After a recent IMAX screening of three scenes from the film, director/co-writer Edwards took part in a Q&A, in which he discussed why he finds the sci-fi genre so appealing, how The Creator evolved into what it is now, the journey in getting an epic original idea into production, shooting in 80 locations with relatively little green screen, how relevant this story about AI has become, wanting to use a different approach to shooting the film, the importance of casting, shooting the combat scenes, cinematic influences, robot design inspiration, getting Hans Zimmer on board to compose the music, and how science fiction provides and opportunity for social commentary.

Question: This is your fourth film, which also happens to be your fourth science fiction film. What is it about this genre that you just keep coming back to?

GARETH EDWARDS: Are there other genres? Ive heard that there are films without robots in them. I dont see it as, I do science fiction. I think the best science fiction is a blend of genres. My first film (Monsters), I see as a love story meets science fiction. My second film, which was Godzilla, is a disaster movie meets science fiction movie. Star Wars (Rogue One) is a war movie meets science fiction.

How did The Creator come about? When and where did inspiration hit you for this?

EDWARDS: It was 7:32pm on a Tuesday. No. There were numerous things that happened, the most obvious one was that we had just finished Rogue One. My girlfriends family lives in Iowa, and we drove across America to go visit them. As we were driving through the Midwest, and there were all these farmlands with tall grass, I was just looking out the window. I had my headphones on, and I wasnt trying to think of an idea for a film, but I was getting a little bit inspired. I just saw this factory in the middle of this tall grass and I remember it having a Japanese logo on it, and I thought, Oh, I wonder what theyre making in there. Because of my tendencies, I was like, Oh, its probably robots, right? And then, I thought, Okay, imagine you were a robot built in a factory, and then, suddenly, for the first time ever, you got to step outside into the field and look around and see the sky. What would that be like? That felt like a really good moment in a movie, but I didnt know what that movie was. I threw it away, like whatever. And then, it tapped me on the shoulder and went, Oh, it could be this, and these ideas started coming. As we carried on with the journey, by the time we pulled up at the house, I had the whole movie mapped out in my head, which has never happened. I was like, Okay, maybe this might be my next thing.

This is an original concept that youre working with here. How did you get New Regency on board as a producer?

EDWARDS: I do need to shout out to New Regency because, as you probably noticed in cinema recently, there are very few original films being made and thats because everyones gotten very gun shy, and the franchises and IP s keep getting regurgitated a little bit. Hats off to New Regency for basically having the balls to take a big swing and do something like this. Some of my closest friends are concept artists, so I asked all my friends, Ill pay you, but could you do some artwork for this idea that Ive got, and just started building up this library of imagery until I had about 50 images. I didnt tell my agent. I kept it very secret because I didnt want to put any pressure on it. I just went into New Regency and laid out all the artwork, and I talked them through the idea, beat by beat, which I hate doing. I hate being a car salesman. I just want to hit play on the movie. Thats my favorite thing to do. Trying to sell it is not my fun thing. So, you look at all that imagery and its incredibly ambitious, and the natural reaction is, This is a $300 million film. Theres no way we can really do this. Wed love to do it, but we cant really do it. And I was like, No, were gonna do it very differently. Were gonna film it with this very small crew and were gonna essentially reverse engineer the whole movie. In theory, what you normally do is you have all this design work and people say that you cant find these locations, so youre gonna have to build sets in a studio against a green screen, and it will cost a fortune. We were like, No, what we want to do is go shoot the movie in real locations, in real parts of the world, that look closest to what these images are. And then, afterwards, when the film is fully edited, get the production designer and other concept artists to paint over those frames and put the sci-fi on top. And everyone was like, That sounds great. Basically, we had to go try to prove it to them.

How many locations did you shoot in?

EDWARDS: On some of the other films Ive done, youre lucky to get away from the studio and go to a proper location a handful of times. On this, we went to 80 locations, and we didnt really use any green screen. There was occasionally a little bit, here and there, but very little. If you keep the crew small enough, the theory was that the cost of building a set, which is typically $200,000, apparently, you can fly everyone to anywhere in the world for that kind of money. And so, we were like, Lets keep the crew small and go to these amazing locations. And so, we went to Nepal, the Himalayas, active volcanoes in Indonesia, temples in Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Tokyo. And then, we did a little bit at Pinewood, using the Volume for some non-green screen, LED screen, environment stuff.

Your antagonist in this is artificial intelligence. Did you know how relevant that would be?

EDWARDS: The trick with AI is that theres a sweet spot window before the robo-apocalypse and not after, which is in November or maybe December. We got lucky [with our release date]. I tried to avoid putting a date. I didnt want to write a date for the movie because even [Stanley] Kubrick gets it wrong. At some point, you have to pick a date, so I did some math and I picked 2070. Now, I feel like an idiot because I should have gone for 2023, with everything thats unfolded in the last few months, or year. Its scarily weird. When we first pitched the movie to the studio, this idea of war with AI, everyone wants to know the backstory. Theyre like, Hang on, why would we be at war with AI? We were like, Its been banned because it went wrong. But why would you ban AI? Its gonna be great. There were all these ideas that you have to set up that, that maybe humanity would reject this thing and not be that cool about it. And the way its played out, the set up of our movie, is pretty much the last few months.

How would you set up this story?

EDWARDS: I would say that the world is divided in two. Essentially, something terrible happened in America and AI got banned. Its completely banned in the West, but in Asia, there was no such problem, so they carried on developing it until it was near human like. So, theres this war going on, to wipe out AI. Public enemy number one, the person that everybody is after, is The Creator. From the Western perspective, its the Osama bin Laden of our story. But from Asia and the AIs perspective, its like God.

When it came to cutting edge technology, what were some of the tools and new innovations that you were able to take advantage of, that didnt exist when you made Rogue One in 2016?

EDWARDS: I think camera technology and filmmaking technology has come a long way, even in the last few years. Something we did on this film, that was really important, was that I wanted it to feel as realistic as possible, so I needed the actors and me to have total freedom on set. We would always be able to shoot in 360 degrees. The biggest thing working against you when you try to do that in a film is that you have lights, and the second you want to move the camera, you can suddenly see the lights and you spend 20 minutes moving them, so it takes forever to shoot a scene. So, the way we worked was with really sensitive camera equipment. We could use the LED lights that are very lightweight. You have a boom operator holding a pole with the microphone on it, so why cant you have a person holding a pole with the lights on it. So, we had a best boy running around holding the light by hand. If the actor suddenly got up and did something and went over here, and then suddenly there was a better shot, I could move and the lighting could be readjusted. What would normally take 10 minutes to change was taking four seconds, so we could do 25-minute takes, where wed play out the scene three or four times. There was an atmosphere of naturalism and realism that I really wanted to get, where it isnt so prescribed, and youre not putting marks on the ground and telling actors to stand there. It wasnt that kind of movie.

What led you to cast John David Washington and Ken Watanabe?

EDWARDS: We were casting the film during the pandemic, so it was really hard to meet anybody. Fortunately, JD lived in L.A. and I heard through his agents, Hey, hed meet you any time you want. Just go for a meal. So, I did. I went and met him during the pandemic, and he walked in with his mask on, but it was a Star Wars mask. It had the Star Wars logo on it. I initially thought, Oh, no, hes doing this because of Rogue One. And then, he sat down and admitted to being a massive Star Wars fan. He was like, Ive been wearing this mask, every single day for like a year. Its been for the whole pandemic. I thought about not wearing it to this meeting, but then it felt false. So, I thought itd be a good icebreaker. We hit it off, straight away. And then, Ken is the only actor that Ive worked with twice. I always want to do something new, so for the longest time, I didnt want to think about Ken for this role. And then, the second he turned up on set, I felt like such an idiot. It was obviously supposed to be Ken, from the beginning. I love Kurosawa films. Those are my big inspirations. And every time you hold the camera up and Kens in the shot, it feels like this strange hybrid of Kurosawa meets Star Wars, which was exactly what we were going for. He gives you goosebumps. Theres something about that guy. Hes just got this face. The reason hes so successful, internationally, is not really about what he says. He can convey so much with just his looks. Hes so good.

How did you find your Alphie?

EDWARDS: We basically did an open casting call, all around the world. We got hundreds of videos, but I didnt have to watch all of them. They sent me the top 70, and then I went to meet 10 kids. The first one was Madeleine [Yuna Voyles], who plays Alphie. She came in and did this scene, and we were all nearly in tears at the end. I thought to myself, This is weird and phenomenal. Maybe her mum was just brilliant at prepping her to get really upset, just before she came in and there was some little trick going on. So, we chatted for a bit and we did some of the scenes, and then right at the end, I was a bit cruel. I was like, Can we try just one more thing? I wanted to see if it was repeatable. I was like, Can we do another scene? So, I explained a different scene and we just improvised it, and she was even more heartbreaking. I dont know what we would have done, if we hadnt found the right kid. We got really lucky. The movie lives and dies [with her performance]. I hate movies about little kids because they can tend to be so annoying. My biggest fear was that we were gonna get one of those really annoying kid movie kids, so it was the biggest relief when she was beyond her years. Its like shes reincarnated, or something.

How was Madeleine working with John David, and vice versa?

EDWARDS: Shes quite method. Well, I cant tell if shes method or not because we only knew each other during the filmmaking process and she kept everybody at arms reach. I was allowed in a little bit, but her and John David were inseparable. He became her surrogate brother or father figure, Im not sure which. I thought I was gonna have to trick her. When we did all the scenes, I was like, I need this to be like a documentary, so we can pull this performance out of this girl without her having to act. And she could act her pants off. She was amazing at it. It was a directors dream. You could just tell her what Alphie was thinking and this amazing performance would come out. Youd look at the other actors and be like, Why cant you all be like this? Whats your problem?

How did filming the combat scenes differ from Rogue One?

EDWARDS: We went to real exterior locations. We went to locations that were the closest thing we could find to what the artwork suggested it should be. When we were in Thailand, we needed to find a really technologically advanced factory, or something like that, and we looked everywhere. There were car manufacturing plants that were nervous about us filming. Eventually, we found a particle accelerator, which was the most advanced thing, probably in the whole of Thailand. We were like, Please, could you let us film? It looked amazing. We went to visit, and they were like, Theres no way youre gonna be allowed to film here. They asked, What do you want to do? And we said, Well, there will be people with guns shooting and explosions. It was a multi-multimillion dollar facility with all these leading cutting-edge scientists, and they were like, Its not gonna happen. Let it go. And then, at the very last minute, someone was like, What filmmaker is doing this? They were like, Its this guy who lives in the States. They were like, Well, what films has he done? And they said, Oh, he did this Star Wars film, called Rogue One. And they were like, Can we be in it? And we were like, Sure, whatever. And so, everybody running around in that scene are nuclear physicists. They were amazing.

Didnt you use a lot of local talent, in front of and behind the camera?

EDWARDS: Yeah. And we had a rule where I wanted to be able to look and not see video village, with the monitor and the chairs. I didnt want to see that anywhere. I wanted it to feel like we were doing a student film, to some extent. The beach scene where Gemma is running and theres all that crossfire, the restrictions of the pandemic were just starting to lift and Thailand was opening up to tourists. They were like, You can film on this beach, but you cant close it. We were like, Oh, my God, how are we gonna do that scene? I dont know what happens normally in Thailand, at night on these beaches, but we didnt close that beach. If you look carefully in the background, you can see bars and tourists just carrying on, but not one person came over and went, What are you doing? There were just four of us with a camera, running around. It didnt look as big, massive movie. It all ends up on the screen. We tried to just be very efficient with it.

What are your cinematic influences for this film? What movies would you recommend as companion pieces?

EDWARDS: I have this superstition, since my first film, where I put up posters in the edit suite that inspired the film Im doing. Around the edit suite on this one, one that you might not know would be Baraka, which I think is one of the greatest movies ever made. And then, there was Lone Wolf and Cub, which is a Japanese manga series. There were the really obvious ones, like Apocalypse Now and Blade Runner. In terms of the dynamic, maybe there was a little bit of Rain Man. Its a journey with someone normal and someone whos a little bit special, different, or however you want to say it. And there, there was Paper Moon.

What was your inspiration for the robot designs?

EDWARDS: The way we tried to quickly summarize the design and aesthetic of the movie was that its a little bit retro futuristic. Imagine that Apple Mac hadnt won the tech war and the Sony Walkman had, so everything has that eighties Walkman/Nintendo feel. We looked at all the product design from that era and tried to put that on the robots. The tricky thing with designing robot heads was trying to pull from sources. We did a whole pass, at one point, where we took insects and insect heads and tried to make it as if that insect had been made by Sony. We took products and tried to turn them into organic looking heads. We took things like film projectors and vacuum cleaners, and then just messed around. We would take things and put them together, and then delete pieces, and we just kept experimenting. It was like evolution, in real life. It was like DNA got merged together with other DNA, trying to create something better than the previous thing.

Who are some of the directors and writers that you look up to and get inspiration from?

EDWARDS: The obvious ones are Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, and Ridley Scott. Thats the high benchmark of what we were trying to do. Im not saying we got anywhere close to achieving it, but the goal of the movie was to try to go back to that style and type of film that we grew up loving, and give it that vibe and aesthetic again. The film was shot on 1970s anamorphic lenses. I hate writing. Its like doing homework. The worst thing in the world is having to write a screenplay, so the only way I can really bring myself to do it is to lock myself somewhere nice. I find a nice hotel, and I say that Im not allowed to leave until Ive finished. I stayed there for a month. I went to Thailand, to the exact place on that beach. I didnt realize that I was getting inspired for the movie. I just picked this nice resort. While I was there, a filmmaker friend was in Vietnam and said, Come over and well do a little trip. So, I went around Vietnam. You cant go around that country and not think of all the imagery from films like Apocalypse Now and Platoon. But I was writing this science fiction film, so everything in my mind was robots and spaceships. Youd see Buddhist monks going to temples, and Id picture a robot Buddhist monk. I spent the whole time going, Oh, my God, what is this movie? Blade Runner meets Apocalypse Now is the fastest way to [describe] it to people.

What was the biggest challenge in filming this movie?

EDWARDS: I wouldnt say there was a particular thing It was more just the duration of it. We started filming in January 2022, and we finished in June. There were six months of nonstop 40 degree heat (in Celsius, which is 104 degrees Fahrenheit), dying every day. Looking back, its a dream that we got to do that, but there was a point where you wanted to collapse and youd only done seven days of filming. The first cut of this movie was five hours long. We had so much great, cool material. Everything thats in this film is all the best stuff of that material. The editing process was basically a game of Jenga, where we would pull things out and see if we missed it, or if it fell apart. We were like, When we finally get this down to two hours, if theres anything anyone misses or wants to put back in, youll be allowed to do it. We put five shots back in. There were five little moments. That old adage of less is more is right, most of the time.

What are the best values of humanity that you hope this movie ultimately illustrates?

EDWARDS: I hope empathy for others. Thats a strong value that I think is very important. When this film began, obviously I didnt know that AI was gonna do what it ended up doing, this last year. AI was really just in the fairy tale of this story. AI was the people who are different to us that we want to get rid of, or naturally have conflicts with. But the second you make them AI, all kinds of fascinating things start to happen. As you write that script, you start to think, Are they real? What if you didnt like what they were doing? Can you turn them off? What if they dont want to be turned off? All this stuff started to play out, which became as strong as the premise. What Im most proud of in the film is that we hung onto that. There are things in the movie that we just got very lucky with. If it came out in November, after we were killed in the robo-apocalypse, it wouldnt be that good. But thankfully, its out on September 29th.

What was it like to have Hans Zimmer do the music?

EDWARDS: When it came to who was gonna do the music for the film, out of the 25 most played tracks on everyones iPhone, 14 of the tracks were Hans Zimmer tracks. I was like, I dont know how, but weve got to get Hans Zimmer. Joe Walker, who is the editor on Dune, put the assembly of the film together, and he had worked with Hans a lot. He was like, Ill talk to Hans. Hell do it. I was like, Really? We ended up in this strange situation, where I had to do a Zoom call with Hans, while I was in the middle of nowhere. We were going to meet the head of the military in Thailand to get permission to film in Black Hawks for a sequence. It was this massive deal meeting that took months and months to organize, and it just happened to be the same moment that Hans was available to do Zoom. We had to pull off the road and I went into a hotel in the middle of nowhere because they had a wifi signal. They said, Youve gotta leave in 30 minutes because the whole military is waiting for us. And so, I was looking at this clock, and he started talking about his anecdotes about The Dark Knight and Terrence Malick. All my life, Ive wanted to talk to him about these films, and I had to be like, Hans, I have to go. Im really sorry, but I have to leave now. We showed him the little test we did for the studio, and he was like, Okay, Im in.

How did you approach collaborating with your cinematographer, Greig Fraser?

EDWARDS: I worked with Greig on Rogue One, and while we were making this, he had to go and work on Dune 2, as well. His protg, Oren Soffer, ended up being our DoP through a lot of the Thailand shoot. The most important thing, when you have a DoP is that you have exactly the same taste. The less you have to talk about what looks good and bad, and their instincts are your instincts, the easier it goes. We were all totally on the same page. Greigs very rebellious, despite how that might look because hes doing these big movies. In the build up to this film, I got to go around to one of those virtual reality studios, and they had this poster on the wall with how to make a movie. It was just every part of the process. I was looking at it and thinking, What a strange thing to have? Why have they got this poster? The guy who ran the thing came up to me and said, I see you looking at the poster. Thats a hundred years old. We havent changed how films are made in one hundred years. We still do it, exactly the same way. With all these new digital tools and technology, there are other ways to make films, and people like Greig and I really want to do things differently because thats how you make a different type of movie. The process is as important as the screenplay, to some extent.

Would you mind talking about the opportunity and the power of science fiction for social commentary and reflection?

EDWARDS: Oh, my God, thats probably why I like science fiction. There is that chance that you can sneak it under the radar. My favorite TV show growing up was The Twilight Zone. Rod Serling wrote a lot of those shows and the reason he did science fiction was because he could get it under the radar of the censors and say things youre not allowed to normally say out loud. If you sit down and start to type, and you try to work out a film and you go, I want to make a film about this thats got this social commentary to it, its gonna be a rubbish film. You get attracted to an idea. Theres something very primal about it that pulls you. Theres something that needs to be said about this subject matter, and then, halfway through writing a film, you start to realize what that thing is. Its like a child. It tells you what they want to be when they grow up. You learn what it is, and then you try to help it. Science fiction does it the best because we all go through our lives having certain beliefs, but they never really get tested because you can get to the end of your life and youre never really challenged. You just do everything that youre supposed to do. But science fiction says, What if the world had this different thing about it? Now, that think you thought was true starts to be false, and you start to question things. I love that kind of storytelling. Thats the most interesting sort. I hope our film does a little bit of that.

The Creator is in theaters on September 29th.

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'The Creator' and Its War Between Humans and Artificial Intelligence - Collider

"This was absolutely stunning to watch first-hand." Heal Turn

Scientists at Texas A&M University were stunned when a piece of metal appeared to heal itself before their eyes.

While tugging at a 40-nanometer-thick piece of platinum inside a vacuum 200 times a second, the team observed how the material could mend itself under an electron microscope.

They claim it's the first time we've ever witnessed a piece of metal crack and then fuse back together by itself, a fascinating new phenomenon on its own, but also one that could "usher in an engineering revolution," according to a press release that is, if we can figure out a way to harness it.

Under repeated pressure, machines tend to wear out over time due to stresses that can cause microscopic cracks, which eventually grow and cause the device to fail.

But the new finding suggests that metals may have a secret way to heal themselves, negating these microscopic fractures.

"What we have confirmed is that metals have their own intrinsic, natural ability to heal themselves, at least in the case of fatigue damage at the nanoscale," said Texas A&M University materials scientist Brad Boyce, co-author of a new paper published in the journal Nature, in the statement.

"This was absolutely stunning to watch first-hand," he added.

If we could ever find a way to harness this effect, the implications could be huge.

"From solder joints in our electronic devices to our vehicles engines to the bridges that we drive over, these structures often fail unpredictably due to cyclic loading that leads to crack initiation and eventual fracture," Boyce explained, adding that these material failures "is measured in hundreds of billions of dollars every year for the US."

Boyce and his colleagues suggest a process called "crack flank cold welding" could be behind the phenomenon. But finding ways to harness this self-healing ability could prove extremely difficult. Plenty of unknowns remain and we still don't know if these findings are generalizable.

"We show this happening in nanocrystalline metals in vacuum," Boyce said. "But we dont know if this can also be induced in conventional metals in air."

It's nonetheless an unexpected new finding in the field of materials science and one that goes to show how much there still is to learn.

More on metal: Scientists Discover Gigantic Solid Metal Ball Inside the Earth's Core

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Scientists Intrigued by Metal That Can Heal Itself After Damage - Futurism

This bizarre organism is missing huge amounts of genes. Spaghetti Yeerk

For years, researchers have known about a species of parasitic critters called hairworms that can "mind control" their host by hijacking their cognitive functions.

Now, it turns out the spaghetti-like organisms that spend almost their entire lives inside other animals' bodies have yet another peculiar claim to fame.

As detailed in a new paper published in the journal Current Biology, hairworms lack a startling proportion of the genes researchers expected them to have which only adds to their already mystifying nature.

"What we found, which was very surprising, was that both hairworm genomes were missing about 30 percent of a set of genes that are expected to be present across basically all groups of animals," said Tauana Cunha, a postdoctoral researcher at Chicago's Field Museum and lead author of the study, in a statement about the findings.

Hairworms were already a bit of an oddball in the animal kingdom.

"One of the coolest things, maybe the thing that they are most known for, is that they can affect the behavior of their hosts and make them do things that they wouldn't do otherwise," Cunha enthused.

But as it turns out, that isn't the only quality that sets them apart. After analyzing and sequencing DNA samples from two hairworm species, Cunha and her colleagues found something astonishing.

"Cilia are organelles, small structures at the cellular level, that are basically present across all animals and even more broadly, in protists and some plants and fungi," Cunha explained. "So they're present across a large diversity of life on Earth."

The researchers concluded that hairworms likely don't have any cilia, since they don't have the "machinery to make cilia in the first place," as Cunha explained.

That means the researchers are now left with even more questions.How can hairworms survive without these near-ubiquitous biological features? Do they get by without them since they spend most of their lives living off their host?

It's a significant puzzle that'll require further research to solve. Cunha suggests we could compare the genes of these hairworms to other mind-controlling parasites to see if we can find some "similarities" a grisly subject matter that's as fascinating as it is gruesome.

More on parasites: Terrifying Parasite Can Actually Triple an Ant's Lifespan

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Scientists Surprised by DNA in Worms That Control Hosts' Brains - Futurism

Image by Getty / Futurism

Brutal heat waves covering large swathes of world right now are forcing healthcare workers to come up with new ways to keep patients cool.

Several areas have hit record temperatures, as sweltering conditions continue across North America and Europe. Death Valley in Californiarecorded a "mind-boggling" 120 degrees Fahrenheit at 1am.

And the effects this heat is having on people's bodies are devastating. Some hospital staff are packing overheated patients in body bags with a bucket of ice to cool them down, The Wall Street Journal reports. Others have resorted to putting them in wet hospital gowns and sitting them in front of fans.

In more severe cases, patients are even showing up comatose, with doctors sometimes prolonging these comas to protect their brains a frightening reality of unprecedented heat surges that have already put millions at risk across the globe.

"Theyre coming in essentially unresponsive and theyre cooked," Aneesh Narang, an emergency medicine physician at Banner-University Medical Center in Phoenix, who had several patients come in with body temperatures as high as 109 Fahrenheit, told NBC last week.

The risks of excess exposure to extreme heat are significant. Symptoms can range from dizziness, nausea, and severe dehydration to comas and death. Heat strokes are particularly dangerous, and can even prove fatal.

Extreme heat can also mess with the body's innate coping mechanisms, like venting off heat by producing sweat.

"Youre kind of cooking from the inside, unfortunately," Narang told NBC.

Worse yet, the summer has only begun, and healthcare workers are worried about what 2023 still has in store for us.

"Were still early- to mid-July, and July and August are probably our two toughest months in this area," Narang added. "I anticipate things will get worse, unfortunately."

And that's without getting into every future summer.

More on extreme heat: Scientists Horrified as Sea Surface Temperatures Spike Off the Charts

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Brutal Heat Wave Is Literally Putting People Into Comas - Futurism

In an exclusive conversation with Euronews Next, will.i.am talks AI, the future of creativity, and his new AI-powered platform to co-pilot creation.

The epitome of a Renaissance Man, will.i.am (born William Adams), the prolific singer, songwriter, rapper, actor, producer, DJ, entrepreneur, and philanthropist, has added another feather to his cap: futurist.

And his latest endeavour serves as another testament to his forward-looking mindset.

The founding and lead member of the Black Eyed Peas has launched FYI (short for Focus Your Idea), billed as the first productivity tool designed to serve creatives first.

The FYI app is engineered to help creatives in a wide array of tasks, including AI-powered creative co-piloting, chatting with collaborators and team members, sharing photos, videos, audio files, and docs, as well as securing data with the most advanced end-to-end encryption.

Jonathan Mildenhall, former Chief Marketing Officer of Airbnb and co-founder and Chairman of TwentyFirstCenturyBrand, says he is particularly excited about the launch of FYI because it has a similar founding story to Airbnb.

Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, the founders of Airbnb, were inspired to create their home renting platform when faced with a sudden rent increase for their New York City apartment. To overcome the financial challenge, they decided to rent out their spare bedroom, sparking the idea that would revolutionise the way people travel.

Similarly, Will, confronted with the limitations imposed by the pandemic and the lack of suitable tools for remote creative collaborations, decided to take matters into his own hands and embarked on a mission to find a solution - the answer was FYI.

Products out of necessity are a gift to the world, said Mildenhall, whos developing the brand strategy for FYI.

In the context of the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, Euronews spoke to will.i.am about the potential and implications of the future of AI, music and creativity.

Camille Bello, Euronews: Will, who do you think will be using FYI?

will.i.am: So the creative community was working across six different tools up until FYI existed. We were on WhatsApp. To work off WhatsApp, you need a Dropbox. If your files were too big, you need to WeTransfer. But if you can't open it up on WhatsApp, you need to send that Wetransfer to emails, you need email, you need a calendar, and you need Zoom and then a chatGPT.

So you need seven things for creatives to get work done remotely on a phone on fire. For FYI you just need one tool called FYI.

The key ideal customer is the hyper-creative, the person that is ideating, putting teams together or small teams. And with AI, small teams become big teams.

CB: How is FYI different from the other language models, such as ChatGPT?

will.i.am: FYI a messenger first. It's a messenger with your file management and your digital asset management storage. [All] connected to the messenger, because why should your conversations around your digital assets, the projects that you're working on, be separate from where your teams and your communication plan strategy are?

So it's a messenger digital asset management file storage. It's a calendar, a music organiser, and a generative AI for team flow.

It's a messenger from the perspective of project-based collaboration, project-based ideation, and materialisation with AI to help you.

CB: Tell us about the algorithm behind FYI.

will.i.am: I can tell you about the work that we're doing with IBM as far as the business of creativity.

Right now, if you're creative and you have an idea that you want to start, but you want to protect that idea before you go, reach out to folks, that's kind of impossible.

[Especially] if you're from some inner city or some from some rural area or living in the suburbs.

And so on FYI - in collaboration with IBM and WatsonX - in the near future, you're going to be able to create a thread and evoke your FYI business agent to create an NDA to protect your ideawithout having to worry about how you find an attorney or afford an attorney to do the basic thing - that is protect and do business while you create.

First we're starting with basic NDA idea of protection, IP protection, and then will grow from there.

And we invite the creative community to be on the journey with us. The whole premise of the product is to champion the creative, support them, and protect them and their IP and their data by issuing elliptical curve cryptography keys that we worked with IBM to ensure that everything is protected. Soup to nuts.

CB: Amidst the ongoing debate on the convergence of AI and music, and in response to a fake Drake track, trip-hop collective Massive Attack tweeted: "Is the discussion 'should AI recreate music?' or is the discussion 'Why is contemporary music so homogenised & formulaic that it's really easy to copy?'

CB: What do you think of that?

will.i.am: For anything to get good at something, it has to reference and copy something. And AI is already great at mimicking paintings, illustrations, marketing plans, strategiesbut it also creates.

I've heard amazing creations that AI has made of music that sounds like something that I would have written, that sounds like me, and some people would be convinced that I did it, that I sung it. And it wasn't a recreation of something. It was something from scratch. And it will continue to get better. How do I feel about that? I feel that regulations need to be put in place around essence and likeness ASAP.

I urge every person that's working in the AI space, every person that works in governance and regulation and setting protection protocols for people and humanity: essence and likeness is importantFighting for people's likeness, people's essence, protecting people and their civil liberties and their communities. That is what we should be doing. We're not saying regulations to stop innovation. We're saying, I'm saying, regulations for people.

CB: Do you think it's a bit premature the way in which we are adopting artificial intelligence - before there is an actual regulation put in place that we can follow?

will.i.am: That's hard to say. That's like saying when the automobile was invented, the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) was around. Fact is, no; That's like saying when the aeroplane was invented, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was already around. The answer is no. But now that there's flight, now that there's vehicles on the road, I think it's time for the Department of Motor Vehicles and the FAA to ensure people are safe and the communities that they live in.

CB: You come from a multicultural background. Are you concerned about the algorithm bias?

will.i.am: The only way to tackle bias is to have people from different communities and different backgrounds training data and writing algorithms. And I've been super passionate about this subject for the past decade-plus. That's why I have a school and a program in East Los Angeles, Boyle Heights, with todos los mexicanos de mi barrio, and we teach them computer science, robotics and programming so they can grow up and fill jobs that are needed to address data, biases and algorithmic biases. That is my core passion.

You can go out and ensure that companies address these biases. Or you can go out there and you could do work and adopt a school and encourage kids to go down this path.

And to the folks that are working in that space, it's not that they're malicious and they don't want people of colour to train models. It's set up from the school systems and the zoning from the get-go because there's not a computer science program in every school, but there's a basketball program or a football program or soccer program in every school, but no engineering or algorithmic programming or data training program mandatory in every school, inner city, rural area, poverty-stricken area, underdeveloped community, underserved community.

Is it the folks that made the model where they're like, mwahaha, we're not going to we don't want? No, that's not the case, there are engineering gaps.

The world needs more engineers. Where is the engineer going to come from?

Now there's engineering for engineering. Now there's an algorithm that can engineer for us, but that still doesn't address the data bias, that still doesn't address the algorithmic bias. So the only true way, like I said, is to have people of colour, black and brown and women and trans and gay and LGBTQ plus training models, writing algorithms. That's the only way. I started 12 years ago with 65 kids. Now we serve 14,000 students in L.A.

I put STEM programs in inner cities. That sounds like something to do. Why? Because they're not doing it. And when you don't have STEM programs in inner cities, you have data bias, algorithmic bias.

CB: Are you concerned about a future in which machines will be doing all the creative and fun work and humans just prompting machines?

will.i.am: No, because I believe in humanity's creativity, spontaneity, curiosity and competitiveness. I believe in that.

Just like calculators out-calculate mathematicians, that doesn't mean people aren't doing calculations. That doesn't mean people aren't building structures and, you know, working with advanced mathematical models. People are still thinking. People are still trying to solve problems. It's just an amazing tool. But that's not going to stop our innovative spirit, our ingenuity, inventions.

Right now, in popular culture, the word is innovation.Invention hasn't been said or talked about in a long time. This new renaissance is going to spark new inventions, not innovations. This next leap is like we're going to invent things. Not just innovate.

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will.i.am launches new AI-driven platform to 'co-pilot' creativity - Euronews