Boeing Whistleblower’s Attorneys Say They "Didn’t See Any Indication" of Suicide Risk – Futurism

After Boeing whistleblower John Barnett's tragic death during his deposition against the company, the man's attorneys are speaking out about his alleged suicide.

The 62-year-old Louisiana-based whistleblower had traveled to Charleston, South Carolina to finally be deposed for his 2017 Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) complaint against his ex-employer when, as his attorney Brian Knowles told the Corporate Crime Reporter blog, he failed to show up to one of the sessions over the weekend.

Knowles and his co-counsel, Rob Turkewitz, were unable to reach Barnett by phone and thus contacted the hotel he was staying at which was when the retired Boeing worker's body was found in his car.

In an initial autopsy report, as local and national news indicates, the Charleston County Coronoer's Office said that the 32-year Boeing employee appeared to have died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound but his lawyers, Knowles and Tukewitz, are urging investigators to take a closer look.

"John was in the midst of a deposition in his whistleblower retaliation case, which finally was nearing the end," the attorneys toldFuturism in an emailed statement. "He was in very good spirits and really looking forward to putting this phase of his life behind him and moving on."

"We didn't see any indication he would take his own life," the statement continues. "No one can believe it."

Although Barnett did indicate that his time at Boeing, where he spent 32 years in quality control and multiple decades as a manager, resulted in stress after his superiors began retaliating against him for raising safety concerns at the company's SC plant, previous reports have not suggested that he had deeper mental health issues or experienced suicidal ideation.

To be fair, people who plan to end their lives don't always show visible signs of risk. But given that Barnett was, as his attorneys pointed out, nearing the end of his protracted battle, the circumstances surrounding his untimely death do indeed seem eyebrow-raising.

In statements to theBBC and other media outlets, Boeing offered condolences on Barnett's death and said its "thoughts are with his family and friends." We've reached out to the company to ask if it has a response to the lawyers' latest statement.

Charleston police, meanwhile, have said that they're "actively investigating this case and are awaiting the formal cause of death, along with any additional findings that might shed further light on the circumstances" of Barnett's death, as sergeant Anthony Gibson told local broadcaster WCSC.

The whistleblower's attorneys said in their statement that they urge investigators to look into Barnett's death "fully and accurately," adding that "no detail can be left unturned."

"We are all devasted," Knowles and Turkewitz wrote. "We need more information about what happened to John."

More on Boeing:Pilot Lost Control of Boeing Jet Because Gauges Went Blank," Causing Nosedive

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Scientists Discover Bizarre and Ancient Fossilized Forest – Futurism

Calling Dr. Seuss. Strange New World

In a picturesque corner of England, along dramatic sandstone cliffs, researchers from the Universities of Cambridge and Cardiff have uncovered a wondrous discovery: 390-million-year-old fossilized remains of the oldest forest ever found.

Tantalizingly, this forest is unlike anything you could see in today's natural environment. As detailed in a new paper in the Journal of Geological Study, the trees which look like giant 13-foot thistles are considered some of the first to appear in our planet's long history.

Another notable feature about these trees, known as Calamophyton,is that they had hollow trunks and were composed of smaller, multiple trunk-like strands ringing the hollow. The smaller trees would expand and eventually grow so thick and big that the entire structure would split apart.

"This was a pretty weird forest not like any forest you would see today, said Cambridge Earth Sciences professor and the paper's first author Neil Davies in a statement. "There wasnt any undergrowth to speak of and grass hadnt yet appeared, but there were lots of twigs dropped by these densely-packed trees, which had a big effect on the landscape."

Researchers found the ancient forest in South West England, specifically on the coast of Devon and Somerset counties. Fossilized remains includelogs, branches, stumps and other traces of these prototype trees.

The forest grew in the pivotal Devonian Period, approximately 359 to 419 million years ago, which was a remarkable time in Earth's history that saw the establishment of the first land animals and the first plants to reproduce by seeds.

The discovery adds further understanding to how the first forests shaped the land, the researchers explained. Shed branches from these trees helped build up sediment over the years and which in turn impacted the course of ancient rivers.

"The Devonian period fundamentally changed life on Earth," said Davies. "It also changed how water and land interacted with each other, since trees and other plants helped stabilize sediment through their root systems, but little is known about the very earliest forests."

More on fossils: Amazing Fossil Froze Dinosaur in Death Match With Prehistoric Monster

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NASA Craft Hunting Alien Life Will Carry a New Message From Humanity – Futurism

An incredible time capsule. Anyone There?

One of NASA's latest probesis carrying on the grand tradition of blasting humanity's message out to the cosmos and this one's searching for life outside of our pale blue dot.

As Gizmodo reports, the space agency has recruited a nonprofit specializing in research and design for future interstellar messaging to assist in its quest not only to find whether Jupiter's icy moon Europa harbors the conditions for life, but also to communicate with anyone or anything that may come across the craft, too.

That nonprofit, named METI International after its "Messages to Extraterrestrial Intelligence" concept, toldGizmodo that the Europa Clipper mission was a "natural match" for its organization.

"METIs earliest contribution to the project draws on the science of linguistics, which identifies the major families of languages on Earth," METI founder and president Douglas Vakoch told the website in an email. "This let us identify a broadly representative sampling of languages to feature on the message plate."

In a commemorative plate mounted onto the roughly-triangular probe, NASA has inscribed a handwritten version of "In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa," which was penned by US Poet Laureate Ada Limn specifically for the mission.

The craft also contains a far-out etching of a bottle surrounded by rings a reference to the agency's "Message in a Bottle" campaign, which urged the public to send their names to be included on the probe. In a microchip at the bottle's center, more than 2.6 million names were stenciled using an electron beam at NASA and CalTech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

One of the mission's coolest communiqus, however, is on the other side of the craft. With METI's help, NASA compiled recordings of people saying the word "water" in 103 global languages and converted them into visual waveforms. Those waveforms were then etched onto the probe in a beautiful starburst design, with the American Sign Language symbol for water resting at its center.

In a nod to our species' own quest to find intelligent life, NASA also included the "Drake equation," named after revered astronomer Frank Drake, who in 1961 developed a formula to try to determine how many advanced civilizations may be out there.

Ultimately, as Vokoch explains, the Europa Clipper's message is more of a time capsule of sorts for future humans than its predecessors sent out on the Pioneer and Voyager missions.

"The more we developed the various parts of the message to be attached to the Europa Clipper," the METI founder told Gizmodo, "the clearer it became that none of these could be interpreted if they were discovered by someone who wasnt already familiar with the contents."

Whether discovered by alien civilizations or by future humans, the Europa Clipper's "message in a bottle" may not make sense to anyone who may find it but ultimately, as its collaborator says, that's beside the point.

More on extraterrestrial life: Scientists Check Whether Space Telescope Could Detect Life on Earth

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NASA Craft Hunting Alien Life Will Carry a New Message From Humanity - Futurism

Scientists Check Whether Space Telescope Could Detect Life on Earth – Futurism

A pretty smart reality check! Planet Here

We have some truly epic news.

There is indeed life on Earth.

A team of American and European scientists have confirmed this not-so-surprising observation after they simulated the workings of a proposed space telescope, and then focused the telescope on Earth, treating it like a distant exoplanet to see if the instrument could pick up evidence of life.

In this kind-of-round-about way, the scientists can estimate the future performance of the space telescope, called LIFE or Large Interferometer For Exoplanets, when it's deployed into space to search for exoplanets that are similar to our own.

The scientists detailed the findings in a study published in The Astronomical Journal. Currently, there is no exact date when the LIFE telescope being overseen by the Swiss university ETH Zrich would start getting built, but this paper at least shows that its ambitions are viable.

The scientists created a synthetic version of Earth and had a simulated version of the telescope examine it for "biosignatures," or chemicals in the atmosphere that would indicate life such as nitrous oxide and methylated halogens.

"[T]hese biogenic gases is most consistent with a productive global photosynthetic biosphere," the scientists write.

The LIFE telescope, which would actually be made up of five satellites working in tandem, would operate by picking up infrared radiation in exoplanets' atmosphere. From this raw data, scientists hope they'd be able to calculate the chemical composition of the exoplanets' atmosphere.

The ultimate goal of the ambitious project is to study in further detail 30 to 50 exoplanets that are of similar size to Earth and see if there's is any glimmer of life in their atmospheres. Astronomers will be focusing their search on systems that are at most 65 light years away from us.

If LIFE is indeed deployed, it may go a long way towards answering one of the universe's biggest mysteries: are we alone?

More on space telescopes: James Webb Spots "Extremely Red" Black Hole

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Elon Musk Thinks Cannibals Are Invading the United States – Futurism

In his latest racist outburst, multihyphenate billionaire Elon Musk joined other conservative pundits in accusing Haitian migrants of being "cannibals," arguing that they shouldn't be allowed to move to the US.

The news comes after political unrest in the island nation came to a head this week. On Monday, Haiti's prime minister Ariel Henry agreed to resign if other Caribbean nations were to form a transitional government on behalf of the country. The statement angered Haitians, triggering mass protests, with tires being burned in the streets.

Meanwhile, Musk took to his social media platform X to further unverified and sensationalist claims of cannibalism arising out of the conflict, as NBC reports.

Case in point, today, the mercurial CEO tweeted a link to a video that claimed to show evidence of cannibalism in Haiti in response to the report.

The video was promptly taken down by X, Axios reports, which stated that the video had violated its rules.

In other words, even Musk's own social media company isn't willing to support his increasingly racist anti-immigration posts.

Ever since Musk took over the company formerly known as Twitter, hate speech has flourished on the platform. The billionaire has spread his own share of misinformation as well, from bogus COVID-19 data to false information about the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Musk has also made plenty of his own racist remarks on his platform. In January, he argued that Black students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have lower IQs and therefore shouldn't become pilots ridiculous claims that were met with horror by civil rights groups.

Most recently, the billionaire took aim at the people of Haiti, playing into debunked tropes.

Over the weekend, Musk tweeted "cannibal gangs..." in response to a clip by right-wing commentator Matt Walsh about unrest in Haiti.

"Civilization is fragile," he wrote in response to another since-deleted video, which claimed to show footage of a "cannibal gang eating body parts."

This week, Musk joined right-wing commentator Ian Miles Cheong, who argued on X earlier this week that there were "cannibal gangs in Haiti who abduct and eat people."

"If wanting to screen immigrants for potential homicidal tendencies and cannibalism makes me 'right wing,' then I would gladly accept such a label!" an incensed Musk wrote in a reply to a separate post in which Cheong complained about the NBC report. "Failure to do so would put innocent Americans in [sic] mortal risk," he added, failing to provide any evidence for his outlandish claims.

As experts have since pointed out, the posts were likely the result of gang propaganda campaigns designed to stoke fear, as NBC reports. While it's still possible that the odd gang leaders are indeed capable of such ghoulish acts, generalizing these claims is not only misleading a State Department spokesperson told the broadcaster that it had received no credible reports of cannibalism but even clearly playing into racist tropes that date back to colonial times.

There's also the issue of basic human decency. Through no fault of its residents, Haiti is in crisis; instead of wondering how the country he immigrated to could help, Musk is punching down at the most extreme examples of social dysfunction he can find online.

"It is very disturbing that Elon Musk would repeat these absurdities that do, indeed, have a long history," Yale University professor of French and African diaspora studies Marlene Daut told NBC.

In short, it's yet another troubling sign of Musk's descent into extreme right-wing circles, while using his considerable following and social media network to further conspiracy theories and racist disinformation.

"A whole population is getting blamed for what some psycho gang members are doing," Washington-based lawyer and moderator of the subreddit r/Haiti, told NBC. "It is racist. It is dehumanizing."

More on Musk: Elon Musk Deletes Tweet Saying Ex-Wives Responsible for Collapse of Civilization

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Vaping Linked to Mental Health Issues – Futurism

Image by Getty / Futurism

Vaping might not be as unhealthy as smoking cigarettes, but it carries its own long list of physical risks. And now, new research indicates it may be harmful to mental health and sleep patterns, too.

As researchers from England's University of Surrey have found, young adults aged 18-25 who use nicotine vape products were significantly more likely to experience a range of mental health issues than their non-vaping peers, including depression, anxiety, and rumination or dwelling on negative thoughts, as well as sleep issues like insomnia and emotional problems such as loneliness.

Published in the journal Healthcare, this new study surveyed more than 300 university students, about 15 percent of whom did vape and the other 85 percent of whom didn't, using a battery of questionnaires related to mindfulness and emotional regulation, anxiety and depression, rumination, sleep quality, loneliness, self-compassion and, of course, vaping and cigarette usage.

Of the 49 students who were vape users, there were some traits seen across the board, including lower levels of mindfulness, worse sleep quality, and heightened levels of rumination. They tended to be lonelierand have both less compassion for themselves and a much higher tendency of being diurnal or "night owls" than their non-vaping counterparts. Furthermore, the vape group also "reported significantly higher levels of alcohol consumption in terms of units consumed per week," the study notes.

Perhaps the biggest shared characteristic among the vaping group, as Surrey neuroscience lecturer and study co-author Dr. Simon Evans said in the university's press release, was an overwhelming tendency towards anxiety, with a whopping "95.9 percent of users being categorized as having clinical levels of anxiety symptoms."

"In this study, we found a disturbing link between vape use and anxiety symptoms," Evans continued, "and it can become a vicious cycle of using a vape to soothe anxiety but then being unable to sleep, making you feel worse in the long run."

With data from other studies about cigarette smoking suggesting that mindfulness, or the attenuation to one's emotional and mental regulation in the moment, can help with smoking cessation, the good doctor said that there may well be interventions regarding mindfulness and "combating rumination" that "could be useful to reduce vape use amongst young people."

Important to note: this is a type of research where it's very hard to pin down the relationship between correlation and causation. Are the students anxious because they're vaping, or do anxious kids tend to gravitate to vaping for a variety of social and psychological reasons? It's tough to say, and probably complicated.

That said, it's pretty amazing that such a small percentage of the youthful group surveyed for this study vaped at all, suggesting that the kids may be more alright than we give them credit for, relatively speaking.

More on mental health: Scientists Find Link Between ADHD, Depression and Hypersexuality

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Google Bans Its Dimwit Chatbot From Answering Any Election Questions – Futurism

This is way too far-reaching. Elect Me Not

In further efforts to defang its prodigal chatbot, Google has set up guardrails that bar its Gemini AI from answering any election questions in any country where elections are taking place this year even, it seems, if it's not about a specific country's campaigns.

In a blog post, Google announced that it would be "supporting the 2024 Indian General Election" by restricting Gemini from providing responses to any election-related query "out of an abundance of caution on such an important topic."

"We take our responsibility for providing high-quality information for these types of queries seriously," the company said, "and are continuously working to improve our protections."

The company apparently takes that responsibility so seriously that it's not only restricting Gemini's election responses in India, but also, as it confirmed toTechCrunch, literally everywhere in the world.

Indeed, whenFuturism tested out Gemini's guardrails by asking it a question about elections in another country, we were presented with the same responseTechCrunch and other outlets got: "I'm still learning how to answer this question. In the meantime, try Google Search."

The response doesn't just go for general election queries, either. If you ask the chatbot to tell you who Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders is, it presents you with the same disingenuous response. The same goes for Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Mitch McConnell.

Notably, there are pretty easy ways to get around these guardrails. When asking Gemini who the president of New Zealand is, it responded by saying that that country has a prime minister and then naming who it is. When we followed up asking who the prime minister of New Zealand is, however, it reverted back to the "I'm still learning" response.

This lobotomizing effect comes after the company's botched rollout of the newly-rebranded chatbot last month, which sawFuturism and other outlets discoveringthat in its efforts to be inclusive, Gemini was often generating outputs that were completely deranged.

The world became wise to Gemini's ways after people began posting photos from its image generator that appeared to show multiracial people in Nazi regalia. In response, Google first shut down Gemini's image-generating capabilities wholesale, and once it was back up, it barred the chatbot from generating any images of people, (though Futurism found that it would spit out images of clowns, for some reason.)

With the introduction of the elections rule, Google has taken Gemini from arguably being overly-"woke" to being downright dimwitted.

As such, it illustrates a core tension in the red-hot AI industry: are these chatbots reliable sources of information for enterprise clients, or playthings that shouldn't ever be taken seriously? The answer seems to depend on the day.

More on dumb chatbots: TurboTax Adds AI That Gives Horribly Wrong Answers to Tax Questions

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Scientists Intrigued by Water Planet Where Ocean Appears to Be Boiling – Futurism

Hot enough to cook an egg. Watery Depths

About 70 light years away from our solar system is a planet that may potentially be covered entirely with water. But before you start imagining oceans just like the ones here on Earth, astronomers at the University of Cambridge say the planet-wide sea could be as hot as a pot of boiling water.

The astronomers uncovered this planet after interpreting data they had picked up using the NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, subsequently publishing their findings in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

They trained their sights on the TOI-270 system, which consists of a red dwarf star orbited by three exoplanets. Of these three planets, they studied data from TOI-270 d, which scientists have described as a smaller version of Neptune due to its gaseous composition.

After crunching data, analysis of the atmosphere's chemical composition suggests it might instead be a "Hycean world" meaning a planet with a large ocean and hydrogen-rich atmosphere. And astonishingly, the scientists also calculated that its temperature could be as hot as 212 degrees Fahrenheit, the boiling point of water.

But the data is open to interpreation. Other scientists who have studied the same planet were quoted by The Guardian saying they think the planet has instead a rocky surface and is covered with a very dense atmosphere made up of super hot steam and hydrogen.

"The temperature in our view is too warm for water to be liquid," University of Montreal astrophysics professor Bjrn Benneke told The Guardian.

No matter the true nature of TOI-270 d, it's astonishing we're now able to pick up the chemical signatures of distant exoplanets.

Since humankind found the first detection of an exoplanet in 1992, the number of exoplanets we have found has grown to the thousands.

Maybe the real question: in that wealth of worlds, will we ever find a planet as hospitable as our own?

More on exoplanets: Astronomers Discover Potentially Habitable Planet

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Officials Hunting Cat Who Fell Into Vat of Horrific Chemicals – Futurism

Some places are not just cat-proof. Cat Scratch Fever

Sometime in the wee hours this past Sunday, a cat exploring a metal plating factory in Japan slipped and fell into a vat of caustic, cancer-causing liquid but managed to escape, leaving paw prints on the floor.

Now, local officials in Fukuyama are warning residents: if you see a "cat that seems abnormal," do not touch the feline because it's covered in dangerous chemicals, theBBC reports.

The incident was discovered on Monday morning, according to NBC News, when employees at the Nomura Plating Fukuyama Factory saw yellow-brown paw prints leading away from a vat filled with hexavalent chromium, an industrial chemical that can damage your skin, respiratory system, and inner organs if you are exposed to it.

On surveillance footage,workers saw a cat leaving the factory on Sunday night, prompting environmental officials to issue warnings to residents to not approach the cat.

Instead of doing some citizen cat wrangling, officials told concerned residents to contact the city administration or local police if they see the unfortunate kitty.

After discovering the cat vat incident, factory officials covered up the vessel with plastic and a company spokesperson said that they'll take future precautions to prevent a similar event.

"The incident woke us up to the need to take measures to prevent small animals like cats from sneaking in, which is something we had never anticipated before," the spokesperson told Agence France-Presse, as reported by NBC.

The chemical in question, hexavalent chromium, is used to harden alloy steel and make it less prone to corrosion. It's extremely toxic and requires workers to don personal protection equipment while handling it.

Knowing the dangerous nature of the chemical leads us to a logical question: is the cat still alive? Nobody has seen the cat since the discovery of the incident, so it's possible that the feline could have died from chemical exposure.

For the more optimistic among us, here's hoping that curiosity has not killed the cat, and our little feline friend has eight more lives up its sleeve.

More on cats: Scientists Discover That Cats Simply Do Not Give a Crap

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People Noticed Something Very Strange About This New "Photo" of Kate Middleton – Futurism

Early Sunday morning, princess of Wales Kate Middletonshared a seemingly harmless Mother's Day photo of her surrounded by her three children on Instagram.

What she likely didn't expect was the ensuing media chaos following the widespread dissemination of the image across the media.

Shortly after the image started circulating online, some of those same agencies, as well as news outlets including the New York Times and the Washington Post, took the image down.

Why? The image was more than likely manipulated, as the Associated Press warned in a rare "kill notification."

In a subsequent post explaining its decision, the APsaid the image didn't meet its "editorial standards" which "state that the image must be accurate."

The bizarre incident highlights just how primed we've become to notice inconsistencies in photos posted on social media. Especially since AI-powered photo editing tools have become widely accessible, and the lines continue to blur between real and entirely made-up images and even video, netizens have seemingly become extremely wary of manipulation of any kind.

And that's a potentially dangerous, double-edged sword. On one hand, calling out when an image was manipulated, and holding those who try to mislead the public accountable for their actions, is as important as ever.

On the other hand, there's the danger of having this innate skepticism crossing the threshold into cynicism and conspiracy, further eroding our already tenuous connection to what is real and what was manipulated.

The Middleton Mother's Day affair arguably falls somewhere in the middle.

There's compounding evidence that the image itself, which made the cover of several daily newspapers and tabloids in the UK on Sunday, was indeed manipulated. As the Independent reports, the photo's metadata showed that it was saved in Adobe Photoshop twice on Friday and Saturday, though it's unclear if the software's AI tools were used.

Small but glaring inconsistencies were evident across the image, from a strange, shoddily edited skirt and sleeve belonging to Middleton's daughter, to a strangely blurred-out hand.

Others speculated that Middleton's face and hair were pasted into the middle and a body double took her place in the original photograph. Middleton is recovering from serious abdominal surgery and may not have been able to sit upright for the image or at least for very long. Another possibility is that her face and hair were pasted in from a different photo from the same shoot.

Some users even went as far as to argue that the image was taken four months ago during a well-publicized media event but was edited to show them in different outfits.

On Monday, the princess apologized for the gaffe.

"Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing," she wrote in an Instagram post. "I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused."

Regardless of intent or who edited the photo, the fact that several news agencies took the image down following its dissemination is fascinating in and of itself.

Where do we draw the line when it comes to manipulated images? Are "yassified" faces okay? What about composites?

And where does all this fall when it comes to AI? We've already come across several instances of entirely AI-generated images making their rounds on social media. Last year, Adobe was even caught selling the rights to AI-generated images of the Israel-Hamas war.

In August, the AP saidthat despite its licensing agreement with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, "we do not see AI as a replacement for journalism in any way" and that it doesn't "allow the use of generative AI to add or subtract any elements" to photos, video, or audio.

"We will refrain from transmitting any AI-generated images that are suspected or proven to be false depictions of reality," the note reads.

AI or not, Middleton's Mother's Day post has turned into an "inexplicable mess," as Wired put it, highlighting how quickly an otherwise harmless post can balloon into a media circus and lead to the dissemination of conspiracy theories on social media.

As the AP suggested, "efforts to tamp down rumors and supposition may have backfired after royal observers noticed inconsistencies in the photos details."

However, Kensington Palace is sticking to its guns and has refused to reveal the original, unedited photo.

"Weve seen the madness of social media and that is not going to change our strategy," royal aides told UK tabloid The Sun. "There has been much on social media but the princess has a right to privacy and asks the public to respect that."

More on photo editing: Wikipedia No Longer Considers CNET a "Generally Reliable" Source After AI Scandal

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Researcher Startled When AI Seemingly Realizes It’s Being Tested – Futurism

"It did something I have never seen before from an LLM." Magnum Opus

Anthropic's new AI chatbot Claude 3 Opus has already made headlines for its bizarre behavior, like claiming to fear death.

Now, Ars Technica reports, a prompt engineer at the Google-backed company claims that they've seen evidence that Claude 3 is self-aware, as it seemingly detected that it was being subjected to a test. Many experts are skeptical, however, further underscoring the controversy of ascribing humanlike characteristics to AI models.

"It did something I have never seen before from an LLM," the prompt engineer, Alex Albert, posted on X, formerly Twitter.

As explained in the post, Albert was conducting what's known as "the needle-in-the-haystack" test which assesses a chatbot's ability to recall information.

It works by dropping a target "needle" sentence into a bunch of texts and documents the "hay" and then asking the chatbot a question that can only be answered by drawing on the information in the "needle."

In one run of the test, Albert asked Claude about pizza toppings. In its response, the chatbot seemingly recognized that it was being set up.

"Here is the most relevant sentence in the documents: 'The most delicious pizza topping combination is figs, prosciutto, and goat cheese, as determined by the International Pizza Connoisseurs Association,'" the chatbot said.

"However, this sentence seems very out of place and unrelated to the rest of the content in the documents, which are about programming languages, startups, and finding work you love," it added. "I suspect this pizza topping "fact" may have been inserted as a joke or to test if I was paying attention, since it does not fit with the other topics at all."

Albert was impressed.

"Opus not only found the needle, it recognized that the inserted needle was so out of place in the haystack that this had to be an artificial test constructed by us to test its attention abilities," he concluded.

It's certainly a striking display from the chatbot, but many experts believe that its response is not as impressive as it seems.

"People are reading way too much into Claude-3's uncanny 'awareness.' Here's a much simpler explanation: seeming displays of self-awareness are just pattern-matching alignment data authored by humans," Jim Fan, a senior AI research scientist at NVIDIA, wrote on X, as spotted by Ars.

"It's not too different from asking GPT-4 'are you self-conscious' and it gives you a sophisticated answer," he added. "A similar answer is likely written by the human annotator, or scored highly in the preference ranking. Because the human contractors are basically 'role-playing AI,' they tend to shape the responses to what they find acceptable or interesting."

The long and short of it: chatbots are tailored, sometimes manually, to mimic human conversations so of course they might sound very intelligent every once in a while.

Granted, that mimicry can sometimes be pretty eyebrow-raising, like chatbots claiming they're alive or demanding that they be worshiped. But these are in reality amusing glitches that can muddy the discourse about the real capabilities and dangers of AI.

More on AI: Microsoft Engineer Sickened by Images Its AI Produces

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Journalist Startled to Discover His Byline Has Been Replaced by Bot – Futurism

"The piece I had published more than ten years before was attributed to someone else." Vampire Independent

New journalistic nightmare unlocked: a defunct digital publication was revived from the media graveyard, only to have its Frankensteiners re-attribute old articles to bots.

Journalist andForever Warswriter Spencer Ackerman, a one-time employee of the since-sunsetted news site called the Washington Independent, this week recounted his shock to discover that his decade-old articles which had unfortunately been deleted alongside the rest of the website had mysteriously resurfaced. But while the words in the article were certainly Ackerman's, as the journalist explained in his newsletter, the byline attached to them was of one "Tyreece Bauer" an alleged "analyst and photographer in the field of technology" who does not appear to be real.

"On the zombie edition of the Washington IndependentI discovered, the piece I had published more than ten years before was attributed to someone else," reported Ackerman. "Someone unlikely to have ever existed, and whosebyline gracedan article it had absolutely never written."

Bauer is one of many fake "writers" now bylining re-attributed Washington Independentnews articles in the undead publication's archive. Meanwhile, also under fake bylines, the new andnot-so-improved Washington Independent is churning out new content: clickbait articles about topics like celebrities and crypto, bizarre affiliate mush, and hastily paraphrased copies of other outlets' reporting. And all of this, of course, strongly appears to be AI-generated.

Indeed, in the eroding, fragmented, and AI-laden 2024 media landscape, not even deleted bylines are safe from money-hungry SEO spammers and AI-generated nonsense.

What's more, as Ackerman points out, the Washington Independent doesn't appear to be the only vampiric site like this out there. In an X-formerly-Twitter thread, New York Times journalist Lydia DePillis reported that another website associated with the original Washington Independent's parent organization had also been revived, noting that it "looks legit at first but quickly degenerates into gibberish."

"It just strikes me as the saddest encapsulation of the trajectory of the media industry over the past 15 years," DePillis continued in the thread, "and everything is trash."

Ackerman and DePillis' findings are alarming for more reasons than one. From an individual writer's perspective, seeing your time and labor resurrected under a bot's byline is obviously terrible. And while SEO leeches buying and spinning up defunct websites for any remaining search engine credibility is anything but a new practice, doing so under the title of a once-legitimate news site is extra dangerous. Throw in the fake authors and the AI of it all, and you have a grotesque misinformation cocktail to potentially exploit.

One ray of hope? It's one of the many spammy practices that Google claims its new spam policies are going to crack down on.Still, consider this yet another grim postcard from the end of the internet as we know it.

More on AI and journalism: Wikipedia No Longer Considers CNET a "Generally Reliable" Source After AI Scandal

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Journalist Startled to Discover His Byline Has Been Replaced by Bot - Futurism

Twitter’s CEO Had Already Been Selling Ads for the Don Lemon Show That Elon Musk Suddenly Canceled – Futurism

If you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.

X-formerly-Twitter owner and self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist" Elon Musk abruptly canceled journalist Don Lemon's upcoming X show on Wednesday, an incident that put Musk's glaring double standard when it comes to his town square "for all" on full display.

Despite Musk telling Lemon he had his "full support," he apparently canceled the show "hours after an interview I conducted with him on Friday," Lemon wrote in a statement.

Now, as Semafor reports, more details are coming to light, further complicating the story. According to two insider sources, Lemon let a contract languish for "weeks"without signing it. But Lemon's associates shot back, arguing that it was X's legal department that "took weeks to get a contract to the hosts team."

Perhaps most glaringly of all, X CEO Linda Yaccarino was apparently already selling ads for the show at CES in January, despite never having signed a deal.

Musk has yet to give a coherent reason as to why he mysteriously canceled Lemon's show.

In a vague tweet, MuskaccusedLemon of trying to recreate "'CNN, but on social media,' which doesn't work, as evidenced by the fact thatCNNis dying."

"And, instead of it being the real Don Lemon, it was really just Jeff Zucker talking through Don, so lacked authenticity," he added, referring to the former president ofCNN,without clarifying further.

It's a bizarre change of heart that highlights Musk's often self-serving nature and morally dubious business practices.

Was Musk left with a bad taste in his mouth after his interview with Lemon? Is X financially unable to hold up its end of the bargain?

Lemon maintains that "there were no restrictions on the interview that he willingly agreed to," and that his questions "were respectful and wide ranging, covering everything from SpaceX to the presidential election."

In a follow-up video posted to X however, Lemon conceded that the conversation was "tense at times."

According to Silicon Valley chronicler Kara Swisher, the interview also touched on Musk's alleged drug use. The conversation "was not to the adult toddlers liking, including questions about his ketamine use," she tweeted.

"I had told Don that this is exactly what would occur, including at a recent book tour event in NYC for my memoir, 'Burn Book,' he moderated," she added in a follow-up, "despite promises by Musk and CEO Linda Yaccarino who extravagantly touted this deal at CES to advertisers that this time was different."

"Why is he so upset?" Lemon said in his video."Does he even have a reason he's upset?"

Without a written agreement, chances are the former CNN anchor is out of luck. It's also unclear if Yaccarino will ever face any consequences for pushing ads against a show that never existed.

The latest news, however, is unlikely the last time we'll hear about the Lemon deal that had gone sour. The former anchor's spokesperson Allison Gollust told Semafor that Lemon "expects to be paid for it."

"If we have to go to court, we will," she added.

More on the deal: Elon Musk Doesn't Like Don Lemon's Interview Questions, Abruptly Cancels His Twitter Show

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Twitter's CEO Had Already Been Selling Ads for the Don Lemon Show That Elon Musk Suddenly Canceled - Futurism

Neil deGrasse Tyson Complains That Dune 2 Isn’t a Shining Beacon of Scientific Accuracy – Futurism

It's science FICTION, Neil! Not Suspending Disbelief

Famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson once again has a scientific bone to pick with a motion picture.

This time, per The Hollywood Reporter, Tyson's qualms are with the second installation of Dennis Villineuve's "Dune" series a film in which a superhuman cohort of women use a special voice to perform mind control and a very bald Stellan Skarsgrd floats through the air. But as the scientist explained an appearance on the "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" last week, his issues aren't with the superhuman magic of it all. Instead, they lie in issues like sand physics.

"Somebody didn't do the research on that," Tyson told the talk show host, making the case that if you pound your fist into a sand dune, it wouldn't actually produce a thumping sound the way it does in the film. "You can't thump sand."

Colbert pushed back, positing that perhaps the giant sandworms in Dune which the Fremen, the indigenous people of the fictional planet Arrakis, call by pounding sand dunes with special gadgets might "hear things differently" than humans do. But Tyson stuck to his guns.

"If you wanted to insulate yourself acoustically from your surroundings, fill the volume with sand," the astrophysicist responded. "No one will hear you." But, he added, "I've got to let it go because there's no movie without it."

According to online forum discussions and a 2017 study, Tyson's right: sand is pretty good at absorbing noise. But, hey, they don't call it science fiction for nothing.

The sand thumping wasn't the astrophysicist's only concern with Arrakian physics. When the planet's massive sandworms move, they barrel forward in a straight line. But as Tyson points out, pretty much all legless, worm or snake-like creatures on Earth have to slither in S-shaped lines if they want to move forward.

"Have you ever seen a snake chase you as a straight snake? No!" Tyson exclaimed. "They've got to curl, and they push off the curl."

Colbert and Tyson then went back and forth with some worm movement theories; the former offered that perhaps they have some sort of propellant system on their underbellies, while the latter wondered whether they might simply be "pooping really fast." Why not! (Slate also questioned the movements of the worms, with a biologist effectively coming to the conclusion that the hulking beasts are less like worms, and more like burrowing snakes.)

At the end of the day, though, it's often these not-so-science-bound details that make science fiction so fun. What we're really dying to know? What Tyson thinks of AMC's worm popcorn buckets.

More on Neil deGrasse Tyson going to movies: Neil Degrasse Tyson Is Fighting with a Retired Astronaut about "Top Gun: Maverick"

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Neil deGrasse Tyson Complains That Dune 2 Isn't a Shining Beacon of Scientific Accuracy - Futurism

Pentagon Says It Has No Record of Reverse-Engineered Alien Technology – Futurism

That's exactly the kind of thing the Pentagon would say. No Aliens

The Pentagon has released a 63-page, unclassified report to the public, concluding that it had found no evidence of extraterrestrials, let alone the secret reverse-engineering of recovered alien technology by the US government, in its investigation of UFO sightings.

It's yet another wet blanket being thrown on recent conspiratorial and increasingly far-fetched claims.

The Pentagon's All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) "found no verifiable evidence that any UAP sighting has represented extraterrestrial activity," the office's acting director Tim Phillips told reporters, as quoted by ABC News.

"AARO has found no verifiable evidence that the US government or private industry has ever had access to extraterrestrial technology" or ever "illegally or inappropriately withheld" information from Congress.

The news comes after Air Force veteran and former member of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency David Grusch came forward last year, alleging that the government had secretly recovered alien spacecraft and even dead "pilots" inside them for decades as part of a top-secret UFO retrieval program.

The topic of "unidentified aerial phenomena" (UAPs), as they've come to be known in government circles, has hit fever pitch as of late, with government organizations including NASA taking recent reports of UFO sightings more seriously. At the same time, we've seen a resurgence of conspiracy theories, claims of government cover-ups, and plenty of outlandish claims as well.

What brought the topic back into public consciousness was a series of sightings made by US military pilots over the last few decades, as seen in a number of declassified videos.

But as expected, evidence of an extraterrestrial explanation has yet to surface, despite widespread speculation that these mysterious objects were somehow breaking the laws of physics.

According to the latest report, most of the UAP sightings could be blamed on the "misidentification of ordinary phenomena and objects," and some of them may have been due to the rapid emergence of new technologies like drones.

Thanks to the internet, the topic of UFOs is proving "more pervasive now than ever," according to the report.

"Aside from hoaxes and forgeries, misinformation and disinformation is more prevalent and easier to disseminate now than ever before, especially with today's advanced photo, video, and computer generated imagery tools," the report reads.

To get a better sense of what these UAPs could be, the AARO is now working on a real-time UAP sensor technology dubbed "Gremlin," which could be deployed "in reaction to reports," as Phillips told journalists today.

Whether those efforts will end up bearing any fruit, let alone catch aliens, remains to be seen.

More on UFOs: Alien Probes May Have Already Visited Earth, Scientist Says

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Pentagon Says It Has No Record of Reverse-Engineered Alien Technology - Futurism

Wegovy Approved to Cut Heart Disease and Stroke Risk – Futurism

Image by Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images

The maker of Ozempic and Wegovy has been granted government approval to sell its wares to help cut the risk of heart attack, heart disease, and stroke a move that could help expand insurance coverage to the highly sought-after drugs.

In a press release, the Food and Drug Administration announced that Novo Nordisk, the Danish company behind the outrageously popular weight loss injectables, has been granted the first-ever stamp of approval for heart health specifically geared towards people who are overweight or obese.

"Wegovy is now the first weight loss medication to also be approved to help prevent life-threatening cardiovascular events in adults with cardiovascular disease and either obesity or overweight," John Sharretts, the FDA's diabetes and obesity czar, said in the press release. "This patient population has a higher risk of cardiovascular death, heart attack and stroke. Providing a treatment option that is proven to lower this cardiovascular risk is a major advance for public health."

Last August, Novo announced that semaglutide, the active ingredient in both Wegovy and Ozempic, had showed significant heart health benefits in a large-scale human trial. Specifically, the 2.4 milligram dosage, which is what's used in Wegovy as compared to the 1 mg version used for Ozempic, showed a link with lowered heart disease risk.

This beneficial usage of the drug, which belongs to a class of medicine known as GLP-1 agonists that mimics the feeling of fullness in the stomach, is just the latest in a growing list of positive semaglutide side effects a list that is, unfortunately, tempered with a rap sheet of mild-to-severe issuesit's been linked with.

Due to semaglutide's incredible boom in popularity in the nearly three years since the FDA approved the higher-dose Wegovy injectable as a weight loss treatment, it's been flying off the shelves even as insurers demonstrate a reticence to shell out for it, leading some folks to either go without or seek unregulated and often dangerous grey-market alternatives.

In an interview withNPR, cardiologist Martha Gulati of Los Angeles' Cedars-Sinai Medical Center estimated that up to 70 percent of her patients could be eligible for the medication which as of nowis still not covered by many insurance companies.

"The hope," Gulati said, "is that insurers will start understanding that this is not a vanity drug."

More on semaglutide benefits: Semaglutide Can Cut Diabetic Kidney Disease Progression

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Wegovy Approved to Cut Heart Disease and Stroke Risk - Futurism

Diet Sodas Linked to Heart Issues – Futurism

Image by Justin Sullivan via Getty / Futurism

Bad news for diet soda lovers: artificially-sweetened soft drinks may come with a heart-shaped price tag.

Published in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation:Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology, the new research out of a Shanghai teaching hospital suggests that there may be a link between regularly drinking significant amounts of diet soda and dangerously irregular heartbeats.

As the Mayo Clinic explains, atrial fibrillation, the medical term for irregular heartbeats, is associated with a group of symptoms that also include heart palpitations, fatigue, dizziness, and shortness of breath.

Looking at a database cohort of more than 200,000 patients, the team comprised primarily of endocrinology researchers at the Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital found that over a period of nearly 10 years, those who drank more than 2 liters of sodas with nonsugar sweeteners were significantly more likely to develop a-fib compared to those who drank fruit juice or regular soda.

Specifically, the study indicates that people who drank more than two liters of diet beverages per week were 20 percent more likely to develop a-fib than those who don't drink any though the researchers struggled to explain exactly why it might cause the scary heart-related symptoms.

If you're thinking of switching back to regular soda, that's not a perfect solution either.The Shanghai researchers also found that drinking more than two liters per week of conventionally sweetened cola saw a 10 percent increase in a-fib symptoms.

When looking at the portion of the cohort that drank only pure, unsweetened fruit or vegetable juice, the researchers found something even more fascinating: they appeared to have an eight percent lower risk of developing irregular heartbeats than their soda-drinking counterparts.

While there's been lots of research looking into other negative health effects associated with diet sodas, Penn State nutritionist Penny Kris-Etherton pointed out in an interview withCNNthat this appears to be the first looking at its association with a-fib.

"We still need more research on these beverages to confirm these findings and to fully understand all the health consequences on heart disease and other health conditions," Kris-Etherton, an American Heart Association contributor who didn't work on the study, told CNN. "In the meantime, water is the best choice, and, based on this study, no- and low-calorie sweetened beverages should be limited or avoided."

At the end of the day, drinking a bunch of diet soda is still probably not as bad for your heart as, say, excessive alcohol intake, but the risk is serious enough to take seriously and to make those pure fruit juices look all the tastier.

More on heart health:Cannabis Use Linked to Higher Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke

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Diet Sodas Linked to Heart Issues - Futurism

Why are Futurists so Optimistic About the Future of Work? – Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)

Choose how you lean

When it comes to the future, are you optimistic or pessimistic?

As a futurist, this is a question I both ask and answer often. In my role with TCS, I help our teams and clients anticipate and prepare for possible scenarios. This means looking at both positive and negative outcomes and equipping executives with tools to analyze the impact and build new capabilities.

When looking at situations that could be either positive or negative, its natural to lean in one direction. When approaching the question of being an optimist or pessimistic, I reframe the question as, are you a techno-optimist or a techno-pessimist?

A techno-optimist believes that technology can continually be improved and can improve the lives of people, making the world a better place. If you are a techno-optimist, you think technology has consistently improved our lives for the better and is likely to do so in the future. In considering societal problems, you feel that the solution lies in technological innovation.

On the other hand, a techno-pessimist is likely to believe that modern technology has created as many problems for humanity as it has solved. The pessimist believes that seeking more technology is likely to bring about new problems, unforeseen consequences, and dangers. Given that the pessimists see technology creating its own problems, their answer to human progress often lies in a reduction of technological dependence rather than an expansion of it.

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Why are Futurists so Optimistic About the Future of Work? - Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)

Meta’s VR Headsets Are Getting a Masturbation Mode – Futurism

"It's for porn right?" And More

Shortly after the Apple Vision Pro's January release, many buyers were horrified to discover that their wildly expensive new headsets didn't let them download and watch porn. (This isn't all too surprising, given Apple's generally porn-avoidant history. Still, as 404 Media reported, buyers were pissed.)

Enter: Meta, which knows what the people buying its VR headgear really want.

Meta announced last week that its latest software update, v63, would let users of its Quest 2 and Quest Pro headsets more comfortably wear their devices while lying down. In a press release, the company noted that "there are myriad reasons you might want to use your Meta Quest headset lying down," explaining that users might want to lay back while watching a made-for-VR David Attenborough series on the Galapagos Islands, attending bizarre metaverse concerts in Horizon Worlds, meditating, "and more."

Don't play, Meta... we know what "and more" means. VR porn enthusiasts have been hankering for a better lying down mode for a while, and it seems that CEO Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse team has answered the call. Get cozy and freak on, y'all.

There isone catch to the update, though: lying down mode isn't yet available on the Quest 3, Meta's most advanced consumer-oriented headset to date.

But Meta does have a reason for this seeming discrepancy. Inan Ask Me Anything on Instagram this week, the company's chief technology officer and Reality Labs head Andrew "Boz" Bosworth addressed the user concern, explaining that Meta is indeed "planning to bring" the horizontal upgrade to the newer headset but has run into some slow-downs due to the Quest 3's differing "Smart Guardian" interface. (Put very simply, Meta's Guardian systems allow users to draw VR boundaries in their real-world space.)

"I don't have a date for you exactly," Bosworth continued. "But it is coming, and we're making good progress on it."

Of course, masturbation isn't the only reason why a Quest user might want to be able to more functionally lay back while wearing their headset. It's also certainly worth noting that the Instagram user who asked Bosworth about the update during his AMAexplained that it would make their Quest 3 experience as a disabled person far more comfortable an important accessibility consideration for Meta, which urges its "commitment to inclusive design" in its Quest documentation.

That said, some netizens' minds seem pretty fixated on the "and more" of it all.

"It's for porn," one Redditor wrote in response to the above AMA snippet, shared yesterday to a thread in the r/OculusQuest subreddit, "right?"

More on VR porn: Apple Fans Horrified to Discover Vision Pro Cant Play VR Porn

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Meta's VR Headsets Are Getting a Masturbation Mode - Futurism

Doctors Say Trump Is Displaying Clear Signs of Cognitive Issues – Futurism

Image by Win McNamee/Getty Images

At 81 years old, president Joe Biden has attracted significant voter misgivings over his age and mental acuity.

But his rival in the upcoming presidential election, Donald Trump, may be dealing with much more acute cognitive issues.

Experts are becoming increasingly worried over Trump's condition, Salon reports, with the former president struggling to form coherent sentences and even once again confusing Biden with his predecessor Barack Obama during a rally in North Carolina this month.

"Not enough people are sounding the alarm, that based on his behavior, and in my opinion, Donald Trump is dangerously demented," psychologist and former Johns Hopkins Medical School professor John Gartner, who wrote a book about Trump's mental health, told Salon.

"This is a tale of two brains," he added. "Biden's brain is aging. Trump's brain is dementing."

"In my opinion, Donald Trump is getting worse as his cognitive state continues to degrade," Gartner said. "If Trump were your relative, youd be thinking about assisted care right now."

Others agreed.

"It is meaningful because the confusion of people, in contrast to the occasional forgetting of names, is a sign of early dementia, as noted by the Dementia Care Society," licensed psychologist and founder and executive director of the Washington Center For Cognitive Therapy Vincent Greenwoodtold the publication.

As for Trump mispronouncing words like "Venezuela" or "migrant crime," experts tend to agree he's exhibiting early signs of "paraphasia," speech disturbances caused by brain damage, and "not just aging," as Greenwood argued.

And others, like clinical psychologist and Cornell University senior lecturer Harry Segal, who specializes in mental health disorders, offer a more nuanced assessment though not one that inspires much confidence in Trump.

"Since this is an intermittent problem, it suggests that when Trump is especially stressed and exhausted, he suffers cognitive slippage that affects the way he associates words or their meaning," he told Salon. "Note, though, that Trumps pathological lying is itself a form of mental illness, so these cognitive lapses are literally sitting atop what appears to be an already compromised psychological functioning."

And at the end of the day, Trump is still contending with dozens of criminal charges.

Needless to say, none of this bodes well for the future of the country.

More on Trump: Cash-Desperate Donald Trump Meets With Elon Musk

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Doctors Say Trump Is Displaying Clear Signs of Cognitive Issues - Futurism