Brexit and Covid put these Beara cheesemakers on the brink after 48 years. Here’s how they survived and thrived – Irish Independent

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Quinlan Steeles parents started making Milleens cheese in a saucepan in their kitchen in 1975, using milk from their dairy herd. They used to export all over the world but the pandemic nearly destroyed the business and they turned things round by focusing exclusively on the Irish market

Quinlan Steele inspecting some of the newly made Milleens cheese on his family farm on the Beara Peninsula before it is packaged and distributed. Photos: Don MacMonagle

Its almost half a century since the Steele family made their first batch of Milleens cheese in a pot on their kitchen stove on West Corks Beara Peninsula.

Norman and Veronica had been milking a small herd of dairy cows on their farm in Eyeries and found themselves with some excess milk.

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Brexit and Covid put these Beara cheesemakers on the brink after 48 years. Here's how they survived and thrived - Irish Independent

Parthenon Marbles should be returned to Greece, says ex-Brexit minister – Yahoo News UK

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Lord David Frost argued the ancient sculptures housed in the British Museum were 'a special situation' (Image: PA)

THE UK should hand back the disputed Parthenon Marbles to Greece in a grand gesture, former Brexit minister Lord Frost has said.

The Conservative peer argued the ancient sculptures housed in the British Museum were a special situation which required a special solution.

Cautioning against a loan to Athens which keeps the issue and the arguments alive, he pressed for a permanent settlement with the formation of a new Anglo-Greek cultural partnership to the benefit of both nations.

He was speaking during a debate in the House of Lords after Rishi Sunak sparked a diplomatic row with Greece by refusing to meet Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, when he compared the artefacts removal with cutting the Mona Lisa in half.

READ MORE:Neal Ascherson: 'Elgin Marbles' and British Empire's racist history

Greece has long demanded the return of the historic works, which were removed by Lord Elgin from occupied Athens in the early 19th century when he was the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.

Part of friezes that adorned the 2500-year-old Parthenon temple on the Acropolis, the ParthenonMarbles have been displayed at the British Museum in London for more than 200 years.

Most of the remaining sculptures are in a purpose-built museum in Athens.

Lord Frost, who previously served as chief Brexit negotiator, told Parliament: I do think that Lord Elgins actions possibly were a little murky, but I do think nevertheless our legal case is good. I also think its not the point. The point is what we do now rather than what happened in the past.

I have never personally been so convinced by the moral, artistic and cultural arguments for the position we take. I think the Parthenon Marbles are a special situation and we should try and find a special solution.

They arent just random museum exhibits. For as long as they are not seen as a whole they are less than the sum of their parts.

Lord Frost, who learned Greek in Greece and has lived in Cyprus, said: For Greece they are part of the national identity, they are a national cultural cause.

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As we saw from the, I am afraid, slightly dismissive treatment of Prime Minister Mitsotakis the other week they do have the capacity to disrupt a relationship that really ought to be a lot better than it is.

READ MORE:Top SNP MSP calls out Scottish estate over its private 'Elgin Marbles'

I do also wonder whether a loan is the right way forward. I admit I am slightly unconvinced by it.

It seems like a solution that has been shaped by the existence of the 1963 Act which rightly prohibits the museum from alienating its collections, and I am afraid nowadays that is a very necessary protection against the tendencies of too many museum curators.

But the problem with a loan is that it keeps the issue and the arguments alive. I think we should try and settle this for good.

My personal view on this is that it is time for a grand gesture and only the Government can make it. It is to offer to return the marbles as a one-off gift to Greece from this country, but as part of and on condition of a new wider Anglo-Greek cultural partnership.

He added: Such a partnership would have to definitively set aside for good the rights and wrongs of the individual acquisition. It would also have to be clear it wasnt a precedent for restitution demands for any other museum exhibit.

But it would show that we actually mean it when we see these marbles as part of our common inheritance, that we can move beyond the what we have we hold approach we take on so many occasions.

Perhaps we could rise to the occasion this time.

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Parthenon Marbles should be returned to Greece, says ex-Brexit minister - Yahoo News UK

The new UK short selling regime: another step away from the EU post-Brexit – Freshfields Transactions

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HM Treasury published, on 22 November 2023, a draft of the Short Selling Regulations 2024 (SSR 2024), along with a policy note. The draft statutory instrument (SI) is intended to establish a new regulatory framework to replace the retained Short Selling Regulation (the UK SSR), which was based on Regulation (EU) 236/2012 (the EU SSR) and incorporated into UK law by the European Union (Withdrawal Act) 2018. This represents another step in the UK governments programme of financial services regulatory reform following the UKs exit of the European Union.

Short selling is the practice of selling a security that is borrowed or not owned by the seller with the intention of repurchasing it later at a lower price to make a profit. The EU SSR was introduced to respond to concerns regarding the short selling of shares in financial institutions and of euro area sovereign debt, as well as a lack of information and transparency to the market and authorities with regard to the effect of short selling on prices and ultimately, financial stability.

Pursuant to the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 (FSMA 2023), the UK SSR will be repealed on a date yet to be determined. In December 2022, HM Treasury launched a call for evidence in which it sought views on the new regulatory framework to replace the UK SSR. The call for evidence closed in March 2023, and the government published its response in July 2023. HM Treasury ran a separate consultation in July 2023 on aspects of the UK SSR related to sovereign debt and credit default swaps (CDS), and published its response to that consultation alongside the draft SI.

The key highlights of the SI include provisions relating to:

1.Scope

The SI defines short selling as a designated activity, which will give the FCA a range of rulemaking, supervisory and enforcement powers with respect to short selling, including by firms that are not subject to FCA authorisation. Further, it requires the FCA to publish a list of shares to which certain rules apply and empowers the FCA to exempt shares from certain notification and other requirements.

2. FCA rule-making powers

The SI empowers the FCA to make rules requiring short sellers of shares to comply with certain conditions or requirements, such as imposing restrictions on uncovered short selling to protect against settlement risks.

3.Disclosure

The initial notification threshold for net short positions has been set at 0.2%. The SI empowers the FCA to set out certain elements of the net short position notification regime, such as detailing how to calculate a net short position and when a notification is required. It also requires the FCA to aggregate and publish net short positions notified on any working day in respect of the issued share capital of a company.

4. Market maker exemption

The SI provides the FCA with the power to exempt market making activities and stabilisation from certain short selling requirements. The exemption will be available to members of UK trading venues and trading venues in other jurisdictions for which HM Treasury has made a determination. The existing equivalence determination for the EEA will remain in place for a transitional period.

5. Emergency powers

The SI gives the FCA the power to intervene in exceptional circumstances, such as requiring notifications of short positions or lending fees, prohibiting or imposing conditions on short sales, or restricting short selling after a significant fall in the price of a financial instrument. The FCA can exercise these powers where it considers that there is a threat to financial stability or in order to prevent a disorderly decline in the price of a financial instrument, and the benefits of an intervention outweigh the detrimental impact of such an intervention on financial markets.

The FCA must publish a notice of any decision to exercise these emergency powers, and it must review any requirement, prohibition, condition or restriction on a regular basis. The SI also requires the FCA to publish a statement of policy on how it considers it will use these intervention powers.

Differences between the UK SSR and the SSR 2024

Generally,the overarching framework relating to short selling remains unchanged between the UK SSR and the SSR 2024. The core definitions and requirements remain largely the same.

The SSR 2024 will reinstate the original requirement for firms to notify the FCA of net short positions above 0.2% of issued share capital. This threshold was lowered to 0.1% in 2021 in response to market uncertainty caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The government has laid a separate statutory instrument that will increase the threshold in the UK SSR to 0.2% from 5 February 2024.

In line with the wider changes introduced as part of the UKs post-Brexit strategy, the SSR 2024 aims to build on the governments approach to build a Smarter Regulatory Framework for financial services. Under the new regime, detailed rules will be set by the FCA in its Handbook within a legislative framework as opposed to the detailed rules being set out in legislation. These regulatory reforms are intended to achieve greater flexibility and adaptability.

Another difference between the two regimes is that the SSR 2024 provides for a broader scope of shares traded on a UK trading venue and related instruments to be covered by the FCAs rules, whereas the UK SSR exempts shares that are principally traded outside the UK from certain requirements. The FCA will have the power to exempt shares from requirements where appropriate and will be required to publish a list of all shares subject to its rules on short selling, which could ultimately result in a narrower set of shares being subject to the short selling rules.

In addition, whereas the UK SSR contains provisions relating to sovereign debt and sovereign CDS, the SSR 2024 will not impose restrictions on the uncovered short selling of UK sovereign debt and CDS, and it will remove reporting requirements with respect to sovereign debt and CDS positions. However, the FCAs emergency intervention powers with respect to these products are retained.

Furthermore, under the SSR 2024, the FCA will be required to publish aggregated net short positions based on individual position notifications it receives from short sellers, whereas the UK SSR requires the FCA to publish individual net short positions above 0.5% of issued share capital, including the identity of the short seller. The new approach will set out the overall net short position in a particular companys shares but avoids disclosure of the names of individual short sellers as is currently the case under the UK SSR.

Next steps

HM Treasury intends to lay the final SI before Parliament in 2024, subject to Parliamentary time. Whilst the policy approach on this area is settled, some drafting and technical aspects may change in the final SI. The deadline to provide any technical comments to HM Treasury is 10 January 2024.

The FCA has indicated that it will consult in 2024 on how it plans to exercise its rule-making powers under the new regime. The final SI will commence at the same time as the FCA makes new rules, alongside the repeal of the UK SSR.

The draft SI does not contain any supervision or enforcement provisions. Instead, these will be covered in a separate SI on the designated activities regime (DAR), which the government plans to publish in early 2024. The DAR SI will contain cross-cutting supervision and enforcement provisions that apply to all designated activities, including short selling.

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The new UK short selling regime: another step away from the EU post-Brexit - Freshfields Transactions

David Cameron’s U-turn on Brexit is truly embarrassing – The New European

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It seems that seven years in a shepherds hut has somehow changed Lord Camerons mind.

Here was I thinking that he was still in favour of the UK being in the EU, that he must be deeply ashamed and contrite about the damage that his calling and losing of the Brexit referendum has caused to the country he loves, and that he would want to re-establish the closest possible ties with the EU as soon as possible.

But it turns out there is no zeal from Cameron to right the wrongs for which he is partially responsible. He is merely a humble public servant who answered the call to serve again. To serve a party that rejected him, to serve a PM whose policies he fought against, to serve a cause he knows is not in the national interest, and to serve a government that is willing to break international law. The former PM makes the Vicar of Bray look like a man of deep, unbending, moral principle.

Lord Camerons grilling by the House of Lords European Affairs Committee was always going to be a rather embarrassing event, where the former PM had to answer questions on why he was implementing a European policy which he previously called a threat to national security and to the economy.

Where he said as PM that the UKs membership of the EU maximised our influence in foreign affairs, now we just have to make the most of the situation we are in, he told their Lordships. Far from being a direct answer this is a disingenuous one. Apparently trying to bend the EU to the UKs way of thinking used to be frustrating and the new ad hoc arrangement is working well (although presumably nothing like as well as it used to when we were sitting round the table, you know being ad hoc and all that).

Lord Cameron also thinks the UKs relationship with the EU is positive and driving good results, is functioning well and that a lot of the heat and anger has subsided.

The stuff left unsaid and unanswered was: is the relationship as positive and good as it used to be, are the results as good, is the relationship functioning as well as it did pre-Brexit and how much heat and anger is left to undermine that relationship?

The foreign secretary, also said that UK/EU relations were now much more functional heaven knows how dysfunctional they got if this is an improvement and we just wanted to be the EUs friend, neighbour and partner, which does sound a bit like a pathetic Billy No Mates asking to join the playground games.

But perhaps the best bit is this; apparently the foreign secretary finds it interesting to come back and see how it is working. Yes, I suppose it must be interesting.

Having called a referendum purely to try to settle an ongoing Tory civil war that has continued virtually unabated for the last seven years, having risked his countrys economy and influence and security (his words) by calling and then incompetently losing that referendum, then having wandered off humming and spending seven years making money, David swans back to the Foreign Office to take a good look at how bad things have got.

If he had said to the Committee, It is far worse than even I feared, we are a laughing stock, our influence is diminished and we are less secure, poorer and permanently on the outside looking in, you might think more of the man.

But apparently it is nothing to do with Dave he is the impartial witness to someone elses crime. He just wishes to serve, to make the best of a bad job.

God, this noblesse oblige can be a right pain sometimes, but it can make life more interesting. Especially for those stuck sulking in a field, in a shepherds hut.

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David Cameron's U-turn on Brexit is truly embarrassing - The New European

The Rwanda plan has become another Brexit for the Tories – The New Statesman

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Nostalgia stalked Westminster yesterday: a nostalgia for Brexit. Why do I say this? Because both the media and Tory MPs seemed to be pretending that the vote on the second reading of the Rwanda bill was a reincarnation of the Brexit wars. Throughout the afternoon, Tory MPs burrowed into various committee rooms around Westminster Palace to fashion a response. Mark Francois a stout Tory MP who, after a stint as a coalition whip and minister, came into his own as a parliamentary Brexit pugilist grandiosely proclaimed outside Portcullis House that he and his colleagues on the partys right would abstain.

Over in the chamber, the shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper, pen in hand, hair slicked back like an Australian Open tennis player, chastised the parliamentarians sat opposite for slashing away at windmills. But Labour was not the main show. That was Robert Jenrick, the erstwhile immigration minister, who rose to declare that here he stood and he could do no other.

Except abstain on the bill in order to improve it at the committee stage. Priti Patel, who Jenrick doffed his hat to multiple times, was sitting a row back as a reminder of all those migration ministers who had failed before Jenrick. In truth, it seemed that his speech was delivered with one eye on the leadership contest that will follow electoral defeat. He was parading in front of his fellow Tory MPs.

Despite his words and his abstention the bill passed with a majority of 44. For all the rigamarole the breakfast meeting between Sunak and mutinous MPs, the photo ops, the hills climbed and marched down again the result was as predicted. The government is still wrestling with a despair-ridden parliamentary party that it can barely control. It is still running out of time to change course before the election. And its message is still incoherent.

Any success the Tories scrape from the Rwanda scheme will be blotted out in thick ink in the papers by vindictive, anonymous quotes speculating about the leadership. It feels like parliamentary Conservatives are trying to start a car while half of their MPs are deflating the tyres and the other half refuse to turn the ignition. The partys disunity precludes any success. Sunak held off a seismic defeat in the Commons but opposition to the bill will continue into the new year.

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What rang true in Jenricks speech was this: illegal migration as an issue is not going away. If we assume that the Rwanda scheme fails and that Labour wins the election, then this will become a problem for Starmer a leader who pumped up expectations in his speech yesterday that he will reduce immigration. He claims to want to chart a new approach, but is he destined to follow the path of raising voters hopes only to be constrained by what that means in reality?

This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substackhere.

[See also: Labour is failing to build a new political consensus]

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The Rwanda plan has become another Brexit for the Tories - The New Statesman

Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken adopts Hi Auto’s voice cloning feature at drive-thru – QSR Web

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Guests at select Ohio Lee's Famous Recipe Chicken restaurants will hear the voice of former NFL player Keith Byars as a partnership with AI platform Hi Auto. Photo: Hi Auto

Dec. 13, 2023

Hi Auto, an AI ordering brand, has launched its AI voice-cloning feature for QSRs. It allows restaurants to fully customize voice options into their drive-thru voice AI ordering tech, according to a press release.

Lee's Famous Recipe Chicken, an early adopter of Hi Auto's drive-thru voice AL ordering technology, will launch the new voice cloning feature as a test in select Ohio drive-thru locations. Guests who visit Lee's Famous Recipe Chicken Ohio locations will be greeted with the voice of sports broadcaster and former NFL player Keith Byars. Byars grew up in Ohio and played football at Ohio State. In 2000, he was inducted into the Ohio State Hall of Fame and in 2020 he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. Byers proceeded to play in the National Football League for 13 seasons, playing for teams including Philadelphia Eagles, Miami Dolphins, New England Patriots and New York Jets. Currently, Byars hosts "The Keith Byars Show" which can be heard on ESPN 1410 WING-AM in Dayton, Ohio.

"Lee's has been blessed to partner with Hi Auto since December of 2020, utilizing their AI voice recognition technology to help our employees and restaurants through the pandemic. We look forward to implementing their latest innovation to make our customer's drive-thru experience the most unique experience in the Dayton market," Chuck Doran, Lee's Famous Recipe Chicken owner and operator, said in the press release. "We've partnered with Keith Byars since his radio program launched 2018. The integrity, quality and excellence Keith brought to the football field and continues to bring to his broadcasts is what we strive to provide every customer that visits Lee's. This is just one more step in that quest."

"Three years ago, Lee's embarked on a pioneering journey with Hi Auto, leveraging their cutting-edge artificial intelligence for our drive-thru orders, marking a milestone in operational efficiency and customer service," Ryan Weaver, CEO of Lee's Famous Recipe Chicken, said in the press release. "This collaboration not only enhanced our labor efficiency by saving approximately five to six hours daily, but also significantly improved order consistency and upselling conversions."

Lee's Famous Recipe Chicken operates more than 130 restaurants in 12 U.S. states and in Canada.

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Lee's Famous Recipe Chicken adopts Hi Auto's voice cloning feature at drive-thru - QSR Web

How to use Audiobox, Meta AI’s new sound and voice cloning tool – Android Police

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Meta introduced its generative AI model for speech, Voicebox, in mid-2023. Meta aims to take AI sound generation to the next level with Audiobox, Voicebox's successor. The innovative tool generates sound effects from text prompts, eliminates noise from speech recordings, creates a restyled voice, generates speech in the style of an audio clip, and more. Before we take it for a spin, let's learn more about Meta's Audiobox.

The Audiobox demo is available on the web only. Try it on your Mac, Windows desktop, or a top Chromebook.

Creating high-quality audio can be a challenging process. Not everyone is a sound engineer and has access to extensive tools to create audio. Here's where Meta's Audiobox comes into play. It's a sound-generation tool from Facebook AI Research (FAIR). Meta's latest offering generates audio and sound effects using voice inputs, text prompts, and a combination of both.

With Audiobox, Meta aims to lower the barrier of audio creation and make it easy for general users to create high-quality sound samples. Whether you want to create audio for a podcast, YouTube video, audiobook, or video game, Audiobox can be your helping hand to get the job done.

Generative AI has made audio creation and voice cloning popular. There is no shortage of such tools. Meta's Audiobox easily stands out from the crowd due to its unique capabilities. Here's what you can do with it:

All Audiobox features are available to try from the company's official website. You can generate audio samples, check previews, and download them to your device.

You can also move to the Sound Effects menu and describe the sound sample you want to create. Add enough details to get astute results from Audiobox. We ran several text prompts and were impressed with the generated sound effects.

Audiobox can produce sound samples that are close to how people speak naturally. It has led to concerns about AI-powered deepfakes. Especially since the US presidential elections are around the corner, you can't rule out misuse of such AI tools. Meta implements automatic audio watermarking on audio generated by Audiobox.

The embedded signal in the generated audio is negligible to the human ear but can be tracked to the frame level. Meta will also add a voice authentication to prevent impersonation. The person must speak a voice prompt while registering their voice. The text prompt refreshes every 50 seconds, so playing someone else's pre-recorded voice is difficult.

Meta decided against making the AI model open source to prevent potential misuse.

Meta has done a remarkable job with Audiobox. It's accurate and very good. Try it with different prompts and voice samples, and check the results. Besides Facebook, tech giants like Google and Microsoft are exploring generative artificial intelligence to create content.

The search giant recently launched Google Bard to take on Open AI's (and Microsoft) ChatGPT. Read our dedicated post to learn more about Google Bard. We also compared Google Bard with ChatGPT to find their capabilities, limitations, and potential.

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How to use Audiobox, Meta AI's new sound and voice cloning tool - Android Police

A Self Cloning Invasive Species Could Soon Take Over Texas – klaq.com

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Who knew that one little crayfish could cause such a big problem? In Texas, this self-cloning aquatic species could soon take over!

Recently, the Texas Parks and Wildlife department sent out a warning on social media alerting all Texans about this possible invasive species called The Marbled Crayfish.

Look at that little fella! This lady is the real definition of "she don't need no man!" because TPWD say these all female crayfish can reproduce without males by cloning! The seriously crazy part, as the organization puts it, is that "the release of a single individual could start an entire invasive population".

TPWD is warning Texans if you have these critters as pets in your aquarium DO NOT release them into the wild! First of all, I didn't know that you could get crayfish and keep them as pets! My next question would be- can you eat them? Which, apparently you can, but I digress.

Now, I didn't think these little crayfish could do so much damage, they're so tiny! But apparently they can, and they have! They have previously spread through Europe and Africa and even appeared in Japan!

As for the science behind why they can self-clone? Well, I think this guy can explain it better than me!

Now the topic of banning the sale of marbled crayfish has come up; to which the TPWD responded by saying:

TPWD did consider prohibiting possession/sale of this species. But, Marbled Crayfish are directly descended via a mutation in aquaculture from the Georgia/Florida native Slough Crayfish, which are also sold in the aquarium trade but arenot self-cloning and so pose much less of a threat. There is no way to tell them apart other than genetic testing.

This would make enforcement of such a ban extremely difficult unless both species were banned and regulations must be enforceable.

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A Self Cloning Invasive Species Could Soon Take Over Texas - klaq.com

Metaverse cloning tech uses AI to create virtual versions of you that live in games you cant always c… – The Sun

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ARTIFICIAL intelligence cloning is poised to become the next big thing in the technology sector - and maybe even our lives.

Meta recently unveiled its AI-powered chatbots and many of them feature likenesses of celebrities - or celeb AI clones.

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This is thanks to its Llama 2 technology, which can generate AI "characters" or "animations" based on real people.

Another company called Delphi lets users create virtual clones of themselves or anyone else.

To generate an AI clone via Delphi, all users need to do is upload some form of identification and as many as thousands of files, including emails, chat transcripts, and even YouTube videos.

It's apparent that this technology is quickly taking over the industry and this is only the beginning, experts say.

MichaelPuscar, Co-founder ofAI firm NPCx, which is developing its own AI cloning technology for the gaming sector, explains the phenomenon further.

"Our aim is to allow video game players toclonethemselves into video games, acting on their behalf in the game when theyre unavailable to play," he told The U.S. Sun in an email.

"You can imagine the following situation: you and I are set to play Call of Duty tonight but at the last minute, your partner unknowingly made a dinner reservation. Now Im stuck, or am I? Im not if I can play with or against yourclone," Puscar said.

NPCxs product is called BehaviorX, and it has not yet been released to the public, he said, but it could be central to the development of the metaverse.

The term metaverse was popularized by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerburg and describes a virtual world that combines social media, cryptocurrency, augmented reality, and gaming.

"Our clones need to exist in not just a video game environment but in the Metaverse as well," Puscar said.

"In both cases, the goal is such that when you interact with these clones they are in every way indistinguishable from the person from whom they were cloned."

To create theclones, NPCx asks players to play the game and observe them and their environment in great detail.

"We specifically ask them to take certain actions in the game, not unlike how actors are asked to take specific actions on a motion capture stage," Puscar said.

"This gives us what we need to train our models and create theclone."

Puscar added that by generating characters based on real-world people, the company can also create non-player characters (NPCs) with deep personalities, who act and react in realistic ways.

When asked what the appeal of AI clones is in gaming, Puscar had a simple answer.

"For gamers, playing alongside or againstAIclonesof real-world players orcelebritiesadds an element of realism and excitement to the gaming experience," he said.

"It's about creating a more engaging, interactive, and personalized form of entertainment that resonates with the user's interests and preferences."

Beyond gaming and chatbots, Puscar anticipates seeing AI cloning technology employed in a variety of applications.

"This could include virtual training environments, interactive educational tools, personalized digital assistants, and more," he said.

"The entertainment industry, in particular, stands to benefit significantly, with possibilities ranging from personalized movie experiences to virtual concerts featuring digitalclonesof artists.

Still, while this all sounds like good fun, the ethics around digitalclonesare "perilous," Puscar explained.

"Once youve trained yourclone, your likeness is acting in ways out of your control. In theory, if the algorithms are working properly, it is acting in ways that you would act," he said.

"But we cannot control the counterparty, and you can imagine situations where someone nefarious decides to simulate sexual acts with aclone, uses profane language, or otherwise attempts to put them into compromising situations."

Therefore, it is imperative to make sure thatclonesare created and used ethically, he said.

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Metaverse cloning tech uses AI to create virtual versions of you that live in games you cant always c... - The Sun

The Smithsonian’s collection of brains is linked to eugenics, taken from vulnerable populations – Live Action

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The Washington Post has published a follow-up to its investigation into the Smithsonian Institution, which has a staggering collection of human body parts, including brains and few of the remains were obtained through ethical means. Now, in the follow-up report, the Post has reported that most of the victims were Washington, D.C.s most vulnerable residents.

Ales Hrdlicka (1869-1943) was the anthropologist responsible for much of the collection of body parts, and he had a specific goal in mind: to prove that minorities, but especially Black people, were inferior to whites. Creating a racial brain collection was part of how he would prove this long-debunked theory. Of the 74 brains he got from residents of Washington, D.C., 48 were Black. Others were from disabled persons or were taken from children including 19 obtained from preborn children.

At least one of these brains was taken after the preborn child was killed in an abortion.

One of the children, Moses, died as an infant, and Hrdlicka performed the autopsy on him, with the familys consent; however, they had no idea that he was also taking the childs brain. It has remained in the Smithsonians collection for decades, though Michelle Farris, a distant relative, is now fighting to get it back so it can buried properly.

It feels like my family was robbed of something, Farris said. A child especially of that age cant speak up for themselves. Since the Washington Posts initial investigation, just five of the brains have been returned to either the persons family, or their cultural heirs such as an indigenous tribe.

While the Smithsonian has expressed willingness to return the remains, those remains must be requested through a formal petition, and as in Moses case, most of the families dont even know the collection exists, much less that a relative has body parts in it. Though the Smithsonian has names for at least 100 of the brains, the institution has not attempted to contact anyone or publish the names so their families can reclaim them.

READ: The media is outraged over stolen body parts but only if it doesnt involve abortion

An undercover investigation from the Center of Medical Progress found through documentation and video investigations that Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry still harvest body parts from the most vulnerable among us preborn children and sell them for medical research.

Notably, Hrdlicka was an ardent eugenicist something he had in common with Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. Sanger accepted an invitation to speak at a Ku Klux Klan meeting and surrounded herself with racists and eugenicists. Lothrop Stoddard was the Exalted Cyclops of the Massachusetts chapter of the Ku Klux Klan and also served on the board of Sangers American Birth Control League (ABCL) the organization that would later become Planned Parenthood. He believed that non-white races must be excluded from America. Clarence Gamble, heir of the Procter and Gamble company fortune, served as a director of both Sangers ABCL and Planned Parenthood boards and was also a eugenicist, supporting laws mandating the sterilization of the disabled. In a letter discussing the notorious Negro Project with Sanger, he said:

The mass of Negroes, particularly in the South, still breed carelessly and disastrously, with the result that the increase among Negroes, even more than among whites, is from that portion of the population least intelligent and fit, and least able to rear children properly.

In his 1904 guide to eugenics, Hrdlicka echoes these beliefs. He wrote of wanting to obtain brains from white people, of which he had abundant opportunity, but also from American negroes, which will be of increasing interest on account of the intellectual progress and mixture of this element in the American population.

In addition to brains, there are still numerous other remains in the collection, including bones and even complete skeletons.

To me, its very upsetting, Native American anthropologist Brad Hatch told the Washington Post. They essentially pulled our ancestors out of the ground, discarded who knows how many of them, and then the large pieces that they could identify, they took back and theyre holding them, essentially in storage where they cant really be given the respect they deserve.

The DOJ put a pro-life grandmother in jail this Christmas for protesting the killing of preborn children. Please take 30-seconds to TELL CONGRESS: STOP THE DOJ FROM TARGETING PRO-LIFE AMERICANS.

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The Smithsonian's collection of brains is linked to eugenics, taken from vulnerable populations - Live Action

A Short History of Pepe the Frog Memes – The Daily Dot

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Pepe started his life as a laid-back cartoon frog but memes transformed him into an alt-right villain. The evolution of this cultural phenomenon is emblematic of the relationship between online culture and politics. Lets take a deeper dive into the history of how this frog went from the protagonist of the comic Boys Club, to an online antagonist.

Originally created by Matt Furie in 2005 for the comic Boys Club, Pepe, an anthropomorphic green frog, began his journey as an innocent cartoon character armed with the catchphrase, Feels good, man, that captured the essence of his easy-going nature.

Pepes transition into a meme began around 2008, when his image started gaining traction on platforms like MySpace, Gaia Online, and 4chan. Pepe evolved into various iterations, including Sad Frog, Smug Frog, Angry Pepe, and Feels Frog. Each variant reflected a different emotional state or reaction, making Pepe a versatile character for online expression.

By 2015, Pepe had become a staple on sites like 4chan and Tumblr, with rare Pepes circulating as virtual trading cards.

Stupid realisation and theory about Pepe the Frog and NFTs

However, the characters widespread popularity took a darker turn when Pepe the Frog was co-opted by the alt-right movement in 2015 and 2016.

The metamorphosis of Pepe intoa symbol of hate and bigotrywas alarming and led to itsinclusion in the Anti-Defamation Leagues hate symbol database. However, it was noted that not all Pepe memes were hate-based. This appropriation of Pepe caused distress to creator Matt Furie,who even took legal actionagainst the misuse of his frog cartoon.

In 2019, Pepes image was again appropriated as a symbol of the protests in Hong Kong. Unlike its use as a representation of hate in the United States, Pepes image in Hong Kong was not tied to alt-right ideologies, something Furie openly welcomed.

The reappropriation of Pepes image as a symbol of resistance against an oppressive state showed how the meme continued to be usurped by various online communities, constantly shifting the meaning of this anthropomorphic frog.

As Pepe memes proliferated, the character appeared in various contexts, sometimes even devoid of any political connotation. From Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj tweeting Pepe memes, to Donald Trumps use of a Presidential Pepe, the frog permeated various levels of pop culture and social media. However, some did not consider these newer uses as a full reclamation of the character from its alt-right connotations.

The story of Pepe the Frog is a testament to the ability of the internet to confer new meaning on characters and images. What started as a comic character became a globally recognized meme, a symbol of political movements, and a contentious icon appropriated for hateful causes. But Pepes journey highlights the fluid nature of digital symbols and their ability to embody vastly different meanings to different groups of people.

Pepes evolution also raises questions about the ownership and transformation of digital content in an age where memes can become powerful tools for communication and expression.

While Pepes journey has been tumultuous, it underscores the dynamic nature of internet culture and its impact on society. Pepe remains a potent symbol in the ever-evolving landscape of online expression, embodying the whimsical and controversial aspects of digital communication.

*First Published: Dec 13, 2023, 9:00 am CST

Kahron Spearman is the community manager for the Daily Dot and Nautilus magazine. Hes also a journalist, copywriter, and host of Discovery with Kahron Spearman on KAZI 88.7.

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A Short History of Pepe the Frog Memes - The Daily Dot

The Latest News on Meme Coins | Navigating the Meme Coin Hype in 2023 with Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, Pepe Coin, and … – Finbold – Finance in Bold

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This post is sponsored and not a part of Finbold's editorial content. For a full disclaimer, please . If you encounter any issues, kindly report them to [emailprotected]. Crypto assets/products can be highly risky. Never invest unless youre prepared to lose all the money you invest.

The cryptocurrency market is experiencing a surge of optimism, fueled by recent positive developments, while the ever-growing popularity of meme coins persists. These digital tokens, inspired by internet memes and cultural trends, are captivating both experienced crypto users and newcomers alike.

This article aims to demystify the world of meme coins, providing an informative overview for crypto users of all levels. Well explore the current market landscape, analyze the top contenders, and dissect the risks and potential rewards associated with these unique crypto coins.

What are Meme Coins? | Understanding the Hype

Unlike Bitcoin or other altcoins, memecoins ride the wave of humor and community. While first wave meme coins such as Dogecoin may have lacked inherent utility, more recent altcoins such as ApeMax stands out with its Boost-to-Earn staking utility, allowing coin holders to boost projects or their favorite entities and potentially earn rewards. Its important to note that while all meme coins mix blockchain and fun, they are all different from one another in many ways. In this article well explore some of these particularities of these different meme cryptos.

Meme Coin Market Overview | Current Landscape and Trends

The meme coin market has experienced explosive growth in recent years, with the total market capitalization reaching over $22 billion as of December 2023. This surge is attributed to several factors, including:

The Leading Meme Coins of 2023:

ApeMax (APEMAX)

ApeMax is exploding onto the crypto scene, grabbing peoples attention with its innovative approach to staking. This exciting new meme coin introduces Boost-to-Earn tokenomics, a revolutionary concept that lets holders potentially earn rewards while simultaneously boosting the projects theyre fans of.

Dogecoin (DOGE)

Dogecoin (DOGE) is the grandfather of all meme coins, predating the current trend by several years. Launched in 2013 as a joke, it quickly captured the hearts and minds of internet users with its Shiba Inu mascot and lighthearted approach to cryptocurrency.

Shiba Inu (SHIB)

Often called the Dogecoin killer, Shiba Inu has captured significant attention through its aggressive marketing and loyal community. SHIB has developed a wide ecosystem with several sub-tokens with specific purposes, and it has also recently launched its own Shibarium Layer-2 chain.

Pepe Coin (PEPE)

Pepe Coin is a popular new meme coin, inspired by the iconic Pepe the Frog meme. Pepe Coin implements a token burning mechanism which takes place on each on-chain transaction. This, combined with its strong community and unique branding, has propelled it to become a popular choice in the meme coin space.

What is ApeMax? | A Potential Game Changer in the Meme Coin Space?

With a rapidly growing community, ApeMax has quickly become a hot topic in presale discussions, gaining traction as a potential game-changer in the blockchain and presale space. In its current presale phase, ApeMax boasts an impressive 7,800+ token holders and a staggering 3.5 billion tokens staked. Moreover, eligible buyers during the presale can acquire exclusive discount Loot Boxes for a limited period.

Heres what makes ApeMax stand out:

ApeMax positions itself as a leader in the evolution of crypto presales and staking. Its innovative approach, combined with its passionate community and exciting features, makes it a new coin that new coin buyers are watching.

Whats The Future of Crypto Coins?

The short answer to this complex question is: its impossible to predict with certainty. Crypto is a notoriously volatile market and constantly changing, with new trends and use cases arising every year. However, 2023 has been a recovery year for crypto following a bearish year in 2023. Institutional adoption and a move into the mainstream could be in sight according to some crypto fans. For example, Paypal will soon allow its users to make transactions using cryptocurrencies, and that includes meme coins.

While the future is always unpredictable, Blockchain technology has the power to disrupt various industries, from finance and supply chain to healthcare and governance. These factors, combined with the current bullish market sentiment, could mean that 2024 could be an intriguing year for crypto with new surprises in store. As 2024 is just around the corner, larger meme coins such as Dogecoin and Shiba Inu also continue to remain popular amongst meme coin fans.

Wrapping up 2023 | Positivity Towards a Bullish Market?

The meme coin market has experienced a whirlwind of activity in 2023, captivating peoples hearts and sparking discussions about the future of cryptocurrency. While volatility remains a defining feature, the year has also been marked by new developments, gearing towards a possible crypto bullrun.

Looking forward, meme coins seem likely to remain a crypto staple within the wider altcoin family. The increasing mainstream awareness, adoption by major platforms, and integration with real-world applications are creating a fertile ground for adoption. New meme coins like ApeMax, with their innovative features, are paving the way for a future where meme coins go beyond the realm of hype to offer new and creative forms of utility. It should be noted that this article doesnt serve as financial advice. Thorough personal research is crucial when engaging with meme coins or any kind of cryptocurrency. Its essential to be aware of the high risks associated as well as the volatility inherent to all crypto coins. For those interested in ApeMax coins, verify regional restrictions and buying eligibility rules on the ApeMax official website before proceeding.

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The Latest News on Meme Coins | Navigating the Meme Coin Hype in 2023 with Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, Pepe Coin, and ... - Finbold - Finance in Bold

Google Admits Gemini AI Demo Was at Least Partially Faked

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Google misrepresented the way its Gemini Pro can recognize a series of images and admitted to speeding up the footage.

Google has a lot to prove with its AI efforts — but it can't seem to stop tripping over its own feet.

Earlier this week, the tech giant announced Gemini, its most capable AI model to date, to much fanfare. In one of a series of videos, Google showed off the mid-level range of the model dubbed Gemini Pro by demonstrating how it could recognize a series of illustrations of a duck, describing the changes a drawing went through at a conversational pace.

But there's one big problem, as Bloomberg columnist Parmy Olson points out: Google appears to have faked the whole thing.

In its own description of the video, Google admitted that "for the purposes of this demo, latency has been reduced, and Gemini outputs have been shortened for brevity." The video footage itself is also appended with the phrase "sequences shortened throughout."

In other words, Google misrepresented the speed at which Gemini Pro can recognize a series of images, indicating that we still don't know what the model is actually capable of.

In the video, Gemini wowed observers by using its multimodal thinking chops to recognize illustrations at what appears to be a drop of a hat. The video, as Olson suggests, also offered us "glimmers of the reasoning abilities that Google’s DeepMind AI lab have cultivated over the years."

That's indeed impressive, considering any form of reasoning has quickly become the next holy grail in the AI industry, causing intense interest in models like OpenAI's rumored Q*.

In reality, the demo wasn't just significantly sped up to make it seem more impressive, but Gemini Pro is likely still stuck with the same old capabilities that we've already seen many times before.

"I think these capabilities are not as novel as people think," Wharton professor Ethan Mollick tweeted, showing how ChatGPT was effortlessly able to identify the simple drawings of a duck in a series of screenshots.

Did Google actively try to deceive the public by speeding up the footage? In a statement to Bloomberg Opinion, a Google spokesperson said it was made by "using still image frames from the footage, and prompting via text."

In other words, Gemini was likely given plenty of time to analyze the images. And its output may have then been overlaid over video footage, giving the impression that it was much more capable than it really was.

"The video illustrates what the multimode user experiences built with Gemini could look like," Oriol Vinyals, vice president of research and deep learning lead at Google’s DeepMind, wrote in a post on X.

Emphasis on "could." Perhaps Google should've opted to show the actual capabilities of its Gemini AI instead.

It's not even the first time Google has royally screwed up the launch of an AI model. Earlier this year, when the company announced its ChatGPT competitor, a demo infamously showed Bard making a blatantly false statement, claiming that NASA's James Webb Space Telescope took the first image of an exoplanet.

As such, Google's latest gaffe certainly doesn't bode well. The company came out swinging this week, claiming that an even more capable version of its latest model called Gemini Ultra was able to outsmart OpenAI's GPT-4 in a test of intelligence.

But from what we've seen so far, we're definitely going to wait and test it out for ourselves before we take the company's word.

More on Gemini: Google Shows Off "Gemini" AI, Says It Beats GPT-4

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Google Admits Gemini AI Demo Was at Least Partially Faked

Ex-OpenAI Board Member Refuses to Say Why She Fired Sam Altman

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The now-former OpenAI board member who was instrumental in the firing of Sam Altman has spoken — but she's still staying mum where it matters.

Mum's The Word

The now-former OpenAI board member who was instrumental in the initial firing of CEO Sam Altman has spoken — but she's still staying mum on why she pushed him out in the first place.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, 31-year-old Georgetown machine learning researcher and erstwhile OpenAI board member Helen Toner was fairly open with her responses about the logistics of the failed coup at the company, but terse when it came to the reasoning behind it.

"Our goal in firing Sam was to strengthen OpenAI and make it more able to achieve its mission," the Australian-born researcher said as her only explanation of the headline-grabbing chain of events.

As the New York Times reported in the midst of the Thanksgiving hubbub, Toner and Altman butted heads the month prior because she published a paper critical of the firm's safety protocols (or lack thereof) and laudatory of those undertaken by Anthropic, which was created by former OpenAI employees who left over similar concerns.

Altman reportedly confronted Toner during their meeting and because he believed, per emails viewed by the NYT, that "any amount of criticism from a board member carries a lot of weight."

After the tense exchange, the CEO brought his concerns about Toner's criticisms up with other board members, which ended up reinforcing those board members' own doubts about his leadership, the WSJ reports. Soon after, Altman himself was on the chopping block over vague allegations of dishonesty — although we still don't know what exactly he was supposedly being dishonest about.

Intimidating

As the company weathered its tumult amid a nearly full-scale revolt from staffers who said they'd leave and follow Altman to Microsoft if he wasn't reinstated, Toner and OpenAI cofounder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever ended up resigning, the report explains, which paved the way for the CEO's return.

In her interview with the WSJ, however, the Georgetown researcher suggested that her resignation was forced by a company attorney.

"[The attorney] was trying to claim that it would be illegal for us not to resign immediately," Toner said, "because if the company fell apart we would be in breach of our fiduciary duties."

With the exit of the Aussie academic and Rand Corporation scientist Tasha McCauley, another of those who voted for Altman's ouster, from the board, there are now no women on OpenAI's governing body — but in this interview at least, Toner was all class.

"I think looking forward," she said, "is the best path from here."

More on OpenAI: Sam Altman Got So Many Texts After Being Fired It Broke His Phone

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Nicki Minaj Fans Are Using AI to Create “Gag City”

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Fans anxiously awaiting the release of Nicki Minaj's latest album have occupied themselves with AI to create their own

Gag City

Fans are anxiously awaiting the drop of Onika "Nicki Minaj" Maraj-Petty's "Pink Friday 2" — and in the meantime, they've occupied themselves with artificial intelligence image generators to create visions of a Minajian utopia known as "Gag City."

The entire "Gag City" gambit began with zealous (and perhaps overzealous) fans tweeting at the Queens-born diva to tell her how excited — or "gagged," to use the drag scene etymology that spread among Maraj-Petty's LGBTQ and queer-friendly fanbase — they are for her first album in more than five years.

Replete with dispensaries, burger joints, and a high-rise shopping mall, Gag City has everything a Barb (as fans call themselves) could ask for.

Gag City, the fan-created AI kingdom for Nicki Minaj, trends on X/Twitter ahead of ‘Pink Friday 2.’ pic.twitter.com/jm3iGS9fBO

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) December 6, 2023

Barbz Hug

As memetic lore will have you believe, these tributes to Meraj-Petty were primarily created with Microsoft's Bing AI image generator. The meme went so deep that people began claiming that her fanbase generating Gag City imagery caused Bing to crash, which allegedly led to the image generator blocking Nicki Minaj-related prompts.

gag city residents have demolished bing head office after their continued sabotage of nicki minaj’s name in their image creator pic.twitter.com/OOpL2Jzj7h

— Xeno? (@AClDBLEEDER) December 6, 2023

When Futurism took to Bing's image creator AI to see what all the fuss was about, we too discovered that you couldn't search for anything related to Minaj. However, the same was true when we inputted other celebrities' names as well, suggesting that Bing, like Google, may intentionally block the names of famous people in an apparent effort to circumvent deepfakes.

Brand Opportunities

As creative as these viral Gag City images have been, it was only a matter of time before engagement-hungry brands tried to get in on the fun and effectively ruin it.

From Spotify changing its location to the imaginary Barb metropolis and introducing "Gag City" as a new "sound town" to KFC's social media manager telling users to "DM" the account, the meme has provided a hot pink branding free-for-all.

The Bing account itself even posted a pretty excellent-looking AI-generated Gag City image.

Next stop: Friday ? https://t.co/J1pRCZcbTd pic.twitter.com/ujG7BsJWUC

— Bing (@bing) December 6, 2023

Sleazy brand bandwagoning aside, the Gag City meme and its many interpretations provide an interesting peek into what the future of generative AI may hold in a world dominated by warring fandoms and overhyped automation.

More on AI imagination: People Cannot Stop Dunking on that Uncanny “AI Singer-Songwriter”

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Silicon Valley Guys Casually Calculating Probability Their AI Will Destroy Humankind

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P(doom) has become the go-to shorthand among AI researchers and tech CEOs for describing the likelihood of AI destroying humanity.

Doom and Gloom

If you find yourself talking to a tech bro about AI, be warned that they might ask you about your "p(doom)" — the hot new statistic that's become part of the everyday lingo among Silicon Valley researchers in recent months, The New York Times reports.

P(doom), or the probability of doom, is a quasi-empirical way of expressing how likely you think AI will destroy humanity — y'know, the kind of cheerful stuff you might talk about over a cup of coffee.

It lets other AI guys know where you stand on the tech without getting too far into the weeds on what exactly constitutes an existential risk. Someone with a p(doom) of 50 percent might be labeled a "doomer," like short-lived interim CEO of OpenAI Emmet Shear, while another with 5 percent might be your typical optimist. Wherever people stand, it now serves, at the very least, as a useful bit of small talk.

"It comes up in almost every dinner conversation," Aaron Levie, CEO of the cloud platform Box, told the NYT.

Scaredy Cats

It should come as no surprise that jargon like p(doom) exists. Fears over the technology, both apocalyptic and mundane, have blown up with the explosive rise of generative AI and large language models like OpenAI's ChatGPT. In many cases, the leaders of the tech, like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, have been more than willing to play into those fears.

Where the term originated isn't a matter of record. The NYT speculates that it more than likely came from the philosophy forum LessWrong over a decade ago, first used by a programmer named Tim Tyler as a way to "refer to the probability of doom without being too specific about the time scale or the definition of 'doom,'" he told the paper.

The forum's founder, Eliezer Yudkowsky, is himself a noted AI doomsayer who has called for the bombing of data centers to stave off armageddon. His p(doom) is "yes," he told NYT, transcending mere mathematical estimates.

Best Guess

Few opinions could outweigh those of AI's towering trifecta of so-called godfathers, whose contrite cautions on the tech have cast a shadow over the industry that is decidedly ominous. One of them, Geoffrey Hinton, left Google last year, stating that he regretted his life's work while soberly warning of AI's risk of eliminating humanity.

Of course, some in the industry remain unabashed optimists. Levie, for instance, told the NYT that his p(doom) is "about as low as it could be." What he fears is not an AI apocalypse, but that premature regulation could stifle the technology.

On the other hand, it could also be said that the focus on pulp sci-fi AI apocalypses in the future threatens to efface AI's existing but-not-as-exciting problems in the present. Boring issues like mass copyright infringement will have a hard time competing against visions of Terminators taking over the planet.

At any rate, p(doom)'s proliferation indicates that there's at least a current of existential self-consciousness among those developing the technology — though whether that affects your personal p(doom) is, naturally, left up to you.

More on AI: Top Execs at Sports Illustrated's Publisher Fired After AI Debacle

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Busted! Drive-Thru Run by "AI" Actually Operated by Humans in the Philippines

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The AI, which takes orders from drive-thru customers at Checkers and Carl's Jr, relies on humans for most of its customer interactions.

Mechanical Turk

An AI drive-thru system used at the fast-food chains Checkers and Carl's Jr isn't the perfectly autonomous tech it's been made out to be. The reality, Bloomberg reports, is that the AI heavily relies on a backbone of outsourced laborers who regularly have to intervene so that it takes customers' orders correctly.

Presto Automation, the company that provides the drive-thru systems, admitted in recent filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that it employs "off-site agents" in countries like the Philippines who help its "Presto Voice" chatbots in over 70 percent of customer interactions.

That's a lot of intervening for something that claims to provide "automation," and is yet another example of tech companies exaggerating the capabilities of their AI systems to belie the technology's true human cost.

"There’s so much hype around AI that everyone is misunderstanding what this tool is," Shelly Palmer, who runs a tech consulting firm, told Bloomberg. "Everybody thinks that AI is some kind of magic."

Change of Tune

According to Bloomberg, the SEC informed Presto in July that it was being investigated for claims "regarding certain aspects of its AI technology."

Beyond that, no other details have been made public about the investigation. What we do know, though, is that the probe has coincided with some revealing changes in Presto's marketing.

In August, Presto's website claimed that its AI could take over 95 percent of drive-thru orders "without any human intervention" — clearly not true, given what we know now. In a show of transparency, that was changed in November to claim 95 percent "without any restaurant or staff intervention," which is technically true, yes, but still seems dishonest.

That shift is part of Presto's overall pivot to its new "humans in the loop" marketing shtick, which upholds its behind the scenes laborers as lightening the workload for the actual restaurant workers. The whole AI thing, it would seem, is just packing it comes in, and the mouthpiece that frustrated customers have to deal with.

"Our human agents enter, review, validate and correct orders," Presto CEO Xavier Casanova told investors during a recent earnings call, as quoted by Bloomberg. "Human agents will always play a role in ensuring order accuracy."

Know Its Limits

The huge hype around AI can obfuscate both its capabilities and the amount of labor behind it. Many tech firms probably don't want you to know that they rely on millions of poorly paid workers in the developing world so that their AI systems can properly function.

Even OpenAI's ChatGPT relies on an army of "grunts" who help the chatbot learn. But tell that to the starry-eyed investors who have collectively sunk over $90 billion into the industry this year without necessarily understanding what they're getting into.

"It highlights the importance of investors really understanding what an AI company can and cannot do," Brian Dobson, an analyst at Chardan Capital Marketts, told Bloomberg.

More on AI: Nicki Minaj Fans Are Using AI to Create "Gag City"

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Elon Musk Says CEO of Disney Should Be Fired, Seemingly for Hurting His Feelings

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X owner Elon Musk lashed out at Disney CEO Bob Iger on Thursday, tweeting that

Another day, another person of note being singled out by conspiracy theorist and X owner Elon Musk.

The mercurial CEO's latest target is Disney CEO Bob Iger, whose empire recently pulled out of advertising on Musk's much-maligned social media network.

Along with plenty of other big names in the advertising space, Disney decided to call it quits after Musk infamously threw his weight behind an appalling and deeply antisemitic conspiracy theory.

Instead of engaging in some clearly much-needed introspection, Musk lashed out at Iger this week, posting that "he should be fired immediately."

"Walt Disney is turning in his grave over what Bob has done to his company," he added.

To get a coherent answer as to why Musk made the demand takes some unpacking, so bear with us.

Musk implied that Disney was to blame for not pulling its ads from Meta, following a lawsuit alleging the much larger social media company had failed to keep child sexual abuse material (CSAM) off of its platform.

"Bob Eiger thinks it’s cool to advertise next to child exploitation material," Musk wrote, misspelling Iger's name, in response to a tweet that argued sex exploration material on Meta was "sponsored" by Disney. "Real stand up guy."

To be clear, Meta has an extremely well-documented problem with keeping disgusting CSAM off of its platforms. Just last week, the Wall Street Journal found that there have been instances of Instagram and Facebook actually promoting pedophile accounts, making what sounds like an already dangerous situation even worse.

At the end of the day, nobody's a real winner here. Iger's own track record is less-than-stellar, especially when it comes to Disney's handling of Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill.

Yet in many ways, Musk is the pot calling the kettle black. Why? Because X-formerly-Twitter has its own considerable issue with CSAM. Especially following Musk's chaotic takeover last year, the New York Times found back in February that Musk is falling far short of making "removing child exploitation" his "priority number one," as he declared last year.

Since then, child abuse content has run rampant on the platform. Worse yet, in July the platform came under fire for reinstating an account that posted child sex abuse material.

Meanwhile, instead of taking responsibility for all of the hateful things he's said, Musk has attempted to rally up his base on X, arguing that advertisers were conspiring against him and his "flaming dumpster" of a social media company.

During last month's New York Times DealBook Summit, the embattled CEO accused advertisers of colluding to "blackmail" him "with advertising" — a harebrained idea that highlights his escalating desperation.

At the time, after literally telling advertisers to go "fuck" themselves, Musk took the opportunity to take a potshot at Iger as well.

"Hey Bob, if you're in the audience, that's how I feel," he added for emphasis. "Don't advertise."

More on the beef: Twitter Is in Extremely Deep Trouble

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Meta’s New Image-Generating AI Is Trained on Your Instagram and Facebook Posts

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Earlier this week, Meta announced a new AI image generator dubbed

Cashing In

Earlier this week, Meta announced a new AI image generator dubbed "Imagine with Meta AI."

And while it may seem like an otherwise conventional tool meant to compete with the likes of Google's DALL-E 3, Diffusion, and Midjourney, Meta's underlying "Emu" image-synthesis model has a dirty little secret.

What's that? Well, as Ars Technica points out, the social media company trained it using a whopping 1.1 billion Instagram and Facebook photos, per the company's official documentation — the latest example of Meta squeezing every last drop out of its user base and its ever-valuable data.

In many ways, it's a data privacy nightmare waiting to unfold. While Meta claims to only have used photos that were set to "public," it's likely only a matter of time until somebody finds a way to abuse the system. After all, Meta's track record is abysmal when it comes to ensuring its users' privacy, to say the least.

So Creative

Meta is selling its latest tool, which was made available exclusively in the US this week, as a "fun and creative" way to generate "content in chats."

"This standalone experience for creative hobbyists lets you create images with technology from Emu, our image foundation model," the company's announcement reads. "While our messaging experience is designed for more playful, back-and-forth interactions, you can now create free images on the web, too."

Meta's Emu model uses a process called "quality-tuning" to compare the "aesthetic alignment" of comparable images, setting it apart from the competition, as Ars notes.

Other than that, the tool is exactly what you'd expect. With a simple prompt, it can spit out four photorealistic images of skateboarding teddy bears or an elephant walking out of a fridge, which can then be shared on Instagram or Facebook — where, perhaps, they'll be scraped by the next AI.

Earlier this year, Meta's president for global affairs Nick Clegg told Reuters that the company has been crawling through Facebook and Instagram posts to train its Meta AI virtual assistant as well as its Emu image model.

At the time, Clegg claimed that Meta was excluding private messages and posts, avoiding public datasets with a "heavy preponderance of personal information."

Instead of immediately triggering a massive outcry and lawsuits over possible copyright infringement like Meta's competitors, the social media company can crawl its own datasets, which come courtesy of its users and its expansive terms of service.

But relying on Instagram selfies and Facebook family albums comes with its own inherent risks, which may well come back to haunt the Mark Zuckerberg-led social giant.

More on Meta: Facebook Has a Gigantic Pedophilia Problem

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This Cartoonish New Robot Dog Somehow Looks Even Scarier

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Chinese robotics company called Weilan recently showed off a creepy, cartoonish-looking robot dog called

Dog Days

We've come across plenty of robot dogs over the years that can dance, speak using ChatGPT, or even assist doctors in hospitals.

But they all have one thing in common: they look like lifeless machines on four stilts.

In an apparent effort to put the "dog " back into "robodog," a Chinese robotics company called Weilan recently showed off an entirely new class of robotic quadruped called "BabyAlpha" — essentially half cartoon dog and half robot.

The company may have overshot its goal a little bit, though, ending up with an even more terrifying-looking machine that looks like it belongs in a "M3GAN"-esque horror flick.

Robot's Best Friend

The small robot canine has a spotted head, a cute little nose, and two floppy-looking ears.

According to the company's website, which we crudely translated using Google, the robot is "especially designed for family companionship scenarios."

"BabyAlpha likes to be by your side," the website reads adding that the little robot has "endless technological superpowers" thanks to AI. Not creepy at all!

Weilan is also targeting its pet as a way to teach children either English or Chinese or keep track of younger family members through a video call tool.

But we can't shake the feeling that BabyAlpha is exactly the kind of thing that kickstarts a series of unfortunate events in a shlocky horror movie.

In case you do trust your children to be around a BabyAlpha, the companion will cost the equivalent of around $1,700 when it goes on sale.

More on robot dogs: Oh Great, They Put ChatGPT Into a Boston Dynamics Robot Dog

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This Cartoonish New Robot Dog Somehow Looks Even Scarier