This Fast Food Drive-Thru Is Now Using AI to Take Orders

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A fast food AI platform is taking orders at a drive-thru in Colorado, and it could be the latest sign that restaurants are prepared to lean on automation.

Fries With That

We already had a robot that could make fast food burgers. And now we have an artificial intelligence that can take your order for one.

Earlier this month, Colorado-based startup Valyant AI announced the launch of a voice-based AI customer service platform, which is now taking customer orders at the drive-thru at Denver’s Good Times Burgers and Frozen Custard.

“We’re excited to deliver a customer service experience unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before,” Valyant AI CEO Rob Carpenter said in a press release.

Pull Forward

Unlike multipurpose assistants such as Alexa or Siri, Valyant’s fast food AI has just one ability: greet drive-thru customers, take their order, and send them down the line. According to Carpenter, putting an AI in charge of this task could benefit both customers and restaurants.

“Seconds count in the drive-thru, and if customers see a long line, they’ll often keep driving and look for another restaurant,” he said. “By improving ordering accuracy and decreasing wait times, our platform improves the customer service experience and allows Good Times to serve more customers more quickly.”

Good Times COO Scott Lefever believes even the employees benefit from the fast food AI platform.

“By freeing employees to spend more time focused on the customer at the window, we’re providing better and faster service to our customers and a more enjoyable experience for our employees,” he said in the press release.

Fill a Need

Right now, Valyant’s AI is only taking breakfast orders and only at one restaurant, but there’s a clear trend of the fast food industry moving toward automation in general. We’re seeing an increase in self-serve kiosks, robots that cook, and self-cleaning equipment.

These machines aren’t necessarily taking jobs from humans either — according to several reports, fast food companies are having an increasingly difficult time finding and keeping employees.

“The only way to truly deal with this is to reduce the number of labor hours that are required to run your concept,” restaurants analyst Peter Saleh told Business Insider. “And, I feel like the only way to really do that is to implement technology.”

READ MORE: At This Fast-Food Drive-Through, the Person Taking Your Order Might Not Be a Person at All [The Washington Post]

More on fast food: Ordering Food via Touchscreen Is so Fun You Spend More Money When You Do It

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A “Tiltrotor” Helicopter May Replace the Army’s Black Hawk

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The U.S. Army is currently vetting potential replacements for its iconic Black Hawk helicopter, which is too slow and has too short a range to stay useful.

Time to Upgrade

The U.S. Army is currently developing replacements for its famous Black Hawk helicopter, which has been a mainstay of the military since it was developed in the 1970s.

Decades later, the Black Hawk is too slow and has too short a range to be practical. One of the frontrunners to replace it borrows the best from planes and helicopters — with two rotating wings, each of which houses a propeller allowing for vertical take off, according to Ars Technica.

A or B

The helicopter, called the V-280 Valor and built by a division of aviation manufacturer Textron has the functionality of a sort of plane-helicopter hybrid that could travel faster and farther than the Black Hawk. It also improves on past tiltrotor designs by leaving the rest of the engine in place, cutting down on cost and the mess kicked up by the rotating blades, Ars reports.

But that’s not the only design the military is considering — another prototype, Sikorsky-Boeing’s SB-1 Defiant looks more like a typical helicopter but uses two counterrotating propellers stacked on top of each other to increase its speed.

Bidding War

In particular, the Army needs a helicopter well-suited for recon missions overseas, hence these two prototypes’ focus on top speed.

There’s no indication yet which of the two will get picked up by the armed forces, but we look forward to the new movies like “Tiltrotor Down” that could follow.

READ MORE: Forget Airwolf: One of these is the Army’s next assault “helicopter” [Ars Technica]

More on helicopters: You Can Fly DARPA’s Idiot-Proof Helicopter With 45 Mins of Training

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A New AI Draws Cats, and They’re Utterly Grotesque

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This Cat Does Not Exist

Ceci n’est pas un chat.

Last week, we reported on a mysterious new website, ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com, that shows you a new human face, generated by an AI, every time you hit the refresh button.

It’s a growing trend: more copycat websites like ThisAirbnbDoesNotExist.com and ThisWaifuDoesNotExist.net have also cropped up in its wake.

And now, ThisCatDoesNotExist.com takes the trend to its logical conclusion: creepy, AI-generated pictures of cats that will fuel your nightmares.

This Cat Should Never Exist

Behind all of these websites lies NVIDIA’s generative adversarial network (GAN) called StyleGAN — a machine-learning algorithm that can learn how to sketch human faces, cats, or almost anything else by examining hundreds of thousands of existing images.

But ThisCatDoesNotExist.com is not the most compelling example of the tech. It’s more like the result of what would happen when hundreds of thousands of cat images, including text memes and their human owners’ faces, are mashed together in a a cyber-car-crash. The results are harrowing.

No, seriously. What happened to these innocent cats?

It’s a shame the algorithm wasn’t able to pick out the human faces.

Or meme text.

Uncatty Valley

GANs have been used for much more ambitious projects in the past. Researchers at NVIDIA harnessed the power of the technology to create uncanny faces that are almost completely indistinguishable from the real thing.

But that doesn’t mean bored people on the internet shouldn’t be able to take advantage of the open-source technology for a bit of fun — that is, as long as real-world cats stay out of harm’s way.

READ MORE: ‘This Person Does Not Exist’ Has Spawned a Host of A.I.-Powered Copycats [Inverse]

More on AI faces: Mysterious Site Uses AI to Create Realistic Yet Horrifying Faces

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Meet Hippocamp, “The Moon That Shouldn’t Be There”

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Researchers have finally figured out why Hippocamp, a tiny moon orbiting Neptune, is able to exist despite its close proximity to a much-larger moon.

Moon Boon

In 2013, scientists discovered a tiny moon orbiting Neptune. They gave it the forgettable name S/2004 N 1, but it soon earned the nickname of “the moon that shouldn’t be there,” because its size and placement didn’t make sense to astronomers.

Now, a team of planetary scientists has not only given Neptune’s 14th moon a more memorable moniker — Hippocamp — but also unraveled some of the mystery surrounding its origin.

Tiny, but Fast

In a paper published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, the researchers shared the results of several years of analysis about Neptune’s tiniest moon.

According to their research, Hippocamp is just 20 miles in diameter and a thousandth of the mass of Proteus, the much-larger moon next to it. It also zips around Neptune at a speed of about 20,000 miles an hour, which is 10 times faster than our Moon circles Earth.

The new name, meanwhile, refers to a mythological sea creature that’s half-horse and half-fish — fitting for a moon orbiting the planet named after the Roman god of the sea.

Splinter Satellite

So that’s what the researchers learned about Hippocamp, but it doesn’t answer the question as to why “the moon that shouldn’t be there” is there.

The answer, according to the researchers, is that it probably wasn’t always.

If Hippocamp was around 4 billion years ago, Proteus would have likely destroyed the smaller moon while clearing its orbit around Neptune. This led the researchers to conclude that Hippocamp likely formed when a chunk of Proteus broke off following a collision with a comet or asteroid.

“This is the first really great example of a moon that got created as a result of an impact,” researcher Mark Showalter told Space.com.

READ MORE: Tiny Neptune Moon Spotted by Hubble May Have Broken From Larger Moon [SETI Institute]

More on the Moon: New Research: Earth’s Atmosphere Extends Well Beyond the Moon

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Software Bug Immediately Crashes Nike’s Self-Lacing Sneakers

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Just days after release, Nike released a software update for its self-tightening sneaker that ended up crashing the whole system.

Great Scott

A great way to generate hype for your product is to name it after something from the “Back To The Future” franchise. That’s why auto-balancing skateboards are called “hoverboards” and Nike’s automatically-tightening shoe uses the phrase “self-lacing.”

Unfortunately, a great way to generate ridicule for your futuristic tech product is to totally break it with a software update, which is also what Nike just did with the aforementioned sneakers, according to The Verge.

Think, McFly!

The $350 shoes were first sold on Sunday. And now, thanks to an update to the app people can use to tighten or loosen the shoes, Android and iPhone users are running into several different bugs that keep them from using it at all.

“It’s pretty sad paying $350.00 for something that doesn’t work properly,” one user wrote in an app store review, according to The Daily Dot. “Hope Nike fixes this fast and sends out something to correct it.”

This is Heavy

Some people report that they can only pair one shoe with their app. Others say that the motors that tighten and loosen the shoes have stopped working altogether, according to The Verge. That means that the very expensive shoe is just about as useful as a slipper.

“App will only sync with left shoe and then fail every time,” one reviewer said. “Also, app says left shoe is already connected to another device whenever I try to reinstall and start over.”

While we all hope to someday see true hoverboards and self-lacing clothes, for now it seems we’re stuck with just another dumb IoT app.

READ MORE: Nike’s self-lacing smart sneakers malfunction days after release [The Daily Dot]

More on self-lacing shoes: Welcome to the Strange, Futuristic World of Nike’s Self-Tightening Shoes

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While Pedophiles Flock to YouTube, Advertisers Flee It

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A video exposing the prevalence of YouTube pedophiles has caused advertisers to flee the platform, but what can it do to actually address the problem?

Pervert Platform

On Sunday, YouTube personality Matt Watson posted a video to the site exposing what he called a “soft-core pedophilia ring.” Based on his research, pedophiles are congregating on suggestive videos of children — and, once connected, using the comments sections to share contact info and links to child pornography.

Watson’s video quickly generated more than 2 million views, and major brands including Disney, Nestle, and Epic Games rushed to pull their advertisements from YouTube — the latest shocking example of how difficult it is for Silicon Valley platforms to police their own communities at scale, even in the face of egregious abuse.

Nefarious Network

Many of the videos drawing these YouTube pedophiles don’t violate any of the platform’s policies — they might feature young girls playing games or doing gymnastics. Others feature illegal content, such as one video in which a prepubescent girl flashes her bare pubic area.

The comments sections of the videos feature lewd messages, suggestive emoji, and timestamps to the moments most likely to appeal to pedophiles. Some commenters leave questions for the children in the videos, and horrifically, the children occasionally respond.

Watson claims in his video that YouTube’s algorithms facilitate this network of pedophiles. Watch one video of children innocently playing, and the algorithm will suggest videos that, from their comments sections, appear popular with YouTube pedophiles.

YouTube’s search function plays a role as well — a WIRED story noted that the site’s autocomplete will add the words “young” and “hot” if a user searches the phrase “girl yoga.”

Disturbed Déjà Vu

Since the release of Watson’s video, YouTube has shared the following statement with various media outlets: “Any content — including comments — that endangers minors is abhorrent and we have clear policies prohibiting this on YouTube. We took immediate action by deleting accounts and channels, reporting illegal activity to authorities and disabling violative comments.”

A number of brands have pulled their advertising from YouTube, too, issuing statements denouncing child exploitation. And that’s great. But advertisers have done this exact same thing before, and yet the problem persists.

That’s due at least in part to how incredibly tough this problem will be to solve. Every minute, users upload 450 hours of content to YouTube, and the combination of humans and machine learning tech the company currently uses to review this content clearly isn’t capable of preventing illegal content from slipping through.

A major loss of advertisers over a long period of time could spur YouTube to find a better system for filtering out this content — assuming one exists — but government fines for facilitating the spread of child pornography might provide additional incentive.

And what about the content that doesn’t violate any rules, like videos of children playing in their backyards? Does YouTube ban any videos featuring minors? How might it enforce that? Should it disable its autocomplete search function so that problematic videos are more difficult for YouTube pedophiles to find?

These are deep questions, but the platform has been dealing with the issue of child exploitation as far back as 2013. Clearly, the various policies it’s already enacted to address the problem aren’t enough — and the strongly worded statements about how “abhorrent” it finds this content won’t be enough either.

READ MORE: Advertisers Boycott YouTube After Pedophiles Swarm Comments on Videos of Children [The New York Times]

More on YouTube: New Research: YouTube Caused the “Flat Earther” Epidemic

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Trump Calls For “6G,” Which Doesn’t Exist

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Drawing Board

We’d like to put out an open call: if you have any idea what 6G technology is, please contact us and fill us in.

We ask because U.S. President Donald Trump just tweeted that he wants “6G” cell service in the U.S. “as soon as possible” — even though we don’t even have 5G service yet and no one has started to meaningfully discuss 6G, according to The Verge.

Quick Primer

5G service is expected to be the next big thing for mobile communications and has long been slated for a 2020 rollout. When it finally goes live, it’s expected to improve cell service, mobile download speeds, and provide better support for the internet of things.

Recently, AT&T misleadingly claimed to have deployed a 5G network before quickly backing away from its own announcement. Meanwhile, there haven’t even been meaningful discussions of what a 6G network would look like.

Invisible Hand

Trump also tweeted that he wants American telecom companies to lead the world in mobile network technology through a spirit of earnest and honest competition, which is a stark contrast to his own administration’s plan to block Chinese 5G technology in the U.S., according to The Verge.

Whether it’s American or Chinese telecom companies that build better 5G service, it’s good to know we have a leader so focused on the future that he wants the U.S. to dominate the race to develop technology that no one has even thought about yet.

READ MORE: Trump wants 6G internet ‘as soon as possible’ [The Verge]

More on 5G: There’s a New 5G Smartphone Coming, and it Might Finally Make the Next-Gen Network Mainstream

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Tesla Model 3 Loses Coveted Consumer Reports Recommendation

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The nonprofit Consumer Reports decided to pull its

Cracking Glass

Tesla’s blockbuster of an electric car, the Model 3, has received some glowing reviews. But now the cracks are starting to show.

The nonprofit Consumer Reports decided to pull its “recommended” rating today, citing new “reliability data” collected from a 2018 survey.

It’s not the first time the Model 3 lost the “recommended” label. In 2018, Consumer Reports first removed the “recommended” label from the Model 3 for its sub-par braking distance before changing its mind in May 2018 after the carmaker shipped an over-the-air update.

Main Culprits

The Model 3 is also not the only car that is losing the rating: the Cadillac 300, Dodge Charger, Acura RDX, BMW 5 Series, and Volkswagen Tiguan are also losing Consumer Reports‘ “recommended” rating.

The main culprits with the Model 3: “problems with paint, trim, and electronics” according to an official update.

Owners complained of freezing and malfunctioning screens, small cracks in rear windows, and issues with loose body trim, according to data from Consumer Reports‘ 2018 owner satisfaction survey that includes input from the owners of 470,000 vehicles.

Long Term Reliability

Consumer Reports has dinged Tesla’s quality testing and long term reliability before. Today’s update cites prior problems with Tesla’s offerings, including Model S suspension problems in 2017 models and hardware issues concerning the Model X SUV’s falcon-wing doors.

But that’s not to say the Model 3 is a bad vehicle: Consumer Reports still lists the Model 3 as the “most satisfying car,” and Tesla’s 2015 Model S even broke Consumer Reports‘ rating system by essentially exceeding all expectations.

READ MORE: Consumer Reports reverses itself again, no longer recommends Tesla Model 3 [The Verge]

More on the Model 3: Elon Musk Slashes Tesla Model 3 Price to Long-Awaited $35,000

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Scientist Who Gene-Hacked Babies “Likely” Boosted Their Brainpower

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Research suggests that the specific genetic edits performed on now-living humans by Chinese scientist He Jiankui could have broader-than-expected impacts.

Galaxy Brain

When infamous Chinese scientists He Jiankui edited the genes of human twin babies last year, he was reportedly trying to make them immune to HIV. But researchers familiar with the genetic changes he made are now saying that the specific manipulation he performed may have broader consequences.

The CCR5 gene is linked to HIV susceptibility, but research published Thursday in the journal Cell shows that it also enhances cognition in mouse studies. The gene can also facilitate a human’s recovery after a stroke and may correlate with academic success, according to MIT Technology Review — meaning that the first two enhanced humans with genetically boosted cognition and memory may already be born.

Feigned Ignorance

There’s no direct evidence that He intended to do anything to twin babies Lulu and Nana’s brain — though given his lofty goals for a future without HIV, it seems plausible that he would have also celebrated figuring out how to boost human intelligence. All the same, evidence gathered by MIT Tech Review suggests that He likely knew about the role CCR5 plays in the brain.

“The answer is likely yes, it did affect their brains,” Alcino Silva, a University of California, Los Angeles neuroscientist who worked on the new research, told MIT Tech. “The simplest interpretation is that those mutations will probably have an impact on cognitive function in the twins.”

Side Effects Unknown

Silva argues that He should not have conducted his research because there’s no way to predict what effect it will have on Lulu and Nana’s lives.

“Could it be conceivable that at one point in the future we could increase the average IQ of the population? I would not be a scientist if I said no,” Silva told MIT Tech. “The work in mice demonstrates the answer may be yes. But mice are not people. We simply don’t know what the consequences will be in mucking around. We are not ready for it yet.”

READ MORE: The CRISPR twins had their brains altered [MIT Technology Review]

More on He Jiankui: Next Gene-Edited Baby Due in Six Months, Scientist Says

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Philosopher: AI Can Never Create True Art

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Sean Dorrance Kelly, philosophy professor at Harvard, argues that artificial intelligence can never achieve true human creativity.

AI Art

Robots with artificial intelligence have created paintings and sketches for years — one even sold for almost half a million dollars at Christie’s Auction House in December.

But is it really art in the same way some of the greatest achievements of creativity in human history have been called “art”?

That’s a clear no. Or at least that’s what Sean Dorrance Kelly, philosophy professor at Harvard, argues in a new essay for the MIT Technology Review. To Kelly, an AI might be able to come up with a “well-executed Bach cantata” or “a brilliant Go strategy” — but it will never be an “autonomous creative agent” like a free-thinking human.

“Creativity is one of the defining features of human beings,” Kelly wrote. “But this kind of creativity depends upon our valuing it, and caring for it, as such.” But thanks to technology, we are starting to value creativity a whole lot less — the same way machines reduce creativity to a simple binary “yes or no.”

Achieving Human Creativity

Kelly believes AI will never end up amounting to human creativity — and worries that by placing less and less importance on the role of creativity, we risk substituting “machine creativity” for our own.

“Human creative achievement, because of the way it is socially embedded, will not succumb to advances in artificial intelligence,” he wrote. “To say otherwise is to misunderstand both what human beings are and what our creativity amounts to.”

But that’s not black or white either. Once robots learn to think for themselves, independent from human influence — and Kelly believes that’s still many years out — the paradigms may shift.

READ MORE: A philosopher argues that an AI can never be an artist

More on robot art: Robot Art A Fleshy New Humanoid Sketches You, Mimics Your Facial Expressions

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NASA’s New Deep-Sea Submarine Could Eventually Look for Aliens

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NASA and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution are working on sending an underwater drone to the deepest points of the Earth's oceans.

The Hadal Zone

Thousands of feet below the surface of Earth’s ocean lies a vast habitat of strange-looking fish, giant jellies, and microscopic animals.

To this day, the “hadal zone” — 3.7-6.8 miles (6,000-11,000 meters) below the surface — remains largely unexplored. But thanks to NASA and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), the world’s leading non-profit dedicated to exploring our oceans, that might soon change.

A brand new submarine called the Orpheus is ready to explore that underwater wilderness with a whole array of scientific instruments — and one day, vehicles like it could explore oceans elsewhere in the solar system, too.

Project Orpheus

Orpheus — named after the Greek hero who survived a trip to the underworld — is a 600 pound drone meant to explore the hadal zone essentially all by itself.

As Business Insider points out, communications from miles beneath the ocean can take longer to reach the surface than broadcasts from the Moon.

It’s also meant to be small, and light so that if all goes right, a very distant relative of that same design could explore the icy oceans of Jupiter’s smallest moon, Europa.

“It’s the great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother of the vehicle that may go to Europa,” Tim Shank, WHOI biologist and mission leader, told Business Insider.

Icy Moons

But diving to those kind of extreme depths is difficult, to say the least. A previous submarine called Nereus built by WHOI engineers was lost at a depth of six miles in 2014. Luckily, the Jet Propulsion Lab at NASA are offering up some help for the Orpheus project.

So far, Orpheus has dived to just shy of 600 feet on an untethered mission in September — a long shot from the hadal zone.

But it’s a tiny first step before mankind could make the first discovery of alien life on Jupiter’s ancient moons — so far one of the likeliest places for life to exist in our Solar System.

READ MORE:  NASA is testing a new submarine that will hunt for undiscovered sea life — and scientists eventually want it to look for aliens on Europa [Business Insider]

More on Europa: NASA’s Nuclear-Powered Tunneling Bot Could Hunt for Life on Europa

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Robots Are Building a Robotics Museum

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The firm that won an international competition to design a robotics museum in Seoul plans to have robots

Builder Bots

In 2022, the Robot Science Museum is expected to officially open in Seoul, South Korea. The museum’s first exhibit, however, will actually launch two years prior — when a team of robots begin constructing the facility.

Turkish firm Melike Altinisik Architects (MAA) recently announced that it had won an international competition to design the Robot Science Museum, which will serve as a branch of the Seoul Metropolitan Museum.

According to the firm, “robots will be in charge” of designing, manufacturing, and constructing the facility. World Architecture elaborates on that a bit, reporting that various systems of robots will mold and assemble the building’s metal plates, as well as 3D-print its concrete landscape.

Amusing Museum

While tasking robots with building a robotics museum is an amusing proposition, the decision to choose MAA’s proposal was also reportedly a fiscal one — the use of robots for the museum’s construction is expected to save time and money.

It’s also important to note that this is far from the first example of robots doing construction. We’ve already seen bots install drywall, lay bricks, and 3D-print homes for people — so robots that build a home for themselves seems like the next logical step.

READ MORE: This Robotics Museum in Korea Will Construct Itself (in Theory) [TechCrunch]

More on robots: This Humanoid Robot Can (Slowly) Install Drywall All by Itself

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New Research: Bone Marrow Transplants Might Prevent Aging

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Out With The Old

There’s new evidence to suggest that transfusions of young tissue can stave off health problems for the elderly.

After a transplantation of a healthy young mouse’s bone marrow, older mice’s brain cells were better preserved and the mice had better memories and cognitive abilities than their elderly peers, according to research published Wednesday in the journal Communications Biology — raising the possibility of a future anti-aging treatment for humans.

Blood-Borne

More specifically, the research found that the marrow prevented brain cells from receding and decaying due to age. Mice who received transfusions had brain cells with longer axons that maintained broader networks with the rest of the brain.

These mice fared better at a battery of cognitive tests than other elderly mice who didn’t receive transfusions.

“While prior studies have shown that introducing blood from young mice can reverse cognitive decline in old mice, it is not well understood how this happens,” said Helen Goodridge, a Cedars-Sinai Medical Center scientist who led the new research, in a press release. “Our research suggests one answer lies in specific properties of youthful blood cells.”

The Big “But”

The research calls to mind Ambrosia Health, the controversial blood transfusion clinic that shut its doors this week after the FDA issued a warning about its practices — but it’s worth remembering that mice aren’t people.

There’s no evidence that this mouse study is relevant to human medicine, and there’s a long road of testing ahead before anyone can say it is — though that doesn’t mean researchers aren’t excited.

“We are entering an era in which there will be more elderly people in the population, along with an increased incidence of Alzheimer’s disease, putting a huge burden on the health system,” Clive Svendsen, who is the director of the Cedars-Sinai Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute and who also helped lead the research project, said in the same press release. “Our work indicates that cognitive decline in mice can be significantly reduced by simply providing young blood cells, which act on the brain to reduce the loss of synapses related to aging.”

READ MORE: Young bone marrow rejuvenates aging mouse brains, study finds [Cedars-Sinai Medical Center via EurekAlert!]

More on regenerative medicine: Neural Stem Cells Grown From Blood Could Revolutionize Medicine

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China Unveils the World’s First Female AI News Anchor

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China's state-run media outlet Xinhua adds a female AI news anchor to its news team, and she'll make her professional debut in March.

A New Woman

On Tuesday, China’s state-run news outlet Xinhua announced the latest addition to its news team: Xin Xiaomeng.

But Xin never went to journalism school — or any school — because “she” is not a real person. Instead, she’s an artificial intelligence created by Xinhua and search engine Sogou — making her the world’s first female AI news anchor.

Two Sessions, Three AIs

Xin will make her professional debut during March’s Two Sessions, the name given to a pair of annual meetings featuring China’s legislature and its top political advisory body.

She won’t be the only AI news anchor covering the event either.

In November, Xinhua and Sogou unveiled the first AI news anchors of any gender, a pair of male AIs trained to deliver the news in either English or Chinese.

The same day they unveiled Xin, Xinhua and Sogou announced that they’d given these AI anchors the ability to stand and talk simultaneously, and they’ll show off that new ability while covering the Two Sessions alongside their female counterpart.

Hard Workers

When Xinhua debuted their first AI anchors in November, the news agency claimed that each anchor could “work 24 hours a day on its official website and various social media platforms, reducing news production costs and improving efficiency.”

Since then, the anchors have delivered 3,400 news reports while logging 10,000 minutes of screen time, according to Tencent News.

Clearly, Xinhua plans to actually put its AIs to work, and the addition of another anchor to the news team should only serve to increase production.

READ MORE: Chinese State Media’s Latest Innovation Is an AI Female News Anchor [Quartz]

More on AI anchors: Meet the World’s First AI News Anchor

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Mark Zuckerberg Insists That Facebook Promotes Privacy

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During a recent interview with law professor Jonathan Zittrain, Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly insisted against all evidence that Facebook promotes privacy.

Zuck Stop

Mark Zuckerberg wants everyone to know that Facebook truly values privacy. So much so, he says, that it practically invented the whole concept!

At least, that was Zuckerberg’s message during a conversation with Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor at Harvard, reports CNBC.

So Close

“Thinking about Facebook as an innovator in privacy is certainly not the mainstream view,” said Zuckerberg in a brief moment of unintentional candor, before going on to describe how the Facebook was originally used to give Harvard students a way to privately communicate among themselves.

Notably, Zuckerberg chose to not focus on Facebook’s role in sharing private messages without permission, undermining democratic elections or enabling genocide in Myanmar.

Missing the Mark

After a series of privacy scandals and data breaches, Zuckerberg is likely trying to earn back the favor of a public that doesn’t fully understand or trust how the corporation generates advertising revenue, according to Gizmodo’s analysis.

Here’s a hint: it’s all thanks to the company’s access to that sweet, sweet private data.

READ MORE: Facebook Is an ‘Innovator in Privacy,’ Says Guy Who Runs Facebook [Gizmodo]

More on Facebook: If Zuck’s Prepared Statements Prove One Thing, It’s That Facebook Has Become Far Too Big

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NASA Lander Now Provides Daily Martian Weather Reports

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A new NASA page beams weather data from the space agency's InSight lander, on the Red Planet, straight to your web browser.

Weather Report

The temperature at Mars’ Elysium Planitia has hovered around a bracing -80 degrees Fahrenheit (-17 degrees Celsius) for the past week, occasionally spiking to a high of 15 degrees Fahrenheit (-10 degrees Celsius).

At least, that’s according to a new NASA website that beams data on Martian weather from the space agency’s InSight lander on the Red Planet straight to your web browser — a striking example of how technology is making Mars more accessible than ever.

Martian Meteorologist

NASA isn’t just using data from the InSight lander to satisfy online curiosity about Martian weather. According to a Cornell blog post announcing the new weather reports, the data is also already adding to scientists’ understanding of the Red Planet’s weather systems.

“Since the lander is close to the equator, I didn’t think we’d see any evidence of the storms that are 60-degrees north latitude, but we’re already seeing evidence of the high and low pressure-signal waves that create weather on Mars,” Don Banfield, the mission lead for InSight’s meteorological sensors, said in the post. “We can see those waves all the way down near the equator, as the waves are big enough that they have a signature. That was a surprise.”

Red Planet

InSight’s weather sensors serve another crucial purpose: supporting the lander’s mission to investigate Mars’ seismic activity.

“For our mission, [the lander’s meteorological sensors] will help us filter out noise in our data and know when we’re seeing a Mars quake and when we aren’t,” Banfield said. “But by operating continuously, we’ll also see a more detailed view of the weather than most surface missions, which usually collect data for just a few hours at a time.”

READ MORE: You Can Now Check the Weather on Mars Every Day [Gizmodo]

More on Mars: NASA’s Mars Lander Places Instrument to Listen for “Marsquakes”

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Watch a Self-Driving Car Obey Police Hand Signals

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self-driving car company Waymo recently shared a video showing one of its autonomous vehicles being waved through an intersection where the light was out.

Palm Reading

For autonomous vehicles that rely on smooth roads and clear signals, a broken traffic light could conceivably pose a major problem.

To get around the problem of a missing green light, self-driving car company Waymo trained its vehicles’ artificial intelligence to detect and respond to the arm movements of a traffic cop as they wave traffic through an intersection, according to CNET — and you can watch it on YouTube.

Long Time Coming

Waymo first claimed that its autonomous vehicles could respond to hand signals from nearby cyclists back in 2016. That particular research treated cyclists, from the vehicle’s perspective, as obstacles to track and avoid.

A new video published by Waymo on Wednesday is the first that shows its vehicles responding to gesture commands — especially in the absence of the traffic lights on which it would normally rely — and obeying police orders. The video, which runs at three times normal speed, shows a picture-in-picture display of the car’s digital perspective and a video camera as it goes through an intersection.

Computer Vision

The video shows the car approach the intersection where a virtual red wall blocks off the road, suggesting that the computer’s software responds to the absence of a green light at an intersection the same way as it might to an illuminated red light.

The cop in the video, represented by a small prism, teeters across the virtual representation of the intersection before finally waving the Waymo vehicle’s vehicle through the intersection and along its way.

READ MORE: Waymo self-driving cars can now respond to traffic cops’ hand signals [CNET]

More on Waymo: Expert Slams Waymo Safety Data: “They Obviously Do Not Trust These Numbers”

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“Holy Herb” Shows Promise as Alzheimer’s Treatment

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Yerba santa, a plant dubbed the

Old Medicine

The name native California tribes gave to the plant Eriodictyon californicum — “Yerba santa” — translates to “holy herb” in English, and the moniker is a testament to the tribes’ respect for the plant, which they used to treat everything from headaches to sore muscles.

Now, in a heartening old-meets-new finding, scientists think they may have discovered yet another ailment Yerba santa has the potential to treat: Alzheimer’s disease.

Brain Protector

In a study published in the journal Redox Biology on Wednesday, researchers from the Salk Institute detail their discovery that Yerba santa could be useful for treating Alzheimer’s.

They started by screening 400 plant extracts known to have pharmacological properties for signs of anti-inflammatory or neuroprotective properties. This led them to the Yerba santa compound sterubin.

The researchers found through additional testing that “the compound was effective against multiple inducers of cell death in the nerve cells,” according to a press release.

It had an anti-inflammatory impact on certain brain cells, and it was also effective at removing iron, which is known to add to the damage of nerve cells in people with neurodegenerative diseases.

Dramatic Drug

The researchers now plan to test sterubin in animal models of Alzheimer’s disease. After that, they’ll set out to determine the compound’s toxicity levels in animals and other characteristics.

Human testing could follow, but as researcher Pamela Maher pointed out in a press release, the team would likely created a synthetic derivative of sterubin rather than use sterubin drawn from a plant.

Ultimately, this wouldn’t be the first medicine with its roots in nature — aspirin and morphine are two well-known examples — but given the ever-growing number of people suffering and dying from Alzheimer’s, the “holy herb” has the potential to be one that has an immediate and dramatic impact.

READ MORE: Native California Medicinal Plant May Hold Promise for Treating Alzheimer’s [Salk Institute]

More on Alzheimer’s: Americans Are Living Longer. That Will Mean More People With Alzheimer’s.

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NASA Warns SpaceX and Boeing About Safety Flaws in Spacecraft

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NASA commissioned SpaceX and Boeing to develop shuttles for crewed missions. Upcoming test flights may be delayed as NASA found several safety flaws.

Back to the Basics

Both Boeing and SpaceX are working to develop tools for NASA to use in upcoming crewed missions from the International Space Station.

While NASA planned on launching test flights over the next few months, the whole program may be delayed as the government agency has found over 30 technical flaws or safety hazards for each company’s system, according to Reuters — a startling rebuke of the efforts of two premier private spaceflight companies to do work for the U.S. government.

“SpaceX and Boeing both have challenges, both comparable, from a safety perspective,” a source from within the government told Reuters.

Plan B

In the past, NASA has paid Russia’s space agency to shuttle astronauts but is currently leaning on private industry to develop alternative options.

NASA spokesperson Joshua Finch told Reuters that the agency was willing to delay missions as long as is necessary to make sure that astronauts will actually reach the space station safely.

Geronimo!

For SpaceX, NASA reported concerns over how the rocket is presently fueled with astronauts already on board. NASA also found problems with how SpaceX rockets orient themselves when landing in water.

Meanwhile, it said, Boeing capsules may not be structurally sound. And both companies, according to Reuters, may not have adequate parachute systems to ensure a safe landing.

READ MORE: Exclusive: SpaceX, Boeing design risks threaten new delays for U.S. space program [Reuters]

More on NASA: Apollo Astronaut: It Would Be “Stupid” to Send People to Mars

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