Category Archives: Futurist

What role should text-generating large language models (LLMs) have in the scientific research process? According to a team of Oxford scientists, the answer at least for now is: pretty much none.

In a new essay, researchers from the Oxford Internet Institute argue that scientists should abstain from using LLM-powered tools like chatbots to assist in scientific research on the grounds that AI's penchant for hallucinating and fabricating facts, combined with the human tendency to anthropomorphize the human-mimicking word engines, could lead to larger information breakdowns a fate that could ultimately threaten the fabric of science itself.

"Our tendency to anthropomorphize machines and trust models as human-like truth-tellers, consuming and spreading the bad information that they produce in the process," the researchers write in the essay, which was published this week in the journal Nature Human Behavior, "is uniquely worrying for the future of science."

The scientists' argument hinges on the reality that LLMs and the many bots that the technology powers aren't primarily designed to be truthful. As they write in the essay, sounding truthful is but "one element by which the usefulness of these systems is measured." Characteristics including "helpfulness, harmlessness, technical efficiency, profitability, [and] customer adoption" matter, too.

"LLMs are designed to produce helpful and convincing responses," they continue, "without any overriding guarantees regarding their accuracy or alignment with fact."

Put simply, if a large language model which, above all else, is taught to beconvincing comes up with an answer that's persuasive but not necessarily factual, the fact that the output is persuasive will override its inaccuracy. In an AI's proverbial brain, simply saying "I don't know" is less helpful than providing an incorrect response.

But as the Oxford researchers lay out, AI's hallucination problem is only half the problem. The Eliza Effect, or the human tendency to read way too far into human-sounding AI outputs due to our deeply mortal proclivity to anthropomorphize everything around us, is a well-documented phenomenon. Because of this effect, we're already primed to put a little too much trust in AI; couple that with the confident tone these chatbots so often take, and you have a perfect recipe for misinformation. After all, when a human gives us a perfectly bottled, expert-sounding paraphrasing in response to a query, we're probably less inclined to use the same critical thinking in our fact-checking as we might when we're doing our own research.

Importantly, the scientists do note "zero-shot translation" as a scenario in which AI outputs might be a bit more reliable. This, as Oxford professor and AI ethicist Brent Mittelstadt told EuroNews, refers to when a model is given "a set of inputs that contain some reliable information or data, plus some request to do something with that data."

"It's called zero-shot translation because the model has not been trained specifically to deal with that type of prompt," Mittelstadt added. So, in other words, a model is more or less rearranging and parsing through a very limited, trustworthy dataset, andnotbeing used as a vast, internet-like knowledge center. But that would certainly limit its use cases, and would demand a more specialized understanding of AI tech much different from just loading up ChatGPT and firing off some research questions.

And elsewhere, the researchers argue, there's an ideological battle at the core of this automation debate. After all, science is a deeply human pursuit. To outsource too much of the scientific process to automated AI labor, the Oxforders say, could undermine that deep-rooted humanity. And is that something we can really afford to lose?

"Do we actually want to reduce opportunities for writing, thinking critically, creating new ideas and hypotheses, grappling with the intricacies of theory and combining knowledge in creative and unprecedented ways?" the researchers write. "These are the inherently valuable hallmarks of curiosity-driven science."

"They are not something that should be cheaply delegated to incredibly impressive machines," they continue, "that remain incapable of distinguishing fact from fiction."

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Scientists Warn That AI Threatens Science Itself - Futurism

Are you ready to embark on an electrifying off-road adventure like never before? Former Jaguar designer Ian Callum is here to revolutionize your outdoor escapades with the stunning Callum Skye electric multi-terrain vehicle. In this article, we delve into the future of off-roading with the Skye, a vehicle that effortlessly combines form and function.

Picture this: a robust, electrified beast that breaks away from the conventional boxy SUV design. Ian Callums Skye is not your average off-road vehicle. Its a vision of innovation and sophistication, where aesthetics meet functionality in perfect harmony.

At just over 13 feet in length, the Skye is thoughtfully sized to navigate the most challenging trails with ease. Its minimal front and rear overhangs, paired with highly arched fenders, provide ample wheel travel for conquering rugged terrains. The Skye isnt just a vehicle; its a trailblazer that sets a new standard in off-road design.

Inside the Skye, youll find a 2+2 layout that can comfortably accommodate up to four passengers. Seated under a sleek fastback canopy, you and your companions can enjoy both the thrill of off-roading and the comfort of a premium interior. Its a combination of luxury and adventure thats bound to leave you in awe.

While the Skye is still under development, one thing is clearit will be a battery-electric vehicle. Although specific powertrain details have not been released yet, you can expect an eco-friendly, high-performance machine thats as powerful as it is sustainable.

As we eagerly await the official unveiling of the Callum Skye, one thing is certain: this electric off-road marvel is set to redefine the way we explore the great outdoors. So, if youre ready to embark on a journey of innovation, luxury, and adventure, keep a close eye on Callum Designs for updates and insights into the future of off-roading.

For all the latest updates and exclusive information about the Callum Skye, visit Callum Designs. Ian Callums vision is just a click away, and the future of off-road exploration has never looked this exciting. Get ready to be electrified by the Callum Skye!

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Beautiful and mysterious. Picture Perfect

NASA has unveiled a spectacular new image of the Milky Way taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, showing ever greater detail of a region close to the nucleus of our home galaxy replete withwhat the space agency is calling needle-like "unexplained structures" that have scientists intrigued and puzzled.

The James Webb Space Telescope, a powerful infrared instrument, was able to take a detailed snapshot of Sagittarius C, a central region of the Milky Way where stars are born and which is about 300 light years away from the gargantuan black hole that makes up the central hub of our galaxy.

The image contains an estimated 500,000 twinkly stars plus a cluster of protostars emerging from dense dark clouds of dust and gas (protostars are baby stars gaining mass before they become full-fledged stars.)

In addition to the stars, the telescope revealed feathery wisps, believed to be emissions from ionized hydrogen and colored as cyan in the image. Usually, these wisps are the product of massive stars belching out excited photons which ionize surrounding hydrogen gas.

Within these wisps, scientists are puzzled by the existence of streaky needle-shaped structures that are randomly assorted throughout the ionized hydrogen. Scientists don't know what they are and are determined to plumb for more data in order to find out.

"Theres never been any infrared data on this region with the level of resolution and sensitivity we get with Webb, so we are seeing lots of features here for the first time," said University of Virginia undergraduate student and principal investigator Samuel Crowe. "Webb reveals an incredible amount of detail, allowing us to study star formation in this sort of environment in a way that wasnt possible previously."

The Webb was launched back in late 2021, with its first images being released in 2022. The telescope was launched with the goal of peering back at the earliest periods of the universe, searching for exoplanets, examining early galaxies, and also charting how stars are formed, such as the ones captured in this latest image.

Scientists are excited about this new shot because not only is it beautiful, but it just might help researchers understand how stars flare into existence in the first place.

"The galactic center is a crowded, tumultuous place," said Instituto Astrofsica de Andaluca researcher and co-investigator Rubn Fedriani. "There are turbulent, magnetized gas clouds that are forming stars, which then impact the surrounding gas with their outflowing winds, jets, and radiation. Webb has provided us with a ton of data on this extreme environment, and we are just starting to dig into it."

More on the Milky Way: Trillions of "Rogue Planets" Are Wandering Through Our Galaxy, Scientists Say

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James Webb Detects Unexplained Structures in Heart of Our Galaxy - Futurism

"The 2023 ozone hole has already surpassed the size of the three years prior." Holed Up

A large hole in the Antarctic ozone layer once thought to be steadily closing could actually be widening, according to new research, casting doubt on whether global efforts to heal the ozone have been successful after all.

Most scientists would disagree. The findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, contradict the broader consensus that the ozone has been steadily recovering over the past four decades.

By analyzing both monthly and daily changes in the ozone from 2004 to 2022, the researchers found that the ozone hole has significantly less ozone than it did 19 years ago, with levels declining by a shocking 26 percent.

"Our analysis ended with data from 2022, but as of today the 2023 ozone hole has already surpassed the size of the three years prior late last month it was over 26 million square kilometers, nearly twice the area of Antarctica," said study lead author Hannah Kessenich at the University of Otago said in a statement about the work.

Located miles above the surface in the stratosphere, the ozone layer is essential to life on Earth, shielding our planet from the Sun's harsh ultraviolet radiation. To protect it, world leaders at the United Nation passed the landmark Montreal Protocol in 1987, internationally banning a chemical used in aerosols called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that scientists discovered just years earlier was depleting the ozone.

The treaty has been widely hailed as a huge environmental victory. This year, a UN report projected that the ozone will return to 1980s levels by 2040.

But Kessenich and her team argue that it's too soon to pat ourselves on the back.

"Most major communications about the ozone layer over the last few years have given the public the impression that the 'ozone issue' has been solved," Kessenich said. "While the Montreal Protocol has vastly improved our situation with CFCs destroying ozone, the hole has been among the largest on record over the past three years, and in two of the five years prior to that."

So the ban on CFCs did work but they may not be the sole culprit if we're to explain this recent widening. Instead, the researchers suggest that ozone depletion could also be driven by the Antarctic polar vortex, a low pressure swirl of cold, westerly winds. So far, they've noted a link between changes in the vortex and declines in the ozone, but can't explain why this would happen.

The researchers' peers aren't quite convinced, though. Martin Jucker at the Climate Change ResearchCentre at the University of New South Wales notes that existing literature has already found that these holes were caused by climate events such as the 2019 bushfires and a massive volcanic eruption.

"It is important to note that the ozone hole is extremely variable from year to year, meaning that it can be large one year and small the other year," Jucker wrote in response to the paper on SciMex. "It is only over longer terms that a trend can be identified," he explained, criticizing the study for "using only 22 years" of data.

Still, right or wrong, the researchers say their work highlights "the importance of continued monitoring of the state of the ozone layer."

More on Earth: A Supernova Blew Out Part of Earth's Atmosphere, Scientists Say

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The Hole in the Ozone Layer Is Getting Bigger Again, Scientists Say - Futurism

Fat cats, living high on the hog. Big Carbon

As some climatologists fret over the morality of flying on an airplane, the richest among us haven't curbed their lifestyle due to any climate change concerns and are actually spending far more on luxuries than usual lately.

Putting this in particularly stark climate terms, a new study from Oxfam confirms that the richest 1 percent of the world had the same carbon footprint in 2019 as the poorest 66 percent, or the equivalent of 5 billion people.

For perspective, 59.4 million people in the world have a net worth of over $1 million, but the top 1 percent are worth over $11 million a minuscule proportion of the ultra-elite thats responsible for an obscene amount of the planets impending global warming doom.

"This report from Oxfam makes it glaringly clear: these are not separate issues," said climate activist Greta Thunberg in the foreword of the Oxfam study. "Climate breakdown and inequality are linked together and fuel each other. If we are to overcome one, we must overcome both."

The study, jointly conducted with the Stockholm Environment Institute, also found that the 1 percent are responsible for so many emissions that any carbon savings from off-shore wind turbines is moot, among other sobering facts.

Whats glaring in the data and testimony in the report is that while the rich are responsible for an outsize share of carbon emissions, its the poorest who will suffer most from the detrimental impact of climate change. For example, global warming will impact the availability of food and potable water whose scarcity will hurt the poor, while the rich can just pay extra for those necessities.

To change this dynamic, the Oxfam report calls for a tax on wealthy individuals and corporations, with proceeds going towards the Global South that would fund an energy transition and help ameliorate adverse effects of climate change on the poor.

The study says that a 60 percent income tax on the 1 percent would able to reduce emissions at more than the total carbon emissions of the United Kingdom and generate an annual figure of $6.4 trillion for a robust energy transition away from fossil fuels.

Would a climate tax on the wealthy have a snowballs chance in hell of happening? With stories of rich people trying to hide their wealth in off-shore accounts, most likely not. But perhaps this sobering report would make them think twice about flying off to Majorca in a private jet.

More on climate change: Exxon is Trying to Find the Guy Who Did Climate Change

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"It was a Sunday afternoon," Keith Thomas, a 45-year-old Long Island native, told us of his accident. "I dove into the wrong side of the pool, and I blacked out."

The next thing he knew, Thomas says, he was being airlifted to a nearby hospital; it was July 2020, just a few months into the pandemic, and he'd badly broken his neck at the C4 and C5 vertebrae of his spine. He's been paralyzed from the neck down since, unable to move or feel his limbs until a few months ago, that is, when a first-of-its-kind clinical trial brought both movement and feeling back to his arms and hands for the first time in three years.

Thomas, who lives with quadriplegia, was the first patient to receive what his doctors are calling a double neural bypass, a new bioelectrical therapy pioneered at Northwell Health's Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research. Led by Chad Bouton, a professor at Northwell's Institute of Bioelectronic Medicine, the experimental new procedure involves a combination of AI, brain-computer interface (BCI) implants, external computers, and non-invasive wearable tech.

Like a coronary bypass surgery creates a detour for your heart to pump blood around an obstacle, a neural bypassuses a combination of machine learning and electrical signaling to reroute an individual's neural signals, avoiding whatever barrier is preventing them from making it where they're supposed to go. A double neural bypass, then, reroutes the signal in just one but two places:in this case, the areas responsible for movement and touch.

The goal? To answer an elusive question: how do you restore the communication between the brain and the body, when the two can no longer speak?

"It's a very challenging problem," said Bouton, who's also the founder and CEO of a biotech firm called Neuvotion, over a video call. "You're looking at these complex electrical patterns in the brain, and you're trying to make sense out of the patterns and extract information from them. We want to know when someone's thinking about moving their hand, or moving their fingers, and we want to be able to then channel those thoughts into something useful."

Bouton and his team refer to this approach as "thought-driven therapy," in which chips embedded in the patient's brain use machine learning to interpret the complex language of neurons. Does it sound like sci-fi? Absolutely. But so far, it's showing unmistakable promise and the implications for the millions worldwide who suffer from paralysis or movement impairment could be significant.

"It's frustrating when someone looks at their limb, and they can't make the movement they want to make," Bouton said. "They're trying, and the brain knows they're trying, but things aren't happening. It's super frustrating, and it can be depressing."

The professor and his team performed the world's first single neural bypass surgery back in 2016, successfully restoring movement in the arms of a patient who had broken his neck on a family vacation six years prior. But while that procedure was able to reestablish the ability to move when hooked up to a computer, that is it didn't bring back the patient's sense of feeling.

Now, seven years later, the double neural bypass has been designed to do both: bring back movement and sensation.

In Thomas' case, he first had to spend months staring at simulated arm and hand movements on a computer screen, urging his brain unsuccessfully, at the time to mimic the motions. The doctors and engineers, meanwhile, took detailed MRIs of his brain, mapping the areas responsible for arm movement and hand touch. (Like searching for a needle in an extremely delicate, blood vessel-laden haystack, Bouton told us.)

Armed with this data, the doctors then hatched a plan to implant a total of five BCI chips: two at the area of the brain that presides over movement, and three at the region responsible for touch and feeling in the fingers. The chips pass decoded bioelectrical messages to the computer,which then sends electric signals to a series of electrode-laden patches placed across Thomas' spine and forearms. Finally, a handful of infinitesimal sensors placed on Thomas' fingertips and palms send touch and pressure data back up to the sensory region of Thomas' brain.

"Every time he thinks about moving and feeling, we actually send another signal to the spinal cord, and that supercharges the spinal cord," said Bouton. "It tries to strengthen connections."

Installing the chips was no small feat. Thomas underwent a 15-hour open brain surgery back in March, and as if that wasn't enough on its own, the Long Islander was awakefor large portions of the procedure, verbally relaying the sensations he was feeling back to Bouton and his surgeons, a team led by Northwell neurosurgeons Ashesh Mehta and Netanel Ben-Shalom.

But Thomas "didn't really have any reservations" about the surgery, he recalled, before conceding: "until the night before."

Fortunately, the procedure was a resounding success. The BCI install went off without a hitch, and for the first time since his accident, Thomas was able to hold and feel his sister's hand.

"It was incredible," Bouton recalled. "It still makes me tear up."

In the four months since the procedure, Thomas has regained full strength in both arms, even experiencing a 110 percent recovery in his right arm. But most excitingly, Thomas has started to experience natural recovery in his forearm and wrist meaning that the therapy might have kickstarted his nervous system's innate healing processes.

"Only several months into the study, he's making huge gains," Bouton said, "doubling his arm strength, and starting to feel new sensations in his forearm and even wrist even after he goes home outside the lab, even when we turn [the computer] off."

When we reached out to experts in the field, enthusiasm for the procedure's success and AI's role in it was palpable.

The surgery is a "novel and exciting advance in the field of both BCI and spinal cord neuroprosthetic interfaces," Dr. Wilson Zachary Ray, Executive Vice-Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery and chief of spine surgery at the Washington School of Medicine in St. Louis, who wasn't involved in the study, said over email. "I suspect this sort of AI and ML innovation will see a massive growth in clinical applications over the next 3 to 5 years."

"At some point in the not too distant future," Ray added, "implantable 'smart technology' will be integrated into the fabric of our daily life, similar to how all view our smartphones today."

But as remarkable as these results are, they're not without caveats. Although Thomas has experienced new sensations outside the lab, the computer needs to be turned on in order for him to be able to move. And as Bouton told us in our interview, the contraption itself isn't exactly minimalist.

"It's kind of like the early heart and lung machine," the professor told us of the contraption. "We've got some parts that are in the body, some parts that are on the laboratory table, and some wearables."

But over time, he says, the goal is to condense the device's size, ideally to the point that it's portable. His company, Neuvotion, is working on a number of non-invasive treatments and devices seeking to restore autonomy to those suffering movement impairment and paralysis, among other applications.

"In the more challenging cases, like Keith's," he added, "combining brain-interface technology with non-invasive devices is powerful."

The recovery also requires a lot of effort for patients hours-long therapy sessions, visits with specialists as they relearn how to move and strengthen those movements, one day at a time.

"You have to be really patient, and really dedicated, to want to do this," said Thomas. "It's a lot of work." Recounting his many weekly therapy sessions and visits to specialists, he added: "It's pretty much a full-time job, being quadriplegic."

But Thomas doesn't mind. The "stars aligned" for him to meet Bouton, he says, and seeing the tangible results of his effort has been extraordinary. If his role in this research helps others down the line, according to Thomas, it's all worth it.

"All of the effort that I'm putting in is paying off," he told us. "I realize it's not going to happen overnight, but the little things reaching up to my chin, being able to touch my other hand, rub my cheek when I have to, call people." He quieted for a second. "It's the little things."

More on paralysis technology: Paralyzed People Successfully Test Brain-controlled Electric Wheelchairs

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For the First Time, AI Brain Chips Allow Paralyzed Man to Move and ... - Futurism

AI bro fight! AI bro fight! Clash of the TAItans

Buttons? Pressed.

Over the weekend, researchers Dylan Patel and Daniel Nishball, who together write a semiconductor blog called SemiAnalysis, published a controversial post declaring that Google's secretive upcoming AI model, dubbed Gemini, is about to blow OpenAI's GPT-4 out of the water. According to the blog brusquely titled "Google Gemini Eats The World Gemini Smashes GPT-4 By 5X, The GPU-Poors" Google's expansive infrastructure of advanced GPUs gives the Silicon Valley stalwart and its next-gen model a leg up over the latest iteration of OpenAI's GPT-4.

Which, as conversations across sites like X-formerly-Twitter and Hacker News made clear, is a contentious take. Does more computing power reallyequal a better AI model?

It's a fascinating question, and some online debates got heated. But no one, it seems, was more perturbed by the statements in the blog than OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who took to X-formerly-Twitter on Monday to scoff at the researchers' analysis.

"Incredible Google got that SemiAnalysis guy to publish their internal marketing/recruiting chart," Altman wrote in the post, referring to an infrastructure chart included in the blog. His signoff to the message: "lol."

Patel, one of the blog authors, didn't take Altman's critiques lying down, and on Tuesday hit back with an X post of his own.

"Sundar to the GPU-poors," the researcher captioned the post, which included an NSFW meme of Google-owning Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai appearing to force-feed milk to Altman. "The data is from a supplier of Google," Patel added, "and we made the chart."

It's not surprising that Altman isn't a fan of the SemiAnalysis post, given that it pretty much just says that Google products will absolutely wallop OpenAI's by the end of the year. And to his credit, as a number of netizens pointed out, the Semiconductors Rule All argument might lack some nuance.

"Computational power alone is not the only resource. It is also the training process itself... and, obviously, data and its quality," one Hacker News user wrote, as caught by Insider. "I will be convinced only after Google demonstrates that Gemini is better than GPT4 (in some, or all, tasks)."

A fair point. Still, it'salsotrue that, thoughOpenAI's ChatGPT release kickstarted the publicview of the AI race, Google which has used its immensely deep pockets to pioneer the world of AI R&D for some time now likely has some powerful stuff up its sleeves. Regardless, at the end of the day, it's always fun to witness Silicon Valley's most powerful bristle at any affront to their perceived superiority.

More on AI: AI's Dirty Secret: Poor People in the Developing World Are Doing Most of the Work

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OpenAI Rages at Report That Google's New AI Crushes GPT-4 - Futurism

August 28, 2023

Who is it? After graduating from Central Saint Martins MA in Fashion (Knitwear) program, Paolina Russo launched her eponymous label alone, until a cosmic moment brought her together with fellow CSM graduate Lucile Guilmard. We shared a studio together and then one morning we just said Look, can we do this together? recalls Russo. And thats when the brand really flourished when there were two minds behind it, a merging of two creative communities.

Despite coming from different backgrounds Russo grew up in Canada; Guilmard in France the two share a common language in crafts, as both an artistic form and a reactive, solution-oriented process. Both were introduced to traditional clothes-making techniques at a young age via family members, which instilled in each of them an organic appreciation for the hands-on knowledge transfer involved in fashion design. Together, they share a reverence for the pure magic of these ancient crafts yet cradle their potential to innovate solutions for the future.

Knitwear, the brands specialty, is, for example, something that has existed for thousands of years but theres so much newness in it and excitement about where you can take it into the future. Even if something seems theoretically impossible, by working with other knitwear developers we are always able to find some sort of practical solution, says Russo of their collaborative approach. It really is a sort of alchemy.

This ethos of communal effort, of intergenerational savoir-faire is the spirited soul of Paolina Russo. The designers always start the development of a new collection by spending time on the ground in the factories they work with. Each step of this process is honestly documented on social media, to make visible, and celebrate, the many hands involved in the making of their garments. Its very important for us to meet the people because everything we do is really craft-based and craft is something that comes from communities. It exists today because its been passed down from generation to generation, explains Guilmard, We want to make sure that this remains a human story, with human hands.

Why do I want it? Russo and Guilmards deft talent for construction and technique, and their singular vision of colour and motif, have allowed them to so magically transform a heritage craft into futuristic folklore. Their signature sculptural knitwear is both fresh and familiar, as the duo so harmoniously balance technical innovation with folkish motifs and playful palettes. But even if there is a certain novelty in the silhouettes, the designers always ground their garments in a sense of longevity: each piece is made from high-quality, natural fibres using innovative techniques to ensure durability.

For their Spring/Summer 2024 collection, Monolith, presented at Copenhagen Fashion Week as part of the Zalando Visionary Award, the designers drew parallels between prehistoric cave markings and the chalked pavement scribbles of their childhoods to emphasis the intelligence of human ancestral wisdom, so often ignored in our Age of Information and Technology. Perfectly dirtied jeans laser-cut with runic symbols, the brands first foray into denim, were styled with wrapped, convex knits; slouched jersey tops were given form with talismanic wooden fastenings. Any tension between past and future was overridden by a brightly-hued optimism for the ability of traditional craftsmanship to endure within future technological landscapes.

Russo and Gailmards approach to sustainability is just as rigorous and socially conscious as their design process. Every step, from the origins of the fibres to the post-consumer journey, is considered. With each collection, they choose to focus on a single fibre and for S/S24 it was cotton. All of our knitwear, denim, jersey, are 100 per cent cotton, explains Russo. Its really important for us as we develop things to consider the post-consumer journey. To know that if the pieces end up in landfill, they can biodegrade. The designers personally visit the sources of all material used and make this information transparent via social media.

As Paolina Russo continues to grow, the designers remain passionately committed to ongoing education regarding technique and material and then sharing all they learn with their community through workshops and social media. Design is about finding solutions to problems and thats why we love fashion. Once you open one door, the conversation is widened. And thats what makes this craft so fascinating and beautiful.

Where can I find it? Paolina Russo is available at Dover Street Market London (both in-store and online), SSENSE, Addicted, ALTER, and SVRN.

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Paolina Russo, the Brand Morphing Ancient Craft Into Futuristic ... - AnOther Magazine

In one bizarreand deeply NSFW corner of the internet, a website called PornPen.aiis churning out an endless feed of graphic, chaotic, and widely varied pornographic imagery all of which, the site makes very clear, was generated using AI.

With a fusillade of new images cropping up in the live feed constantly, the effect can be overwhelming. Some are impressively photorealistic, while others are intentionally cartoonish. Many carry at least one telltale sign of AI generation,from malformed hands or an extra appendage to abnormalities in eyes or ears (the AI is also weirdly bad at depicting penises, for some reason.)There's substantial diversity in body type, age, race, and gender, though you have to click an option to see men in the feed, suggesting a heterosexual male preoccupation to the project.

Staring at the PornPen feed, it's difficult to not have mixed feelings. On the one hand, erotic art and sex work are as natural to the human experience as anything else; there's a 37,000-year-old depiction of a vulva etched into the ceiling of France's Chauvet cave, after all.

But as human as porn has always been, AI is distinctly inhuman. An algorithm is essentially gobbling up human-made imagery, remixing it, and regurgitating it to suit the desires of horny users. And between the rise of thirst-trapping AI-generated influencers, the deep attachments that people are forming to AI companion programs like Replika, and the onset of chatbot-enabled AI sexting, it seems that AI's role in the vast landscape of porn, sex, and relationships is only just beginning to take form. While this is something we've been imagining through science fiction for some time now think "Her," "Ex Machina," "Blade Runner," and so on we still have absolutely no idea how this burgeoning sexual arena might play out in the real world.

So in a sense, sure, maybe PornPen is just an inevitable new milepost in the thousands-year-old history of smut. But it also feels like a sign of things to come. If so, maybe it's worth asking how this kind of endlessly customizable sexual solipsism might impact real-world relationships, not to mention the economics of the pre-AI porn industry.

AI advocates often see the tech as something that will either save the world or destroy it. The creator of PornPen, who goes by the moniker Dreampen, falls optimistically into the former camp:as he tells it, AI will be a tool that produces erotic content in a safe way, unlocking creativity and even empowering adult performers.

"When Stable Diffusion first came out, I saw that many people were trying to make NSFW content," he told us via email. "A lot of AI generator sites blocked this content, and people were also making illegal content such as deepfakes. I wanted to fulfill the AI porn desires in a safe way."

There are design choices to try to keep PornPen from going off the rails. The site, which is built on the open-source Stable Diffusion image generator, only allows users to access preset tags for generation purposes. So users can builda prompt, but they can't actually write their own. That prevents bad actors from writing in celebrity names, Dreampen says, or requesting depictions of violent or illegal acts or "other harmful prompts."

"I thought this was a clever way to preserve safety," said the developer, "while giving people some creative flexibility."

The site seems to be connecting with an audience. If its constantly-populating feed wasn't evidence enough, PornPen's Discord community boasts about 25,000 users and its Subreddit has another 32,500 members.

Perhaps most notable is PornPen's success on Patreon. Though a slower, more basic version of the site is available for free, coughing up $15 a month to upgrade to "Pro Mode" grants the most dedicated users access to a faster, higher-quality, and more expansive more tags to choose from, advanced editing options, unlimited generation rights, and more of the like iteration of the site. The project's Patreon currently has nearly 7,000 paying members,suggesting that it's pulling in yearly revenue of more than a million dollars.

That's a lot of cash and a clear sign, it seems, that AI-generated porn can be lucrative.

"People want to look at porn and they want to customize it to their tastes," said the creator, adding that "many users have stated that they enjoy PornPen because they know people aren't exploited."

Exploitation is something that Dreampen pays a lot of lip service to, telling us that his ultimate goal with the site is to fully "end human exploitation" in the adult industry. That's an interesting way to look at it: porn has historically been rife with abuse, and if humans were to be fullyremoved from it, it would technically eliminate any exploitation going on.

But the nature of AI makes the specifics of exploitation murky. PornPen was trained using the LAION-5B dataset, a large-scale AI training dataset scraped from the web by the nonprofit Common Crawl. That means the nude figures on PornPen's endless feed are, in a sense, mashed-up composites of people whose images appeared in it. Did they give consent,in any reasonable way,to be included in something like this?

There's also the fact that not all porn is exploitative. Much of it is done under the full consent and control of performers, particularly in an era where platforms like OnlyFans, though still flawed, have granted sex workers more agency than ever before.What will sites like PornPen mean to them?

Again, Dreampen has a cheery outlook.

"I've actually had OnlyFans creators reach out to me asking to use my platform," said the developer. "Creators are interested in training custom models on their own data, so they can use AI to make pictures of themselves. One creator, who was getting older and thinking of retiring, realized that they could 'immortalize' their younger body into AI, and keep their business stream going that would have otherwise ended."

It's an interesting point. And Dreampen also argues that AI could give performers new ways to streamline their businesses.

"I see [the site] as a tool which can improve the workflow for sex workers," he said, noting that some OnlyFans creators have been known to outsource chats with users to outside ghostwriters. "Users are not even chatting with the actual creator. In some ways, their persona is already a virtual avatar that is managed by the original person."

"In that world," he added, "why can't the images/videos themselves also be 'outsourced' to AI?"

Like the rest of the AI-sex landscape, PornPen sits squarely in a gray area. In some respects, it's tempting to peruse ersatz smut in which no performers were underpaid or coerced. But if it becomes the norm, it could spell disaster for all the performers who are creating adult content on their own terms. It's an ominous new unknown. It splits our already-flimsy, post-social-media conceptions of reality and fantasy apart, recombining the pieces into something entirely brand new.

How it'll all ultimately unfold, no one knows. But Dreampen, for his part, certainly has some ideas.

"I think sites like Pornhub will have to adapt or acquire companies, otherwise they will get beaten by new sites with new technology," he said, adding that "AI porn will create a new category of adult performer."

"Essentially, people can create an AI avatar that they manage, and people will pay to interact with them," he continued. "Online sex work won't rely on people using their own body, and the industry becomes more accessible."

More on AI-generated fantasies: Guy Who Uses AI to Post as a Voluptuous Influencer: "I Usually Just Call Myself Her Manager"

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Are We Ready For This Site's Endless Feed of AI-Generated Porn? - Futurism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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