Olivia Buckingham On The Deepak Chopra Life and Soul Retreat With RAKxa Integrative Wellness – Vogue Hong Kong

Posted on June 12, 2024 by Danzig

When life allows you to meet Dr Deepak Chopra face-to-face at the renowned RAKxa Integrative Wellness in Bangkok, I simply couldnt turn it down! Dr Deepak Chopra is a well-known author, speaker, and alternative medicine advocate. He is recognised for his teachings on mind-body healing, spirituality, and holistic wellness. Chopra has written numerous books on these topics and has gained a significant following worldwide. His work often combines elements of Eastern philosophy with Western science to promote holistic health and personal growth. I had the opportunity to attend the Deepak Chopra Life & Soul Retreat at RAKxas Thai property located on a conservation island just outside of the city itself.

RAKxa is a state-of-the-art, luxurious medical and wellness destination based on a beautiful conservation island surrounded by the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok. Its unique approach to wellness addresses the guests body, mind, and lifestyle to help them design their journey to achieve wholeness. RAKxas Integrative approach consists of diagnostics to help guests define their health goals, which are then achieved through personalised solutions that involve an unrivalled selection of both medical science and complementary holistic treatments.

At the new Deepak Chopra Life and Soul Retreat with RAKxa in Thailand, they combine the latest cutting-edge medical diagnostics and treatments with ancient healing wisdom and teachings. But having said that its a very collaborative approach in the sense that they will tailor your treatments to whatever your concerns are both mentally and physically. At RAKxa they offer the latest cutting-edge biomarkers for assessing health and biological fitness along with practical ways to regulate mind, body, and spirit as a unified process. And with this, we explore well-documented scientific techniques for healing. It is our belief that a joyful energetic body, loving compassionate heart, quiet creative mind, and lightness of being along with a self-regulating biology optimized for homeostasis are the ideal landscape for longevity and healthspan. This is the true example of integrative wellbeing at its best, says Dr Deepak Chopra.

RAKxa Lakeside Villas at dusk

Traditional Thai interior lobby

Interviewing Dr. Deepak Chopra, discussing topics such as longevity

To say it was a life-changing experience mentally emotionally and physically is an understatement. There was a profound inner healing that I am eternally grateful for through all the incredible treatments and experiences. These life-changing practices improve your health span, including advanced spiritual meditation techniques, personally tailored cutting-edge diagnostics, and bespoke treatment plans provided by RAKxa and Dr Chopra and leading scientific breakthroughs in longevity.

Wearing Taller Marmo kaftan on the RAKxa walkways out to the private lake

I landed at 6 am from London and with the resort only 40 minutes away from the airport, you can start your immersive journey the moment you step foot at the tranquil and secluded location. I was shown to my beautiful lakeside villa and then went straight to my wellness and health consultation with the doctor, who took blood tests and gave me a full medical assessment. To acclimatise to the jet lag, they suggested a session in the hyperbaric chamber claustrophobia wasnt even an option, I fell straight to sleep for the duration of the 60-minute treatment! It was then time for a Marma Ayurvedic healing massage. Marmas are the energy points that run through the body this ancient therapy assists in the healthy flow of energy through the bodys pathways. An antioxidant IV drop was then advised to boost energy and clear brain fog.

Testing out the red cord suspension exercise which optimises neuromuscular control

Having an IV drip at the RAKxa wellness centre

The next morning I received all my results. A whole treatment plan was designed uniquely for me which included some incredible treatments I had never experienced, including the amazing traditional Ya Pao detoxification which includes a herbal burning on the abdomen. Chakra balancing and crystal healing were also suggested to rebalance energies within the body and clear out stagnant blocks that may be causing an imbalance. Acupuncture, moxibustion and cupping were also advised to promote self-healing.

Experiencing the marma healing ayuerverdic massage

The next three days were designed to focus on the life lessons taught by Dr Deepak Chopra. We began with a welcoming ceremony where we were each presented with a white string around our wrist a symbol to establish a teacher-student bond. The ceremony was beautiful. Important components of this were bananas: overcoming obstacles; popped rice: flourishing knowledge; 9 joss sticks: prosperity; 3 candles: students willingness to learn from teachers; 32 Thai baht in money: symbolic fee offered to teachers; tobacco: teachers acceptance of negativities in place of their students; and lastly, everlasting bloom Flowers: symbol of resilience. We started each morning with sunrise meditation and closed the evening with sunset meditation each guided by Dr Deepak. A truly heart-opening powerful and energetic experience I will never forget.

Kate Moss newly launched COSMOSS incense sticks

Kate Moss reading everyone their personal intention from her book "love letters"

On our final day, we were treated to a COSMOSS workshop where founder Kate Moss herself led healing readings from her very own LOVE LETTERS A set of 150 affirmations promising to brighten and enlighten whilst embracing the power of meditation. Its a collection of words on love and wisdom from names such as Shakespeare, Gandhi, Rumi and of course Dr Deepak Chopra. I, myself, have integrated these words of wisdom and spirituality into my daily morning routine to motivate and inspire. You just flick and stop where your heart feels it and allow that to be your affirmation of the day. The right affirmation will choose you, they seem to give you what you need to hear at that moment Kate says. She then said, I hope people share them with their loved ones, spreading positivity. It was a very personal moment with the ever-graceful Kate Moss and very touching to have experienced that moment with her. It was very poignant as she read mine out loud to me it read You are not behind, its not too late. Youre exactly where you are meant to be. Everything is unfolding. Dont judge yourself about how long something is taking to happen. Be patient. Your time is coming. Just be thankful you made it this far. She also exclusively launched her new incense sticks, sacred mist. They bring calm and peace and boost your mood. The luxurious incense sticks release a calming and uplifting light smoke for a transformative soul-soothing effect to restore calm energy to your surroundings, soul and self. I also incorporate this ritual now as part of my daily wellness and spiritual practice to help clear the mind and reinvigorate the senses.

Kneeling in prayer at the monk closing ceremony

The final day was marked by a traditional Thai Monk ceremony where we each gave offerings. Taak Baat offered the monks items to use in the temple and monastery. These are often dried foods and personal items to remove bad karma. The idea behind the ceremony is to gain happiness in your present life, prosperity, good luck, success in your job and responsibilities. It is also intended to help us see the truth about life. There is also the contented feeling that this merit will have good effects on your next life. The chanting in Balinese and Sanskrit language was mesmerising as we each had a moment to reflect on each of our lives, be present and show our gratitude.

These seven days have brought about an immense transformation mentally, emotionally physically and spiritually. The memories will live in my heart forever.

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Olivia Buckingham On The Deepak Chopra Life and Soul Retreat With RAKxa Integrative Wellness - Vogue Hong Kong

Arrest Threatens Nepals Standing as Bastion of Free Speech – The New York Times

Posted on June 6, 2024 by Danzig

In a region sliding toward authoritarianism one country after another, the small Himalayan nation of Nepal was a shining exception.

Political debates remained largely free, and the powerful could easily be questioned. That openness, in a poor country emerging from centuries of monarchical suppression and decades of insurgency, showed that democratic expression need not necessarily be correlated to economic status.

But the arrest last month of the owner of the countrys largest media conglomerate has raised fears about the Nepali governments commitment to free speech, and about whether the country is now going the way of its South Asian neighbors Pakistan, Bangladesh and India.

The executive, Kailash Sirohiya, was detained nearly two weeks ago in a thinly veiled act of retaliation by Nepals powerful home minister, Rabi Lamichhane. The minister had been the subject of intensely negative coverage by the Kantipur Media Group, owned by Mr. Sirohiya.

The companys news articles had disclosed that Mr. Lamichhane, a popular television host before he turned to politics, had broken the law by serving in Parliament while maintaining citizenship in a second country, the United States.

Mr. Lamichhane resigned but then returned months later to Parliament, and to the helm of the Ministry of Home Affairs, after addressing the citizenship issue. Kantipur continued to examine Mr. Lamichhanes actions, however, later reporting accusations of embezzlement against him.

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Arrest Threatens Nepals Standing as Bastion of Free Speech - The New York Times

Gender, equality, and free speech: A look at Mammadyarov’s controversial remarks Aze.Media – Aze Media

Posted on June 6, 2024 by Danzig

Last week, chess player Shakhriyar Mammadyarov expressed his opinion on his YouTube channels show Persona that women are weaker than men in many areas. This statement was harshly criticized on social media and was seen as contrary to the concept of gender equality.

Perhaps, a few years ago, say 5-6 years ago, I would have joined the campaign to criticize Shakhriyar Mammadyarov and might have even been one of those who lynched him. However, age and life experience allow me to analyze what is happening without emotions, calmly and impartially. In this sense, the generalized statements of the chess player about women do not bother me as a woman, and I even want to thank him for publicly expressing his conservative views.

The fact is that it is absolutely necessary to loudly express opposing opinions that do not align with the standards of neoliberals so that those who lynch dissenters on social media and subject them to psychological violence do not dominate society. Neoliberals spread a dangerous virus of the idea that everyone should think alike. They are intolerant of opinions that do not support their stance and, instead of engaging in a normal polemic, exhibit infantile hysteria, considering themselves morally superior to everyone else and unable to digest differences. As a result, a situation has arisen in the West where even the most respected intellectual is forced to remain silent if they disagree with the neoliberals, fearing a massive attack, job loss, and social exclusion. Many times, both abroad and here, when a public figure expresses a conservative opinion, feminists and supporters of gender equality apply emotional and psychological pressure on that person instead of conducting a logical, cultured discussion. Or, for instance, Azerbaijani immigrants may rejoice in the liberation of Karabakh in private conversations but curse the war in their social media posts, fearing deportation from the countries where they have sought asylum. Such behavior is a new form of Nazism in a neoliberal guise. One of the factors preventing our neoliberals from moving from the virtual world to reality is the dominance of mental conservatism in society.

As a journalist, I began my active career at 525-ci qzet (525th Newspaper). During my career, I wrote many critical and rebellious articles against conservative values and the institution of elders. However, my observations of the impudence of modern neoliberalism and its attempts to suppress diversity of opinion, as well as analytical articles I read, gradually dissuaded me from this rebelliousness

Most people who criticize Shakhriyar Mammadyarov for his statements call him a sexist and a person with primitive thinking, emphasizing his disrespect for gender equality in their angry texts. I listened to the part of Shakhriyar Mammadyarovs interview in question; he calmly, without any insulting tone, shares his thoughts, does not oppose womens right to education and self-realization in desired fields, but merely makes a generalization. The main argument of his opponents is that for centuries men have not created equal opportunities for women, so they have not been able to show their talents and strengths. When it comes to art, as a film critic, I can say: compared to other art forms, cinematography is very young. In the years when the cinematic language was developing and being recognized as serious art, many womens rights were already recognized, and they were active in this field. If I were to compile a list of the ten, twenty, or even fifty best directors in the world, not a single female director would be included. Of course, there are women directors with excellent films: Kira Muratova, Larisa Shepitko, Chantal Akerman, Liliana Cavani, Margarethe von Trotta, Agnes Varda, Agnieszka Holland, and others. However, the collective work of all these women directors would still lose to the work of Buuel or Antonioni in terms of artistic criteria, cinematic language, and interpretation. Or in the field of acting, I could name dozens of brilliant actresses. Heres an interesting fact: Rene Jeanne Falconettis performance in Carl Dreyers The Passion of Joan of Arc is still considered the best acting performance in cinema.

Now, to ensure gender equality in cinema, they artificially push female directors, regardless of talent, into prestigious festivals. As a result, films like Titane and Happening, which are genuinely low-quality and irrelevant to art, win awards

When it comes to creating equal opportunities for both genders, women must also be prepared to serve in the military and work in tough jobs, and their biological, anatomical, and physiological characteristics will not be considered. Recently, a law was passed in the Netherlands that requires women to serve in the army based on gender equality. At this rate, the situation will reach the point where women will suffer not from gender inequality but from gender equality.

Looking for signs of sexism in everything has already reached the point of absurdity. In the West, a woman can scold a man who helps her carry a heavy load, seeing it as an insult to her personality and a violation of her rights. Some women believe that gender equality arises when they behave like men and mimic their manners.

Due to the excessive obsession with gender equality, women and men are losing their natural characteristics inherent in their nature, trying to turn gender equality into genderless equality, while medical science is trying to figure out how transgender women (men who have become women) can gain the ability to give birth.

When such situations arise (I mean Shakhriyar Mammadyarovs interview), I return to Russian theater director Konstantin Bogomolovs manifesto The Abduction of Europe 2.0, which caused many discussions a few years ago. According to the author, the ideology of the new ethics formed by the West forces everyone to speak politically correctly, preventing them from expressing their thoughts, ignoring the complex nature of a person their dark sides and flaws, limiting freedom of feelings, and ultimately creating soulless people without differences and contradictions:

The West declares itself a society oriented toward the realization of personal freedoms. In fact, today the West is waging an ongoing struggle against the human person that complex and difficult to control energy. In the course of this struggle, the functions of the courts and prosecutors and the isolation cell have not been eliminated, and yet they have been largely delegated from the state to society. The state itself, in the form of its police and security services, has indeed been humanized. Meanwhile, the nominally progressive part of society takes on the role of the new storm troopers, and with their help, that selfsame state becomes surpassingly effective at combatting dissent.

Feelings and thoughts had always belonged to the private sphere. Keep your hands to yourself; but as for your heart and your brain these were left free. Such was the unspoken social contract of European civilization. It understood that man is a receptacle full of emotions and ideas; it understood that hatred the flip side of love may be a difficult and dangerous thing, but for all that is something necessary and an important part of the human personality.

In the New Ethical Reich, a person is trained to love and deprived of the right to freely hate.

No longer can you say: I do not love , I do not like , I am afraid of You must get your emotions in line with public opinion and social values.

The new ethics also state that you can think whatever you want inside, but it is forbidden to voice it aloud, and your internal censorship must always be vigilant. You must not make mistakes, and the moment you make a mistake, you will lose everything. Neoliberalism, which does not recognize a persons right to make mistakes or to voice their beliefs, has been giving Shakhriyar Mammadyarov Azerbaijani-style advice in recent days: an intellectual must think a hundred times before speaking, know the weight of his words, and so on.

Shakhriyar Mammadyarov deserves thanks for not weighing his words, for thinking differently, and for voicing his beliefs without fear.

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Gender, equality, and free speech: A look at Mammadyarov's controversial remarks Aze.Media - Aze Media

Journal of Free Speech Law: "Defamatory in Whose Eyes?," by Prof. Kenneth W. Simons – Reason

Posted on June 6, 2024 by Danzig

The article is here; the abstract:

Defamation is a moral and legal wrong that is distinct from the wrongs of insulting or offending a person, lying to a person, or unjustifiably causing emotional distress. Defamation essentially involves harm or injury to a person's reputation. And reputation is a social concept: It refers to a person's standing in some relevant audience, i.e., the group or community beyond the speaker and the person.

But from whose perspective must a statement be defamatory? This question has multiple dimensions. Is our only interest whether the person's standing is lowered in the eyes of the community? Or should we also consider the perspective of the person who claims to have been defamed? Must that person subjectively view the statement as injuring his or her own reputation? Are we also interested in the perspective of the speaker?

The perspective of the person's group or community is undoubtedly critical, but this prompts additional questions. If only a minority, or even a very small portion, of the community would lower their opinion of the person, while the majority would not, is that sufficient? Moreover, are these further questions descriptive inquiries into how (most, some, or a few) people would react, or instead normative evaluations of how (most, some, or a few) people should react? Or is the most defensible analysis a hybrid or combination of descriptive and normative features?

One possible approach to these questions about the defamatory character of a statement asks whether the statement might cause a reasonable person to lower their esteem of the person. But the reasonable person test is inadequate: It obscures critical questions, including the relative weight we should give to descriptive rather than normative perspectives, to subcommunities as opposed to larger communities, or to the varying perspectives of the plaintiff, the speaker, and the relevant community.

The most plausible approach, I will argue, is a largely descriptive perspective that focuses on the actual reactions of both the plaintiff and the subcommunity with which the plaintiff identifies. Defamation law should reject a purely normative perspective that considers only whether members of the community would be justified in lowering their esteem of the plaintiff if the false statement were true. People frequently criticize and even ostracize others for flimsy, irrational, or illegitimate reasons. Yet the resulting reputational injuries are real, and the conduct that causes them is often highly unjustifiable. However, courts should recognize a narrow normative exception and should exclude liability when providing a defamation remedy would contravene a significant public policy, such as the legal principles condemning discrimination on the basis of race or sexual preference.

Journal of Free Speech Law: "Defamatory in Whose Eyes?," by Prof. Kenneth W. Simons - Reason

LETTER: Local government needs to respect free speech – ECM Publishers

Posted on June 6, 2024 by Danzig

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LETTER: Local government needs to respect free speech - ECM Publishers

College students must learn there’s a difference between free speech and violence – Norfolk Daily News

Posted on June 6, 2024 by Danzig

Were glad to know that numerous colleges are considering suspensions and expulsions for students who vandalized campuses and committed violence at graduation time this spring.

What took place at UCLA, Columbia University, MIT and elsewhere has been well publicized the setting up of encampments by student protestors, often relating to the desire to support Palestinians and rail against Israels efforts to stop Hamas terrorist acts.

Some would describe the protests as examples of free speech. From our perspective, however, they were violent acts showing disregard to law and campus rules.

Jonathan Butcher, a senior research fellow in education policy at The Heritage Foundation, recently wrote that School officials should not have waited as long as they did to call law enforcement, and the rioters who were not students, faculty or college staff should face charges. But administrators also should be considering suspensions and expulsions for students involved.

Campus riots are not anything new, but in the most recent examples of campus unrest dating to 2015 colleges were slow to respond to students and rioters who shouted down professors and invited lecturers. Middlebury College in Vermont is one example of a site where violent shout-downs took place.

Students regurgitated the Marxist slogans from critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) as they de-platformed speakersand in some cases, college administrators did not punish students, Mr. Butcher wrote. Predictably, surveys over the last decade have found that many students are afraid to speak their minds on campus for fear of being canceled, shouted down or worse.

Blocking someone elses expressive rights is not a protected form of speech. Yet surveys have found that some on campus approved of violence in the face of ideas with which they disagree. In too many situations on campuses, the message to students was clear: You can be disruptive with minimal or no consequences.

Today, however, students have pushed the bounds even further, creating so much disturbance that some schools were forced to cancel classes and graduation ceremonies because campuses were not physically safe for anyone.

Had school personnel acted decisively during riots over the last 10 years, consistently suspending or expelling violent students, perhaps disrupters would have had second thoughts.

Mr. Butcher writes, State lawmakers should revisit their conduct codes and require public college administrators to involve law enforcement and consider suspension or expulsion when students destroy school property, injure others, violate free-speech protections or otherwise commit violence.

College educators must teach students the difference between free speech and violence. The former deserves protection. The latter should be met with consequences.

College students must learn there's a difference between free speech and violence - Norfolk Daily News

Elon Musk says he won a battle for free speech in court, but it won’t stop the war for social media regulation – The Conversation

Posted on June 6, 2024 by Danzig

Australias eSafety Commissioner has dropped its Federal Court case against X relating to tweets distributing the footage of the Wakeley church stabbing.

In response to the decision, Xs owner, billionaire Elon Musk, tweeted freedom of speech is worth fighting for.

This case goes to a central question about the operation of Australias Online Safety Act and the powers of the regulator to remove harmful content.

It will no doubt be viewed with interest by other online safety regulators across the world who are also grappling with these issues. That is, how can governments control the distribution of harmful online material within a country when the internet is global? Do global takedowns unfairly limit free speech? Does geo-blocking strike an acceptable balance between restricting harmful content and free speech?

Read more: eSafety commissioner drops court effort to force Elon Musk to put international ban on stabbing video

In April, the eSafety Commissioner issued X with a removal notice instructing it to take all reasonable steps to take down videos of the stabbings. A central consideration in issuing the notice was that the New South Wales Commissioner of Police had described the stabbing as a terrorist incident.

X geo-blocked (blocking content depending on location) the video for Australian audiences but refused to impose a wider global ban. The eSafety Commissioner viewed this as a failure to abide by its removal notice, and commenced proceedings in the Federal Court.

A central question in the case was whether the geo-blocking of material to stop Australian users accessing the content constitutes the taking of all reasonable steps under the legislation when that material is globally available.

In a hearing before the Federal Court in May, the barrister for the Commissioner had stated that in order for X to take all reasonable steps there had to be a global ban. They pointed to the ease of buying a VPN (virtual private network) to avoid the domestic takedown.

The eSafety Commissioner cited the prudent use of public funds as one of the reasons for dropping the case, as it also has other litigation in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

Although this is a legitimate consideration, it was also obvious the argument for a global ban on the material was a difficult one to make given that it would operate outside Australia.

While Musk has been calling this a victory, it is only the case for a global ban that has been dropped. The removal notice stands pending Xs review and it may very well be that the geo-blocking will remain. At least in Australia, posting a video of a stabbing may still be treated as beyond accepted community standards.

While the Online Safety Act allows for local authorities to issue an extraterritorial order, whether that extends to issuing a global ban is an open question. Even if a global order can be made under the act, it may not mean much in practice. Countries regulate free speech within their own jurisdictions and take their own position as to what is legitimate free speech and what is harmful content.

A court in another country may take a dim view of a global order and not enforce it in their jurisdiction. But another country may also decide to ban the content under their own laws.

Even though the Federal Court case has been discontinued, the regulation of social media in Australia continues to be a central focus of political and legal debate.

In addition to the litigation between the commissioner and X in other tribunals, there are two major reviews occurring in the next few months: a review of the Online Safety Act and a Parliamentary Inquiry into Social Media. These will examine some of the legal issues that would have been considered by the Federal Court, such as the regulation of harmful content disseminated over social media.

However, it would have been preferable to have a court ruling on these issues, particularly as there is uncertainty about key parts of the Online Safety Act.

Read more: Investigating social media harm is a good idea, but parliament is about to see how complicated it is to fix

Internationally, online safety is also being tested and debated in other countries. For instance, the UK Online Safety Act has been criticised for unduly limiting free speech. These are therefore matters calling for international cooperation.

Looking ahead, it is becoming increasingly apparent the power of tech companies is affecting the ability of safety regulators to constrain their activities. The Australian eSafety Commissioner described X as consistently non-compliant.

Whatever view is taken of the arguments made in the Federal Court case, the power wielded by tech companies and their ability to circumvent Australian law should be a central concern of the Australian government going forward.

A chilling effect on the exercise of free speech rights: University of California issues vindictive interim suspensions to … – WSWS

Posted on June 6, 2024 by Danzig

On Tuesday at 7 p.m. Eastern/4 p.m. Pacific, the WSWS and International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) are holding an online public meeting, From Wayne State to University of Californiaindustrial workers must oppose protest crackdowns. Register for the meeting here.

Thousands of students across the country and world have participated in protests on college campuses against the US-backed genocide in Gaza. The Biden administration has led a bipartisan police crackdown on campuses, which has resulted in more than 3,000 arrests nationwide. Meanwhile, universities have carried out academic interim suspensions as part of a two-pronged strategy to exert the maximum pressure and make an example out of protestors.

Interim suspensions are severe measures traditionally reserved for students who are a threat to the safety of others on campus. A student is academically suspended and immediately banned from all university property and facilities. Receiving an interim suspension often results in a domino effect that entails the loss of access to dorms, causing homelessness; loss of access to campus health centers and pharmacies; cutting off healthcare and prescription medication. In the case of foreign students their academic visas can be revoked, which may result in deportation since their immigration status is dependent upon being actively enrolled in a specific university.

The number of interim suspensions have skyrocketed in the last two months and are coupled with the denial of due process. While there have been dozens of campuses carrying out the punishing suspensions, there is a particular large concentration in the University of California system, where the crackdowns provoked strike action by academic workers. Walkouts are currently taking place at UC Santa Cruz, UC Davis, and UCLA, with campuses in San Diego, Santa Barbara and Irvine joining the strike this week.

Last month, UC San Diego began issuing interim suspensions to students for simply being seen at the encampments. According to the UCSD Guardian, student and Assistant Vice President of the Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, Leticia Guzman, received notice of an interim suspension on May 2. The previous person who held that position, Cristian Fuentes Hernandez, received notice of interim suspension soon after, on May 5.

The email notifying them of their suspensions explained that the university had obtained information that they were present at the encampment that violates university policy, and that, The information described above, if true, provides cause to believe that your continued presence at UC San Diego is reasonably likely to lead to physical harm to any person or property, threats of violence, conduct that threatens the health or safety of any person, or other disruptive activity incompatible with the orderly operation of the campus.

The following day, on May 6, around 200 police officers aggressively raided the encampment using pepper spray and arresting more than 60 people, 40 of whom were students. In making clear their endorsement of this police crackdown, UCSD Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla said, UC San Diego encourages and allows peaceful protests, but this encampment violated campus policy and the law, and grew to pose an unacceptable risk to the safety of the campus community.

Immediately following this attack, UCSD announced that every one of the 40 students that were arrested would face an automatic interim suspension, in addition to the other interim suspensions quietly handed out to students for simply being present at the encampment. In contrast, only 16 interim suspensions were handed out all of last year.

The 60 arrested faced charges of unlawful assembly, with 39 charged with unauthorized encroachment on public land, 34 charged with resisting arrest, 17 charged for violating UC San Diego curfew laws, and four with camping on university property.

Sukham Sidhu, with The Office of Student Advocacy at UC San Diego, told the Los Angeles Times, You very rarely see these interim suspension casesThe only times Ive seen it imposed are in cases of physical assault. Sidhu noted that a number of interim suspensions did not relate to any arrests. The very first one I heard about, the student was just seen entering the encampment and theres no evidence they stayed there When I heard they were interim suspended for that, I was like, What?!

On May 8, UCI issued their first round of interim suspensions that banned students from all campus facilities including housing. The suspension notices referred to generic violations of university policy such as disruption, but none of them contained any specific allegations about any individual students behavior, according to a letter issued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) last Friday to UCI Chancellor Howard Gillman.

The letter outlined the punitive issuance of interim suspension issued to students for having only administrative associations with clubs involved in the protests.

The University, on May 8, also imposed administrative holds upon recipients of the interim suspension notices for the student organizations, i.e., authorized signers for those organizations whose names appeared on student organization paperwork, casting doubt on their ability to continue in their academic programs and receive a degree until the holds are lifted.

On May 15, the UCI encampment was raided by police and more than 30 students and faculty were arrested. According to the ACLU letter, following this the University issued Penal Code 626.4 withdrawal of consent orders against some, but not all, of the more than 30 students, staff, and faculty who were arrested. Those orders banned students from returning to campus, including to their University housing, for either 7 or 14 days. On May 21, the University then issued another round of interim suspensions against students who were arrested on May 15, 2024.

Elliot Yu was among the dozens of UCI students arrested on May 15. In a video posted to the United Auto Workers (UAW) social media page, he described: For about six hours my wrists were cuffed in zip ties that were so tight they dug into my flesh and cut off circulation. My hands swelled up so much that when the police eventually tried to cut them off they struggled to fit the scissors in between my wrists and the cuffs.

Yu went on to describe his interim suspension, After I got out of jail I was told that I was banned from campus and my apartment. Since I live on campus, a campus ban acts as a same day eviction notice. Im not the only person who lost both their housing and the full function of their hands. This is only one example of how the UCs brutal response to peaceful protests has harmed hundreds of students and workers across the state.

The ACLU letter makes clear the interim suspensions are a dangerous attack on the democratic rights of students. Because the interim suspensions took effect prior to any hearing or other opportunity for students to respond to allegations against them, they fail to comport with the most basic due process requirements, the civil liberties organization states. This premature punishment is therefore likely to have a chilling effect on the exercise of free speech rights on campus.

The University compounded the potential chill when it decided to rely upon the criminal legal system in addition to its own disciplinary mechanisms, by initially subjecting some students who were present at a May 15 protest to Penal Code 626.4 withdrawal of consent orders that ban them from every area of campus including even their own University housing before interim suspensions were issued. Finally, we are concerned by reports that several students have received administrative holds merely because their names were on student organization paperwork, and not because there are any allegations against them specifically. If true, these holds are punishing students for their association with student organizations and the viewpoints expressed by those organizations, in violation of federal and state free speech protections.

The assault on democratic rights is being directed by the Biden administration with the full support of the Republicans who are leading a witch-hunting campaign in the House Education Committee to smear protestors as antisemitic and pressuring officials to bring the full weight of the law against protesters. The universities have had no issue complying as the institutions serve the interests of Wall Street and are deeply integrated in the military intelligence apparatus.

The UC Regents and chancellors themselves represent administrators across all campuses who have longstanding and clear ties to military contractors, weapons manufacturers and intelligence agencies. Richard Leib, the current Chair of the UC Board of Regents, is a businessman with a long history in charter schools, consultancy, and military and intelligence agencies. He was an executive at US Public Technologies, which was acquired in 1999 by defense contractor Lockheed Martin, where he continued as an executive.

The UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering boasts the Contextual Robotics Institute, which is sponsored by Northrop Grumman, General Atomics, General Dynamics, SPAWAR (Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command), Air Force Office of Scientific Research, US Army Research Laboratory, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), US Department of Defense, US Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Office of Naval Research and Lockheed Martin.

Pradeep Khosla, UCSDs chancellor, previously worked with DARPA on the Senior Advisory Group for Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systemsalso known as drones. In 2016, Khosla joined the executive board of Avigilon Corporation of Vancouver, a leading company using facial recognition and body movement technology to help police identify suspects.

In 2016, the UC Board of Regents, which at that time was led by Janet Napolitano, ex-chief of Homeland Security under Obama, sanctioned a secret spyware system capable of monitoring and collecting data from all individuals within the networks of the ten UC campuses and five medical centers throughout California.

At the time, the WSWS warned, Napolitano and the UCOP insist that the aggregated data [from the spyware system] will not be used for non-security purposes. However, it is not difficult to imagine a situation in which student protests and strikes for higher wages are easily categorized as security purposes by the UC administration. Additionally, the security policy makes an exception to disclose the personal data for those considered to be engaged in illegal activity.

The university system is a key player in the military intelligence apparatus and Wall Street. UCs deep connections to war abroad and repression at home explains why they have played such a central role in the political assault on free speech and democratic rights.

Student demands for university divestment from the US and Israeli war machines are certainly legitimate. But the fact remains that protests isolated to the campuses and appeals to the powers that be cannot stop the genocide in Gaza and the even more horrific wars for global domination by US imperialism, including with nuclear armed Russia and China.

For that the working class must directly intervene. The UC strike is an important step forward in the entry of the working class as political force to stop war and repression. But the strike is being sabotaged by the United Auto Workers bureaucracy, which is aligned with the Biden administration and is doing everything it can to isolate and wear down the UC strikers.

Academic workers, graduate, undergraduate students and faculty must build their own Rank-and-File Strike Committees to shut down the entire UC system, and appeal to all UAW members and all workers to carry out collective action to halt the assault on students and stop the war. This includes strike action by members of the UAW, the International Association of Machinists and unions at automotive, defense and other industrial factories.

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A chilling effect on the exercise of free speech rights: University of California issues vindictive interim suspensions to ... - WSWS

For first time in 50 years, Stanford faculty approve free speech statement – The College Fix

Posted on June 6, 2024 by Danzig

Stanford University scholars recently recommitted themselves to the principles of free speech and freedom of expression in a new statement that updates, reaffirms and complements a Statement on Academic Freedom first passed 50 years ago, in 1974, according to the Stanford Report.

The move comes thanks in part to the work of an Ad Hoc Committee on University Speech, formed last year to address several free speech and academic freedom controversies at the school, including a Protected Identity Harm reporting system deemed Orwellian by many observers and a13-page Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative discouraging the use of more than 125 mostly innocuous words, includingAmerican.

In 2022, longtime Stanford Professor of Medicine Jay Bhattacharya declaredacademic freedom is dead in retelling how his institution systematically abandoned him for his contrarian views on COVID. The elite institution also made headlines after a mob of students, aided by a DEI dean at the time, shouted down a federal judge during a guest lecture in 2023. Most recently, the school has been plagued with accusations of rampant antisemitism.

The school continues to be embroiled in controversies. For example, more than one third of Stanford University students say using physical violence to stop a speech is acceptable in at least some circumstances, according to a survey released earlier this year.

The Faculty Senate, after much debate, approved last week a statement that aims to address some of those problems.

The freedom to explore and present new, unconventional, and even unpopular ideas is essential to the academic mission of the university; therefore, Stanford shall promote the widest possible freedom of expression, consistent with the universitys legal and moral obligations to prevent harassment and discrimination. Accordingly, university policies must not censor individuals speech based on the content of what is expressed, except in narrow circumstances, it reads in part.

At the same time, Stanfords educational role as well as its academic and legal obligations differ across locations and contexts on campus, such as spaces open to all community members, classrooms, and dormitories. Community members also have varying privileges and responsibilities in different contexts, it adds.

Likewise, legal rights and obligations pertain in different ways to community members depending on whether they are acting as students, teachers, staff, or faculty members. The principles of freedom of speech and expression will be understood in light of these variations across contexts and roles. The campus disruption policy furnishes an example of how some of these distinctions may be drawn.

The free speech statement is non-binding, as scholars had talked it down from a policy, according to the Stanford Report.

The Faculty Senate also approved an Institutional Statements Policy, which calls for institutional restraint in making statements and aims to prevent the establishment of institutional orthodoxy that might chill dissent, the Stanford Report added.

The policy, which applies to leadership, vice provosts, and deans, among others, states that when speaking for the institution, Stanford University leaders and administrators should not express an opinion on political and social controversies, unless these matters directly affect the mission of the university or implicate its legal obligations.

MORE: Embattled Stanford Professor of Medicine Jay Bhattacharya: Academic freedom is dead

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Leaked Emails Show Elon Musk Diverting AI Resources Away From Tesla as Automaker Flails

Posted on June 6, 2024 by Danzig

Elon Musk is diverting important AI hardware shipments away from Tesla in favor of his social media platform X and his AI startup xAI.

Snatch That

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is reportedly diverting important AI hardware shipments away from Tesla in favor of his social media platform X and his AI startup xAI.

As CNBC reports, emails widely circulating within Nvidia suggest that Musk instructed the chipmaker to prioritize the shipment of thousands of H100 AI chips, previously reserved for Tesla, to X and xAI instead.

H100 chips have quickly emerged as the cornerstone of many AI companies' ambitions, making them incredibly difficult to come by and exceedingly expensive.

The latest report is a striking development considering Musk has long threatened to divert his AI ambitions away from Tesla, going as far as to "blackmail" investors earlier this year. In January, he tweeted that he's "uncomfortable growing Tesla to be a leader in AI and robotics without having [about] 25 percent voting control," infuriating shareholders.

Playing Favorites

According to CNBC, the diversion of resources means that Tesla's AI ambitions could be pushed back by months. And that doesn't bode well, considering the company is already in dire straits, facing a disastrous financial year ahead and hugely hyped driver assistance software that still isn't living up to Musk's immense promises.

That's pertinent because Musk has bet much of the carmaker on the success of its so-called "Full Self-Driving" tech, which heavily relies on hardware like Nvidia's H100 chips, promising the unveiling of a "robotaxi" as soon as August.

An email obtained by CNBC suggests comments Musk made during Tesla's ill-fated first-quarter earnings call this year misconstrued how many chips were ordered and where they were destined. The email also noted that the company's continued layoffs could lead to delays with an existing "H100 project" at the EV maker's Texas factory.

In short, was Musk bluffing and misleading investors by favoring his social media platform and nascent AI startup? Is he jumping ship and abandoning Tesla when it needs him — and not his antics — the most?

The news will likely further anger shareholders who are already fuming over Musk and his board prioritizing the reinstatement of a controversial $56 billion pay package.

Tesla is in crisis mode, with share prices down almost 30 percent so far this year. And the outlook is grim, with waning overall demand for EVs and an influx of much cheaper cars from China tightening the screws.

Meanwhile, Musk continues to push the narrative that Tesla is putting AI and what it refers to "self-driving" tech first and foremost.

"If somebody doesn’t believe Tesla’s going to solve autonomy, I think they should not be an investor in the company," he told investors during the first quarter earnings call. "We will, and we are."

More on Tesla: Elon Musk Accused of Massive Insider Trading at Tesla

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Producer of "Beyond the Spider-Verse" Responds to Rumors of AI Use in Animation

Posted on June 6, 2024 by Danzig

Three's a Crowd

The producer of the new "Spider-Verse" animated film has laid to rest concerns that AI was used to create the new "threequel."

"There is no generative AI in 'Beyond the Spider-Verse' and there never will be," tweeted Chris Miller, the film trilogy's cowriter and producer. "One of the main goals of the films is to create new visual styles that have never been seen in a studio [computer graphics] film, not steal the generic plagiarized average of other artists’ work."

Miller's affirmation comes in response to an outcry over vague comments from Sony executive Tony Vinciquerra, who was quoted at a recent investor event saying that the studio behind the animated series would be using AI to lower costs.

"We are very focused on AI. The biggest problem with making films today is the expense," the Sony exec said, per IndieWire. "We will be looking at ways to... produce both films for theaters and television in a more efficient way, using AI primarily."

Unsurprisingly, fans were startled by the comments amid widespread backlash to the use of the burgeoning tech in entertainment.

"Keep generative AI away from Spider-Man: Beyond The Spider-Verse," reads the post Miller was responding to, for instance. "AI robs people of their jobs & produces nothing but slop. We don’t want that anywhere near this film or any film for that matter. Please keep it away from the filmmaking process."

Movie Moves

The producer's denial of AI use in "Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse," which is still awaiting a release date after being indefinitely delayed by Sony last year, comes amid tension over the use of AI in Hollywood.

After lengthy strikes in 2023 over studios' interest in the disruptive technology, the Screen Actors' Guild made the strange decision to ink a deal allowing AI voice cloning in video games — a move many saw as a betrayal of union rank and file who didn't sign off on such a provision, and which could constitute a slippery slope down the line.

Though SAG insists the deal is meant to give voice actors greater protections and freedom to license their work, it nevertheless has opened up further concerns about how studios and entertainment workers' supposed representatives will handle AI decision-making.

As such, Miller's insistence that the "Spider-Verse" films will "never" use AI may come in conflict with Sony's insistence on using it to cut costs. But for now, it doesn't appear that the tech was used in the creation of its stunning visuals.

More on AI and entertainment: The First AI-Generated Romcom Is Coming Out This Summer

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Scientists Find That a Tiny Proportion of People Spread Almost All the Fake News, and They Turn Out to Be Exactly Who You’d Expect

Posted on June 6, 2024 by Danzig

Naomi Wolf Pipeline

A new study shows that a minuscule subset of "supersharers" spread the overwhelming majority of fake news on social media during the 2020 election cycle. The average supersharer profile, according to the research? Older, white, conservative, and incredibly online women in red states. Cue the gasp!

The study, published this week in the journal Science, analyzed data from the accounts of 660,000 verifiably real, US-based voters on the platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

Of these hundreds of thousands of American netizens, the researchers — a team comprising American and Israeli scientists — were able to determine that only about 2,000 users were responsible for sharing a whopping 80 percent of misinformation that spread during the 2020 election.

When the researchers examined the voter registration information attributed to the supersharers, a clear pattern emerged: they were disproportionately likely to be middle-aged-to-older white women with an average age of 58; they were also primarily Republican and lived in conservative states like Florida, Texas, and Arizona.

These users aren't just active, either. Per the journal's writeup, more than one in every 20 X users examined for the study were following these accounts, meaning that these supersharers are punching way above their weight in terms of reach. (The study builds on an earlier 2019 study from many of the same researchers, which found similar supersharer results when analyzing the 2016 election cycle.)

In a way, they could be likened to fake news influencers. Popular conspiracy websites like Infowars and Gateway Pundit publish fake news, which then makes its way to supersharers, who distribute it to the social media masses.

Final Boss

Though the researchers expected to find that the supersharers' many tweets were somehow automated, there was no clear timing pattern or other indicator suggesting that was the case. Instead, they found the opposite: that these folks are fully plugged into the misinformation IV, mainlining fake news and manually clicking retweet over, and over, and over again.

"That was a big surprise," study coauthor Briony Swire-Thompson, a psychologist at Northeastern University, told Science. "They are literally sitting at their computer pressing retweet."

To that end, it's also unlikely that the supersharing cohort in question was part of a coordinated disinformation effort. On the contrary, according to researchers, these users moreso represent a caustic breakdown in the way online fake news is created, shared, and consumed by a large faction of American voters. And though this study was about the 2020 election, as we all go kicking and screaming into November 2024, it's important to remember that not everyone exists in the same digital reality.

"It does not seem like supersharing is a one-off attempt to influence elections by tech-savvy individuals," Nir Grinberg, study co-author and computational social scientist at Israel's Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, told Science, "but rather a longer-term corrosive socio-technical process that contaminates the information ecosystem for some part of society."

More on fake news: Police Say AI-Generated Article about Local Murder Is "Entirely" Made Up

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Scientists Find That a Tiny Proportion of People Spread Almost All the Fake News, and They Turn Out to Be Exactly Who You’d Expect

OpenAI Insider Estimates 70 Percent Chance That AI Will Destroy or Catastrophically Harm Humanity

Posted on June 6, 2024 by Danzig

A former OpenAI researcher became so convinced that the technology would usher in doom for humanity, he left the company and called it out.

Getting Warner

After former and current OpenAI employees released an open letter claiming they're being silenced against raising safety issues, one of the letter's signees made an even more terrifying prediction: that the odds AI will either destroy or catastrophically harm humankind are greater than a coin flip.

In an interview with The New York Times, former OpenAI governance researcher Daniel Kokotajlo accused the company of ignoring the monumental risks posed by artificial general intelligence (AGI) because its decision-makers are so enthralled with its possibilities.

"OpenAI is really excited about building AGI," Kokotajlo said, "and they are recklessly racing to be the first there."

Kokotajlo's spiciest claim to the newspaper, though, was that the chance AI will wreck humanity is around 70 percent — odds you wouldn't accept for any major life event, but that OpenAI and its ilk are barreling ahead with anyway.

MF Doom

The term "p(doom)," which is AI-speak for the probability that AI will usher in doom for humankind, is the subject of constant controversy in the machine learning world.

The 31-year-old Kokotajlo told the NYT that after he joined OpenAI in 2022 and was asked to forecast the technology's progress, he became convinced not only that the industry would achieve AGI by the year 2027, but that there was a great probability that it would catastrophically harm or even destroy humanity.

As noted in the open letter, Kokotajlo and his comrades — which includes former and current employees at Google DeepMind and Anthropic, as well as Geoffrey Hinton, the so-called "Godfather of AI" who left Google last year over similar concerns — are asserting their "right to warn" the public about the risks posed by AI.

Kokotajlo became so convinced that AI posed massive risks to humanity that eventually, he personally urged OpenAI CEO Sam Altman that the company needed to "pivot to safety" and spend more time implementing guardrails to reign in the technology rather than continue making it smarter.

Altman, per the former employee's recounting, seemed to agree with him at the time, but over time it just felt like lip service.

Fed up, Kokotajlo quit the firm in April, telling his team in an email that he had "lost confidence that OpenAI will behave responsibly" as it continues trying to build near-human-level AI.

"The world isn’t ready, and we aren’t ready," he wrote in his email, which was shared with the NYT. "And I’m concerned we are rushing forward regardless and rationalizing our actions."

Between the big-name exits and these sorts of terrifying predictions, the latest news out of OpenAI has been grim — and it's hard to see it getting any sunnier moving forward.

"We’re proud of our track record providing the most capable and safest AI systems and believe in our scientific approach to addressing risk," the company said in a statement after the publication of this piece. "We agree that rigorous debate is crucial given the significance of this technology and we'll continue to engage with governments, civil society and other communities around the world."

"This is also why we have avenues for employees to express their concerns including an anonymous integrity hotline and a Safety and Security Committee led by members of our board and safety leaders from the company," the statement continued.

More on OpenAI: Sam Altman Replaces OpenAI's Fired Safety Team With Himself and His Cronies

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Experts Fear Horrifying Heat Waves That Could Kill Tens of Thousands of People at Once

Posted on June 6, 2024 by Danzig

An expert warns that over ten thousand people could die as the result of a single heat wave, sending hundreds of thousands to the hospital.

Beat by Heat

American cities are ill-suited for the heat. The asphalt and concrete that dominate our infrastructure mercilessly intensify it, driving outdoor temperatures in urban areas by up to an additional 20 degrees Fahrenheit on a hot afternoon. We can often ignore the fact that we've trapped ourselves in metropolis-scaled frying pans, however, thanks to air conditioning in our cars and homes.

But the uptick in extreme weather attributed to climate change, plain old heat included, has continually put many cities' energy grids under threat. So what happens when all those AC units suddenly lose power?

If a blackout hits during a blistering heat wave: an absolute catastrophe, according to experts in an op-ed piece for The New York Times written by Jeff Goodell, author of "The Heat Will Kill You First." In one extreme scenario befalling an American city, over ten thousand people could die as the result of a single heat wave, sending hundreds of thousands more to the hospital.

Goodell said that Mikhail Chester, director of the Metis Center for Infrastructure and Sustainable Engineering at Arizona State University, once likened such a scenario as "the Hurricane Katrina of extreme heat" — underscoring the vulnerability of American infrastructure to soaring temperatures.

Widespread Wipeout

Those staggering figures come from a study published last year in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, which explored what would happen if a major, two-day blackout took place during a heat wave in Phoenix, Detroit, and Atlanta.

Some 99 percent of buildings in Phoenix have AC, according to the study, which makes its power grid most likely to fail. Atlanta is just behind at 94 percent, and Detroit, the coolest city, ranked at 53 percent.

In Phoenix — which last year went an entire month with temperatures of 110 degrees Fahrenheit or higher — the death toll could be monumental. The study found that a whopping 800,000 people — half the Arizona capital's population — would need emergency medical care, and more than 13,000 would die.

These figures were considerably lower for Atlanta and Detroit, which are cooler cities, but no less worrying: six people would die in Atlanta, the study estimated, and 221 in Detroit.

According to the researchers, the number of major blackouts in the US more than doubled between 2015-16 and 2020-21 — though not all were due to the climate.

"It doesn't really matter if the blackout is the result of a cyberattack or a hurricane," study lead author Brian Stone, director of the Urban Climate Lab at Georgia Tech, told the NYT. "For the purposes of our research, the effect is the same."

Either way, hot temperatures do cause power grids to fail, and so we'll have some serious infrastructural overhauls to do — and perhaps changes in our power consumption habits — to ensure that cities can withstand the heat.

More on climate change: Mexico Getting So Hot That Monkeys Are Falling Dead From Trees

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Forensic Analysis Finds Overwhelming Similarities Between OpenAI’s Voice and Scarlett Johansson

Posted on June 6, 2024 by Danzig

The analysis used several AI models to compare the OpenAI voice to the voices of around 600 actresses, including Scarlett Johansson.

A+ Copycat

OpenAI's controversial "Sky" voice for ChatGPT sounds remarkably similar to the voice of Scarlett Johansson, a forensic analysis has found, adding weight to what many already suspected and what Johansson herself has charged: that OpenAI deliberately mimicked the actress's voice without her permission.

The analysis, conducted by researchers at the Arizona State University and commissioned by NPR, used several AI models to evaluate similarities between the voices of Sky and about 600 actresses, including Johansson.

Lo and behold, it found that Johansson's voice was more similar to Sky than 98 percent of the other candidates.

There are a few caveats, however. Johansson wasn't always the top scorer, with the voices of Anne Hathaway and Keri Russell "often" being rated as more alike, according to NPR. Sky's voice is slightly higher pitched and more expressive, too, while Johansson's is breathier.

But other parts of the analysis are damning, such as one that simulated the speakers' vocal tracts based on the characteristics of their voice and found that Sky and Johansson would have identical tract lengths.

Visar Berisha, a computer scientist at ASU who led the analysis, summed it up neatly. "Our analysis shows that the two voices are similar but likely not identical," he told NPR.

Sky-High Lies

The controversy stems from a big update to ChatGPT released last month, which debuted a new voice assistant capable of real-time conversation.

Sky was one of those voices, and soon enough, people took note of its resemblance to Johansson's role in the sci-fi movie "Her," in which she voices a chirpy AI chatbot that the film's melancholic protagonist falls in love with.

If those parallels weren't already suspicious, they were all but confirmed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — a professed fan of the movie — who cheekily tweeted the single word "her" on the day of the voice assistant's release.

Then in a blundering series of backpedals, the AI company suddenly pulled the Sky voice days later, but said it had not copied ScarJo's voice. Instead, it claimed, a different actress was behind the chatbot (which was later corroborated by reporting from The Washington Post).

Johansson fired back, revealing that OpenAI had in fact twice approached her to license her voice. She turned the offers down, only to discover that OpenAI had released a chatbot with a voice she thought was "eerily similar" to hers.

In the face of mounting negative PR, OpenAI has maintained that this whole fiasco was simply the fault of its poor communication with the actress. Johansson hasn't filed a lawsuit yet, but she has hired lawyers. Many legal experts already believed that she would have a strong case. And now, with these latest forensic findings, it could be even stronger.

More on AI: OpenAI Insiders Say They're Being Silenced About Danger

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Scientists Find Plastic-Eating Fungus Feasting on Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Posted on June 6, 2024 by Danzig

Marine scientists discovered an ocean-borne fungus chomping through plastic trash in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Chomp Chomp

Does nature have to do everything itself?

An international cohort of marine scientists discovered an ocean-borne fungus chomping through plastic trash suspended in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, as detailed in a new study published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

Dubbed Parengyodontium album, the fungus was discovered among the thin layers of other microbes that live in and around the floating plastic pile in the North Pacific.

According to the study, it's the fourth known marine fungus capable of consuming and breaking down plastic waste. Researchers found that P. album was specifically able to break down UV-exposed carbon-based polyethylene, which is the type of plastic most commonly used to make consumer products, like water bottles and grocery bags — and the most pervasive form of plastic waste that pollutes Earth's oceans.

"It was already known that UV light breaks down plastic by itself mechanically," said study lead author Annika Vaksmaa, a marine biologist and biogeochemist at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), in a statement, "but our results show that it also facilitates the biological plastic breakdown by marine fungi."

Don't Get Carried Away

Before you get ahead of yourself: no, this discovery doesn't mean that you should start consuming single-use plastics with abandon. Our oceans are overrun with destructive plastic pollutants, and refraining from plastic use as much as possible is still our best bet at keeping plastic from plugging up the Earth's vital — though fragile — oceans with animal- and environment-harming garbage.

Mitigating and removing the plastic that's already clogging Earth's waterways is still an important goal. But doing so unfortunately isn't quite as simple as scooping it out of the ocean en masse. Trawling for plastic with large nets can disturb marine life, and efforts to do so are costly and often wasteful themselves.

So in the fight to find a way to reduce ocean plastic, finding a new fungus capable of speeding up the plastic degradation process is an exciting new turn. But it's not a cure-all. According to the research, lab-grown P. album was observed to break down a given piece of UV-treated plastic at a rate of roughly 0.05 percent per day for every nine-day period. Which isn't nothing, but it'd take a very long time for the bacteria to get through the entirety of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, let alone the millions of metric tons of plastics that enter the ocean every year.

Regardless, the P. album finding is heartening — and according to the researchers, this latest discovery suggests that more plastic-eating organisms might be out there.

"Marine fungi can break down complex materials made of carbon," added Vaksmaa, adding that it's "likely that in addition to the four species identified so far, other species also contribute to plastic degradation."

More on plastic-hungry microbes: Scientists Gene-Hack Bacteria to Turn Waste Plastic Into Kevlar-Like Spider Silk

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The AI Industry Is Swarming DC With Lobbyists

Posted on June 6, 2024 by Danzig

A report by Public Citizen found that the amount of AI lobbyists more than doubled in 2023 from the year before.

Swarm of the Suits

As the AI industry continues to balloon, so does its army of lackeys ready to buttonhole lawmakers for favorable regulation. According to a new report by the consumer rights advocacy group Public Citizen, thousands of AI lobbyists have descended upon the Capitol, in a dramatic surge of influence that's already coincided with major policy decisions.

Between 2019 and 2022, the number of lobbyists sent by corporations and other groups on AI-related issues stayed relatively equal year-to-year, hovering around 1,500. Then in 2023, things went off the charts, with over 3,400 lobbyists flooding Washington DC — an increase of more than 120 percent.

"We're reaching a point where the policies that are going to shape AI policy in the next 10 years are really being decided now," Mike Tanglis, research director at Public Citizen's Congress Watch division, told The Hill. "From our perspective, having the leading voices on an issue being those that stand to make billions of dollars is generally not a good idea for the public."

Power Up

Those numbers show that the AI lobby has had a sizeable presence for years. It's only now, with the mainstream popularity of chatbots like ChatGPT and image generators like Midjourney, that people are beginning to take notice — and that the number of AI lobbyists has begun to significantly climb.

One of the more brazen displays of the industry's sway over the federal government took place last fall, when dozens of tech leaders, from Elon Musk to Sam Altman, gathered for an historic closed door session with over 60 US senators, lecturing them about the future of AI.

Unsurprisingly, a plurality of the lobbyists today comes from the tech industry — 700 of them, or 20 percent of that total. But a mix of 17 different industries comprised the other 80 percent, illustrating the wide scope of intersecting interests in AI.

Advocacy groups accounted for the next largest chunk with 425 lobbyists, of whom could be pro or anti-AI. Others included defense, health care, financial services, and education, all with clear stakes.

Presidential Prize

What's also interesting isn't just where these lobbyists are coming from, but where they're going. Excluding both houses of Congress — the most obvious target — the White House was the most lobbied body of the federal government last year, with over 1,100 lobbyists.

Their reasons for hounding the Oval Office are obvious. In October, President Joe Biden issued an executive order on AI laying down ground rules for its development, which were noticeably and perhaps acceptably vague. If the AI industry hadn't already influenced that ordinance, it will undoubtedly keep sending lobbyists to shape how it's enforced in the future. Case in point: the report found that the amount of lobbyists immediately went up after the executive order was issued.

Of course, what really talks is the money, and those figures are less clear. A recent report from OpenSecrets found that groups that lobbied the government on AI spent more than $957 million last year — but that represents a range of interests, and not just on the emerging technology.

But, as Public Citizen's report concludes, expect all those figures to climb — dollars, suits, you name it.

More on AI: OpenAI Insider Estimates 70 Percent Chance That AI Will Destroy or Catastrophically Harm Humanity

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The AI Industry Is Swarming DC With Lobbyists

OpenAI Negotiating to Buy "Vast Quantities" of Fusion Power, Which Doesn’t Exist Yet

Posted on June 6, 2024 by Danzig

Fusion startup Helion is in talks for a deal with OpenAI to

For all his public visibility, Sam Altman only get a measly $65,000 a year in salary from OpenAI, and no ownership stake.

But as The Wall Street Journal reports, the CEO has a far more lucrative venture fund to pay the bills: he's invested in hundreds of companies, many of which are directly benefiting from his AI company's soaring success.

And some of those companies directly do business with OpenAI, raising questions over possible conflicts of interest.

Near the top of that list is Helion, a nuclear fusion power company that's been around for about 11 years.

And as it turns out, the company didn't just sign a massive partnership with OpenAI partner Microsoft last year, but it's even in talks for a deal with OpenAI itself to "buy vast quantities of electricity to provide power for data centers," according to the WSJ.

But there's one big problem: the tech has yet to materialize, making any promises of "vast" amounts of power nothing but an empty-handed commitment in the distant future. Try as they might, researchers have yet to figure out how to make it a viable way to generate energy, rendering it nothing more than a moonshot.

At the same time, the revelation throws Altman's already dubious personal dealings into an even murkier light.

Despite fusion remaining a glint in the eye of nuclear engineers, Altman professes to believe in the promise of a renewable source of electricity, having invested $375 million in Helion back in 2021, the biggest payout he's ever made to a startup.

"Helion is, like, more than an investment to me," he said at a StrictlyVC event last year. "It’s the other thing beside OpenAI that I spend a lot of time on. I’m just super excited about what’s going to happen there."

In many ways, it would be an elegant — albeit entirely unproven — solution to OpenAI's insatiable energy demands. Training AI is an infamously power-hungry process that consumes a staggering amount of water as well. Apart from fusion energy, Microsoft is also investigating building small nuclear fission reactors to keep its data centers running.

But despite scientists repeatedly claiming various "breakthroughs" in the field of nuclear fusion, we have yet to build a reactor that can produce a significant amount of energy.

Still, Altman is doubling down, claiming that the future of AI will depend on a "breakthrough" in power generation during this year's World Economic Forum in Davos. "It motivates us to go invest more in fusion," he said at the time.

The recently-minted billionaire has even implied that artificial general intelligence, a form of AI that would supercede the capabilities of humans, could even "make fusion" happen.

In other words, like many of his peers in the venture capital world, Altman is in the business of selling dreams, not technological actualities. Besides, as he recently admitted, his AI company doesn't even know how its current crop of AI models works in the first place.

"We can build AGI," he tweeted back in 2022. "We can colonize space. We can get fusion to work and solar to mass scale. We can cure all human disease. We can build new realities."

More on Sam Altman: Sam Altman Admits That OpenAI Doesn't Actually Understand How Its AI Works

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OpenAI Negotiating to Buy "Vast Quantities" of Fusion Power, Which Doesn't Exist Yet

News Site Says It’s Using to AI to Crank Out Articles Bylined by Fake Racially Diverse Writers in a Very Responsible Way

Posted on June 6, 2024 by Danzig

A news network is attributing AI-spun articles to fake authors with racially diverse names. Its publisher claims the names were unintentional.

A national network of local news sites called Hoodline is using fake authors with fictional and pointedly racially diverse names to byline AI-generated articles.

The outlet's publisher claims it's doing so in an extremely normal, human-mitigated way. But unsurprisingly, a Nieman Lab analysis of the content and its authors suggests otherwise.

Per Neiman, Hoodline websites were once a refuge for hyperlocal human-boots-on-the-ground reporting. These days, though, when you log onto a Hoodline site, you'll find articles written by a slew of entirely fabricated writers.

Hoodline is owned by a company called Impress3, which in turn is helmed by a CEO named Zack Chen. In April, Chen published an article on Hoodline's San Francisco site explaining that the news network was using "pen names" to publish AI-generated content — a euphemism that others have deployed when caught publishing fake writers in reputable outlets.

In that hard-to-parse post, Chen declared that these pen names "are not associated with any individual live journalist or editor." Instead, "the independent variants of the AI model that we're using are tied to specific pen names, but are still being edited by humans." (We must note: that's not the definition of a pen name, but whatever.)

Unlike the fake authors that Futurism investigations discovered at Sports Illustrated, The Miami Herald, The LA Times, and many other publications, Hoodline's made-up authors do have little "AI" badges next to their names. But in a way, as Nieman notes, that disclosure makes its writers even stranger — not to mention more ethically fraught. After all, if you're going to be up-front about AI use, why not just publish under a generalized byline, like "Hoodline Bot"?

The only reason to include a byline is to add some kind of identity, even if a fabricated one, to the content — and as Chen recently told Nieman, that's exactly the goal.

"These inherently lend themselves to having a persona," Chen told the Harvard journalism lab, so "it would not make sense for an AI news anchor to be named 'Hoodline San Francisco.'"

Which brings us to the details of the bylines themselves. Each city's Hoodline site has a bespoke lineup of fake writers, each with their own fake name. In May, Chen told Bloomberg that the writers' fake names were chosen at random. But as Nieman found, the fake author lineups at various Hoodline websites appear to reflect a given region's demographics, a reality that feels hardly coincidental. Hoodline's San Francisco-focused site, for example, published content under fake bylines like "Nina Singh-Hudson," "Leticia Ruiz," and "Eric Tanaka." But as Nieman's Neel Dhanesha writes, the "Hoodline site for Boston, where 13.9 percent of residents reported being of Irish ancestry in the 2022 census, 'Leticia Ruiz' and 'Eric Tanaka' give way to 'Will O'Brien' and 'Sam Cavanaugh.'"

In other words, it strongly seems as though Hoodline's bylines were designed to appeal to the people who might live in certain cities — and in doing so, Hoodline's sites didn't just manufacture the appearance of a human writing staff, but a racially varied one to boot. (In reality, the journalism industry in the United States is starkly lacking in racial diversity.)

And as it turns out? Hoodline's authors weren't quite as randomized as Chen had previously suggested.

"We instructed [the tool generating names] to be randomized, though we did add details to the AI tool generating the personas of the purpose of the generation," Chen admitted to Nieman, adding that his AI was "prompted to randomly select a name and persona for an individual who would be reporting on — in this case — Boston."

"If there is a bias," he added, "it is the opposite of what we intended."

Chen further claimed that Hoodline has a "team of dozens of (human) journalist researchers who are involved with information gathering, fact checking, source identification, and background research, among other things," though Nieman's research unsurprisingly found a number of publishing oddities and errors suggesting there might be less human involvement than Chen was letting on. Hoodline also doesn't have any kind of masthead, so it's unclear whether its alleged team of "dozens" reflects the same kind of diversity it's awarded its fake authors.

It's worth noting that a similar problem existed in the content we discovered at Sports Illustrated and other publishers. Like at Hoodline, many of these fake writers were attributed racially diverse names; many of these made-up writer profiles even went a step further and were outfitted with AI-generated headshots depicting fake, diverse faces.

Attributing AI-generated authors to fake writers at all, regardless of whether they have an "AI" badge next to their names, raises red flags from the jump. But fabricating desperately needed diversity in journalism by whipping up a fake writing staff — as opposed to, you know, hiring real humans from different minority groups — is a racing-to-the-bottom kind of low.

It seems that Hoodline's definition of good journalism, however, would differ.

"Our articles are crafted with a blend of technology and editorial expertise," reads the publisher's AI policy, "that respects and upholds the values of journalism."

More on fake writers: Meet AdVon, the AI-Powered Content Monster Infecting the Media Industry

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News Site Says It’s Using to AI to Crank Out Articles Bylined by Fake Racially Diverse Writers in a Very Responsible Way

The Cybertruck’s Steering Has a Significant Lag

Posted on June 6, 2024 by Danzig

Tesla's Cybertruck's steer-by-wire system has a considerable delay. But that may be a feature, not a bug, as many netizens have argued.

Tesla's Cybertruck is a major departure from conventional automotive design in many ways, from its peculiar shape to its use of stainless steel.

High on that list is also the pickup's steer-by-wire system, which translates the movement of the steering yoke to all four wheels using actuators, foregoing any physical connection.

Tesla claims that the system means that "steering Cybertruck feels more responsive and requires less effort from the driver."

But if a recent video spotted by Jalopnik is anything to go by, the system suffers from a considerable delay between the movement of the steering yoke and the front wheels, raising questions over whether the truck is truly safe to drive.

The cybertruck has a fly-by-wire steering wheel.... and it LAGS pic.twitter.com/nUbrCXjU0r
— Heart (@heartereum) June 3, 2024

The video quickly drew plenty of derision.

"Imagine crashing because of your steering ping," one user joked.

But as many other netizens have since pointed out, there may be a good reason for the delay.

Other users on Tesla CEO Elon Musk's social media platform X quickly amended the viral video with a Community note, arguing that "without steer by wire would take far longer to make that turn."

"It isn't lag," the note reads. "This is a safety feature."

They may be onto something. Going from one extreme of the steering range to the othertakes a considerable amount of movement of the steering wheel in a conventional car, as one Reddit user demonstrated with his Ford F-150. Besides, completing the maneuver seen in the video while traveling at speed could result in very erratic and potentially dangerous movement, and in extreme cases even flip the vehicle (although you'd have to try very hard to flip a 6,600-pound EV).

The Cybertruck's steering wheel is also designed to translate far more movement to the wheels with relatively little turning of the steering yoke at slower speeds. At highway speeds, that ratio becomes much lower to ensure stability on the road.

"There’s absolutely no real-life scenario in which you need to turn the wheels that quickly while stationary," one Reddit user pointed out.

Car journalists have generally spoken highly of the steer-by-wire system, noting the truck's surprising agility. However, most have also noted that the unusual setup takes time to get used to.

But what about the responsiveness of the steering at higher speeds? What would happen if a Cybertruck driver had to swerve out of the way of an oncoming obstacle, a situation where every fraction of a second counts? As users on Hacker News pointed out, even a minimal amount of lag could lead to a driver overreacting, making the situation worse.

Plenty of questions remain. For one, we don't know whether the delay is present when the Cybertruck is in motion, or how a possible delay would compare to a stationary one, especially when taking its variable turning ratio into account.

Nonetheless, there's a good case to be made that this particular video may have primarily served as a way to take a potshot at Tesla and draw a crowd.

To be clear, there are plenty of other valid criticisms of the unusual pickup, including terrible range, shoddy workmanship, besmirched body panels, lack of manual controls, a finicky and unreliable truck bed cover — and lots of lemons being delivered to customers.

"There's many, many, many, many reasons to hate on the Cybertruck but this isn't one of them," one Reddit user argued.

More on the Cybertruck: Elon Musk Is Gonna Blow a Gasket When He Sees This Pride-Themed Cybertruck

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The Cybertruck’s Steering Has a Significant Lag