Sotto Voce

A scammer attempting to trick Ferrari executives was thwarted by a stalwart safety measure: common sense.

As Bloomberg reports, the scammer in question earlier this month reached out to a Ferrari executive via WhatsApp. From an account with the name and profile of Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna — though not from the real CEO's usual number, of course — they attempted to convince the C-Suiter that a major acquisition was soon to be underway.

"Hey, did you hear about the big acquisition we're planning? I could need your help," the Vigna impersonator wrote, adding that they should be ready to sign a non-disclosure agreement ahead of the big deal.

"Italy's market regulator and Milan stock exchange have been already informed," the scammer continued. "Stay ready and please utmost discretion."

That's when things got even shadier, according to Bloomberg. The unnamed executive then jumped on the phone with the phony Vigna, who used a deepfaked voice to "speak" in a live conversation with the targeted scam-ee. In Vigna's voice, the scammer fibbed that the CEO was using a super-secret number to conduct super-secret business, hence the strange messages from the new number. But still not quite convinced, the executive asked the scammer a question that only the real Vigna would know: what book did the exec just lend to his high-powered boss?

And with that, the scammer hung up the phone. The enduring security question tactic stands strong!

Scamly Reunion

AI-powered deepfakes of human voices and even faces are getting increasingly convincing, meaning that it's getting increasingly difficult to rely on simply trying to dissect whether someone looks or sounds real. So, with deepfaked-abetted scam sprees on the rise, the Ferrari executive's time-tested strategy is a great example of a way to defend yourself — yes, this stuff can happen to anyone, not just executives of billion-dollar Italian companies — against a similar scam.

In the same vein, security experts have encouraged families to come up with secret "code words" to use with each other in the case that, say, a scammer impersonates a family member in a ploy to abscond with some cash.

While the attempted Ferrari scammer was foiled, other corporate executives should remain vigilant. Earlier this year, a CEO was fooled into handing over tens of millions of dollars to deepfake-assisted scammers. And in an incredible twist of irony, the security firm Know Be4 recently revealed that it was tricked into hiring a North Korean hacker as a remote worker, who used an AI-generated headshot to conceal their identity.

In other words, scammers stay scamming, and they're using AI to do it. Stay safe out there, kids!

More on AI scams: Security Firm Alarmed to Discover Their Remote Employee Is a North Korean Hacker

The post Ferrari Exec Suspects Call From CEO Is Deepfaked, Asks Question Only He Would Know the Answer To appeared first on Futurism.

Visit link:
Ferrari Exec Suspects Call From CEO Is Deepfaked, Asks Question Only He Would Know the Answer To

Hack Job

Over the weekend, Elon Musk posted an AI-doctored video of Vice President Kamala Harris on X-formerly-Twitter — and thus far, he hasn't apologized for it.

In the video, which Musk posted on July 26 and has since been viewed hundreds of millions of times, the presidential candidate's voice was altered to make it sound like she was bragging about being "the ultimate diversity hire."

"I'm both a woman and a person of color," the fake-Harris in the altered video says, "so if you criticize anything I say, you're both sexist and racist."

"This is amazing," the billionaire Donald Trump booster boasted of the video, originally posted by an account that calls itself @MrReaganUSA.

In that initial post, the user admitted that the video was a parody. When Musk posted it as his own, he made no such acknowledgment, seemingly violating X's own rules barring users from sharing "synthetic, manipulated or out-of-context media that may deceive or confuse people and lead to harm."

Other Foot

At press time, the video has been up for nearly three days, and although Musk spent the weekend posting his usual drivel — including misinformation suggesting Democrats are "importing" undocumented people to vote illegally and that the party controls Google — he hasn't said a word online or in response to press requests, including from Futurism, about the AI-manipulated video he shared.

Though Musk himself has stayed mum on the subject, the Harris campaign hasn't.

"We believe the American people want the real freedom, opportunity, and security Vice President Harris is offering," declares a statement from the campaign to CNN, "not the fake, manipulated lies of Elon Musk and Donald Trump."

Electioneering aside, it's not at all hard to imagine that if a Democratic donor shared a doctored video of Trump without disclosure or apology, Musk and his fellow travelers would be up in arms about it — but then again, that crowd isn't exactly known for not being hypocrites.

More on Musk: Elon Musk Accused of Withholding His Own Children From Visiting Grimes' Dying Grandmother After She Supported His Trans Daughter

The post Elon Musk Won’t Apologize After Sharing Faked AI Video of Kamala Harris appeared first on Futurism.

Read the original:
Elon Musk Won’t Apologize After Sharing Faked AI Video of Kamala Harris

Ready Or Not

SpaceX is slated to launch a billionaire benefactor into orbit for the world's first private spacewalk in the next few weeks — that is, if the mission doesn't get postponed yet again.

As Space.com reports, the Elon Musk-owned company admitted in a press briefing over the weekend that its Polaris Dawn mission will now launch no earlier than August 19 following reschedulings that pushed it back to July 31.

The mission, which will take fintech billionaire Jared Isaacman aboard a Falcon 9 rocket to become the first space tourist to ever attempt a spacewalk, was postponed in the wake of another of the company's rockets exploding earlier in July — though the official reasoning behind the slip seems to be traffic-related.

"There's a lot going on on [the International Space Station] right now," explained Sarah Walker, the director of SpaceX's Dragon mission management, during the presser. "We opted to fly the Crew-9 mission as our next [astronaut] mission and are ready to fly Polaris Dawn in late summer, as soon as we fulfill those obligations."

She later clarified that "late summer" meant at some point in August, Space.com notes.

Flying Solo-ish

This will be neither the first time Isaacman has flown up on a SpaceX rocket — he previously took an incredibly expensive orbital vacation in 2021 — nor the first time this specific mission has slipped launch dates.

As Space.com explains, Polaris Dawn was originally slated for late 2022, but it's been pushed back repeatedly. Given the official cause of the slip, it's unclear whether this most recent postponement is due to the Falcon 9 explosion or not.

When the Polaris Dawn mission — which is supposed to be the first of three additional trips after his first one — is finally launched, it won't link up with the ISS but will instead see Isaacman and his comrades fly farther into Earth's orbit than any other Dragon mission to date.

Postponements aside, it's nevertheless going to be incredible to watch Isaacman and the crew flying up with him to ghostride the whip — as he becomes the first space tourist ever to do so.

Updated to better describe the Falcon 9 failure.

More on space tourism: Billionaire Promised Crew Free Flights Around Moon, Then Dashed Their Dreams

The post SpaceX Preparing to Launch Billionaire Adventurer for First Ever Private Spacewalk appeared first on Futurism.

See the rest here:
SpaceX Preparing to Launch Billionaire Adventurer for First Ever Private Spacewalk

Orbital Games

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) sent well wishes to the athletes competing in the Paris Olympics by putting on their own, zero-gravity spin on the international games.

On Friday, NASA released a video of ISS astronauts performing a series of athletic spoofs, starting with a faux ceremonial passing of the Olympic torch. The crewmembers then performed a series of zero-gravity Olympic events, with the ISS' lack of gravity assisting them as they attempted to take on sports generally made much harder by gravity: gymnastics favorites like the pommel horse and floor-style backflipping, track and field feats like the discus, shotput, and hurdles, as well as weightlifting, and more.

"Over the past few days on the International Space Station, we've had an absolute blast pretending to be Olympic athletes," NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick told the camera to close out the video, faux-lympic torch in hand. "We, of course, have had the benefit of weightlessness," he added, caveating the advantages of being gravity-free. "We can't imagine how hard this must be to be such a world-class athlete, doing your sports under actual gravity."

"So from all of us aboard the International Space Station," Dominick continued, "to every single athlete in the Olympic Games, Godspeed."

Ring Around

If we had to pick a favorite zero-G event, it would have to be the ISSers' take on weightlifting, in which one crewmember squats a bar affixed with two other astronauts, as opposed to traditional rounded weights.

The 2024 Paris Olympic Games will run through August 11. And while there are a dizzying number of events to watch from home, there's unfortunately yet to be a spacefaring portion of the quadrennial athletic showdown. But who knows — maybe one day, humanity's imagined Moon colonies will host. But until then, to all of the athletes, we'll echo the ISS crew's message: Godspeed!

More on ISS happenings: NASA Reportedly Considering Rescuing Stranded Astronauts Using SpaceX Spacecraft

The post Astronauts Hold Their Own Olympics on Board Space Station appeared first on Futurism.

View post:
Astronauts Hold Their Own Olympics on Board Space Station

Known for genetic good looks, bizarre antics seemingly reminiscent of his "Grey Gardens" foremothers, and now, for being Vogue's latest political correspondent, Caroline Kennedy's 31-year-old son Jack Schlossberg has become the internet's latest nepo baby "It" boy.

That's why it was so shocking when this Futurism reporter happened to be scrolling back through the Kennedy scion's Instagram feed — it is, somehow, even stranger and more unhinged than one could reasonably expect.

Take, for instance, this post from August 2018 during what we'll call Schlossberg's "green period":

Like most of the other posts in this roughly four-year-long attempt to turn his IG grid into a lime green-and-white custom meme page, Schlossberg muses about the comparative differences between the definitions of "Holland" and "Netherlands," the first of which denotes a region in the country as a whole.

"Also: Convinced 'The Hague' doesn't exist," Schlossberg writes, apropos to nearly nothing beyond The Hague very much being the capital of The Netherlands.

A Kennedy thinking The Hague isn't real sounds like the punchline of a long-forgotten political joke, but there's definitely more where that came from, too.

Prior to this green period, Schlossberg appeared to have a strange amount of personal stanning for since-assassinated Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that occurred while his mother was the US ambassador to Japan.

After Abe was assassinated, the political heir explained in an Instagram story that the former PM and his mom were the only people who attended his 23rd birthday — but given that the oldest of those stan posts was made 10 years ago, before Schlossberg turned 23, it appears the fandom came before the party appearance.

While no one who's seen his "Ticket to Ride" rendition would accuse the raven-mopped Kennedy devisee of being, well, normal, the outright strangeness of his IG feed before his viral fame — you know, back when he was just the ultimate American nepo baby — makes him a lot more interesting than other influencers (to say nothing of people working for Anna Wintour).

It's worth at least a smirk that nobody has advised Schlossberg or his well-heeled family to clean up his feed — but then again, maybe that's part of the brand. After all, the Kennedy clan are having nothing if not a wild 2024 on the Internet. What's another one? It's another lesson in the forgettable permanence of one's posted past — until the spotlight hits. The eternal wisdom remains as ever: Cleanse your feed with fire every now and again.

More on political memes: "JD Vance Couch" Searches Outpace "Trump Shooting" Queries on Google

The post Kennedy Thirst-Trapper Jack Schlossberg’s Instagram Feed Is Incredibly Unhinged appeared first on Futurism.

Here is the original post:
Kennedy Thirst-Trapper Jack Schlossberg’s Instagram Feed Is Incredibly Unhinged

If you've been watching the Olympics, you might have seen Google's new ad pitching its generative AI-powered chatbot, Gemini. And if you have seen it, we're curious: did you roll your eyes to the back of your skull when you first saw it, too?

The commercial in question features a young girl who aspires to be like Team USA hurdling star and two-time Olympic gold medal winner Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. The girl's father, who narrates the ad, wants to help his daughter write a fan letter to her favorite athlete, so he turns to Gemini to help him do it.

"Help my daughter write a letter telling Sydney how inspiring she is," the father prompts the bot, "and be sure to mention how my daughter plans on breaking her world record one day. (She says sorry, not sorry.)"

Gemini then spits out the requested letter — which in the small portion that's visible looks perfectly generic.

But while we would hope that this father-daughter duo might then spruce up the AI-spun fan mail with some more personality, the intended message of the commercial — that generative AI is there to offer a helping hand to all, including tykes hoping to reach out to their favorite athlete — falls wildly, brutally flat.

After all, this kid isn't an executive trying to expedite penning a boring, bound-to-be-formulaic email. She's a child who, instead of learning how to express herself through words on paper, is instead being taught to turn to a computer program that automatically provides a soulless and formulaic facsimile of genuine expression to learn from. Depressing stuff.

To be clear, we're not saying that the fictional kid in the commercial shouldn't be able to get some actual help while writing her letter. Assistance is important, and it's part of how kids learn! They give it — a fan letter, a math problem, a new move on the field — their best shot, and a good teacher or parent or coach helps them by editing, adjusting, and providing some healthy guidance along the way. The kid hopefully takes the notes and learns, and in doing so, they get better. Conversely, a great way to not help kids get better at written communication (or anything, really) is to simply get someone or something else to do the work for them.

This isn't about trying to train a kid to be a professional writer one day. This is about foundational knowledge and skills. Just because a young person might not feel naturally inclined to a subject — hi, math — doesn't mean they shouldn't learn the basics anyway.

And elsewhere, what happened to simply learning to do hard things? Writing a piece of fan mail to someone you admire might be nerve-wracking, for kids and even for adults, but sometimes the only way to do something challenging is to sit down and force yourself to do it.

Of course, sometimes formulas are helpful. But learning how to build something from a blank page using your own brain, even if the result is formulaic, is a very different process from asking a machine to spit the whole first draft out from scratch. If you only know how to hem, you don't really know how to sew a dress.

There's a vast difference between being overly cautious about a technology and having reservations about where and how said technology should be applied. Again, if you're turning to AI to reduce the time that you, in this one short life, are using to send already-robotic company emails, be our guest. But teaching a malleable child who wants to express their admiration to someone who inspires them — in this case an athlete who, as New York Magazine's Matt Stieb touches on, represents human excellence in their field — by using a human-mimicking AI instead of what could have been a challenging-yet-rewarding learning experience woefully misses the mark.

In other words, throw this AI ad in the garbage heap next to Apple's creativity-annihilating iPad ad. And by the way? We can almost guarantee that the human on the other side would prefer the letter read like it was written by an earnest kid who tried their best, and not like they used a downloaded fan mail template and filled in the blanks like corporate Mad Libs.

More on bad tech ads: Apple's New Ad Showing Machines Crushing Human Creativity Is a Bit on the Nose

The post Google's Latest Pitch for AI Is So Sad It Sounds Like a Spoof appeared first on Futurism.

Read more:
Google's Latest Pitch for AI Is So Sad It Sounds Like a Spoof

The Crackcident

Tesla — and particularly its controversial CEO Elon Musk — are adamant that the divisive Cybertruck is the toughest vehicle money can buy — corroding body panels, severe electrical problems, failing wipers, failing steering systems, easily cracked windows, and stuck charging cables notwithstanding.

Real-world evidence, though, often differs. Take one video currently making the rounds on Musk's social media platform X-formerly-Twitter showing one daring Tesla fan walking on top of a gaudy, camouflage-wrapped Cybertruck.

"This thing was built to last," the person in the video can be heard saying as he clambers onto the roof. "I'm literally walking on this thing right now."

The windshield — one of the largest in the industry — gives in almost immediately, cracking audibly and forming a hairline fracture along the right side of the massive pane of glass — a $1,900 mistake that will likely put the truck out of commission for a long time.

American Made

What's particularly odd about the video is that the owner simply glosses over his screw-up as if nothing happened.

He also addressed the elephant in the room: the truck has become astonishingly unpopular in the mainstream, with critics calling it out for being ugly and a symbol of poor life choices.

The truck has also become a full-throated, $100,000 endorsement of Musk's increasingly polarizing world views, something that is actively discouraging buyers from choosing a Tesla.

"It's so funny, this is the most American-made car," he said, continuing to defend the vehicle even after cracking the windshield. "Y'all hate on this truck even though this redefines what trucking should've been. Tesla makes the most American-made cars period."

But is this really the ultimate symbol of America? Besides its negative connotations, production has proven a massive headache for Tesla, with Cybertrucks breaking down at an alarming rate.

Then again, the same could be argued for the United States.

More on the Cybertruck: Cybertrucks Need to Return to Garage Yet Again to Fix Parts That Keep Falling Off

The post Tesla Fan Climbs on Cybertruck to Show How Tough It Is, Accidentally Cracks Windshield appeared first on Futurism.

Original post:
Tesla Fan Climbs on Cybertruck to Show How Tough It Is, Accidentally Cracks Windshield

Meta Fate

Facebook owner Meta has burned an astronomical amount of cash developing its augmented and virtual reality products — but none of them have really caught on yet.

As Yahoo Finance reports, the Mark Zuckerberg-led social media giant has spent almost $50 billion in just over four years, a staggering sum given that the products' pitiful revenues have barely made a dent in their soaring costs.

According to insiders, the massive spending has been due to a "chaotic" culture and mismanagement, marked by a revolving door of upper executives who often lacked any experience in the field.

While Zuckerberg has pulled the purse strings tighter lately, promising investors a "year of efficiency" starting in 2023, the company's Reality Labs has continued bleeding billions of dollars.

And now that the CEO has fully committed the company to developing AI tech, investors are left wondering: can Meta support both AI and Reality Labs without spending more than it can afford?

Reality Problems

Since 2020, spending on Reality Labs — which includes the development of the company's virtual reality headsets and its lackluster "metaverse" experience — has grown steadily, with reported expenses ballooning from $7.7 billion in 2020 to a whopping $18 billion in 2023. Meanwhile, revenue failed to breach $2.3 billion in 2021 — and sank to just $1.9 billion last year.

Insiders who spoke with Yahoo recalled that "local heroes" were promoted within Reality Labs, despite lacking any understanding of VR or AR tech.

"In software you can get away with that because you make mistakes and change things all the time," one former employee, who called the situation "pretty chaotic," told the outlet. "In hardware, you’re stuck with your mistakes for a long time."

"They play employee bingo," another employee added. "They move people into AR that don’t really understand it. It’s hardware and experience, not a news feed in your hand."

Zuckerberg's "metaverse," a virtual playground advertised to allow remote workers to be in the same virtual room, has also seemingly been a flop.

Analysts have also been unimpressed, with Deepwater Asset Management cofounder Gene Munster calling Reality Labs a "disaster from a financial perspective" in an interview with Yahoo.

In short, Zuckerberg's bet on the metaverse has so far been an unmitigated disaster — and given his newfound obsession with AI, it just might be an experiment he eventually abandons.

More on Reality Labs: Zuckerberg's Metaverse Is Bleeding Billions of Dollars, Documents Reveal

The post Facebook's VR Department Is Apparently a Complete Catastrophe appeared first on Futurism.

See the original post:
Facebook's VR Department Is Apparently a Complete Catastrophe

Feeling Dumb

It's no secret that multi-hyphenate billionaire Elon Musk spends an astonishing amount of time posting dubious political material on his social media echo chamber X-formerly-Twitter.

During a late Sunday night session, Musk cosigned a meme that reads: "If you ever feel dumb, just remember there are some people who still believe everything shown in [sic] news," resharing the image with a curt "yup."

But it didn't take long for Musk to out himself as one of those same gullible dupes who will believe anything if it flatters their preconceptions.

"This is messed up," he wrote a few hours later, at 3:42 am, as he reshared a video posted by Visegrád 24, an influential independent news account that tweets about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war that's well-known for posting fake news.

Visegrád 24 claimed the video showed "armed communist Maduro gangs 'Colectivos' are now storming polling stations in Punta Cardón," Venezuela.

But as an X community note quickly pointed out, that was a complete lie.

"Those are thieves stealing air conditioners and a woman can be heard in the video saying so," the note reads. "Voting in Venezuela is done on small computers that look nothing like what appears in this video."

Believing Everything

Musk quietly deleted the post without acknowledging that he'd spread fake news himself, the exact thing he'd just blamed the media for doing.

His hilariously timed blunder is far from the first. The mercurial CEO has a long history of bringing attention to racist conspiracy theories, outright propaganda, and completely made-up news reports, allowing hate speech and fake news to flourish on the platform.

Other users were alarmed at Musk blindly "believing everything" he sees on his platform.

"These are air conditioners, Elon Musk," one user tweeted. "Visegrad regularly posts fake news."

An account representing the distributed hacking group Anonymous chimed in as well.

"In an attempt at pushing propaganda, Elon pushes a false narrative that the thieves in the video are stealing ballot boxes," Anonymous tweeted, "when it's easy to see they're stealing air conditioning units for windows."

Last week, Musk shared an AI-generated video of vice president Kamala Harris, a flagrant violation of his platform's own policies.

In short, while a healthy dose of skepticism goes a long way when reading or watching the news, X-formerly-Twitter has quickly become a cesspool of unsourced claims and propaganda, making it a far worse place to catch up.

Worse yet, Musk's already tenuous connection to reality is as shaky as ever. With his endorsement of the notorious liar Donald Trump, Musk has clearly abandoned any commitment to the truth — a troubling development given the presidential election is right around the corner.

More on Musk: Elon Musk Won't Apologize After Sharing Faked AI Video of Kamala Harris

The post Elon Musk Bashes the News Media, Then Immediately Falls for Fake News appeared first on Futurism.

Read more from the original source:
Elon Musk Bashes the News Media, Then Immediately Falls for Fake News

Certain Accident

For roughly a decade now, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has made so-far empty promises about "solving" autonomous driving.

The company's erroneously named "Full Self-Driving" driver assistance software in particular has repeatedly drawn flak for endangering Tesla drivers daring enough to use it on public roads.

Now, Truist Securities analyst William Stein — who has a hold rating on Tesla's stock, meaning a recommendation to neither buy nor sell the stock — says he recently took the feature for a spin, finding that the tech simply isn't ready for prime time.

As Bloomberg reports, Stein almost rear-ended another vehicle that had "only partly completed a right turn."

"My quick intervention was absolutely required to avoid an otherwise certain accident," he wrote in a note to clients on Monday.

Eyes Off the Road

Stein's experience echoes plenty of other close calls and collisions using Tesla's driver assistance software, many of which have proved fatal — prompting an investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

And despite numerous over-the-air updates being issued to owners who were willing to spend up to $8,000 for the privilege of testing the system, the software is still woefully unprepared for the real world.

While driving around New York suburbs, Stein was shocked that he was able to turn his "head completely away from the road" without triggering any safety features: "The system continued for 20-40 seconds before issuing a warning," he wrote.

FSD also failed to pull over the vehicle when a police officer hand signaled for Stein to do so to allow a funeral procession to pass.

Stein did give Tesla some credit, concluding that FSD was "truly amazing, but not even close to ‘solving’ autonomy," referring to Musk's repeated promises of enabling actual self-driving.

It's a glaring report considering that Musk continues to double down on self-driving tech. The mercurial CEO recently promised to unveil a "robotaxi" that would presumably rely on FSD-like software.

But the robotaxi event has already been delayed from August to October, raising flags among Tesla bears. As far as we know, the company hasn't even applied for regulatory approval for a self-driving taxi service.

In short, despite many years of public testing — courtesy of paying customers, not trained engineers — FSD is still pretty rough around the edges, which could bode badly for Musk going all in on autonomous driving.

More on FSD: Tesla Stock Slaughtered After Its August "Robotaxi" Event Falls Apart

The post Tesla Analyst Tries Full Self-Driving, Has to Stop It From Crashing appeared first on Futurism.

See the article here:
Tesla Analyst Tries Full Self-Driving, Has to Stop It From Crashing

Flying Low

Montero"Lil Nas X" Hill got lambasted by random people online for flying in a commercial plane, prompting the music star to say he's doing his part for the planet by not traveling in a fuel-guzzling private jet.

"[T]o all u bitches calling me broke for flying on a regular plane i don’t wanna see not one viral carbon footprint tweet when yall see my ass on a jet," he posted on the social media platform X-formerly-Twitter.

Critics of the rap-country-pop star were responding to his tweeted video posted a day earlier where he is seen smiling and laughing silently inside a noisy airplane cabin with a caption that seems to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris over ex-President Donald Trump.

Some replies agreed with his political seal of approval, while others trolled with pro-Trump messages. But a few poked at him for flying with the rest of the hoi polloi.

"[A]ren’t you supposed to be flying private? *gasp* are you... broke?" wrote one person.

That obviously got under Lil Nas' skin, which forced him to clap back to the online crowd.

to all u bitches calling me broke for flying on a regular plane i don’t wanna see not one viral carbon footprint tweet when yall see my ass on a jet https://t.co/lDanSyttkt

— ? ????·?•?????·???????????l (@LilNasX) July 27, 2024

Star Struck

Setting aside his political endorsement, Lil Nas X has a point about private jets.

For example, Taylor Swift has gotten immense flack for having possibly the highest carbon footprint of any celebrity, at an estimated 8,300 tons of carbon emissions annually as of 2022 because of her extensive private jet use, dwarfing the typical American carbon footprint of around 16 tons per year.

Now imagine a lot of other Taylor Swifts, in the form of people with lesser names but just as much money, flying private and emitting untold tons of carbon during their frequent travels.

For example, it's been estimated that about one percent of people were responsible for 50 percent of airplane carbon missions in 2018.

So Lil Nas X is in the right — not just is he doing the right thing for the planet, but he'd almost certainly be criticized for flying private.

Maybe some people just need to cool their jets.

More on airplanes: Want to Save the Environment? Experts Say You Should Stop Traveling

The post Lil Nas X Is Flying Commercial to Avoid the Huge Carbon Footprint of a Private Jet appeared first on Futurism.

Go here to read the rest:
Lil Nas X Is Flying Commercial to Avoid the Huge Carbon Footprint of a Private Jet

McGrid

Keeping generative AI models running requires astronomical amounts of electricity — and the United States' aging power grid is struggling to handle the load.

As CNBC reports, experts are worried that the massive surge in interest in the tech could prove to be a major infrastructure problem. Transformers used to turn raw electricity into usable power are on average 38 years old and have quickly become a prime source of power outages. Building new transmission lines has also proven unpopular, since the extra costs tend to be passed onto local residents, raising their electric bills.

And it's not just power that's proving to be a bottleneck for generative AI — the data centers that power it also need copious amounts of water to keep cool.

According to recent estimates by Boston Consulting Group, demand for data centers is rising at a brisk pace in the US, and is expected to make up 16 percent of total US power consumption by the year 2030. Whether the country's aging infrastructure will be able to support such a massive load remains to be seen.

Power Play

AI companies are already feeling the crunch, with data center company Vantage executive Jeff Tench telling CNBC that there's already a "slowdown" in Northern California because of a "lack of availability of power from the utilities here in this area."

"The industry itself is looking for places where there is either proximate access to renewables, either wind or solar, and other infrastructure that can be leveraged," he added, "whether it be part of an incentive program to convert what would have been a coal-fired plant into natural gas, or increasingly looking at ways in which to offtake power from nuclear facilities."

Tech leaders have floated exotic ideas for meeting sky-high energy demands. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told audiences at this year's World Economic Forum that the AI models of tomorrow would require a "breakthrough" — spurring him to invest in fusion power himself.

But despite decades of research, fusion energy currently remains largely hypothetical.

Other companies like Microsoft are looking into developing "small modular reactors" — basically scaled-down nuclear power plants — that could give data centers an in-situ boost.

Chipmakers are also hoping to reduce power demand by increasing the efficiency of AI chips.

But whether any of those efforts will be enough to meet the seemingly insatiable power demands of AI companies is anything but certain.

Meanwhile, the carbon footprint of generative AI continues to soar, with Google admitting in its latest environmental impact report that it's woefully behind its plan to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2030.

More on generative AI: Washington Post Launches AI to Answer Climate Questions, But It Won't Say Whether AI Is Bad for the Climate

The post America's Ramshackle Power Grid Is Straining Under the Load of Generative AI appeared first on Futurism.

Visit link:
America's Ramshackle Power Grid Is Straining Under the Load of Generative AI

Speaker of the House

Artificial intelligence is being heralded as the future here on Earth, and according to a pair of scientists invested in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), it might even allow aliens to talk to us — or a version of us, at least.

In an editorial for Scientific American, SETI Institute astronomer Franch Marchis and NASA researcher Ignacio G. Lopez-Francois have teamed up together as "alien-curious scientists" to advocate for an AI-infused version of what those in their respective fields refer to as "messaging extraterrestrial intelligence," or METI for short.

Despite its heady implications, humans have been engaged in METI for as long as we've been going to space. Since the early 1960s, we Earthlings have sent everything from music and scientific formulas to Morse Code and maps out into the great beyond in hopes of hearing back — though thus far, those attempts at communicating with ETs have been for naught.

To Marchis and Lopez-Francois, these METI efforts can only be enhanced by introducing something as interactive as an AI large language model (LLM). In particular, they're arguing that we should send one out into space so it can speak for us.

"Aliens could," the duo wrote, "learn one of our languages, ask the LLM questions about us and receive replies that are representative of humanity."

Hello Out There

With the growing body of research about the potentially hundreds of millions of habitable exoplanets in our Milky Way galaxy alone, these alien-oriented scientists believe "several of these worlds could host technological civilizations curious to meet us and learn about us."

While one might argue that our current LLMs are not even up to snuff enough for humans to get much valuable communication out of them, these SETI scientists said that some open-source models, such as those made by Meta and Mistral, could already be fine-tuned enough to act as human emissaries.

After creating a human simulacrum fit for the stars, these alien-oriented LLMs could then be compressed, the pair explained, via the process of "quantization," which maps huge sets of data onto smaller sets. They could then be sent out to space using several methods — including radio, laser, or even copper disk communiqués — that could make the transmission of any LLM as rapid as possible (though Marchis and Lopez-Francois admitted that there's some massive technological hurdles that would have to be tackled first.)

"By sending well-curated large language models into the cosmos," they concluded, "we will open the door to unprecedented exchanges with extraterrestrial intelligences, ensuring that our legacy endures, even when we might not."

More on aliens and AI: We're Detecting No Alien Civilizations Because They Were Destroyed by AI, Astrophysicist Proposes

The post Scientists Suggest Sending AI to Aliens So They Can Talk to It in Real Time appeared first on Futurism.

Here is the original post:
Scientists Suggest Sending AI to Aliens So They Can Talk to It in Real Time

Common Denominator

Dark matter, the invisible substance believed to account for over 80 percent of the universe's mass, is not an easy thing to detect. We can see its gravitational pull on visible matter, however — which makes hydrogen, as the most common element out there, a prime candidate to watch for those interactions.

Taking advantage of this, a team of researchers have analyzed how hydrogen absorbs the light from distant sources like galaxies in an effect known as the "Lyman-Alpha Forest," and have applied this in a series of simulations to map the distribution of dark matter throughout the cosmos.

Their resulting study, published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astrophysics, confirms that there's a discrepancy between our observations of the universe and our predictions about its structures — and possibly points to the existence of a never-before-seen type of particle.

Ride or Dye

The universe is filled with hydrogen atoms, often in clouds of neutral hydrogen which make up most of the interstellar medium. In a spectrum of distant light sources like galaxies and quasars — whose structures are thought to be governed by dark matter's gravity — the areas where hydrogen absorbs the light along its journey to Earth show up as a staggered series of spiked lines that look like a forest.

"These are the atoms and molecules that the light has encountered along the way," said study coauthor Simon Bird, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Riverside, in a statement about the work. "Since each type of atom has a specific way of absorbing light, leaving a sort of signature in the spectrogram, it is possible to trace their presence, especially that of hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe."

Bird said to think of hydrogen as a dye and dark matter as water.

"The dye will follow where the water goes," he explained. "Dark matter gravitates so it has a gravitational potential. The hydrogen gas falls into it, and you use it as a tracer of the dark matter. Where it is denser there's more dark matter."

The Genuine Particle

What the researchers found by doing this reinforced the discrepancies, or "tensions," between what we observe about the universe's structures versus what our models predict.

"One of the current tensions is the number of galaxies on small scales and at low redshifts," Bird said. "The low redshift universe is the one relatively close to us."

Bird suggests two reasons for the discrepancies. One is the existence of a never-before-seen particle, which could be something like the Weakly Interact Massive Particles, or WIMPs, that are hypothesized to be dark matter.

The other is that "something strange" is going on with the supermassive black holes that form the center of galaxies — they could somehow be "stunting the growth" of their galaxies, throwing their structures out of the shapes we'd expect them to be.

"It's not completely convincing yet," Bird said. "But if this holds up in later data sets, then it is much more likely to be a new particle or some new type of physics, rather than the black holes messing up our calculations."

More on dark matter: Massive, Mysterious Objects Detected Floating Through Deep Space

The post Scientists Analyzing Deep Space "Forest" to Map Dark Matter appeared first on Futurism.

Go here to see the original:
Scientists Analyzing Deep Space "Forest" to Map Dark Matter