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Schools Using AI to Send Police to Students’ Homes

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Schools are employing dubious AI-powered software to accuse teenagers of wanting to harm themselves — and sending the police to their homes.

Worst Experience

Schools are employing dubious AI-powered software to accuse teenagers of wanting to harm themselves and sending the cops to their homes as a result — with often chaotic and traumatic results.

As the New York Times reports, software being installed on high school students' school-issued devices tracks every word they type. An algorithm then analyzes the language for evidence of teenagers wanting to harm themselves.

Unsurprisingly, the software can get it wrong by woefully misinterpreting what the students are actually trying to say. A 17-year-old in Neosho, Missouri, for instance, was woken up by the police in the middle of the night.

As it turns out, a poem she had written years ago triggered the alarms of a software called GoGuardian Beacon, which its maker describes as a way to "safeguard students from physical harm."

"It was one of the worst experiences of her life," the teen's mother told the NYT.

Wellness Check

Internet safety software employed by educational tech companies took off during the COVID-19 shutdowns, leading to widespread surveillance of students in their own homes.

Many of these systems are designed to flag keywords or phrases to figure out if a teen is planning to hurt themselves.

But as the NYT reports, we have no idea if they're at all effective or accurate, since the companies have yet to release any data.

Besides false alarms, schools have reported that the systems have allowed them to intervene in time before they're at imminent risk at least some of the time.

However, the software remains highly invasive and could represent a massive intrusion of privacy. Civil rights groups have criticized the tech, arguing that in most cases, law enforcement shouldn't be involved, according to the NYT.

In short, is this really the best weapon against teen suicides, which have emerged as the second leading cause of death among individuals aged five to 24 in the US?

"There are a lot of false alerts," Ryan West, chief of the police department in charge of the school of the 17-year-old, told the NYT. "But if we can save one kid, it’s worth a lot of false alerts."

Others, however, tend to disagree with that assessment.

"Given the total lack of information on outcomes, it’s not really possible for me to evaluate the system’s usage," Baltimore city councilman Ryan Dorsey, who has criticized these systems in the past, told the newspaper. "I think it’s terribly misguided to send police — especially knowing what I know and believe of school police in general — to children’s homes."

More on AI: Suspected Assassin of Insurance CEO Studied Artificial Intelligence, Spoke of "Singularity"

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Fusion Startup Conducts Strange Ceremony Involving Woman With Wires Coming Out of Her Back

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Spectacular Oracular

Earlier this year in a Silicon Valley warehouse, a nuclear fusion startup held a strange secret ceremony that featured, among other things, a bunch of giant capacitors and a woman with wires attached to her back playing piano alongside a robotic arm.

As Wired reports, attendees at the event hosted by the nuclear fusion startup Fuse included military and intelligence officials, venture capitalists, San Francisco art types, physicists, musicians both robotic and human — and, well, Grimes.

"Grace and luck came together in a freak wave, and people were moved," virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier wrote for the magazine. "Grimes was there, gaggle of kids orbiting her on the floor, transfixed. One said this must be what monsters listen to."

Hosted by the supermodel musician Charlotte Kemp Muhl — a multi-hyphenate powerhouse currently touring with St. Vincent and in a long-term relationship with Lanier's old friend Sean Ono Lennon — the event seems ostensibly meant to showcase to potential backers the kinds of people Fure has in its orbit.

Among them is Serene, the self-described hacker pianist attached to biofeedback wires during the ceremony who also happened to create Snowflake, the free internet module inside the Tor browser. Together, she and Muhl launched Finis Musicae, a startup billed as creating "robots for music" that were also on display at the clandestine event.

Fuse Frame

Obviously, none of Lanier's name-dropping sounds like it has anything to do with nuclear fusion — and indeed, there was no fusion on display at the event for the startup, founded by JC Btaiche, the son of a Lebanese nuclear physicist who was a mere 19-year-old when he started the firm.

As Btaiche told Lanier, his goal is to become the "SpaceX of fusion" and accomplish "Big Tech"-style achievements for all manner of partners. Given the unnamed members of the attendee rundown, those would-be partners likely had emissaries in attendance.

With another facility already located in Canada — Btaiche is, among other things, a former researcher at McGill and the founder of an ed-tech startup in Montreal — Fuse is clearly laying down roots in Silicon Valley.

As Lanier writes, the region has, for better or for worse, thirsted for this type of spectacle amid the rapid advancements of AI. What better way to give the people what they want than at an event promising another technology that's still in its earliest days?

More on startup world: Startup Says It'll Use Huge Space Mirror to Sell Sunlight During Nighttime

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Paul McCartney Reverses Opinion on AI After Using It to Produce New "Beatles" Song, Now Alarmed It Will "Wipe Out" the Music…

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Despite using artificial intelligence tools to help resuscitate old John Lennon vocals, Paul McCartney is now against some AI uses.

White Knight

Despite previously using artificial intelligence tools to help resuscitate old John Lennon vocals, fellow Beatle Paul McCartney is now singing a different tune about the tech.

As the Guardian reports, the beknighted Beatle has issued a statement ahead of the UK parliament's debate over amending its data bill to allow artists to exclude their work from AI training data. In it, McCartney warned that AI may take over the industry if nobody takes a stand.

"We[’ve] got to be careful about it," the Beatle said, "because it could just take over and we don’t want that to happen, particularly for the young composers and writers [for] who, it may be the only way they[’re] gonna make a career."

"If AI wipes that out," he continued, "that would be a very sad thing indeed."

Then and Now

McCartney's new position on AI comes just over a month after the Grammy Awards announced that the final Beatles song, "Now and Then," had been nominated for two awards — making it the first AI-assisted track ever to get the nod from the Recording Academy.

Though the track was made using AI, it wasn't the generative type that's been getting immense buzz lately. Around the time the song was released, McCartney revealed that engineers had used AI tech known as "stem separation" to lift the assassinated Beatle's vocals from an old demo.

"There it was, John’s voice, crystal clear," the Wings singer said in a press release about the song and titular album last year. "It’s quite emotional. And we all play on it, it’s a genuine Beatles recording."

Former Beatles drummer Ringo Starr added in that statement that the AI tech that helped bring Lennon's vocals back to life was "far out."

"It was the closest we’ll ever come to having him back in the room," Starr expounded, "so it was very emotional for all of us."

Be that as it may, both McCartney and Starr's names are absent from a popular petition against the unauthorized use of artists' work by AI companies. Most recently, "Running Up That Hill" songstress Kate Bush became one of the more than 36,000 signatories to join the anti-AI campaign, which also features well-heeled endorsers across industries including Julianne Moore, Stephen Fry, and The Cure's Robert Smith.

It's not quite "AI for me but not for thee," but the remaining Beatles' absence from the petition feels noteworthy as their home country prepares to debate whether to sign AI restrictions into law.

More on AI and musicians: The AI That De-Ages Eminem Into Slim Shady Is Astonishingly Bad

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Trump’s New Billionaire Head of NASA Says He May Pause His Own Personal Vacations Into Space While Leading Agency

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SpaceX space tourist Jared Isaacman may soon have to go on a hiatus from his trips into orbit now that he's been named NASA administrator.

Stuck in the Office

Billionaire Jared Isaacman has been to space twice. First, he commanded the first all-civilian mission to orbit in September 2021 on board SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft. Almost exactly three years later, he again rode the craft to orbit to become the first private astronaut to go on a spacewalk.

But the playboy space tourist may soon have to go on a hiatus from his privately-funded trips into orbit — because Isaacman was picked by president-elect Donald Trump, or perhaps his buddy Elon Musk, to become the next head of NASA.

The announcement catapulted the trained fighter jet pilot into the upper echelons of Washington, DC — which could force him to put his personal space travel ambitions on hold.

As part of the private Polaris program organized by Isaacman, the entrepreneur wanted to follow up his September spacewalk with two more trips on board SpaceX's Crew Dragon and eventually the company's much larger Starship.

"The future of the Polaris program is a little bit of a question mark at the moment," Isaacman told the audience of a space conference in Orlando, as quoted by Reuters. "It may wind up on hold for a little bit."

Spacefaring Kinda Guy

It's the first time Isaacman has made a public appearance since being appointed NASA administrator. As Reuters points out, the billionaire appeared highly optimistic about the future of the private space industry at the event but offered few clues on how we would lead NASA starting in January.

The 41-year-old is widely expected to further existing private-public partnerships, which could turn out to be a major windfall for SpaceX, which is already a major NASA contractor.

"At NASA, we will passionately pursue these possibilities and usher in an era where humanity becomes a true spacefaring civilization," Isaacman wrote in an announcement on X last week.

Where his new role will leave the Polaris program and SpaceX's other private astronaut partnerships with the likes of Axiom and Vast remains unclear.

In short, while it may not be him personally riding a spacecraft into space, given his new role in the Trump administration, SpaceX's space exploration ambitions almost certainly just got a major boost.

More on Isaacman: The New Head of NASA Had an Interesting Disagreement with the Space Agency

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Scientists Intrigued by Planet With Long Tail

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Astronomers have discovered an unusual exoplanet with a long

Being Tailed

Astronomers have discovered an unusual exoplanet with a long "tail" of gas trailing behind it, not unlike a giant comet.

As NASA details in a recent article about the discovery, the planet, dubbed WASP-69 b, is steadily shedding its atmosphere of hydrogen and helium particles, which are being shaped into the astonishing tail by harsh stellar winds blowing its way.

WASP-69 b is a hot Jupiter, which means it's a gas giant roughly the mass of Jupiter but orbits its host star in the Aquarius constellation — some 164 light-years away from earth — at a much shorter distance, causing its surface temperatures to soar.

The sheer amount of radiation from its host star causes lightweight gases including hydrogen and helium to "photoevaporate" into outer space, trailing the planet in an epic wake.

"Strong stellar winds can sculpt that outflow in tails that trail behind the planet," University of California astrophysicist Dakotah Tyler, lead author of a paper published in the journal The Astrophysical Journal, told NASA.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)

Breaking Wind

Tyler and his colleagues found that the exoplanet is losing an estimated 200,000 tons of gas per second. While that may sound like a lot, we're talking about planetary scales; every one billion years, the team found, the planet is losing the mass equivalent to planet Earth, which means it's unlikely to ever run out of gas in its atmosphere (WASP-69 b is roughly 90 times the mass of Earth.)

The exoplanet's tail is astonishingly long, extending more than 7.5 times its radius behind it, or 350,000 miles, which is roughly 1.5 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

But as the stellar winds shift, WASP-69 b's unusual appendage's size and shape can change, and astronomers are only beginning to understand this unusual phenomenon.

"Studying the escaping atmospheres of highly irradiated exoplanets is critical for understanding the physical mechanisms that shape the demographics of close-in planets," the paper reads.

More on exoplanets: Cornell Astronomer Hoping the James Webb Will Confirm Alien Life in 2025

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Scientists Horrified by "Mirror Life" That Could Wipe Out Biology As We Know It

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A group of scientists have called for an immediate halt on creating

A group of the world's leading biologists have called for an immediate halt on a technology you've probably never even heard of — but is so dangerous, they say, that it could upend the order life itself on this planet, if not wipe it out.

In a nearly three-hundred page technical report published this month, the scientists describe the horrifyingly existential risks posed by what's known as mirror life: synthetic organisms whose DNA structures are a mirror image to that of all known natural organisms.

Mirror lifeforms are probably a few decades away from being realized. But the risk they pose is unfathomably serious, according to the scientists.

"The consequences could be globally disastrous," report coauthor Jack W. Szostak, a Nobel-prize-winning chemist at the University of Chicago, told The New York Times.

The famous DNA double helix is considered right-handed, meaning its spiral strands — a sugar-phosphate backbone — twist to the right. (To picture this, make a thumbs-up with your right hand; your thumb is the vertical axis and your curled-up fingers represent the direction of the spiral.) On the other hand, proteins, the building block of cells, are left-handed.

Why this is the case remains a matter of scientific debate. But this so-called homochirality is the state of nature on the planet — and it's gotten us this far.

Yet in our infinite human arrogance lies the capacity to defy that order. What happens if we make mirror organisms with left-handed DNA and right-handed proteins?

Proponents of pursuing this research argue that such mirror cells could have incredible medical applications. Scientists have already forged mirror proteins and discovered that they are much more resilient than natural ones because the enzymes that are designed to break them down can't bind to them. This could be a breakthrough in treating chronic diseases, since many therapeutic drugs are broken down too quickly to have a lasting effect without simply taking more of them.

The problem, however, is that mirror organisms could act unpredictably when interacting with natural cells. We simply don't know what would happen when mirror life clashes with ours. And in a void of information, you plan for the worst.

What if, for example, an experimental mirror bacteria was accidentally released into the world? Our biology would have no idea how to deal with these synthetic organisms. They could bypass detection by our immune system, easily infect a host, and spread a deadly pandemic. The risk applies to all lifeforms, too — not just humans.

To drive the point home, think of how invasive species have totally annihilated native ones. Now supercharge that deadly advantage with organisms that are completely alien to all life on Earth, and we may not stand a chance.

"Unless compelling evidence emerges that mirror life would not pose extraordinary dangers, we believe that mirror bacteria and other mirror organisms, even those with engineered biocontainment measures, should not be created," the report authors wrote in an accompanying letter published in Science. "We therefore recommend that research with the goal of creating mirror bacteria not be permitted, and that funders make clear that they will not support such work."

More on deadly biology: UN Deploys Investigators as Mysterious "Disease X" Continues to Spread

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Mexico Is Getting So Hot That Even Young People Are Dropping Dead

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Scientists have found that not just older adults are succumbing to dangerous temperatures driven by climate change.

Killer Heat

Scientists have found that it's not just older adults succumbing to dangerous temperatures driven by climate change — even younger people may be more susceptible to extreme heat as well.

As detailed in a new study published in the journal Science Advances, researchers found that three-fourths of heat-related deaths in Mexico between 1998 and 2019 were people under the age of 35.

It's a fascinating — and perhaps foreboding — new finding that suggests it's not just the elderly who are at the highest risk of dying from heat.

"These age groups are also quite vulnerable to heat in ways that we don’t expect even at temperatures that we don’t think of as particularly warm," first author and Stanford University environmental social scientist Andrew Wilson told the New York Times.

Wet Bulb Blues

Since getting an accurate picture of how many people die due to heat exhaustion is difficult — death certificates often don't list heat as a cause — the team turned to data relating to changes in "wet bulb" temperatures, which take both humidity and air temperatures into account to gauge how well human bodies can adapt to heat.

"While multiple metrics exist to measure humid heat stress, wet-bulb temperature has been identified as an important metric for understanding the impact of heat on human health because it accounts for the critical role of sweat evaporation — the primary mechanism by which the human body cools itself — in maintaining homeostasis under heat exposure," the paper reads.

Around a wet bulb temperature of just 95 degrees Fahrenheit, "humans can no longer dissipate heat into the environment and are thus physically incapable of survival when exposed for a sufficient length of time," the researchers wrote.

Surprisingly, the researchers found that even at much lower wet bulb temperatures of around 75 degrees Fahrenheit — or 88 degrees Fahrenheit with 50 percent humidity — adults between the ages of 18 to 34 were dying from heat.

That's in contrast to adults older than 70 being vulnerable to much higher wet bulb temperatures.

It's a concerning finding, considering the number of extreme heat waves is only expected to rise as climate change continues to push up temperatures around the globe. The team projects that the number of deaths among young adults will increase by 32 percent by the year 2100.

"You’re going to increase the number of moderately warm days much more than you’re going to increase the number of extremely hot days," Wilson told the NYT.

Worse yet, those between the ages of 18 to 34 are also far more likely to engage in strenuous activities outdoors, including sports or work-related tasks, leaving them more at risk.

"It’s not just about your physiological vulnerability," coauthor and Columbia University graduate student Daniel Bressler told the newspaper. "It’s about the economic and the social factors that make it so that you’re more exposed."

More on death heat: Dozens of Americans Die in Brutal Heat Wave

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Doctors Intrigued by Treatment That Makes Dead Brains Show Signs of Life

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Scientists were astonished to find that recirculating preserving agents through a severed pig's head caused its brain to show signs of life.

Scientists were astonished to find that recirculating a cocktail of preserving agents through a severed pig's head caused the animal's brain to show signs of life.

As New Scientist reports, basic cellular functions were restored in the dismembered brain — something that was previously thought impossible following the cessation of blood flow.

While the pig brain wasn't exactly oinking at the farm after the treatment, in scientifically significant ways it was seemingly brought back from the brink of death — a ghoulish experiment that could have implications for future efforts to reanimate a dead human brain as well.

In fact, Yale School of Medicine neuroscientist Zvonimir Vrselja and his colleagues are looking to try the technique on human brains — efforts, needless to say, that could have thorny ethical ramifications.

For one, the definition of when a person has died has remained a lively debate among health practitioners.

"We are trying to be transparent and very careful because there’s so much value that can come out of this," Vrselja told New Scientist.

Some argue that death occurs when the heart stops beating. Others define it as the point when the brain's functions cease entirely.

Things get murkier when you consider that neuroscientists have already found that brain activity can extend far beyond cardiac arrest. In fact, research has found that the brain can even light up when the heart stops beating.

"The dying brain actually starts this massive rescue effort," University of Michigan neuroscientist Jimo Borjigin told New Scientist.

Borjigin found in a 2023 study that the brain "appeared to be on fire" after four dying people were taken off of life support.

"If we can better understand what’s going on at this point, I believe we could resuscitate it," he added.

Vrselja and his colleagues are at the forefront of those efforts, having developed a special drug cocktail called BrainEx that stops the brain from being damaged by the sudden surge of oxygen-rich blood following brain death.

In a 2019 experiment involving pig brains, the researchers managed to bring some activity back four hours after decapitation.

But even getting remotely near the point of consciousness with a donated human brain could have major ethical ramifications, forcing the team to tread carefully.

"We had to develop new methods to make sure no electrical activity is occurring in an organized way that might reflect any kind of consciousness," Vrselja told New Scientist.

For now, they're using their invention to test out treatments for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

Similar techniques could also be used to prolong the shelf life of donor organs, which could save lives.

More on death: Professor of Medicine Says Death Appears to Be Reversible

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94-Year-Old Warren Buffett Announces Plans to Give Away $147 Billion When He Dies

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Warren Buffett has announced that much of his legendary accumulation of wealth will be given away under the auspices of his three children.

Give It All Away

American stock market wizard Warren Buffett has announced that much of his legendary accumulation of wealth will be given away under the auspices of his three children.

However, as the 94-year-old admitted in a lengthy letter to investors, even they've grown quite old themselves, inspiring him to come up with a contingency plan in case they were to pass away before his remaining $147.4 billion fortune could be fully handed out — though he stopped short of publicly naming such a successor.

"Father time always wins," he wrote, as quoted by the Associated Press. "But he can be fickle — indeed unfair and even cruel — sometimes ending life at birth or soon thereafter while, at other times, waiting a century or so before paying a visit."

"To date, I’ve been very lucky, but, before long, he will get around to me," he added. "There is, however, a downside to my good fortune in avoiding his notice."

Logan Roy IRL

The nonagenarian admitted that the "expected life span of my children has materially diminished" since pledging to donate yearly to his children's charitable efforts, as well as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in 2006.

Buffett also argued that "hugely wealthy parents should leave their children enough so they can do anything but not enough that they can do nothing."

The billionaire has made considerable donations over the years. Last year, his charitable giving exceeded $50 billion, roughly twice his entire 2006 net worth.

Despite his advanced age, Buffett has held onto the reins of his Berkshire Hathaway empire and has yet to announce plans to retire. His children, however, won't be taking over the multinational holdings company — one of his deputies, Greg Abel, has already been identified as the next CEO following Buffett's death.

Meanwhile, Buffett's children are tasked to oversee his philanthropic efforts.

Last year, he announced that the three would have ten years following his death to give away his fortune. But now that they're growing old, it's probably for the best to arrange a backup plan in case they quite literally can't give it away fast enough.

More on Warren Buffett: Warren Buffett Compares AI to the Atom Bomb

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The Only Thing Sadder Than This Cybertruck’s Gaping Wound Is Its Bumper Sticker

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A Cybertruck owner waited two weeks for Tesla to patch up his car's bumper, and the sticker he plastered on it makes the bad situation worse.

Crash Course

A Cybertruck owner waited two miserable weeks for a Tesla collision shop to patch up his car's torn bumper, and the sticker he plastered on the vehicle makes his bad situation worse.

"I bought this after I knew Elon was awesome," reads the bumper sticker, which the truck owner shared as part of an explanatory post on X-formerly-Twitter.

It's meant to be a defiant response to the much more popular stickers sheepishly disclaiming that a Tesla's owner bought the vehicle "before we knew Elon was crazy" — but after the accident, it feels more like a sad trombone.

Boulevard of Broken Teslas

While waiting for repair parts, the collision shop had stripped part of the Cybertruck's steel body to reveal the white exoskeleton beneath.

"I want Tesla to be the best," pleaded the Cybertruck owner, whose X name identifies them only as "Tryangle." But the "truck was perfectly drivable, and it's just been sitting in the lot for 10-plus days torn down."

"No one can give me a clear idea of when parts will be available, or when things will be completed," Tryangle continued. "I feel like my truck is being held hostage." 

One man's woe here speaks to a larger issue with Musk's most passionate followers: they'll endure anything to feel close to the billionaire. They don't mind that the $74,000-and-up Cybertruck clearly isn't as invincible as advertised, or that it's a nightmare to service, and that it sometimes bursts into flames.

As for Tryangle, his Cybertruck is now fixed and back in his possession — and he couldn't be more thrilled.

"I ordered my @cybertruck five years ago," he recently wrote on X-formerly-Twitter. "Never has anything in my life been worth the wait like the Cybertruck has! (Sorry to my wife, baby boy, and future children.)"

More on the Cybertruck: Warning! Do Not Expose Cybertrucks to Common Magnets

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Scientists Baffled by Orcas Wearing Dead Salmon as Hats

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Orcas have once again been observed swimming around with dead salmon on their snout as

Hatful of Sorrow

You've probably heard all about orcas' daring feats, like sinking yachts. But are you aware that they can be quite dashing, too?

Yep. It appears that these snazzy cetaceans are fond of wearing "hats" in the form of dead salmon on their snouts, and sometimes other fish.

First observed in 1987, the morbid fashion trend quickly came and went like so many questionable choices in dress  — but like baggy trousers, it now it appears to be back in style again.

As New Scientist reports, photographers have spotted killer whales donning salmon hats off the coast of the Pacific Northwest, reigniting debate about why orcas exhibit this puzzling behavior.

"Honestly, your guess is as good as mine," Deborah Giles, the science and research director at the non-profit Wild Orca, told New Scientist.

"We saw one with a fish on its head," she described. "So that was fun — it's been a while since I've personally seen it."

Boast to Coast

As New Scientist notes, only west coast orcas appear to favor dressing this way. East coasters, it seems, are either too cool or too démodé to bother.

Because orcas can live up to ninety years, it's possible that it's the same trendsetter from nearly four decades ago — or its acolytes — that's reviving the salmon hats. Who knew that orcas had fashion icons of their own?

"It does seem possible that some individuals that experienced [the behavior the] first time around may have started it again," Andrew Foote, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Oslo, Norway, told New Scientist.

Fishful Thinking

In reality, there could be a practical reason behind the hats. Perhaps this is how the orcas set aside some food for later after an especially plentiful hunt.

"We've seen mammal-eating killer whales carry large chunks of food under their pectoral fin, kind of tucked in next to their body," Giles told New Scientist.

Either way, it's a testament to the intelligence of the creatures, which are social to such an almost primate degree that they develop their own cultures. It's this cultural bent — and the trends that come with it — that's believed to be responsible for how orcas not only began attacking human vessels, but learned how to immobilize and even sink them.

Nevertheless, it'll take more observations to bear out the saving-a-snack hypothesis — which Giles suggests could be done with camera-equipped drones.

"Over time, we may be able to gather enough information to show that, for instance, one carried a fish hat for 30 minutes or so, and then he ate it," she told New Scientist.

More on whales: Footage Shows Orca Blasting SeaWorld Visitors With Liquid Feces

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Tesla Factories Caught Spewing Toxins Into Air, River, Sewer

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Tesla's plant in Austin, Texas is leaking huge amounts of hazardous wastewater into the city's sewer, violating local environmental guidelines.

Tesla's plant in Austin, Texas has been leaking huge amounts of hazardous wastewater into the city's sewer, violating local environmental guidelines.

As detailed in public records obtained by the Wall Street Journal, the Elon Musk-led company also allowed a massive casting furnace to spew toxins into the air after its door refused to shut.

These environmental problems continued to be a problem for months. While Tesla bosses were aware of them, they forced employees to come up with short-term fixes, according to the report, all in an effort to avoid slowing down production.

The news once again highlights Musk's disregard for environmental regulations. Now that he's aligned himself with president-elect Donald Trump, Musk has vowed to "delete the mountain of choking regulations that do not serve the greater good" as part of his so-called "Department of Government Efficiency," or DOGE.

In short, Tesla's egregious environmental shortcomings underscore the conflict of interest as the mercurial CEO attempts to dismantle the environmental rules by which his companies currently have to abide.

It also marks a turning point for a billionaire who once was seen as a pioneer in renewable energy and an ally of environmental causes.

According to the WSJ, Tesla's factory in Fremont, California has gotten more warnings for air pollution rule violations than almost any other car plant in the state. Over just the past five years, the factory violated air pollution permits 112 times and failed to address shortcomings with equipment designed to minimize emissions.

Meanwhile in Austin, employees were afraid to speak up over environmental concerns, citing fears of being fired.

"Tesla repeatedly asked me to lie to the government so that they could operate without paying for proper environmental controls," one environmental compliance staffer said, according to a 2024 memo obtained by the WSJ.

The EPA's criminal-enforcement division has since opened an inquiry into the staffer's allegations.

While production was ramping up at the Texas factory, a massive six-acre pond of wastewater was slowly being directed into Austin's sewer system, without Tesla ever getting permission.

During rainstorms, Tesla even dumped chemicals into the nearby Colorado River, turning it an alarming shade of brown.

After the unnamed environmental compliance staffer refused a Tesla executive's request to lobby Austin's water regulator to downplay its frequent violations of chemical limits, the staffer was abruptly fired.

It's a sad reality for a company that was once hailed as popularizing the answer to gas-guzzling combustion engines.

In his 2006 "Master Plan," Musk promised to help "expedite the move from a mine-and-burn hydrocarbon economy towards a solar electric economy, which I believe to be the primary, but not exclusive, sustainable solution."

Any references to the plan were quietly deleted from Tesla's website in August — highlighting the EV maker and its CEO's newfound disregard for the environment and the rules that were created to protect it.

More on Tesla: Tesla Deletes Elon Musk's "Master Plan"

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Startup Mocked for Charging $5,000 to "Edit" Book Manuscripts Using AI

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Startup company Spines wants to publish 8,000 books in 2025 by using AI. Before that can happen, Spines should stop embarrassing itself.

Let Him Book

A startup called Spines apparently wants to use AI to edit and publish 8,000 books in 2025 — though no word on whether they'll be any good.

There are several issues with the premise. First, AI is a notoriously untalented wordsmith. It will undoubtedly struggle with the myriad tasks Spines assigns to it, including "proofreads, cover designs, formats, publishes, and... distributing your book in just a couple of weeks," according to the venture's website. 

Oh, and then there's the issue of Spines embarrassing itself publicly. 

"A great example of how no one can find actual uses for LLMs that aren't scams for grifts," short story writer Lincoln Michel wrote of the flap on X-formerly-Twitter. "Quite literally the LAST thing publishing needs is... AI regurgitations."

Author Rowan Coleman agreed.

"The people behind Spines AI publishing are spineLESS," Coleman posted on the same site. "They don’t care about books, don’t care about art, don’t care about the instinctive human talent it takes to write, edit and produce a book. They want the magic, without the work."

Feral Page

Spines CEO and cofounder Yehuda Niv told The Bookseller, a UK book business magazine, that Spines had already published seven "bestsellers." But when Spines was pressed to provide sales numbers, a company representative claimed the "data is private and belongs to the author." Hm, suspicious. 

Niv also promised The Bookseller that Spines "isn't self-publishing, is not a traditional publisher and is not a vanity publisher." That's despite the fact that Spines' website, which sells publishing plans from between $1,500 to $4,400, advertises to customers who are clearly looking to team up with an inexpensive vanity publisher.

"I sent my book to 17 different publishers and got rejected every time, and vanity publishers quoted me between $11,000 to $17,000," said on Spines' website the author of Spines' "Biological Transcendence and the Tao: An Exposé on the Potential to Alleviate Disease and Ageing and the Considerations of Age-Old Wisdom," which doesn't currently have a single Amazon review. "With Spines, I got my book published in less than 30 days!" 

Hm, interesting. That testimonial makes Spines sound an awful lot like a vanity publisher.

AI startups love to reinvent the wheel and claim it's never been done before. Like an ed tech startup founder who used AI to cover for her run-of-the-mill embezzlement, or a Finnish AI company which put a high tech twist on the common practice of exploiting incarcerated workers. 

Will it work for books? We'll be watching.

More on AI: Character.AI Is Hosting Pro-Anorexia Chatbots That Encourage Young People to Engage in Disordered Eating

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Woman Annoyed When She Gets on Wegovy and It Does Nothing

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For some, the issue with GLP-1 drugs like Wegovy isn't getting access to these game-changing medications, but having them not work.

The fever-pitch hype around GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro makes them sound like game-changing medications, and for many they are — but for other patients, the experience is totally underwhelming.

In an interview with the Associated Press, 38-year-old Danielle Griffin said that although she was able to get a prescription for Novo Nordisk's weight loss shot Wegovy — and even got it covered by her insurance, which is still often a struggle — the medication just didn't work for her.

"I have been on Wegovy for a year and a half," Griffin said, "and have only lost 13 pounds."

Despite doing "everything right," including dieting, exercising, and drinking lots of water, she's had "no success" with the popular weight loss injectable.

"It’s discouraging," Giffin said.

While there's been scrutiny on a laundry list of side effects that can come with glucagon-like peptide-1 drugs, which seem to work by mimicking the body's feeling of fullness, non-responsiveness of this sort hasn't captured much attention.

Obesity experts told the AP, however, that up to 20 percent — or one in every five patients — may not lose weight on the drugs at all.

Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity expert at Massachusetts General Hospital, told the news wire that because "different people have different responses," these drugs won't work the same for everyone who takes them.

From medications that stymie weight loss to differences in brain and gut chemistry, lots of factors influence how people metabolize GLP-1s, the Mass General doctor said.

"[Obesity] is a disease that stems from the brain," Stanford said. "The dysfunction may not be the same."

Endocrine specialist Jody Dushay of Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center said that she's also seen people have issues losing weight with GLP-1s — though generally, she and her patients are able to tell whether they're going to work within a few weeks.

Between non-responsiveness and undesirable gastrointestinal side effects like vomiting, nausea, and diarrhea, those who run into issues with drugs like Wegovy often feel at wit's end, Dushay said. There are plenty of other options, however, including switching to a different GLP-1.

"I tell them: it's not game over," the endocrinologist said.

Indeed, Griffin told the AP that she eventually switched over to Zepbound, a similar drug made by Eli Lilly — and that within just three months, she'd lost seven pounds.

"I’m hoping it’s slow and steady," the woman said.

More on GLP-1s: The Diet Industry Is Reportedly in Total Meltdown Over GLP-1 Weight Loss Drugs

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Cybertruck Owners Actually Love the Fact That Their Car Could Fly Apart at Any Moment

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The reason that people keep buying the Cybertruck is that they actually like the dangerous appeal of its shoddy construction.

Just twelve months since it began shipping out to customers, the Cybertruck is now on its sixth recall — this time for turning into a seven-thousand pound paperweight while driving.

And yet, people keep buying the Tesla pickup. Its owners have adopted a siege mentality against the onslaught of bad press, and perhaps against the world, which isn't very kind to the stainless steel behemoths.

What draws someone to dump $100,000 on a vehicle that reportedly bricks after going through a car wash? One explanation is that it's a sign of the extreme loyalty that Elon Musk inspires in his fans.

But there could be more to it. As an automotive expert suggests, the Cybertruck's shoddiness may actually be what endears it to its edgy buyers.

"The people drawn to [the Cybertruck] don't have quality of construction or safety at the top of mind," Ivan Drury, director of insights at the automotive inventory company Edmunds, told Wired. "That this could be a dangerous vehicle to drive is key to its appeal."

Cybertruck buyers are people "who think 'I don't care if I kill people when I drive this thing down the street,'" he added.

As of October, Tesla has sold over 28,250 Cybertrucks, according to Kelly Blue Book, making it one of the best selling EVs in the country (though this is still a far cry from the 250,000 per year that Musk once estimated).

Its selling points are varied. It's hyped as "bullet-proof" and "apocalypse proof," though your results may vary; Tesla also claims it can off-road and tow and be an all-around workhorse.

For many owners, the reality has been soberingly different. Sloppy construction, discolored body panels and getting stumped by normal truck stuff have all come to define the vehicle since its launch. There have even been reports of brand new Cybertrucks suddenly breaking down.

It's not surprising, then, that the Cybertruck has been recalled at an average of once every two months. If anything, it's surprising it hasn't been recalled more.

But that amount is already alarming. Harl Brauer, an executive analyst at iSeeCars, estimates that the Cybertruck's tally of six recalls make it "worse than 91 percent" of all other 2024 vehicles.

"We aren't comfortable making [lifetime recall] predictions on the Cybertruck at this very early stage," Brauer told Wired. "But so far it isn't doing very well."

Yet according to Drury, Cybertruck owners don't pay attention to details like that. In fact, you can more or less sum up their ethos as a giant "fuck you" to sound car-buying wisdom.

"Cybertruck customers are in it for the stares and glares — they don't care about how many times [this vehicle is] going to be recalled over 30 years," Drury told Wired. "They're buying this car for now, with zero thought to the future."

"A standard auto customer wants to know if a car will last 10 years or will be ongoing good value for money," he added. "A Cybertruck customer doesn't care about any of that. Owning a Cybertruck isn't practical; it's a boast. A boast that 'I have so much discretionary income I can afford to waste it on an impractical car.'"

More on Tesla: Warning! Do Not Expose Cybertrucks to Common Magnets

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Man Renovates Decommissioned Missile Silo Into Delightful Airbnb, Attracts "Swingers"

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A man in Arkansas turned a decommissioned missile silo into a lavish Airbnb over ten years, spending $800,000.

Doomsdairbnb

A man in Arkansas turned a decommissioned missile silo into a lavish short-term rental property.

But whether it was a wise long-term investment remains to be seen. As owner GT Hill tells Business Insider, he bought the silo for $90,000 in 2010, and then spent a whopping $800,000 over ten years to convert the space into a unique rental experience.

"Probably 20 percent of my interest was in the doomsday prepper aspect or the idea of preparing to survive in the case of a catastrophe," Hill wrote. "I'm not a full doomsday prepper, but I like the idea of being prepared for the unknown, including having food storage and some survival skills."

The end product, dubbed Titan II, is a 3500-square-foot living space located in the middle of a 200-acre ranch and 150 feet below the ground. Hill says it's already hosted famous YouTubers, bands, birthday parties, and "even some swingers."

And in case the end of the world is nigh, Hill will have the ideal place to seek shelter for himself and his family — as long as it's not already booked up, that is.

"Being underground the place is typically cooler than a normal living space but extra blankets are provided," the Airbnb description reads.

Location, Location

The missile silo itself was decommissioned after Russia and the US signed a treaty in 1979 to limit their nuclear arsenals.

"They actually had to blow up the top of the structure and fill it in," Hill wrote. "So it was an underground structure, but completely buried."

The ten years of hard work Hill put into the property included pumping out a tidal wave of water that had accumulated in the space.

"The place had asbestos and methane gas at the top of the control center, where the crew quarters were," Hill wrote. "I recorded videos of the whole process, and you can actually hear my voice change because of the methane in the air."

"After spending $800,000, we're probably netting $80,000 a year in revenue from the place now that I rent it out on Airbnb," he added.

In short, "it's not a great way to spend time or money," Hill admitted.

More on Airbnb: Airbnb Apologizes After Allowing Listing for "1830s Slave Cabin"

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It Sounds an Awful Lot Like OpenAI Is Adding Ads to ChatGPT

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Recent hiring activity and wishy-washy statements make it seem like OpenAI is planning to introduce ads into ChatGPT.

Ad Age

They're not copping to much yet, but recent hiring activity and wishy-washy statements make it seem an awful lot like OpenAI is planning to introduce ads into its suite of products like ChatGPT.

As the Financial Times reports, the company is hiring ad talent away from its big tech rivals like Google and Meta. And ad-oriented job listings at the company that the FT spotted on LinkedIn offer a similar sense.

So far, even the free versions of OpenAI's products have remained ad-free. Of course, the company is currently swimming in money — in the two years since its flagship chatbot dropped, OpenAI's valuation skyrocketed to $157 billion — but amid reports of shrinking traffic and the extremely expensive nature of AI infrastructure, it may well be starting to feel the squeeze.

If it did start to put ads into ChatGPT, the formerly nonprofit OpenAI would be crossing a Rubicon of sleaziness; the obvious integration would be to jump on users asking things like "best air fryer" and then pointing them toward companies paying OpenAI for publicity, undermining the entire premise of an intelligent and objective AI-powered assistant.

DraperGPT

In an interview with the FT, chief financial officer Sarah Friar candidly said the company had been weighing an ads model, though she declined to say when or where such ads would be released besides saying the company would be "thoughtful about when and where we implement them."

A former mover and shaker for the likes of Nextdoor and Salesforce, Friar went on to point out that she and OpenAI chief product officer Kevin Weil — who previously helmed ad-supported projects at Instagram and Twitter — have a ton of ad experience.

"The good news with Kevin Weil at the wheel with product is that he came from Instagram," she told the outlet. "He knows how this works."

Following the interview, however, Friar backtracked with an unconvincing reversal.

"Our current business is experiencing rapid growth and we see significant opportunities within our existing business model," she told the FT. "While we’re open to exploring other revenue streams in the future, we have no active plans to pursue advertising."

As of now, of course, there's no confirmation of anything except internal talks about introducing ads into OpenAI products.

Reading between the lines, however, it seems like the firm doing a bit more than brainstorming — and that after-interview reversal makes the whole thing seem all the more likely to happen.

More on OpenAI's interiority: OpenAI Implores Judge Not to Expose Communications by Its Top Researchers

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ChatGPT Is Absolutely Butchering Reporting From Its “News Partners”

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A review found that OpenAI's

A review by Columbia's Tow Center for Digital Journalism found that OpenAI's ChatGPT search — a newer version of OpenAI's flagship chatbot designed to paraphrase web queries and provide links to proper sources — is routinely mangling reporting from news outlets, including OpenAI "news partners" that have signed content licensing deals with the AI industry leader.

According to the Columbia Journalism Review, the Tow Center's findings analyzed "two hundred quotes from twenty publications and asked ChatGPT to identify the sources of each quote." The chatbot's accuracy was mixed, with some responses providing entirely accurate attributions, others providing entirely incorrect attribution details, and others offering a blend of fact and fiction.

ChatGPT's search function operates via web crawlers, which return information from around the web as bottled into AI-paraphrased outputs. Some publications, for example The New York Times — which last year sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright violations — have blocked OpenAI's web crawlers from rooting around their websites entirely by way of their robots.txt pages. Others, including OpenAI news partners that have signed licensing deals to give the AI company access to their valuable troves of journalistic material in exchange for cash, allow OpenAI's web crawlers to dig through their sites.

Per the CJR, the Tow Center found that in cases where ChatGPT couldn't locate the correct source for a quote due to robots.txt restrictions, it would frequently resort to fabricating source material — as opposed to informing the chatbot user that it couldn't find the quote or that it was blocked from retrieving it. More than a third of all ChatGPT replies returned during the review reportedly contained this type of error.

But no one was spared — not even publications that allow ChatGPT's web crawlers to sift through their sites. According to the review, ChatGPT frequently returned either fully incorrect or partially incorrect attributions for stories penned by journalists at OpenAI-partnered institutions. The same was true for publications not subject to OpenAI licensing deals, but that don't block the AI's crawlers.

It's a terrible look for the AI-powered search feature, which OpenAI billed in a blog post last month as a tool that provides "fast, timely answers with links to relevant web sources," and has received praise from prominent media leaders for its purported potential to benefit journalists and news consumers.

"As AI reshapes the media landscape, Axel Springer's partnership with OpenAI opens up tremendous opportunities for innovative advancements," Mathias Sanchez, an executive at the OpenAI-partnered publisher Axel Springer, said in an October statement. "Together, we're driving new business models that ensure journalism remains both trustworthy and profitable." (According to the Tow Center's review, ChatGPT search frequently returned entirely inaccurate answers when asked to find direct quotes from the Axel Springer-owned publication Politico.)

According to the CJR, the investigators also found that ChatGPT sometimes returned plagiarized news content in cases where the bot's crawlers were blocked by a publisher. We reported on the same phenomenon back in August, when we found that ChatGPT was frequently citing plagiarized versions of original NYT reporting published by DNyuz, a notorious Armenian content mill.

The review further showed that ChatGPT search's ability to provide correct attributions for the same query is wildly unpredictable, with the bot often returning alternately inaccurate and accurate sourcing when given the same prompt multiple times.

A spokesperson for OpenAI admonished the Tow Center's "atypical" testing method, adding that "we support publishers and creators by helping 250M weekly ChatGPT users discover quality content through summaries, quotes, clear links, and attribution."

"We've collaborated with partners to improve in-line citation accuracy and respect publisher preferences, including enabling how they appear in search by managing OAI-SearchBot in their robots.txt," the spokesperson added. "We'll keep enhancing search results."

The media industry is still largely powered by click-based ad revenue, meaning that the Tow Center's findings could be concerning on a business level. If ChatGPT continues to get things wrong, are licensing deals and subscriptions lucrative enough to make up for the loss in traffic? And zooming out, there's the issue of what machine-mangled inaccuracy does to the complicated, much-untrusted news and information landscape: should generative AI become internet users' primary method of finding and metabolizing news, can the public rely on web-surfing tools like ChatGPT search not to muddy the information landscape at large?

That remains to be seen. But in the meantime, a word to the wise: if you're using ChatGPT search, you might want to triple-check that you know where its information is coming from.

More on ChatGPT attributions: Amid New York Times Lawsuit, ChatGPT Is Citing Plagiarized Versions of NYT Articles on an Armenian Content Mill

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Scientists Intrigued by Large Dark Shapes Appearing on Surface of Jupiter

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Researchers have observed mysterious,

Magnetic Tornadoes

Researchers have observed mysterious "dark ovals," each roughly the size of the Earth, appearing on the polar regions of Jupiter on the ultraviolet spectrum.

The gas giant, whose Great Red Spot has already puzzled astronomers for centuries, has an extremely powerful magnetic field which scientists say could be behind the odd phenomenon.

As detailed in a new paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, a NASA-supported group of scientists concluded that disturbances high in the planet's atmosphere may cause these dark spots to appear in ultraviolet observations.

While the ovals were first spotted in Hubble observations in the late 1990s, the team says it may have found the reason for why they appear: they suggest that "magnetic tornadoes" in the upper atmosphere could be stirring up stratospheric haze, causing these unusual features to form near both Jupiter's north and south poles.

Jupiter Haze

These ovals appear dark in UV observations taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, as part of the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) project, because they absorb more ultraviolet light than their surroundings.

The phenomenon may not be limited to the upper reaches of the gas giant's atmosphere. The ovals' existence suggests there are strong forces at work deep into the planet's atmosphere, the researchers posit.

"In the first two months, we realized these OPAL images were like a gold mine, in some sense, and I very quickly was able to construct this analysis pipeline and send all the images through to see what we get," said undergraduate UC Berkeley student and coauthor Troy Tsubota in a statement.

Tsubota and his collaborators suggest that the deepest point of these vortices within the planet's ionosphere may be stirring up Jupiter's hazy atmosphere and sending it upwards much like a tornado, causing these ovals to form over roughly a month before dissipating.

"The haze in the dark ovals is 50 times thicker than the typical concentration," said coauthor and UC Santa Cruz planetary science professor Xi Zhang in the statement, "which suggests it likely forms due to swirling vortex dynamics rather than chemical reactions triggered by high-energy particles from the upper atmosphere."

The team hopes to shed more light on how atmospheric dynamics differ between the Earth and Jupiter.

"Studying connections between different atmospheric layers is very important for all planets, whether it’s an exoplanet, Jupiter or Earth," senior author and UC Berkeley associate research astronomer Michael Wong added.

"To me, discoveries like this are significant and interesting not only because it’s something new in the cosmos, but also because they give us fresh ways to think about our atmospheres on Earth," Zhang argued in a separate statement.

"For instance, one of the big uncertainties in predicting climate change is understanding how aerosols — tiny particles in the atmosphere — form and behave," Zhang added. "Jupiter offers a completely different perspective, where magnetic fields and atmospheric layers interact in ways we don’t experience here."

More on Jupiter: James Webb Observes Mysterious Structures Above Jupiter's Great Red Spot

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Is Elon Musk Now Secretly Controlling Donald Trump?

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Elon Musk's control over Donald Trump seems akin to, well, the president-elect's control own takeover of the GOP.

Succession Theme

As one politico points out, Elon Musk's hold on Donald Trump seems akin to the president-elect's control own takeover of the GOP.

In an interview with Newsweek, Democratic strategist Chai Komanduri suggested that the Muskian agenda is now the Republican party line — and that may help the billionaire's bottom line, too.

"The Republican Party is led by an elderly man who is increasingly deluded, distracted and extremely greedy," said the longtime strategist and MSNBC contributor. "[Musk] saw an opportunity here, also, with the fact that there is no clear MAGA successor."

"He said, 'The Republican Party is here for the taking,'" Komanduri told the magazine of Musk's potential frame of mind. "'I just have to deal with Trump, and then it will be mine.'"

By joining forces with Trump, the multi-hyphenate business owner seems to have made a "very clear investment opportunity," Komanduri said.

Indeed, as Business Insider noted in another recent analysis, Musk's seemingly outrageous over-spending on purchasing Twitter back in 2022 may be paying off in spades now that he wields such political influence — and it all raises the question: is Trump the boss of Musk, or vice versa?

Kiss the Ring

A looming question since the election has been how long the Musk-Trump bromance will last, especially since Trump's last administration quickly became a revolving door of spurned former loyalists.

While there have been reports of tensions between the Tesla and SpaceX owner and members of Trump's posse, the South African-born mogul's appearance at the president-elect's Thanksgiving dinner — not to mention the pair's bizarro joint dance to The Village People's "YMCA" — suggests he's in the inner sanctum, at least for now.

In an interview with CNN last week, New York Times senior political reporter Maggie Haberman opined that if Trump has grown weary of the brash billionaire whose dollars boosted him into office, he hasn't been "making that especially public."

Given that it's rare for people in the president-elect's orbit to be richer than him, Musk's money may be part of the draw he holds for Trump, the longtime White House watcher said.

"Musk is also, and depends on the day, the richest or one of the richest men in the world, and Trump has a huge fascination with wealth," she said. "As you noted, Trump equates wealth with intelligence, and so I actually think this relationship could last for quite some time."

If that's the case, we're in for a very bumpy and extremely cringe four years.

More on this strange dynamic: Body Language Expert Says Trump Is Acting "Submissive" Around Musk

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