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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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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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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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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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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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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Crypto Guy Buys $6.2 Million Banana, Eats It on the Spot

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A crypto baron spent a whopping $6.2 million on a banana duct-taped to a wall has eaten it at a flashy event in Hong Kong.

Money in the Banana Stand

A crypto baron spent a whopping $6.2 million on a banana duct-taped to a wall — a conceptual artwork titled "Comedian" by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan — at a Sotheby's auction in New York last week.

Instead of "hodling," by allowing his unusual investment to grow in value, entrepreneur Justin Sun did the opposite: eating the banana in front of a group of attendees, as the Guardian reports.

"Eating it at a press conference can also become a part of the artwork’s history," he told the crowd during a flashy event at a Hong Kong luxury hotel last week.

At least the world's most expensive banana was fresh enough for Sun to enjoy eating it.

"It’s much better than other bananas," he claimed. "It’s really quite good."

Some Potassium

To be clear, Cattelan always intended the controversial artwork to spark a conversation around what we can feasibly call "art." In other words, Sun's unusual strategy as an art collector isn't quite as bizarre as it sounds.

He did, however, take the eyebrow-raising concept to its depressing conclusion by comparing the banana to a non-fungible token (NFT).

"Most of its objects and ideas exist as (intellectual property) and on the internet, as opposed to something physical," he said, as quoted by the Guardian.

It wasn't his only questionable investment, either; Sun also disclosed to regulators that he would back US president-elect Donald Trump by investing a whopping $30 million in the former reality TV star's dubious crypto project, World Liberty Financial.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has also charged Sun for selling unregistered securities. It's an unsurprising development, given the sheer number of crypto founders currently being sued over securities fraud.

The crypto baron has also vowed to buy 100,000 bananas from Shah Alam, the owner of the New York City fruit stand that originally sold Cattelan the fateful banana for less than a dollar.

"Through this event, we aim not only to support the fruit stand and Mr. Shah Alam but also to connect the artistic significance of the banana to everyone," Sun told the crowd during the event last week.

More on bananas: Bananas May Go Extinct From Deadly Disease, Scientists Warn

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Scientists Say Skeletons Show Ancient Humans With Huge Heads

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Scientists suggest a

Big Brain Time

Scientists are suggesting that a "large-headed" group of extinct humans once lived during the same time as homo sapiens — that's us, of course — hundreds of millennia ago in what's now modern-day China.

As detailed in a paper published in the journal Nature Communications last month, University of Hawaii at Manoa anthropologist Christopher Bae and Chinese Academy of Sciences paleontologist Xiujie Wu are proposing the existence of a new group of humans called the Juluren, which roughly translates to "big heads."

Many of the proposed group's attributes, based on bone fragments collected across modern-day China, are currently ascribed to Denisovans, a subspecies of archaic humans who lived across Asia from 285,000 to 25,000 years ago.

However, Wu and Bae argue that some of these fossils' features should be assigned to their own species.

"Collectively, these fossils represent a new form of large-brained hominin," they wrote in the study.

Head Hunters

The species, which would've lived from around 300,000 years ago until about 50,000 years ago across eastern Asia, likely hunted wild horses in small groups. They also appeared to make stone tools and used animal hides for survival.

Wu and Bae are hoping to fill in the gaps in our current knowledge of extinct human subspecies by refining how we refer to these disparate groups today.

"This study clarifies a hominin fossil record that has tended to include anything that cannot easily be assigned to Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens," Bae said in a statement. "Although we started this project several years ago, we did not expect being able to propose a new hominin (human ancestor) species and then to be able to organize the hominin fossils from Asia into different groups."

All told, the research suggests a far more complex and nuanced picture of the dispersal of human groups over hundreds of thousands of years.

"I see the name Juluren not as a replacement for Denisovan, but as a way of referring to a particular group of fossils and their possible place in the network of ancient groups," paleoanthropologist John Hawks, who was not involved in the research, wrote in a blog post about the study.

"I think the record is more expansive than most specialists have been assuming," he added. "Calling all these groups by the same name makes sense only as a contrast to recent humans, not as a description of their populations across space and time."

Wu and Bae would tend to agree.

"If anything, the eastern Asian record is prompting us to recognize just how complex human evolution is more generally and really forcing us to revise and rethink our interpretations of various evolutionary models to better match the growing fossil record," they wrote in their study.

More on homo sapiens: Scientists Find Structure From Before Homo Sapiens Existed

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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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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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Cybertrucks Appear to Have a Bafflingly Stupid Problem When It Snows

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Cybertruck onwers are finding that a front ledge perfectly collects snow and ice, potentially blocking the headlights.

Snow Crash

Cybertruck owners are discovering yet another eyebrow-raising decision Tesla made while designing the divisive truck: the front bumper excels at collecting snow and ice, obscuring the headlights with icy buildup during the wintry conditions in which it's supposed to excel.

In a video shared on TikTok, truck owner Joe Fay detailed a "major flaw," outlining how the otherwise "amazing" and "extremely bright" headlights can become "completely blocked."

"Now, I can't believe Tesla just didn't think about this when they put this giant shelf in front of the lights, but if they did, it's honestly an awful design," he complained. "I'll let you know how driving is in the blizzard."

Stainless Icicle

It's not just Fay who struggled with the problem.

"The lights get clogged with snowfall, then the bits that melt freeze and create a sort of ice wall blocking the lights," one owner wrote in a post on the Cybertruck Owners Club forum. "This can’t be removed without a hammer (my scrapper [sic] couldn’t)."

"Super bummed out about it as I was counting on it being a beast in the snow," the owner lamented.

Other owners quickly chimed in, wondering if they could give Tesla even more money to solve the problem with a light bar accessory that could be plugged into the frunk's power outlet.

"No word on this happening but it’s 100 percent needed," another user argued.

"I was looking forward to winter with my Cybertruck, but it is hard to after seeing these photos..." one user added.

However, it's not all doom and gloom. After his video got over a million views, Fay uploaded an update to TikTok claiming that he could drive even with the blocked headlights.

"I didn't notice any blockage while I was driving those short couple of miles, he said but admitted that if the headlights were to be "fully blocked" with a lot more snow, it still might become an issue.

And at the end of the day, others say, it's not an issue exclusive to the Cybertruck.

"Well I’m not a rocket scientist but I’m pretty sure if it snows," one commenter quipped on TikTok. "You gotta clean off your car's headlights anyway. Tesla or anything other vehicle."

"Any vehicle with recessed LED headlights has this problem," one Cyberrtuck Owners Club user wrote in a separate post. "Don't expect a recall here."

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

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Cybertrucks Appear to Have a Bafflingly Stupid Problem When It Snows

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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Three Recent High School Grads Dead in Grisly Cybertruck Crash

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In Northern California, a group of recent high school graduates died in a Cybertruck crash that burst into flames.

Up in Smoke

In Northern California, a group of recent high school graduates have died in a Cybertruck inferno.

As San Francisco's KTVU reports, four young people who graduated high school last year in the town of Piedmont had been inside the Tesla vehicle when it slammed into a barrier and caught fire in the middle of the night.

Another driver reportedly pulled off the road to help after the Cybertruck crashed, and managed to pull one person out of the fiery wreckage. That lucky grad survived and was taken to a nearby hospital, while the other three — none of whom have been identified by name — died at the scene.

According to local police, the Cybertruck fire was so hot and burned so fast that water wasn't able to douse it out.

"The heat was just too intense," Piedmont police chief Jeremy Bowers told KTVU.

Getting Warmer

Though the report didn't speculate as to why the fire burned so hot, the lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles like Cybertrucks caused consternation among firefighters.

During another fire involving one of the vehicles in Texas earlier this year — which ironically occurred after its driver crashed into a fire hydrant — the blaze took more than an hour to extinguish due to the high temperatures at which those mega-combustible batteries burn.

Notably, that debacle was the second Texas Cybertruck to catch fire in less than a month — and in the first instance, the driver lost their life.

While Cybertrucks' crappy paint jobs and clueless owners are easy to dunk on, we're increasingly seeing that these low-poly vehicles can be extremely hazardous. In the case of the Piedmont Cybertruck fire, that danger cost three recent high school graduates their lives.

More on Cybertrucks: Thousands of Cybertrucks Recalled for Bricking While Driving

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Three Recent High School Grads Dead in Grisly Cybertruck Crash

Former Google CEO Alarmed by Teen Boys Falling in Love With AI Girlfriends

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Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt seems mighty concerned about today's youth becoming obsessed with AI girlfriends. 

TFW AI GF

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt seems mighty concerned about today's youth becoming obsessed with AI girlfriends.

During a recent interview on "The Prof G Show" podcast, Schmidt suggested that both parents and young people are ill-equipped to handle what he calls an "unexpected problem of existing technology."

These AI companions are, as the former Google CEO said, so "perfect" that they end up enthralling young people and causing them to disconnect from the real world.

"That kind of obsession is possible," he told NYU Stern professor Scott Galloway, "especially for people who are not fully formed."

While women are also turning to AI romantic partners, Schmidt said that young men are particularly susceptible as they "turn to the online world for enjoyment and sustenance." Thanks to algorithms pushing problematic content, these young men often stumble across dangerous content, be it extremist influencers or manipulative chatbots.

"You put a 12- or 13-year-old in front of these things, and they have access to every evil as well as every good in the world," he told Galloway, "and they’re not ready to take it."

Scared Straight

We've seen this play out recently in the real world to devastating effect when a 14-year-old boy in Florida who died by suicide at the beginning of the year after a "Game of Thrones"-themed chatbot hosted on Character.AI encouraged him to do so.

Though Setzer's story is far more extreme than most, it highlights the dangers posed by these lifelike chatbots — and without proper regulation, these tragedies are likely to keep occurring. We've also recently seen AI characters that encourage eating disorders and engage in sexual grooming behavior toward underage users.

Indeed, Schmidt went on to note that laws like the sweeping Section 230 rule that protects tech companies from being held liable for harm caused by their products shield firms like Character.AI — which, ironically, Google has provided with billions of dollars in backing — from accountability.

Because these technologies are so valuable, the ex-Google chief said, "it’s likely to take some kind of a calamity to cause a change in regulation" — though it's hard to imagine anything more calamitous than a teen dying after his AI girlfriend pushed him to suicide.

More on AI gfs: Replika CEO: It's Fine for Lonely People to Marry Their AI Chatbots

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Change to Twitter Suggests Elon Musk Is Panicking Over Users Leaving for Bluesky

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X owner Elon Musk appears to be spooked by the flow of users leaving the social media platform in favor of alternatives like BlueSky.

Nothing to See

X owner Elon Musk appears to be spooked by the continuous flow of users leaving the social media platform in favor of alternatives like BlueSky and Meta's Threads.

In a surprising move last week, Musk announced that the platform would start allowing users to hide likes, shares, and reposts — a suspicious decision that feels like a bid to conceal the platform's waning energy.

"You can now hide engagement buttons and numbers below each post and interact with posts through custom swipe gestures!" X app developer May Ly tweeted last week.

Musk himself resorted to an odd excuse for the new feature.

"It's much cleaner with engagement numbers turned off," he wrote. "You can still see view count if you care."

Grass Greener

Why Musk would suddenly care about a "cleaner" user interface is a bit of a mystery. Ever since taking over the social media platform in 2022, the company has littered the network with a confusing array of colored checkmarks, unnecessary info, and a barrage of disruptive ads.

But it doesn't take much reading between the lines to wonder if X is paying attention to the astronomic rise of Twitter alternatives BlueSky and Threads. Over the past week alone, BlueSky's daily active users have soared to 3.5 million, a massive 300 percent increase since Election Day, according to Similarweb.

As of earlier this month, Threads had a whopping 275 million monthly active users. But thanks to its breakneck momentum, Bluesky is starting to close the gap where it matters.

Even Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is anxiously paying attention, with many former Twitter power users choosing Bluesky instead of Threads in the wake of the election.

Meanwhile, Musk's X has implemented a number of user-hostile policy changes, from requiring users to opt out of having their posts be used to train the platform's AI chatbot to dismantling the block function, thereby opening the floodgates for even more harassment.

Hate speech and even child sexual abuse material have run rampant on X ever since Musk took over, turning the platform into a hellhole of disinformation and exploitation.

Last week, Musk also appeared to confirm that X was actively throttling the visibility of posts that include external links, a sign that the platform could be looking for ways to shut out outside news.

In short, who could blame users for running away?

More on Bluesky: Zuckerberg Seems Genuinely Alarmed by the Explosive Growth of Bluesky

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When They Took Fluoride Out of the Water Like RFK Jr. Wants to Do Everywhere, People’s Teeth Started Rotting Out of Their Heads

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An Alaskan city removed fluoride from its drinking water like RFK wants to do for the whole country — and tooth decay surged.

Our next potential leader of US health policy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, wants to ban adding fluoride to public drinking water — a practice that experts agree has remarkably elevated teeth health for millions of Americans at little cost.

In a country where many people don't have access to dental care, a widespread crackdown on this naturally occurring mineral could be a disaster. To see how, we turn to the sobering case of Juneau, a city in Alaska that voted to stop fluoridating its water in 2007, citing many of the same fears that RFK touts today.

In a 2018 study published in the journal BMC Oral Health, researchers examined the dental records of adolescents in the Alaska community who sought Medicaid dental care in the years surrounding either side of the ban.

They divided them into two treatment groups: a 2003 group, when public drinking water had optimal levels of fluoride, and a 2012 group, well after the fluoride ban.

The results were damning. On average, the 2012 group had a significantly higher number of cavity-related procedures for adolescents than the 2003 group. Similarly, the odds of someone 18 years-old or younger undergoing the same type of procedure was 25 percent higher in 2012.

Children born after the fluoride ban were the hardest hit age group, receiving not only the most tooth decay treatments, but also having the most expensive treatments on average.

Additionally on the economic side of things, the researchers found that dental care costs for adolescents soared by 73 percent as a result of the fluoride policy, even after adjusting for inflation. In sum, it seems clear cut that removing fluoride caused tooth rot to surge — and with it, medical costs.

Today, nearly three-quarters of the US population has access to fluoridated water, reducing tooth decay in children and adults by an estimated 25 percent. The US Centers for Disease Control has hailed fluoridation as one of the top ten greatest public health interventions in history.

So why does RFK, who was nominated by president-elect Donald Trump to be the head of the Department of Health and Human Services, want to ban it? Well, according to him and other critics, fluoride is dangerous "industrial waste" that's associated with everything from IQ loss to cancer.

While fluoride does have its complications, RFK's criticisms haven't been proven or are overblown — and most of fluoridation's drawbacks come from doses that are extremely high compared to the amount added to public water.

According to Scientific American, at three times the recommended level in water, fluoride can cause a condition called dental fluorosis, which damages — typically cosmetically — the developing teeth of young children. It can also cause more serious and painful skeletal fluorosis, but that's exceedingly rare.

As far as the effects on a child's mental acuity goes, the evidence is highly disputed. A 2024 review conducted by the US National Toxicology Program linked high levels of fluoride to lower IQs in children — but the study only focused on the effects of fluoride at twice the recommended level in the US, and couldn't draw as strong a link at reasonable fluoride concentrations. It also failed to pass scientific review twice, and bypassed independent review on its most recent version, per SciAm.

In short, there's not nearly enough evidence yet to justify a nationwide ban on fluoridation — and plenty of evidence to show it'd be a bad idea.

More on RFK: If You Take Adderall, RFK Jr. Should Probably Make You Quite Nervous

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Scientists Converting Cars to Run on Invasive Seaweed

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Invasive sargassum seaweed may be a great source of biogas, turning it into a fuel that can power converted combustion engine cars.

Seaweed Sedan

Mountains of brown, sludgy sargassum, an invasive species of seaweed, have rendered popular beaches in the Caribbean into an unsightly mess.

The situation has become so dire that Barbados' prime minister Mia Mottley declared the invasion a national emergency in 2018.

But there could be a silver lining, the BBC reports: scientists say sargassum could be a lucrative source of biogas, turning the fibrous species into a fuel that can power converted combustion engine cars. A group of Caribbean scientists recently launched the first-ever vehicles converted to run on the stuff — a creative endeavor that turns a dire environmental crisis into a golden opportunity.

Biogas Boon

The team at the University of the West Indies (UWI) in Barbados developed a conversion kit that can turn a conventional gas-powered car into one that runs on the seaweed product for just $2,500.

"Tourism has suffered a lot from the seaweed; hotels have been spending millions on tackling it," UWI lecturer and renewable energy expert Legena Henry told the BBC.

The team combined rum distillery wastewater with sargassum inside a bioreactor and found that it produced plenty of usable biogas.

"Within just two weeks we got pretty good results," UWI student Brittney McKenzie, who was tasked with collecting the seaweed, told the broadcaster. "It was turning into something even bigger than we initially thought."

Sargassum has become a major problem, threatening not just local endangered wildlife but even human health due to the hydrogen sulfide it releases as it decomposes. Climate change is also allowing its population to explode, covering many Caribbean beaches entirely.

"By repurposing it in vehicles you protect tourism and prevent people from inhaling it," biologist Shamika Spencer, who worked on the project, told the BBC. "When we scale up to fuel more vehicles it will require a very large volume."

But the resulting sargassum-based biofuel won't be a magic fix for a growing environmental crisis.

"My goal is to help build up this region," Henry added. "We are now setting up a four-car pilot to demonstrate real-life working prototypes to convince funders that this is workable and scalable."

More on biogas: A Cruise Line Plans to Power Its Ships with Dead Fish

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RFK Jr., Who Hates Adderall, Says Heroin Was Great for Treating His ADHD

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RFK Jr. admitted that using heroin helped him become a better student — but when it comes to actual ADHD meds, he's not having it.

The man Donald Trump has chosen to lead the United States' health system claimed that doing heroin helped him become a better student — the same month he said that people on Adderall should be sent to "wellness farms."

"I was at the bottom of my class, I started doing heroin, and I went to the top of my class," Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. told podcaster Shawn Ryan in a newly-resurfaced clip from July. "Suddenly I could sit still, and I could read and I could concentrate. I could listen to what people were saying."

The political scion went on to acknowledge that he would "probably today be diagnosed with ADHD" and that using heroin and other drugs like cocaine were a form of self-medication.

When it comes to actual prescription medications, however, the 70-year-old anti-vaxxer sings a different tune.

The same month that the Ryan interview was posted, Kennedy told another podcaster that he would like to see what he calls "wellness farms" where people on medications including Adderall can go and get clean — while remaining pointedly vague on whether these stays would be voluntary.

"I’m going to create these wellness farms where they can go to get off of illegal drugs, off of opiates, but also illegal drugs, other psychiatric drugs, if they want to," he told the "Latino Capitalist" podcast, "to get off of SSRIs, to get off of benzos, to get off of Adderall, and to spend time as much time as they need — three or four years if they need it — to learn to get reparented, to reconnect with communities."

And a few months prior, he made similar comments, sans the ominous mention of labor camps, in yet another podcast interview.

"Our kids are all on Adderall. They’re all on [anti-depressant] SSRIs. Why?" Kennedy told Todd Ault. "Doctors didn’t just start prescribing these for no reason. We have damaged this entire generation. We have poisoned them."

Taken together, these three remarks make it seem that in the mind of the man tapped to be our next Health and Human Services secretary, a powerful opioid is less severe a drug than Adderall — and to our minds, there's nothing healthy about that.

More on RFK Jr.: Trump's Raw Milk Zealot Accused of Inappropriately Touching Babysitter

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There’s Something Very Strange About Our Galaxy

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Researchers have found that there's something highly unusual about the Milky Way, setting it apart from other galaxies.

Galactic Outlier

Researchers have found that there's something highly unusual about the Milky Way that sets it apart from galaxies which, on a surface level, appear similar.

As detailed in three recent papers published in The Astrophysical Journal, a team of researchers examined a mountain of data as part of the Satellites Around Galactic Analogs (SAGA) survey, which was dedicated to comparing the Milky Way to 101 other galaxies that are similar in mass.

The distinction is technical but significant, the researchers say: they found that the Milky Way has surprisingly few smaller satellite galaxies compared to its peers — and some of them have mysteriously stopped forming new stars.

"Now we have a puzzle," said Stanford astrophysics professor Risa Wechsler, who cofounded SAGA and coauthored all three papers, in a statement. "What in the Milky Way caused these small, lower-mass satellites to have their star formation quenched?"

Satellite Activity

The findings suggest our galaxy's evolutionary history is strikingly different, setting it apart from all the others — research that could also force scientists to reexamine how we understand the formation of galaxies.

"Our results show that we cannot constrain models of galaxy formation just to the Milky Way," said Wechsler. "We have to look at that full distribution of similar galaxies across the universe."

At the core of the researchers' findings is dark matter, the mysterious substance that scientists believe makes up 85 percent of the matter in the universe, but has yet to be directly observed. Researchers have previously found that massive halos of dark matter allow galaxies to form within them, creating gravitational forces strong enough for ordinary matter to clump together.

"Perhaps, unlike a typical host galaxy, the Milky Way has a unique combination of older satellites that have ceased star formation and newer, active ones... that only recently fell into the Milky Way's dark matter halo," Wechsler suggested.

When Wechsler and her colleagues examined 378 small satellite galaxies that orbit the 101 much larger galaxies like the Milky Way, they found that half the Milky Way's satellites were no longer forming stars, unlike most other galaxies, whose satellites were still active stellar factories.

It all raises an intriguing question: why is our galactic home different?

"To me, the frontier is figuring out what dark matter is doing on scales smaller than the Milky Way, like with the smaller dark matter halos that surround these little satellites," Wechsler said.

More on galaxy formation: This Ancient "Rebel" Galaxy Closely Mirroring the Milky Way Has Astronomers Freaked Out

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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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