Category Archives: Futurist

K-pop has been around for several decades, and it continues to evolve as time passes. Out of the visual themes that have seen the light of day, the adoption of futuristic concepts has always been intriguing, especially given the anticipation of how the world progresses and how close these cinematographies are to predicting the distant future.

Without further ado, here are seven K-pop music videos that adopted futuristic concepts.

VIXX makes use of artificial intelligence in this epic love story. The plot revolves around Hongbin who attempts to bring his late partner back to life as a cyborg and successfully achieves it. Unfortunately, the couples happy ending is cut short when their reunion is jeopardized by a group of men in black. It seems like it was an error to proceed with such a delicate operation in a world that adamantly fights it!

AleXas earlier cinematography mainly focused on artificial intelligence. In this track, it seems like different versions of herself are fighting one another, and each version has a certain distinctive robotic feature, some more disturbing than others. In a fight for survival, the artist is staying true to her Do Or Die motto.

Kais solo debut is nothing short of mind-blowing, and the scenery he chose for his music video fits the advanced technology theme perfectly. While the idol is serenading hearts and rocking moves, his background shows a futuristic city with flying vehicles, drones, and lots of plugs practically everywhere. Add to that Kais glitching as he appears and disappears mid-performance, which looks like high-quality holograms!

2NE1 takes things up a notch, showing us not only a futuristic universe but also a post-apocalyptic one. A virtual program is recruiting citizens with promises of a heaven-like life. They put them to sleep while plugging them into a simulated but far from accurate paradise, further disconnecting them from the real world. In this music video, the quartet teams up to put an end to this masquerade and bring the population back home.

ONF is incessantly watched, chased, and caught while living in an insanely wired world. The members continuously rebel against the system and its high tech, which seems to be doing more harm than good, all while living their best lives. Optimistic and courageous, they eventually turn things to their advantage and put an end to the fight. To be able to drag a whole army of robots to dance along is truly something beautiful to witness!

SMs most recent girl group has adopted futurism as their overall concept with their AI counterparts making up the second half of their group. This being said, its only natural if they feature bits of it in all of their music videos. With Girls being their latest comeback, the members are shown being part of a game, metaverse style, only they are playing for their survival in the real world.

B.I is yet another artist that embraces the theme in his videography, except this time no one is attacking the ultra-modern city. Instead, he takes us on a jolly ride around in the company of friends and a potential love interest. For some reason, one can assume (and hope) that the vibe of the music video seemingly mirrors B.Is current life since he looks so relaxed and happy.

Honorable mentions:

SuperMs Jopping, NCT 127s Superhuman, and MIRAEs KILLA.

Which K-pop music video has adopted the coolest futuristic concept? Let us know in the comments below!

Esmee L.is a Moroccan lively dreamer, writer, and Hallyu enthusiast.

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7 Intriguing K-Pop MVs That Adopted Futuristic Concepts - soompi

Nike has unveiled Trove, a stylish digital experience geared towards its customers in China, which celebrates the brands collaborations with Matthew M Williams, who helms the Maison Givenchy fashion house, and music artist and producer G-Dragon.

Optimised for use on smartphones, the experience uses AR tech to allow users to pan around the unique worlds built for each collaborator according to their chosen aesthetic language. Though the design concepts are visibly distinct from one another, they both share a futuristic feel.

Williams is akin to a glitchy yoga retreat in the desert, while the atmospheric area created for G-Dragon feels as though an architect has gone to town on a cavernous underground bunker.

The experience links to additional content where people can read more about the Nike collaborations with the two creatives, and they can also generate a personalised business card inspired by each theme. The local version of the experience contains quick links to products embedded in the AR environments.

The platform was brought to life by BBH China, production studio Unit9 and Nikes global catalyst brand management team Nikes global marketing arm which works on the brands collaborative projects across fashion, design, entertainment, music and art.

All of the platform copy is written in simplified Chinese, so people requiring another language to navigate the experience might benefit from their mobile browsers live translation function if one is available.

Access Nikes Trove experience via smartphone here

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Nike launches futuristic AR experience in China - Creative Review

The Rolls Royce Spectre is the firms first EV. Photo: Rolls Royce

Like every other car maker, Rolls-Royce is going electric. By 2030, the firm says itll be a fully electric car maker, and is now preparing to launch its first EV. Coming next year, the Spectre is now undergoing an impressive array of tests to put the electric car through its paces.

After running the Spectre EV close to the Arctic Circle to test it in extreme temperatures, Rolls-Royce has now headed to a setting more appropriate for the cars life on the road: the French riviera.

The move is all part of its aim to cover more than 1.5 million miles to test the car in a variety of settings. In France, the Spectre EV will run on the Autodrome de Miramas facility, which previously held the French Grand Prix way back in 1926. The car will also cover the roads around the Cte dAzur.

he Rolls Royce Spectre: Perfecly noiseless. Photo: Rolls Royce

While soaking up the sun, and hopefully a few miles, Rolls-Royce will put the Spectres complex suspension through its paces.

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In the south of France, the Rolls-Royce Spectre will cover almost 390,000 miles to ensure it delivers the firms signature magic carpet smooth ride. In order to do this while carrying around the added weight of an EV, Rolls-Royce has developed new hardware and software to control the Spectres suspension.

The new system sees the car read the road ahead and, on straights, automatically decouple the cars anti-roll bars, allowing each wheel to act independently. This, the firm says, will stop the Spectre from rocking whenever it hits an undulation in the road.

Once a corner is spotted in the road ahead, the components are re-coupled, the suspension dampers stiffen and the four-wheel steering system prepares to activate.

Rolls Royce Spectre putting its suspension through its paces. Photo: Rolls Royce

According to Rolls-Royce, more than 18 sensors are monitored when cornering, and the cars built-in computer makes minute adjustments to the steering, braking, power delivery and suspension.

As well as that high-tech suspension system, the Rolls-Royce Spectre also boasts the title of the most aerodynamic Rolls Royce of all time.

The pursuit of ultimate aerodynamics is personified with the redesigned Spirit of Ecstasy mascot on the front of the Spectre. But the reduction of drag on the car goes much deeper than its emblem.

The new and improved Spirit of Ecstasy. Photo: Rolls Royce

The companys spaceframe architecture and extensive wind tunnel testing and digital modeling have helped Rolls engineers cut the Spectres drag coefficient to just 0.25. That doesnt quite match the 0.20 that Mercedes claims for its EQS sedan, but does put the car on a par with the Honda Insight.

Before all that aerodynamic goodness can head out to customers, Rolls-Royce says it still has a further 600,000 miles of testing to cover with the car. After that, the first customer deliveries of the Spectre will begin in the fourth quarter of 2023.

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The First Rolls-Royce EV Has a Suspension That Can See The Future - Jalopnik

An automaker can build the best car in the world, but if buyers dont ultimately appreciate it, and want it enough to spend money on it, then its all over before it ever began. In 1934, Walter P. Chrysler found that out the hard way and the expensive way with the Airflow.

Today, these quaint museum-quality antiques dont appear particularly exceptional or avant-garde, they just look, well, old. However, compared with other vehicles built during the same era, the Airflow was groundbreaking.

It was Chryslers chief designer, Carl Breer, who came up with the idea of reducing wind resistance in automobiles after observing birds and aircraft in flight. The result, he believed, would be a car that would look smarter, go faster and consume less fuel than other vehicles available. Chrysler also hoped that the Airflow would be the kind of breakthrough machine needed to vault his company out of the middle of the pack and into a much stronger sales position.

After consulting with Orville Wright, who, with his brother, Wilbur, had been the first to successfully achieve powered flight, Breer and a small group began secretly testing different shapes in a full-scale wind tunnel that Chrysler had constructed.

One of the revelations garnered in the wind tunnel was that automobiles in the late 1920s and early 1930s were far more aerodynamic when backing up than driving forward. This ultimately led to a smoother front-end design containing a rounded (instead of upright) grille and headlights slotted into the fenders instead of the traditional method of perching them on top. At the rear, full fender skirts and a tapered back end helped reduce drag, adding to the cars slippery silhouette.

Engineering advancements that went into the Airflows development included reversing the weight distribution traditionally around 45 per cent in the front and 55 per cent in the rear at the time by shifting part of the engine over the front wheels and moving the rear seat ahead of the rear axle. This adjustment kept the front of the car more firmly planted at highway speeds, significantly improved ride quality and resulted in more spacious seating.

The methods developed to construct the Airflow were also ahead of their time. Traditional body-on-frame construction was abandoned in favour of a space frame upon which the body panels were welded in place. This system didnt reduce weight, but it made the body significantly more rigid than previous models.

All Airflows were originally destined to carry the DeSoto label, but company founder Walter P. not only insisted the Chrysler brand name be used, but that the Airflow be fitted with a more powerful eight-cylinder engine rather than the six-cylinder in the DeSoto version. As well, Chrysler ordered that the cars be sold in a variety of wheelbases and that a line of opulently dressed Chrysler Custom Imperial limousine versions be built. Meanwhile, the mid-priced DeSoto Airflow was offered in one standard wheelbase.

After a six-year development period and rigorous testing (including speed and durability runs at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah), the Airflow was finally unveiled at the 1934 New York Auto Show. Prices ranged from $1,000 (U.S.) for the base DeSoto version, all the way up to $5,000 for the stretched Imperial limousine.

Initially, the public response was extremely favourable, even though reviews in the press were lukewarm at best. But when the anticipated surge in sales failed to materialize, design changes were quickly implemented for the following year. In a major about-face, the Airflows rounded nose was replaced by a more traditional looking pointed grille in an upright position.

Despite these modifications, sales continued to tumble as loyal buyers began switching to other brands. Chrysler continued to make other conventionally styled vehicle models that sold in decent numbers. Unfortunately for DeSoto, the Airflow was the only car available and brand sales dropped by nearly 40 per cent.

By 1937, the company finally threw in the towel and the car that was designed to be ahead of its time quietly went out of production.

Given the high expectations, the Airflows four-year sales total of about 55,000 was considered a failure. Only a few years later, the teeth marks in Chryslers hide began to heal as the public came to embrace many of the engineering and styling advances pioneered by these exceptionally sturdy and surprisingly quick automobiles. For Chrysler and its Airflow, the future, it seemed, would just have to wait.

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People like the future, but apparently not all at once - Toronto Star

After claiming to have successfully launched no less than a digital revolution in neighbouring Coventry and Derby, Gigabit Networks is bringing its ultra-high speed 930Mbps broadband service to Wolverhampton, claiming a marked improvement on the citys current average speeds of 87Mbps.

Based in the city of Leicester, the regional provider has a mission to empower the Midlands with faster, future-proofed, ultra-reliable internet connectivity, and wants to bring more opportunities for growth, business, community and investment to the region. It argues that its service area has not yet experienced the endless possibilities that come with gigabit-capable PureFibre broadband as the cabling and infrastructure simply hasnt existed.

Theregional providersaid that partnering with carrier-neutral wholesale full-fibre provider CityFibre has allowed it to improve local infrastructure and bridge the UKs digital divide by giving the people of the Midlands the internet speeds and reliability they deserve.

The company also said that by rolling out near-gigabit broadband services it is satisfying demand. It cited recent research, which suggested that by 2023, the average UK household will have 50 smart devices online and competing for bandwidth, putting a strain on household broadband.

It added that in March 2021, the median average download speed of UK home broadband connections was a mere 50.4 Mbps, and that the roll-out will see residents and businesses in nine postcode areas in Wolverhampton making the most of this ultrafast technology to seamlessly stream HD TV, download large files, and participate in video calls more quickly and reliably than ever before.

The turbulent nature of the past two years has proven the need for reliable internet connection and speed we continue to seek entertainment, social connection and education online, saidGigabit Networks co-founder David Yates.

Now, the cost-of-living crisis is showing that people need more room to innovate and generate multiple streams of income the best way to do this is through the internet. Wolverhampton is now in an exciting position where it can leverage these exclusive speeds to generate more opportunities for the city.

Adding further context to what the roll-out could achieve, the company offered the example of local resident Shiv Passap, who was one of the first to have the new service live in his home. I recently had GigaFast Pro installed into my home in Wolverhampton, he said.

Since being connected, I have experienced exceptional performance in speed and reliability. As a homeworker, it is paramount that I can access data instantly, make landline calls away from home and stream effortlessly throughout the day all of which is now possible and more with the help of Gigabit Networks.

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Gigabit Networks brings futuristic broadband to Wolverhampton - ComputerWeekly.com

Earlier this month, a Romanian rocket startup called ARCA Space showed off one of the strangest rocket designs we've ever seen. Adding to the general sense of eccentricity hovering over the project, it says the venture will be funded by selling crypto tokens that can later be exchanged for ore that we're serious, this is the pitch it'll obtain via asteroid mining.

We should emphasize that the concept, dubbed the EcoRocket Heavy, looks extremely peculiar. It's powered by steam and stuffed to the gills with boosters, making it technically wider than it is tall,which gives the impression of a large, lumpy wedding cake, or possibly an art deco skyscraper (in ARCA's vision, an attached spacecraft dubbed the AMi Cargo will take care of the asteroid mining).

In short, it looks like something you'd see dreamed up by a teenager on Kerbal Space Program.

In the space community, the response was swift and brutal.

"This is possibly the dumbest space thing I've ever seen, and that's saying something," Ars Technica senior space editor Eric Berger tweeted.

"ARCA Space just revealed the updated concept for EcoRocket Heavy and I'll certainly be having nightmares about it for months," another user noted.

Another simply exclaimed: "wtf."

We were curious how ARCA Space founder Dumitru Popescu felt about that type of feedback. But in an interview, he remained steadfast.

"Each time you propose an innovative design, you should definitely expect people's reaction to be, let's say reserved," he told Futurism.

"I mean, if you if you see a car with five wheels, your reaction will not be necessarily positive," he added.

ARCA does have at least a little bit of experience. It's successfully launched two partially reusable and steam-powered rockets into the stratosphere so far albeit a far shot from orbit.

It's also worth noting that it was awarded a contract by the European Space Agencyto develop a parachute system for the agency's ExoMars spacecraft. The spacecraft didn't make it, however, and crashed on the Martian surface in 2016,with ARCA taking some of the heat.

The company has an extremely colorful history. In 2015, for instance, it racked up headlines for a battery-powered hoverboard that never appears to have materialized.

Other adventures have been less lighthearted. Popescu was arrested and jailed in New Mexico back in 2017 on 13 counts of fraud, five counts of embezzlement, and one count of forgery.

In a 2018 video posted to Facebook, Popescu claimed the arrest was the result of his second ex-wife and a former ARCA board director who had colluded against him. Prosecutors later dropped the charges against him although not before Popescu fired his attorney and represented himself in court.

The company even alluded to the arrest in a new white paper about the asteroid mining plans, writing that the story "sounds pretty unbelievable, but unfortunately it is true" in an eyebrow-raising footnote.

In the same footnote, Popescu went as far as to say that his time incarcerated was "one of the best things that ever happened to me," because it gave him "time to think and focus on how I'm going to restart ARCA," with "only $300."

His arrest, despite "being very difficult" for him, "was also a good experience," because it made him reevaluate his approach to rocketry, Popescu told Futurism.

As laid out in the white paper, ARCA's EcoRocket Heavy would be made up of a dizzying number of "Propulsion Modules" 540 total, spread out across several levels that, once put together, form an awkward stack that's much wider at the bottom than the top.

That means the rocket is girthy as hell, measuring some 113 feet across at the base, which is an ungainly four times the width of SpaceX's Starship.

The rationale behind this strange design? It'll save money that would otherwise be spent on a large crane.

"Of course, the taller the rocket, the larger the crane," the white paper reads. "And when we looked at Starship/Super Heavy that is using these insanely tall cranes, it was clear for us that this must be avoided by all means, because the rental or manufacturing of those cranes is seriously expensive."

"It absolutely is a unique design, which came from some constraints," Popescu told Futurism, noting that working on a single body requires "a lot of supporting equipment."

Popescu also said that "we are not actually the first to propose this idea," pointing to German rocket maker OTRAG. That company, which went defunct in 1987, similarly suggested using mass-produced units spread out across several stages to launch heavy payloads into orbit in the 1970s.

The idea was tested at several German and African test sites, with rockets reaching suborbital altitudes on at least 14 occasions before the company shut down.

Popescu also said that simulations showed the extremely wide structure of the EcoRocket Heavy had a surprisingly low drag penalty.

But as YouTuber and rocket scientist Scott Manley explained in a 2020 video about OTRAG, the German company's designs "always seemed to come out below what was required," adding that there were some substantial "technical challenges."

For instance, "clustering all these units together would be a slow task because they would have to get them perfectly aligned if there was any skew any twists they would pick up roll."

Both OTRAG and ARCA Space aimed to greatly reduce the amount of money it cost to launch payloads into orbit. But ARCA took the idea even further, focusing its efforts on using water a resource that's orders of magnitude cheaper than liquid or solid rocket propellants as a way to get its giant rocket off the ground.

To that end, the EcoRocket's name suggests that it was designed with the environment in mind,but Popescu said that wasn't the original intent.

"Actually, I need to admit that the first drive for us to build the EcoRocket was not actually the pursuit of the ecological aspect," Popescu told Futurism, adding that it was actually "cost reduction."

The EcoRocket Heavy's first two stages use steam from heated water to create thrust which has turned out to be a bit of a headache for ARCA.

The team quickly noticed that steam performed significantly worse than other "polluting or toxic propellants," according to Popescu.

Launching heavy payloads using steam alone clearly wasn't going to work.

"And at some point, honestly, we were thinking, 'Okay, this is not going anywhere,'" he said. "'This is a dumb idea.'"

That's when the team decided to have only the upper stages use polluting fuels a hydrogen peroxide mix that includes kerosene to give payloads the extra lift they need to enter orbit once past the atmosphere.

Besides, in Popescu's thinking, once the rocket blasts past the stratosphere, who cares about expelling pollutants into outer space?

In short, the EcoRocket is a gargantuan construction made up of hundreds of hot water tanks a comparison Popescu agreed was accurate enough with a couple of traditional rocket stages mixed in.

"We traded basically the performance for cost reduction and environment protection," Popescu told Futurism, something the company sees as "a fair trade."

Tradeoffs aside, does ARCA's vision actually amount to a rocket that can perform in the real world, nevermind reach a distant asteroid?

ARCA is betting big, promising that its EcoRocket Heavy will be "the heaviest and has the highest thrust compared to any other vehicle ever built," according to the company's website. "It also promises the lowest cost/kg ever recorded."

Of course, that all relies on the company managing to raise a planned $73 million by selling crypto investors on the idea of mining asteroids for resources.

ARCA is planning to kick off its token sale in August, which in the year 2022 should give anybody pause following an endless list of scams luring victims into first buying tokens, promising various benefits or returns, and then pulling the rug from underneath them.

Popescu insists that the math checks out, though. He says thatlaunching an asteroid mining mission will cost "in the range of $100 million"in a "very high risk, but also high reward initiative," which is something that would scare away "classic investors."

That's why ARCA Space turned to crowdfunding, he said, since individual investors wouldn't be asked to contribute "big amounts of money."

To succeed, the company would have to generate immense interest, raise a ton of money, launch a massive rocket for pennies on the dollar, find a resource-rich asteroid, extract its precious resources, and safely bring back the spoils.

And that's not even mentioning the intricacies of international space law, which could undermine such pursuits before they even get off the ground.

"Good luck, I guess?" Berger offered in a recent Ars post about the venture and, indeed, they'll certainly need it.

More on super heavy rockets: SpaceX Finally Lifts Super Heavy Booster Using Giant Robot Arms

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This Might Be the Weirdest-Looking Rocket We've Ever Seen - Futurism

Back in May, the FBI took EminiFX founder Eddy Alexandre into custody after accusing him of fraud.

In June, the Justice Department and Commodity Futures Trading Commission accused his cryptocurrency company EminiFX of being a Ponzi scheme,arguing that it had cheated $59 million out of thousands of investors.

And now, according to a preliminary report, it sounds like the company made out with far more money than initially thought, collecting a staggering $250 million from around 62,000 user accounts between September 2021 and May 2022, The Washington Post reports.

It's a high-profile example of a crypto venture seemingly being exposed for what it truly is: a scam. It certainly wouldn't be the first.Still, if the allegations are true, it does stand out for its mendacity.

"This is like no other case I've followed," wrote WaPo columnist Michelle Singletary.

EminiFX promised investors returns of at least five percent a week, which should already raise innumerable red flags, using what it claimed to be a proprietary trading system that it claimed invested money on foreign exchange markets.

But investigators soon caught on to the ruse, discovering that it was most likely using funds from investors to pay other investors, a hallmark sign of a Ponzi scheme.

There was even a "multilevel marketing aspect" to EminiFX's operations, according to Singletary, rewarding those who recruit others with bonuses.

While returns remained positive every week, "I havent found any investing activity to support those returns," David Castleman, a lawyer from Raines Feldman LLP, who filed the preliminary report, told WaPo.

This is where the story gets even wilder. Many of the investors or victims are from Haiti, and are standing behind Alexandre, who was born there. A petition on Change.org has already been signed by almost 14,000 EminiFX investors.

The users saw the returns, but never opted to cash out so they could reinvest the amount for future returns, which is exactly what allows a Ponzi scheme to operate.

"Many users appear to never have withdrawn or redeemed funds," Castleman noted in a report, as quoted by WaPo.

Worse yet, Castleman found that there was no evidence that the propriety investment system even existed.

It's a devastating story that appears toillustrate an age-old lesson: if it sounds too good to be true especiallyin the chaotic world of crypto it's probably a scam.

The fact that Alexandre still has substantial support from his victims only adds to the heartbreak.

READ MORE: The FBI says it busted a big crypto Ponzi scam. It just got bigger.

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Shockingly, Crypto Project That Promised 5% Returns Per Week Turned Out to Be a Ponzi Scheme - Futurism

A NASA-funded project aims to use the Sun as a gigantic lens to peer into the far reaches of the cosmos and search them for extraterrestrial biosignatures.

The project, led by Slava Turyshev at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, received $2 million in funding from the space agency's Institute for Advanced Concepts back in 2020, an initiative that has supported plenty of other outlandish Moonshot projects over the years.

In a recent yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper spotted by Universe Today, Turyshev teamed up with the Aerospace Corporation, a California-based nonprofit that operates federally funded research, to explore the feasibility of the idea.

Here's what they propose: the mission would involve several small satellites that self-assemble at the solar gravitational lens (SGL) point, an epic journey that could take up to 25 years.

The SGL marks the spot where the assembled satellites, the Sun and a distant exoplanet target would form a straight line. The Sun's gravitational field would then greatly magnify light from the exoplanet as it passes by, allowing the satellites to peer far beyond what has been possible so far.

That point also happens to be around 1,000 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun, which is several times the total distance NASA's Voyager 1 probe has traveled over its 44 year journey, as Universe Today points out.

To cover the distance, the mission would take advantage of a solar sail, which are only starting to be tested by scientists.

In simple terms, a solar sail takes advantage of the tiny amounts of radiation pressure exerted by sunlight on large "sails" or mirrors, to slowly accelerate to high velocities.

Early experiments have shown promise, but the tech has never been tested over any great distance.

If such a mission were to ever become a reality an astronomical if at this point in time we could potentially peer into a different star system altogether without having to go there ourselves, Turyshev and his colleagues argue in their paper.

And that's a tantalizing prospect the researchers argue is worth the time and effort.

"It is our only means, in the foreseeable future, to learn details about exosolar sister planets like our home world," the team concludes.

READ MORE: A Mission to Reach the Solar Gravitational Lens in 30 Years [Universe Today]

More on gravitational lensing: NASA Releases Hubble Image of Most Distant Star Ever Seen

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Researchers Want to Use the Sun As a Giant Telescope to Look for Aliens - Futurism

Is this a good idea?Good Yarn

It's hard to imagine a single author churning out a full-length novel every nine weeks, but that's exactly what writer Jennifer Lepp told the Verge she does constantly. To keep up with demand and make a decent living, indie novelists are cranking out books more quickly than ever before.

Lepp, whose pen name is Leanne Leeds, told the pub that she's even started using an artificial intelligence program to assist with her writing, and that it's made her faster. Now, she can fine tune sections of copy or find inspiration for a passage instead of relying on a precise spreadsheet with daily word counts goals in order to meet her impossible deadlines.

"Its just words," Lepp told the Verge. "Its my story, my characters, my world. I came up with it. So what if a computer wrote them?"

The program Lepp uses is called Sudowrite, which is built on OpenAI's GPT-3 machine learning model and which writers can try before purchasing. Like many AIs designed to create artwork in various mediums based on prompts, it takes practice and skill to get usable chunks of text users have to learn to communicate ideas with the AI, making the process something akin to a machine-human collaboration.

AI writing is controversial. One professor and writer the Verge interviewed even left social media for periods of time because of pushback against her acceptance of AI writing.

How many writers will take up AI and how it could affect book sales in the future is an unanswered question, but one thing's for sure AI storytelling is here, regardless of how we feel about it.

More on missed opportunities to adapt: NFT Guy Accidentally Spent $150K On Stupid Joke He Tried To Make

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Authors Are Starting to Use AI to Quickly Churn Out Novels - Futurism

Russian space corporation Roscosmos has finally formally announced that it's abandoning the International Space Station but it's keeping details extraordinarily vague, simply saying it'll leave at some point "after 2024."

That's at least in part because Russia is planning to build its own space station. The country's invasion of Ukraine has also only served to accelerate the severing of its ties with the international space community.

The news also comes just two weeks after former deputy prime minister Yuri Borisov took over as the head of Roscosmos, replacing embattled and outspoken warmonger Dmitri Rogozin.

"Of course, we will fulfill all our obligations to our partners, but the decision about withdrawing from the station after 2024 has been made," Borisov said during a meeting with president Vladimir Putin, as quoted by Reuters. "I think that by that time we will start forming a Russian orbiting station."

Putin reportedly responded with "good."

"Asked for clarification on Russia's space station plans," Reuters space reporter Joey Roulette tweeted, "a Roscosmos spokeswoman referred Reuters to Borisov's remarks without saying whether it represented the agency's official position."

One valid reading is that Russia's latest edict is intentionally vague.In many ways, we still have no idea when the country will leave the station as "after 2024" leaves open plenty of other interpretations.

Meanwhile, NASA is still planning on keeping ISS operations running with its international partners until at least 2030.

"The withdrawal will take some time," Russian military and space analyst Pavel Luzin told The New York Times. "Most likely, we need to interpret this as Russias refusal to extend the stations operation up until 2030."

What makes matters even more awkward is that NASA director for the ISS Robyn Gates confirmed to Reuters that she had yet to hear from her Russian counterparts.

"Nothing official yet," Gatens told Reuters. "We literally just saw that as well. We haven't gotten anything official."

In fact, Borisov's comments come at the same time that NASA's space partners are convening at this week's International Space Station Research and Development Conference (ISSRDC).

It's not the first time Roscosmos has threatened the future of the ISS. Last year, Roscosmos sources confirmed that it had started the long process of disengaging from the orbital outpost.

But this time the tone is at least somewhat different, according to experts.

"This is more official than previous statements," Ars Technica senior space editor Eric Berger tweeted. "It also provides time to NASA and its international and commercial partners to prepare the US side to fly on its own."

Right now, Russia "provides all of the propulsion for International Space Station used for station reboost, attitude control, debris avoidance maneuvers and eventual de-orbit operations," according to a March FAQ on NASA's website.

Meanwhile, the US provides power via the station's solar arrays and some of the life support systems.

That means that if Russia goes through with the pullout, NASA will have the daunting task of devising ways of keeping the aging station in orbit on its own without Russian boosters.

At least the space agency has a way to shuttle astronauts to and from the station without relying on Russian spacecraft, thanks to SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule.

Industry players are certainly paying attention. During a panel at the ISSRDC, Mike Gold, executive vice president of US aerospace corporation Redwire, argued this morning that NASA should use the opportunity to increase commercial activities on board the aging outpost.

All told, the future of the ISS is as uncertain as ever. While NASA has pledged to keep operations going for the next eight years, its biggest partner is ready to call it quits much sooner than that.

READ MORE: Russia has not signaled space station withdrawal to NASA, U.S. official says [Reuters]

More on the ISS: NASA Seeks Funding to Send Scientists to Space Station

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Russia Says It's Definitely Quitting the ISS But Doesn't Say When Exactly - Futurism