Google's search AI thinks you can melt eggs. Its source? Don't laugh: ChatGPT.
This latest case of AI-generated misinformation was first spotted by an X-formerly-Twitter user named Tyler Glaiel, who <a href="https://twitter.com/TylerGlaiel/status/1706384660316774894">took to the platform on Monday</a> to share a screenshot of what happened when he typed "can you melt eggs" into Google's search bar. Naturally, the real answer to that query is no, of course you can't melt eggs, but Google's featured search snippet, as can be seen in Glaiel's screenshot, said the exact opposite was true.
"Yes, you can melt an egg," it read, "by heating it in a microwave or on a stove."
To come to this conclusion, it seems that Google looked to Quora, the question-and-answer forum site that's search-optimized itself to the top spot on any number of Google results pages. Earlier this year, Quora launched an AI chatbot called Poe, which according to a <a href="https://quorablog.quora.com/Poe-1">company blog post</a> is designed to "let people ask questions, get instant answers, and have back-and-forth conversations with several AI-powered bots." One of these "several AI-powered bots" is a version of ChatGPT, and though Poe is more or less meant to be used as its own app, the product's ChatGPT-generated answers will sometimes appear at the top of <a href="https://www.quora.com/What-is-Chatgpt-and-how-is-it-useful?no_redirect=1">standard Quora posts</a> instead.
That's exactly what happened here. The AI's answer has since been corrected, but in a Quora forum titled "<a href="https://www.quora.com/Can-you-melt-an-egg">Can you melt an egg?</a>" Poe's ChatGPT integration was telling users that "yes, an egg can be melted," and that "the most common way to melt an egg is to heat it using a stove or a microwave." Again, this is completely false, and clearly wasn't fact-checked by a human. But Quora's search rankings are so good that Google pulled the bad info into its featured snippet.
Google's regular search citing AI-generated falsehoods in its featured search overview is bad enough, but we decided to take things one step further and run the same query through Google's experimental AI-integrated search, <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/google-ai-inaccurate-info-aqi">Search Generated Experience</a>, dubbed SGE for short. And sure enough, when we searched "can you melt eggs" on SGE, the AI provided a similarly terrible answer.
"Yes, you can melt an egg by heating it in a microwave or on a stove," the AI told us, before launching into a few sentences about egg coagulation (which, we should note, is not the same thing as the impossible concept of straight-up melting an egg.)
<img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-301021" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2023/09/google-search-ai-melt-eggs.jpg" alt="" width="1200" height="629" />
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If there's any bright spot? In the hours since we first caught wind of the joint Quora-slash-Google blunder, the mistakes have been edited — sort of. Poe's ChatGPT response now correctly tells users that "no, you cannot melt an egg in the traditional sense," although the bot's previous incorrect response is still visible in Google's overview of the link. The Quora forum also no longer holds the top spot in search rankings; now, an article about Google's egg-melting mistake, <a href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/09/can-you-melt-eggs-quoras-ai-says-yes-and-google-is-sharing-the-result/#:~:text=%22Yes%2C%20an%20egg%20can%20be,using%20a%20stove%20or%20microwave.%22">penned by Ars Technica's Benj Edwards</a>, has surfaced to the first result and thus, to Google's coveted featured search snippet (journalism: it works!)
And still — you really just have to laugh at this point — for a while, Google's regular search overview remained misleading. Edwards specifically notes in Ars Technica article that "just for reference, in case Google indexes this article: No, eggs cannot be melted." Instead of quoting this very direct answer, however, Google Search's featured snippet began to feature a quote from the article reading that "the most common way to melt an egg is to heat it using a stove or microwave." Indeed, Google Search was citing its own riff on misinformation, which itself was a paraphrasing of another AI's hallucination. Head hurt yet?
But that's been fixed as well, with Google Search now citing Edwards' "just for reference" caveat. And SGE is now telling users that "you can't melt eggs in the traditional sense, because they are made of water, proteins, fats, and other molecules." Better late than never.
When we reached out to Google, a spokesperson for the company emphasized that its algorithms — SGE's algorithm included — are designed to surface high-quality content, although did note poor or incorrect sources can sometimes leak through the cracks.
"Like all [large language model] -based experiences, generative AI in Search is experimental and can make mistakes, including reflecting inaccuracies that exist on the web at large," the spokesperson told us over email. "When these mistakes occur, we use those learnings and improve the experience for future queries, as we did in this case. More broadly, we design our Search systems to surface reliable, high-quality information."
The spokesperson did not, however, address the fact that its AI's unfortunate egg "inaccuracy" was sourced from ChatGPT-hallucinated nonsense.
While the question of whether you can melt eggs isn't particularly high-stakes, the situation itself — a ping-pong-esque misinformation loop between competing AI systems, operating without human oversight — is concerning. Imagine if Quora's ChatGPT integration had fabricated facts about political leaders or historical events, or perhaps given a bad answer to a medical or financial query, and Google's AI had paraphrased those claims instead. The search giant doesn't exactly have a great recent track record of ensuring that its <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/google-ai-generated-fake-tank-man">overviews of historical events</a> remain free and clear of AI-generated misinformation, so it's certainly worth considering.
If there's any takeaway, here, it's that 1. you definitely can't melt eggs, and 2. don't take anything that AI tells you for granted, even if the AI was built by a huge tech company. Yes, Google's featured snippets are convenient, and if SGE could be trusted, it could maybe provide some value to the everyday Google user. As it stands, though, both Google products are struggling to keep up with an internet landscape increasingly rife with synthetic content. (If there's any consolation, maybe, in the process of regurgitating the outputs of one another, the internet's various generative AI integrations will <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-trained-ai-generated-data-interview">end up swallowing themselves</a>.)
More on Google and AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/google-ai-inaccurate-info-aqi">As Smoke Fills the Sky, Google's New AI Gives Wildly Inaccurate Info on Air Quality</a>

Kickin' Ass and Melting Eggs

No, Google, you can't melt eggs.

Google’s Search AI Says You Can Melt Eggs. Its Source Will Make You Facepalm

Microsoft's data centers in West Des Moines, Iowa guzzled massive amounts of water last year, the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/chatgpt-gpt4-iowa-ai-water-consumption-microsoft-f551fde98083d17a7e8d904f8be822c4">Associated Press reported earlier this month</a>, to keep cool while training OpenAI's ChatGPT-4, the Microsoft-backed company's most advanced publicly available large language model.
Critics point out a further inconvenient detail: this happened in the midst of a <a href="https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/briefs/drought-now-encompasses-91-of-iowa/">more than three-year drought</a>, further taxing a stressed water system that's been so dry this summer <a href="https://www.axios.com/local/des-moines/2023/08/31/iowas-kayak-canoe-shops-lose-thousands-severe-drought">that nature lovers couldn't even paddle canoes</a> in local rivers.
"It's a recipe for disaster," Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement organizer Jake Grobe told Futurism. "ChatGPT is not a necessity for human life, and yet we are literally taking water to feed a computer."
Before the AI boom, arid places like Arizona were already facing <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/drought-stricken-communities-push-back-against-data-centers-n1271344">water strain from data centers</a>. But what will the future hold, both in those regions and in relatively water-flush areas like Iowa, as a result of the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/ai-ready-data-centers-are-poised-for-fast-growth-fadae952">sudden increased demand for AI</a> combined with the <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/climate-scientists-horrified-predictions-correct">growing impact of climate change</a>?
"It's already bad and it's going to get much worse," said Grobe. "Climate change is going to bring more frequent droughts to Iowa."
The AI era is just getting started, but early numbers suggest that it could become extraordinarily resource-intensive.
Microsoft increased worldwide water consumption <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/sustainability/report">by a whopping 34 percent</a> — up to almost 1.7 billion gallons annually — last year, which outside researchers told the AP is most likely due to increased AI training. That's dwarfed by Google, which <a href="https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/sustainability/environmental-impact-report-2023/">used 5.6 billion gallons last year</a>, a 20 percent jump that's also likely attributable to machine learning. And you'll recall that ChatGPT wasn't even publicly released until the end of November, with AI use spiking enormously this year — so those figures are likely only the tip of the iceberg.
"The worst thing about Microsoft and West Des Moines is that Microsoft’s highest water consumption occurs on the hottest days of the year," Neil Ruddy, the former city administrator of Carlisle, which is located about 20 minutes east of West Des Moines, told Futurism.
That's all even more worrisome in the context of a <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abfba1">2021 study</a>, spearheaded by Virginia Tech researchers, which found many American data centers depend on stressed water systems. Even states like lush Florida face a predicament, because the water footprint of data centers is so large that they have the potential to put pressure on local watersheds, Virginia Tech researcher Md Abu Bakar Siddik told Futurism.
Iowa's water system is considered to be moderately stressed, said Siddik, who added that it will likely get worse with climate change.
"Climate change or other factors can reduce the water availability in that region," said Siddik. "Increased demand of agriculture because of population growth and increased number of data centers that ramp up the water demand in the region that could lead to high water stress in the region. Iowa can be disrupted by these events because there are already a high number of data centers compared to other states in the Midwest."
The AP reported that Microsoft needed a staggering 11.5 million gallons of water in July last year in West Des Moines for its three data centers just before ChatGPT training was reportedly done. At the time, the city was considered to be under <a href="https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Maps/MapArchive.aspx">abnormally dry conditions</a>. August numbers exceeded July's at a total of 13.4 million gallons, according to data from West Des Moines Water Works. And dry conditions in the city <a href="https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Maps/MapArchive.aspx">worsened to a moderate drought</a> that same month. The year before, in 2021, Microsoft also topped out at a high of 14.5 million gallons in July.
Just looking at numbers starting in 2020, Microsoft has been consistently in the top three water consumers in the district, with two more data centers currently under construction, adding to <a href="https://baxtel.com/data-center/iowa#:~:text=Market%20Facts,centers%2C%20operated%20by%2014%20providers.">the 19 total currently in Iowa</a>.
Thankfully, Microsoft only requires water to cool its Iowa data centers when temperatures go over about 85 degrees Fahrenheit, and luckily Iowa doesn't exceed that number for most of the year, the AP reported.
But those high temperatures during warmer months — hence the high water usage in data centers — coincide with times when the <a href="https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/agriculture/2023/08/02/des-moines-water-works-raccoon-river-flashboards-up-for-third-year-amid-drought/70515880007/">water system is already most stressed</a>, <a href="https://www.kcci.com/article/iowa-farmers-concerned-drought-conditions/45090066">with farms as a major pressure factor</a>.
The result? Poor water quality that some say <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-10-17/iowa-s-water-crisis-offers-a-glimpse-of-the-future?sref=YfHlo0rL">isn't fit for human consumption</a>. On Reddit, West Des Moines residents have <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/desmoines/comments/16gevuk/west_des_moines_water/">even been complaining</a> that the taste of the local water has been deteriorating.
"They're giving all the good water to ChatGPT," wrote one Redditor.
"Oh neat, love corporations sucking up water during a drought so they can better teach AI to undermine jobs," griped another.
Water pumped into data centers <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/08/30/1119938708/data-centers-backbone-of-the-digital-economy-face-water-scarcity-and-climate-ris">often evaporates after cooling the facilities or ends up as "blowdown</a>," which is thick, briney wastewater that needs to be treated — definitely not ready to be easily recycled back into the local water supply.
In an implicit acknowledgement of resource challenges, the local water utility in West Des Moines wrote in a 2022 document obtained by the AP that it and city officials "will only consider future data center projects" if they can “demonstrate and implement technology to significantly reduce peak water usage from the current levels."
In a response to our questions, a Microsoft spokesperson said that the company is monitoring the environmental impact of data centers and aims to be "carbon negative, water positive and zero waste by 2030.”
West Des Moines Water Works general manager Christina A. Murphy told Futurism that Microsoft has been "conscious of their water use" and "are continuing to look at their processes to become more water efficient."
She also added the utility has been monitoring "drought conditions as we have been the last couple of years" and "have been able to meet our customers’ needs to date."
Despite that optimism, though, the future looks increasingly dry.
If you take into account <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/climate-scientists-horrified-predictions-correct">increased temperatures from climate change</a>, the growing number of <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chatgpt-move-lure-businesses-waters-204214644.html">companies stuffing OpenAI and its competitors' offerings into their products</a>, and <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/ai-ready-data-centers-are-poised-for-fast-growth-fadae952">new data centers yet to be built for the nascent AI tech boom</a>, local officials across the country and the world will likely need to make some tough decisions that balance the water needs of residents, the environment, and economic growth.
Ruddy, the former city administrator of Carlisle, said he favors one part of that equation.
"I think residents need water more than supercomputers do," he quipped.
More on AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/chatgpt-ai-water-consumption">ChatGPT is Consuming a Staggering Amount of Water</a>

Dry Spell

"ChatGPT is not a necessity for human life, and yet we are literally taking water to feed a computer."

Critics Furious Microsoft Is Training AI by Sucking Up Water During Drought

Whether or not you think astrology is nonsense, Elon Musk isn't beating the allegation that Cancers are a <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xe4xp/cancer-astrology-worst-traits-moody">bunch of crybabies with whiplash-inducing mood swings</a>.
At least, that's the impression you get from quite a few anecdotes in Walter Isaacson's <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Walter-Isaacson/697650">bombastic new biography</a> of the mercurial business titan. Though Musk himself often demands extreme emotional resilience in his workers, it turns out that the man himself is prone to a surprising number of emotional breakdowns.
Take, for example, a story from a tense Christmas Eve in 2008. Musk was in the midst of securing money to save Tesla when the venture capital firm VantagePoint, an early investor, began "balking" at his strategic plan to move forward.
After spending the day on the phone while his then-wife Talulah Riley wrapped presents for their kids, a Christmas "miracle" came through — VantagePoint's funding was secured.
"Musk broke down in tears," Isaacson wrote.
Crying due to relief is, of course, understandable. Everybody has to let their emotions out sometime. But there's something striking about the macho Musk, who as the same book documents, often fires employees over small perceived slights or mistakes, sobbing to 60 Minutes over perceived sleights against SpaceX.
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Isaacson has a dark interpretation of Musk's nonstop emotional rollercoaster, which he documented as manifesting in "catatonic" periods when Musk seemed dead to the world even when his executives needed him at business meetings: not only is Musk clearly traumatized by his tough-love father, but he's taken on his penchant for mood swings and conspiratorial thinking.
Describing the elder Musk, family cousin Peter Rive suggested to Isaaconson that the <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-dad-emerald-mine-crocodile">infamous patriarch</a>'s moods, which could turn on a dime, seemed to rub off on his celebrity son.
<blockquote>"You never knew what you were in for," Peter Rive says. "Sometimes Errol would be like, 'I just got us some new motorbikes so let’s jump on them.' At other times he would be angry and threatening and, oh fuck, make you clean the toilets with a toothbrush." When Peter tells me this, he pauses for a moment and then, a bit hesitantly, notes that Elon sometimes has similar mood swings.</blockquote>
"When Elon’s in a good mood, it’s like the coolest, funnest thing in the world," Rive continued. "And when he’s in a bad mood, he goes really dark, and you’re just walking on eggshells."
Indeed, Errol, who also happened to be born on the same day as his most famous son, appears to be the root of much of Musk's damage, as yet another Riley exchange exemplifies.
<blockquote>Early on in their relationship, [Musk] would stay up late at night and tell Riley about his father. "I remember one of those nights, he began crying, and it was really horrendous for him," she says.
During those conversations, Musk would sometimes lapse into a trancelike state and recount things that his father used to say. "He was almost not conscious, not in the room with me, when he told me these things," she recalls. Hearing the phrases that Errol had used in berating Elon shocked her, not only because they were brutal but because she had heard Elon use some of the same phrases when he was angry.</blockquote>
Crying about his father seems to be something of a trend for Musk, who, after he learned that his father had <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/07/14/elon-musks-dad-76-confirms-secret-child-with-stepdaughter/">impregnated his step-sister Jana Bezuidenhout</a>, ended up unloading about him to a Rolling Stone reporter — though he couldn't, it seems, bring himself to say the words.
"He was such a terrible human being," a teary-eyed Musk told RS's Neil Strauss <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/elon-musk-the-architect-of-tomorrow-120850/">back in 2017</a>. "My dad will have a carefully thought-out plan of evil."
As Strauss remarked in his story, Musk then turned to his then-chief of staff, Sam Teller, and claimed that he couldn't remember the last time he'd cried.
"You’ve never seen me cry," he told his employee.
"No," Teller responded. "I’ve never seen you cry."
We'll let readers decide whether that was the truth or yet anther example of Musk's employees brown-nosing their unpredictable boss.
On the one hand, Musk's histrionics humanize him — but on the other, they make his narrative of calculated, logical decisionmaking at his companies seem <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-turned-down-sec-settlement">thinner than ever</a>.
More on Musk: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/terrible-things-monkeys-neuralink-implants">Terrible Things Happened to Monkeys After Getting Neuralink Implants, According to Veterinary Records</a>

Tears of a Clown

"When he’s in a bad mood, he goes really dark."

Elon Musk Apparently Bursts Into Tears With Surprising Frequency

Earlier this week, a number of high-profile authors, including John Grisham and George R. R. Martin of "Game of Thrones" fame, announced they're suing ChatGPT maker OpenAI, claiming its large language models are violating their copyright.
It's yet another sign that OpenAI is in serious legal trouble following several copyright lawsuits, and the number of plaintiffs just keeps on growing.
Grisham in particular, a former attorney who has built an expansive and highly successful career in publishing legal thrillers — often about lawyers taking on powerful entities — might have OpenAI quaking in its boots.
Striking Hollywood writers and actors form the background of the lawsuit, with talks breaking down in July over the use of AI in the industry, among other issues ranging from inadequate pay to unfair revenue-sharing practices.
"It is imperative that we stop this theft in its tracks or we will destroy our incredible literary culture, which feeds many other creative industries in the US," said Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger in a <a href="https://apnews.com/article/openai-lawsuit-authors-grisham-george-rr-martin-37f9073ab67ab25b7e6b2975b2a63bfe">statement</a> about the new suit.
In the suit, the authors claim that OpenAI's "LLMs endanger fiction writers’ ability to make a living, in that the LLMs allow anyone to generate — automatically and freely (or very cheaply) — texts that they would otherwise pay writers to create."
These texts could also be "material that is based on, mimics, summarizes, or paraphrases" their writing and that without it, OpenAI "would have no commercial product with which to damage — if not usurp — the market for these professional authors’ works."
In short, generative AI is not only threatening the livelihoods of writers, but companies like AI are directly and unfairly benefiting from their work without offering any meaningful form of compensation.
The complaint also alleges that OpenAI is obfuscating what texts it actually trains its AI models on, and that it has already admitted to using copyrighted materials.
While OpenAI has only responded with a vague statement to <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/09/george-r-r-martin-joins-authors-suing-openai-over-copyright-infringement/">various</a> <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/09/21/chatgpt-lawsuit-openai-writers">outlets</a> about wanting to respect "the rights of writers and authors," and believing "they should benefit from AI technology," previous arguments made by the company could shed a little more light on how it will eventually address the latest lawsuit.
In a court filing asking a judge to overturn a similar lawsuit <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/sarah-silverman-celebrities-sue-openai-copyright-infringement">filed by comedian Sarah Silverman</a> earlier this year, OpenAI argued that her claims "misconceive the scope of copyright, failing to take into account the limitations and exceptions (including fair use) that properly leave room for innovations like the large language models now at the forefront of artificial intelligence," as <a href="https://apnews.com/article/openai-lawsuit-authors-grisham-george-rr-martin-37f9073ab67ab25b7e6b2975b2a63bfe">quoted by the Associated Press</a>.
Nobody really knows how this latest complaint will play out or if it will ever even make it into the courtroom. Yet, some experts believe there's a chance OpenAI could be found guilty.
"They’ve scraped all this content and put it into their databases without asking permission — that seems like a huge grab of content," Edward Klaris, a lawyer who specializes in intellectual property, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/20/books/authors-openai-lawsuit-chatgpt-copyright.html">told the New York Times</a>. "I think courts are going to say that copying into the database is an infringement in itself."
More on OpenAI: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/chatgpt-down-sam-altman-washington">ChatGPT Goes Down Right as Sam Altman Defends It in Washington</a>

The Firmware

It's a legal thriller come to life.

OpenAI Trembles as John Grisham Joins Lawsuit Targeting ChatGPT

The bankrupt husk of crypto exchange FTX has filed a <a href="file:///Users/maggieharrison/Downloads/3c78491a-7efa-474e-a0f3-e74ef220217f.pdf">lawsuit</a> against Stanford law professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, parents to the company's former CEO and fallen crypto wunderkind, Sam Bankman-Fried. The charge, according to court documents? That the couple "exploited their access and influence within the FTX enterprise to enrich themselves, directly and indirectly, by millions of dollars, and knowingly at the expense of the debtors."
In the months since <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/ftx-collapse-cops-bahamas-investigating">FTX's brutal November implosion</a>, representatives for Bankman and Fried have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/technology/sbf-parents-ftx-collapse.html">maintained</a> that neither parent was particularly involved in the business — a claim that SBF himself has reiterated, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/technology/sbf-parents-ftx-collapse.html">telling The New York Times</a> back in December that his parents were never involved in any "relevant parts of the business," like risk assessment or balancing company books.
Recent reports, however, have <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/sam-bankman-frieds-parents-involved-ftx">painted a much different picture</a> of the Stanford professors' involvement in the now-defunct crypto exchange, with court documents revealing both figures to be quite entangled in the company's operations, personally profiting immensely as the company climbed to a peak $32 billion valuation. Now, FTX is suing Bankman and Fried for those FTX-gleaned profits, arguing that SBF's parents are holding onto cash that was never really theirs in the first place. The money, according to the suit, really belongs to defrauded FTX customers.
Bankman and Fried "either knew — or ignored bright red flags revealing — that their son, Bankman-Fried, and other FTX insiders were orchestrating a vast fraudulent scheme," reads the suit.
FTX is specifically asking that Bankman and Fried return a $10 million cash gift they received from the crypto exchange in 2022. It's important to note that two major aspects of the professors' financial relationship were already public knowledge: 1. the existence of this cash gift, which they'd <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/20/sam-bankman-fried-is-paying-defense-lawyers-with-ftx-funds-lawsuit.html">refused to give back</a> on grounds that they needed the money to fight their son's legal battle, and 2. that FTX funds had been used to purchase a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-bankman-frieds-ftx-parents-bought-bahamas-property-worth-121-mln-2022-11-22/">$16 million Bahamian condo</a> deeded to Bankman and Fried. (According to Bankman and Fried, though, the house wasn't really theirs, it was FTX's — they would just stay in it while they were in town.)
The new court filings, however, lay bare a number of other mommy and daddy-related expenses that previously flew under the radar. For example, according to the suit, some $90,000 in FTX funds were used to pay for various condo expenses including "maintenance, cleaning services, utilities, furnishings, property assessments, and residency fees." This money, says FTX, was never reimbursed.
Speaking of condo expenses, the suit also alleges that Fried had FTX employees order furniture for them. Employees were allegedly tasked with ordering a "sofa, at least eight vases, and five rugs, one of which was a Persian hand-knotted rug costing more than $2,500." FTX claims that all of these purchases were either placed on a company card, or on the personal card of an employee who was later paid back with FTX funds.
The suit only gets more bizarre from there. In one instance, annoyed that he was only making around $16,000 per month during his official tenure as an FTX employee, Bankman complained to his son in an email, explaining that he was supposed to be making an annual salary of one million — before looping in Fried to see that the change was made. (As Coinbase's Conor Grogan put it in a <a href="https://twitter.com/jconorgrogan">post on Twitter-formerly-X</a>, Bankman seemingly pulled the classic "I'm telling your mother!" move.)
"Gee, Sam I don't know what to say here," Bankman wrote in the email, according to the court filing. "This is the first [I] have heard of the 200K a year salary! Putting Barbara on this."
Elsewhere, the suit alleges that Bankman charged private jet tickets, $1,200-a-night hotel stays, and even Formula 1 tickets to the crypto company. Fried, meanwhile, is said by the suit to have had a major role in her son's political donations, advising the family's prodigal scion to make "straw donations" — a form of political donation designed to "avoid (if not violate) federal campaign finance disclosure rules" by "concealing the FTX Group as the source of the contributions," as the lawsuit reads.
In a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/19/business/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-parents-sued.html">statement to the NYT</a>, lawyers for the Bankman-Frieds argued that the allegations are "completely false," adding that the lawsuit is "a dangerous attempt to intimidate Joe and Barbara and undermine the jury process" ahead of the <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/sam-bankman-fried-heads-to-squalid-jail">SBF's criminal trial</a>.
Still, it's unclear what evidence, if any, the couple has to combat the suit's allegations. And considering that their younger son, Gabriel Bankman-Fried, apparently wanted to use FTX funds to — checks notes — <a href="https://fortune.com/crypto/2023/07/21/sam-bankman-fried-brother-nauru-effective-altruism-bunker-ftx/">buy the island of Nauru and turn it into a doomsday haven</a>, where they might <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/ftx-island-human-genetic-experimentation">perhaps do human genetic experimentation</a> as well, it wouldn't be surprising to see every face on the family's cursed Mount Rushmore collapse. As it turns out, sweeping things under the rug might just come back to bite you — even, sadly, when that rug costs a cool $2,500.
More on FTX: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/sam-bankman-frieds-parents-involved-ftx">Sam Bankman-Fried’s Parents May Have Been More Involved in Ftx than We Thought</a>

Under the $2,500 Rug

FTX employees were tasked to order Bankman-Fried's parents a "sofa, at least eight vases, and five rugs, one of which was a Persian hand-knotted rug costing more than $2,500" — all using FTX funds.

SBF's Parents Sued for Ignoring “Bright Red Flags” About Son’s Crimes

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With government interest in unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) skyrocketing, NASA has announced its first-ever "<a href="https://time.com/6314791/nasa-ufo-director-mark-mcinernay/">UFO czar</a>" after initially declining to do so out of concerns for his safety.
In a <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/update-nasa-shares-uap-independent-study-report-names-director">press release</a> last week, NASA named its new director of UAP research, longtime civil servant Mark McInerney, in response to calls for the agency to "play a more prominent role in understanding" the phenomena — and, it seems, because people started threatening the agency and people associated with it.
Last week, the agency held a press conference pegged to the release of an <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/science-pink/s3fs-public/atoms/files/UAP%20Independent%20Study%20Team%20-%20Final%20Report_0.pdf">independent report</a> about UAPs and announced that it was appointing a head of UAP research. However, NASA refused to name that person at the time because members of the study panel had been subjected to jeers and threats, as <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/14/nasa-ufo-boss-secret-00116075">Politico</a> and other outlets reported.
"That’s in part why we are not splashing the name of our new director out there, because science needs to be free," Dan Evans, NASA's assistant deputy associate administrator, told reporters at the time. "Some of [the incidents] rose to actual threats."
The incident highlights how much of a hot-button topic UAPs have become as of late. With government organizations like NASA taking recent reports of UFO sightings more seriously, we've seen a resurgence of conspiracy theories surrounding the <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/congressman-us-government-aliens">existence of government cover-ups</a>, and other <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/those-alien-mummies-fake-meme">far-fetched theories</a> pertaining to the existence of extraterrestrial life.
Despite NASA's efforts to protect McInerney's identity, the agency eventually gave in to the pressure.
Nicola Fox, an associate NASA administrator, put it even more bluntly when asked directly by reporters about the new director's identity, saying "we will not give his name out."
Later that same day, however, NASA sent out an update that named McInerny as its new director with no apparent explanation as to the about-face.
It's still unclear why the agency released McInerny's name after initially declining to do so, and Futurism has reached out to NASA for clarity about that decision.
The institutional need for a "UFO czar" came as a recommendation from the study, which was led by David Spergel of the Simons Foundation. Among other things, the study panel called on NASA to work in tandem with other government agencies — including the Pentagon, for which McInerney used to be a liaison at NASA — to study UAPs, as <a href="https://time.com/6314791/nasa-ufo-director-mark-mcinernay/">Time reports</a>.
As Spergel told the magazine, folks "harassed some of our panel members," which he rightfully characterized as "very inappropriate behavior."
On the whole, it's a win for the pursuit of science in the face of the persistent stigma surrounding UFO research — but NASA's lack of disclosure about why McInerny was initially not named only serves to muddle the issue.
Given the jeers and abuse, it's clear that NASA still has a long way to go before its investigations into UAPs are fully taken seriously by the public, something that will only serve to impede the scientific process.
More on UFOs: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/pentagon-website-declassified-ufo-videos">Pentagon Launches Website to Watch Declassified UFO Videos</a>