<h2>Broken Clock</h2>
Bernie Sanders may be on the opposite end of the left-right spectrum from <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/19/us/texas-elon-musk.html">freshly-minted politico Elon Musk</a> — but on the issue of military spending, they have one big take in common.
"Elon Musk is right," the <a href="https://x.com/SenSanders/status/1863268770371772863">Vermont senator tweeted</a>. "The Pentagon, with a budget of $886 billion, just failed its 7th audit in a row. It’s lost track of billions."
Indeed, the Department of Defense regularly reports to its supposed overseers in Congress that it doesn't know where portions of its <a href="https://www.defense.gov/Spotlights/FY2024-Defense-Budget/">ginormous budgets</a> have gone. At the end of 2023, for instance, it admitted in an audit progress update that it <a href="https://responsiblestatecraft.org/pentagon-audit-2666415734/">couldn't account for 61 percent</a> of its $3.5 trillion in assets.
"Last year, only 13 senators voted against the Military Industrial Complex and a defense budget full of waste and fraud," Sanders continued. "That must change."
The communique seems to reference recent remarks from Musk on X-formerly-Twitter that saw the billionaire and forthcoming head of the <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-doge-innovation">Department of Government Efficiency</a> — acronymed, ludicrously, as DOGE — criticizing the DOD's <a href="https://www.gao.gov/blog/f-35-will-now-exceed-2-trillion-military-plans-fly-it-less">multi-trillion dollar fighter jet program</a>.
<h2>Fighting Pilot</h2>
In the caption of a <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1860574377013838033">post last week</a> featuring a video of a synchronized drone swarm, the Tesla and SpaceX owner took potshots at the Pentagon's "manned fighter jets like the F-35," which cost between $82.5 and $109 million <a href="https://www.defenseone.com/business/2024/07/f-35s-price-might-rise-lockheed-warns/398323">per individual plane</a>.
"Crewed fighter jets are an inefficient way to extend the range of missiles or drop bombs," <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1860730086909215155">Musk said later in the thread</a> after another user defended their use. "A reusable drone can do so without all the overhead of a human pilot. And fighter jets will be shot down very quickly if the opposing force has sophisticated SAM or drones, as shown by the Russia-Ukraine conflict."
"Fighter jets do have the advantage of helping Air Force officers get laid," he quipped. "Drones are much less effective in this regard."
While the South African-born business magnate hasn't <a href="https://responsiblestatecraft.org/elon-musk-doge-pentagon/">proffered any specific military spending cuts</a>, coming out against F-35s in favor of drones is a relatively surprising stance considering that <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Search/Spacex/">SpaceX has multiple</a> <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/elon-musk-just-won-another-massive-military-contractthis-time-for-satellites/">Pentagon contracts</a> and has <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/musks-spacex-forges-tighter-links-with-u-s-spy-and-military-agencies-512399bd">become a key supplier</a> for the intelligence community to boot.
All the same, Sanders was correct to point out that on the topic of expensive fighter jets, Musk is technically right — though of course, the billionaire seems mostly to oppose them only because <a href="https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-elon-musk-drones/">he loves drones</a>.
More on Musk: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-controlling-trump">Is Elon Musk Now Secretly Controlling Donald Trump?</a>

Slash and Burn

Strange bedfellows.

Bernie Sanders Offers Support for Elon Musk's Plans to Cut Pentagon Spending

<h2>Shut Down</h2>
Tesla CEO Elon Musk <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/02/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-loses-bid-to-get-56-billion-pay-package-reinstated.html">has lost his bid</a> to get his absurdly astronomical pay package — currently valued at just north of $100 billion — reinstated.
In January, Delaware judge Kathaleen McCormick <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-judge-voided">deemed the largest compensation plan in US history null and void</a>, arguing that Musk had full control over Tesla and its board, leading to a negotiation that was "deeply flawed."
A <a href="https://futurism.com/analyst-predicts-tesla-vote-no-elon-musk-pay-package">consequent shareholder vote in June</a> unsurprisingly found that investors were willing to reinstate the compensation plan — but even that failed to convince McCormick.
"Even if a stockholder vote could have a ratifying effect, it could not do so here," she wrote in an <a href="https://apnews.com/article/tesla-elon-musk-executive-pay-compensation-shareholders-86c5811b738e3a9df2b6e4adbcd055bb?taid=674e3a3dcb690e0001b5e632&amp;utm_campaign=TrueAnthem&amp;utm_medium=AP&amp;utm_source=Twitter">opinion on Monday</a>. "Were the court to condone the practice of allowing defeated parties to create new facts for the purpose of revising judgments, lawsuits would become interminable."
The news is bound to be yet another major thorn in the side of the world's richest man, who has been hoping for many years to further enrich himself through the payout. Musk has <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-judge-voided">repeatedly lashed</a> out at McCormick, warning to "never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware," following her January decision.
It's also a sign that Musk isn't technically above the law — despite the many signs lately suggesting the opposite.
<h2>My Tesla</h2>
Meanwhile, lawyers <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-accused-massive-insider-trading-tesla">who sued Musk</a> on behalf of Tesla shareholders have been awarded a monstrous $345 million attorney fee.
"We are pleased with Chancellor McCormick’s ruling, which declined Tesla’s invitation to inject continued uncertainty into Court proceedings and thank the Chancellor and her staff for their extraordinary hard work in overseeing this complex case," Bernstein, Litowitz, Berger &amp; Grossmann attorneys wrote in a statement, as <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/02/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-loses-bid-to-get-56-billion-pay-package-reinstated.html">quoted by CNBC</a>.
Tesla has since <a href="https://x.com/Tesla/status/1863730393930735634">published a statement</a> arguing that "the ruling is wrong, and we're going to appeal."
"This ruling, if not overturned, means that judges and plaintiffs’ lawyers run Delaware companies rather than their rightful owners — the shareholders," the statement reads.
That appeal, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/delaware-judge-rejects-request-restore-elon-musks-56-billion-tesla-compensation-2024-12-02/#:~:text=Musk's%202018%20pay%20package%20gave,not%20receive%20any%20guaranteed%20salary.">according to Reuters</a>, could take a full year to play out.
The compensation plan was originally valued at up to $56 billion when it was first conceived in 2018 and required Musk to hit specific company performance milestones.
Since then, Tesla's value has soared, which means it's worth almost twice that, given today's stock price.
Musk's own Tesla holdings are worth almost $150 billion, which would make him one of the richest men in the world without even considering any of his other investments.
Even now that he's the <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-controlling-trump">right-hand man of the new president of the United States</a>, Musk would need to pass new legislation through Congress to overrule McCormick's decision, as the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/03/business/dealbook/musk-tesla-pay-delaware.html">New York Times reports</a>.
In other words, Musk will have to continue trying very hard to engorge himself on Tesla stock.
More on the compensation plan: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-begs-shareholders-vote-pay-package">Elon Musk Begs Tesla Shareholders to Vote for His $56 Billion Pay Package</a>

Must Be Hard

Boohoo.

Elon Must Just Got Absolutely Owned

<h2>Bad Flood</h2>
A burst water pipe has wreaked havoc on data sent by a pair of NASA spacecraft — the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) — which are tens of thousands and hundreds of miles away from Earth, respectively.
And no, the four-inch cooling water line wasn't attached to either of them when it burst on November 26. The incident occurred at the SDO Joint Science Operations Center (JSOC) at Stanford University in California, according to a <a href="https://solarweb1.stanford.edu/JSOC_Emergency_Resources.html">recent update</a>, forcing scientists to shut down the processing of data from numerous SDO and IRIS scientific instruments.
"The Stanford JSOC team is working to assess the extent of the damage, but it is severe," the update reads. "Science data processing" will "be down for an extended length of time."
But there's a silver lining. Since the "data capture systems for all three instruments remain functional," no incoming data is "expected to be lost."
<h2>Pied Piper</h2>
The pipe, which sends cooling water through a server room at Stanford, burst and "caused major flooding" as well as "extensive water damage," according to the JSOC team.
"At this point, it is unclear how long it will take to assess the damage, repair the equipment, and complete recovery," reads an FAQ appended to the update. "We do know that the damage is extensive and [repairs] will not be completed until 2025."
The IRIS spacecraft launched in June 2013 and has been helping scientists study the flow of plasma into the Sun's corona and heliosphere using a high-frame-rate UV imaging spectrometer.
The SDO, which launched in 2010, was designed to study how solar activity causes space weather, the conditions caused by the Sun releasing a barrage of charged particles streaming across the solar system.
Fortunately, while the flood will greatly delay data processing, the spacecraft are still able to beam data back home as expected.
Besides, it's also a lot easier to address a burst water pipe in a server room back on Earth than it is to repair a spacecraft thousands of miles away.
More on solar spacecraft: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/spacecraft-close-up-video-sun">Spacecraft Takes Close Up Video of the Sun, Revealing Otherworldly Hellscape</a>

Space Flood

Scientists are "working to assess the extent of the damage, but it is severe."

Flood Wreaks Havoc on NASA Spacecraft

A new research consortium has found not only that brain fungi or bacteria can cause some dementia cases, but also that for some patients, the damage can even be reversed.
One of the main drivers behind this discovery, pharmaceutical rep-turned-researcher Nikki Schultek <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/dec/01/the-brain-microbiome-could-understanding-it-help-prevent-dementia">told the Guardian</a> that she also suffered from dementia caused by fungi.
Nearly a decade ago, the North Carolina-based business school graduate suddenly developed debilitating cognitive symptoms. In her early 30s at the time, Schultek was terrified she wouldn't live long enough to see her children, then just three and five years old, grow up.
After being tested for multiple sclerosis, the young mother and her doctors eventually figured out what was going on: she had concurring chronic infections from the Lyme disease-causing bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi — and one of them had reached her brain.
Antibiotics calmed the infection, but because it's hard to eradicate infections once they reach the brain, Schulek decided to start her own research group — the Alzheimer's Pathobiome Initiative — to study cases like hers where bacterial or fungal infections seem to be linked to dementia.
Unlike Schultek, who got a marketing degree from Villanova, the consortium's other members hold medical degrees from universities like Cambridge and Heidelberg, and work at institutions like Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and Oxford's Institute of Population Ageing.
In a paper published in the <a href="https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/alz.13076">journal Alzheimer's and Dementia</a> last year, the improbable disease researcher and her erudite colleagues outlined several cases where people with dementia symptoms were found to have similar infections in their brains. When they took antiviral or antifungal meds, those symptoms abated.
According to University of Edinburgh molecular biologist and paper coauthor Richard Lathe, many of the people whose cases the consortium studied essentially discovered the link by accident when their dementia symptoms "went away" after being treated with antivirals or antifungals.
Because the hypothesis is so new, it's impossible to know yet what percentage of dementia and Alzheimer's patients may be experiencing those symptoms due to bacterial or fungal infections.
"We know there are some," Lathe continued. "We know it’s unlikely to be 100 percent, but our guess is that probably half or more could potentially be treated."
If that bold theory turns out to be true, it could mean that many cases of dementia are reversible with medication — which could utterly change the game when it comes to these debilitating cognitive disorders.
More on dementia: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/two-new-dementia-risk-factors">Two New Dementia Risk Factors Have Been Uncovered — And You Can Actually Do Something About Them</a>

Brain Drain

Studies

An incredible finding. 

Some Cases of Dementia Can Be Cured, Researchers Say, Because They’re Caused by Fungus and Bacteria in Brain

<h2>Ad Age</h2>
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 <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/9350d075-1658-4d3c-8bc9-b9b3dfc29b26">Financial Times reports</a>, 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, <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/02/openai-raises-6-6b-and-is-now-valued-at-157b/">OpenAI's valuation skyrocketed to $157 billion</a> — but amid reports of <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-traffic-slips-again-third-month-row-2023-09-07/">shrinking traffic</a> and the <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/big-tech-facing-problem-ai-plans-returns">extremely expensive nature</a> 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.
<h2>DraperGPT</h2>
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: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/openai-guild-lawsuit-communications">OpenAI Implores Judge Not to Expose Communications by Its Top Researchers</a>

Ad-GPT

Ads inside ChatGPT may be on the horizon.

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

An infamous insurance billionaire has been accused by several women of operating a bizarre "baby project" to build a giant white family.
In a wide-reaching exposé, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-12-02/us-fertility-clinics-helped-a-disgraced-billionaire-deceive-women?sref=YfHlo0rL">Bloomberg reports</a> that North Carolina insurance tycoon Greg Lindberg operated this scheme by manipulating young women into donating eggs to him — and signing over their parental rights — in exchange for millions of dollars.
One of these women, who was identified only by the pseudonym Anya, is the biological mother of a five-year-old boy who she says she hasn't seen in four years because her now-ex-boyfriend, Lindberg, has used the contracts she signed to keep him from her.
After divorcing his wife and losing custody of his first three children, the disgraced insurance executive and father of 12 has, per several people familiar with his natal ambitions, become obsessed with having an ever-increasing vassal of progeny. In particular, he was said by these sources to want children who could never be taken from him — hence having the women sign their parental rights away.
With an army of lawyers and well-paid in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics on his payroll, most of Lindberg's reproductive scheming has apparently been legal due to the fertility industry's lack of oversight.
Along with the women whose eggs he purchased, Lindberg also allegedly ran a massive network of surrogates and had at least two female assistants — one of whom also carried his child — run the logistics of this deeply weird baby-making operation.
The donors, however, seemed to be central to the campaign given that it was their genetic material the billionaire con was interested in. Many were models when they met Lindberg, and almost all had blonde hair and either blue or green eyes.
"I wanted to meet these folks in person, at least take them to dinner, get to know them," the billionaire bragged to Bloomberg before cutting off contact. After that, he filed a lawsuit accusing the outlet of defamation, slander, and interfering in his relationships. Notably, it does not seem that he denied the claims about his baby project, and instead seemed proud of it.
Per interviews with some of these women, Lindberg seems to have done more than take them to dinner. Anya, as mentioned, considered him her boyfriend, and he was said to be "courting" multiple women for egg donation at once. In at least one case, two women involved in this natalist nightmare had their eggs retrieved from the same clinic within just a few days of each other.
During his first prison stint for bribery and conspiracy convictions that were <a href="https://apnews.com/article/north-carolina-government-and-politics-bf81d90da220bef7979381053ef14391">thrown out on procedural grounds</a>, the magnate pressed his staffers to keep his businesses — both baby and insurance — afloat. His employees balked at the directive, but ultimately followed through, and the births only increased after he was <a href="https://www.wunc.org/law/2022-07-18/insurance-magnate-out-of-prison-after-convictions-overturned">released in 2022</a>.
After <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/insurance-mogul-pleads-guilty-2b-fraud-and-money-laundering-scheme">pleading guilty in November</a> to a $2 billion fraud and money laundering scheme, it's likely that Lindberg will be headed back to prison — and the women who were ensnared in his creepy birth web will likely have to keep living without seeing their biological kids.
More on natalist weirdos: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-daughter-vivian-taylor-swift">Elon Musk's Daughter Disgusted by His Revolting "Incel" Tweet About Taylor Swift</a>

Lindberg Babies 

Genetics

Fertility cults did not die out with the ancient world. 

Infamous Billionaire Accused of Running Bizarre Human Birthing Scheme

<h2>David Who?</h2>
Netizens were baffled to find that OpenAI's ChatGPT refused to acknowledge the existence of the name "David Mayer."
Ask the chatbot about the name and it gives a <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1h0tlc6/weird_response_david_mayer/">puzzling reply</a>: "I'm unable to produce a response."
Then the chat abruptly ends, forcing users to open a new window to keep using the assistant.
Frustratingly, OpenAI has yet to comment on the matter and questions are still hard to come by. The most prominent personality who goes by that name is David Mayer de Rothschild, a British adventurer and environmentalist who presumably doesn't have any bones to pick with an AI chatbot.
He also happens to be the heir of the Rothschild banking dynasty, which has spawned plenty of <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1h3kak2/why_does_chatgpt_censor_the_name_david_mayer_as/">far-fetched conspiracy theories</a>.
The incident highlights just how little we know about how these large language models operate, what kind of content they've been trained on, and what limits are imposed by their makers.
We've seen plenty of examples of AI chatbots <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/researchers-ai-chatgpt-hallucinations-terminology">hallucinating facts</a>, <a href="https://futurism.com/openai-strawberry-thought-process-scheming">failing at simple tasks</a>, and even <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-eating-disorder-chatbots">encouraging dangerous behavior</a> — meaning that the tool getting hung up on a simple name isn't even the most <a href="https://futurism.com/reasoning-ai-models-simple-trick">unusual behavior</a> we've come across.
<h2>Shmavid Shmayer</h2>
As we wait for official word from OpenAI — Futurism has reached out for comment — many social media users have been busy digging around for some answers.
For instance, AI investor Justine Moore <a href="https://x.com/venturetwins/status/1863288173461377516">found at least six more names</a> that triggered a similar response, including several individuals who have filed General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) "right to be forgotten" requests in the EU. In other words, the quirk may have to do with their efforts to have their online presence erased.
Others have suggested that the name David Mayer may have been blocked due to the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/16/akhmed-one-armed-isis-terrorist-alias-david-mayer-historian-secret-watch-list">existence of a Chechen ISIS member</a> who used the name as an alias.
As <a href="https://www.404media.co/not-just-david-mayer-chatgpt-breaks-when-asked-about-two-law-professors/">404 Media reports</a>, ChatGPT also breaks when it's asked about two law professors named Jonathan Zittrain and Jonathan Turley.
Intriguingly, Zittrain wrote a <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/07/ai-agents-safety-risks/678864/?ref=404media.co">piece in The Atlantic</a> about the need to "control AI agents now."
One user even <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/chatgpt-david-mayer-name-glitch-ai-b2657197.html">changed their name</a> to David Mayer in ChatGPT, which led to the tool refusing to acknowledge their new name.
Is the name being blocked because of OpenAI's guardrails, which were designed to protect individuals' privacy? Did David Mayer — whoever he may be — file legal documents with the AI company?
It's a mystifying bug that underlines how much of a black box ChatGPT really is. And it underscores a constant lesson with AI products: don't take any of their answers at face value.
More on ChatGPT: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/lawyer-submits-anti-ai-document">Lawyer Submits Anti-AI Document That Appears to Have Been Created Using AI</a>

Blame John Mayer

We still have no idea why.

ChatGPT Crashes If You Mention the Name "David Mayer"

A review by Columbia's Tow Center for Digital Journalism found that OpenAI's <a href="https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-search/">ChatGPT search</a> — a <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/openai-ai-search-engine-makes-factual-mistake">newer version</a> 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 "<a href="https://openai.com/index/conde-nast/">news partners</a>" that have signed content licensing deals with the AI industry leader.
According <a href="https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/how-chatgpt-misrepresents-publisher-content.php">to the Columbia Journalism Review</a>, the Tow Center's <a href="https://github.com/TowCenter/search-gpt/">findings</a> 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 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/27/business/media/new-york-times-open-ai-microsoft-lawsuit.html">sued OpenAI and Microsoft</a> 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 <a href="https://futurism.com/atlantic-staff-unhappy-about-openai">licensing deals</a> <a href="https://openai.com/index/conde-nast/">to</a> <a href="https://www.hearst.com/-/hearst-and-openai-announce-strategic-content-partnership">give</a> <a href="https://www.voxmedia.com/2024/5/29/24166483/vox-media-openai-strategic-content-and-product-partnership">the AI company</a> <a href="https://openai.com/index/news-corp-and-openai-sign-landmark-multi-year-global-partnership/">access</a> <a href="https://openai.com/index/content-partnership-with-financial-times/">to</a> their valuable troves of journalistic material in exchange for cash, <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/open-ai-publisher-deals-scraping-bots/">allow OpenAI's web crawlers</a> 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 <a href="https://www.axelspringer.com/en/ax-press-release/axel-springer-and-openai-partner-to-deepen-beneficial-use-of-ai-in-journalism">OpenAI-partnered publisher</a> 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 <a href="https://futurism.com/chatgpt-plagiarized-nyt-articles">reported on the same phenomenon back in August</a>, when we found that ChatGPT was frequently citing plagiarized versions of original NYT reporting published by DNyuz, <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/drudge-report-links-site-plagiarizes-stories">a notorious Armenian content mill</a>.
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, <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/651977/americans-trust-media-remains-trend-low.aspx">much-untrusted</a> 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: <a href="https://futurism.com/chatgpt-plagiarized-nyt-articles">Amid New York Times Lawsuit, ChatGPT Is Citing Plagiarized Versions of NYT Articles on an Armenian Content Mill</a>

Double Agent

Are those licensing deals worth it?

ChatGPT Is Absolutely Butchering Reporting From Its “News Partners”

<h2>Magnetic Tornadoes</h2>
Researchers have <a href="https://news.berkeley.edu/2024/11/26/magnetic-tornado-is-stirring-up-the-haze-at-jupiters-poles/">observed mysterious "dark ovals</a>," each roughly the size of the Earth, appearing on the polar regions of Jupiter on the ultraviolet spectrum.
The gas giant, whose <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/james-webb-jupiter">Great Red Spot</a> 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 <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-024-02419-0">new paper</a> 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.
<h2>Jupiter Haze</h2>
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 <a href="https://news.berkeley.edu/2024/11/26/magnetic-tornado-is-stirring-up-the-haze-at-jupiters-poles/">statement</a>.
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 <a href="https://news.ucsc.edu/2024/12/jupiter-uv-ovals.html">separate statement</a>.
"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: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/james-webb-jupiter">James Webb Observes Mysterious Structures Above Jupiter's Great Red Spot</a>

Jupiter? I Barely Even Know Her

Something's up.

Scientists Intrigued by Large Dark Shapes Appearing on Surface of Jupiter

<h2>Succession Theme</h2>
As one politico points out, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/how-elon-musk-rebranded-trump">Elon Musk's hold on Donald Trump</a> seems akin to the president-elect's control own <a href="https://www.politico.com/interactives/2024/republican-platform-trump-changes/">takeover of the GOP</a>.
In an <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-taken-over-maga-democratic-strategist-1993640">interview with Newsweek</a>, 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 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIRvdljYamU">MSNBC contributor</a>. "[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 <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-twitter-value-x-trump-xai-2024-11">Business Insider noted</a> 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 <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/12/01/musk-trump-buddy-lobby/">political influence</a> — and it all raises the question: is Trump the boss of Musk, or vice versa?
<h2>Kiss the Ring</h2>
A looming question since the election has been how long the Musk-Trump bromance will last, especially since Trump's last administration <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/tracking-turnover-in-the-trump-administration/">quickly became a revolving door</a> of spurned former loyalists.
While there have been <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-blowout-fight-trump-adviser">reports of tensions</a> 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 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a32TJGLRh4s">bizarro joint dance</a> to The Village People's "YMCA" — suggests he's in the inner sanctum, at least for now.
In an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVkSqBHDZBg">interview with CNN</a> 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 <a href="https://www.umaryland.edu/politics-panel/covering-the-trump-presidency/">longtime White House watcher</a> 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 <a href="https://futurism.com/expert-warns-elon-musk-gut-nasa">very bumpy</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/07/style/elon-musk-donald-trump-campaign-rally.html">extremely cringe</a> four years.
More on this strange dynamic: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/trump-body-language">Body Language Expert Says Trump Is Acting "Submissive" Around Musk</a>