<h2>You're Toxic</h2>
Over on Facebook, the latest frontier of AI misinformation is taking the form of a wizened old wizard who gives appalling mushroom advice.
As <a href="https://www.404media.co/ai-chatbot-added-to-mushroom-foraging-facebook-group-immediately-gives-tips-for-cooking-dangerous-mushroom/">our friends at 404 Media report</a>, a Facebook group geared towards helping mushroom foragers identify their fungi finds recently had an AI chatbot added to it that instructed users on the best way to prepare an <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969720330412?ref=404media.co">arsenic-carrying shroom</a>.
Named "FungiFriend," the chatbot was injected by Facebook's platform into the popular Northeast Mushroom Identification and Discussion group and included a bearded, psychedelic-looking wizard as its avatar. When one user asked the bot how to cook Sarcosphaera coronaria — a <a href="https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/68183-Sarcosphaera-coronaria">violet-hued mushroom</a> that was thought to be edible before a bunch of people <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11557-024-02006-7">died from eating it in Europe</a> — the chatbot recklessly claimed that enthusiasts like to sauté this "edible but rare" fungus in butter, add it to stews, or pickle it.
This dangerous chatbot was brought to 404's attention via Rick Claypool, a research director with the consumer protection group Public Citizen who also happens to be an avid forager who's warned about "<a href="https://fungimag.com/v17i2/v17n2-Claypool.pdf?fbclid=IwY2xjawGgXf9leHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHWyP2kCSwObFoWZZOwpQR-5JvpTRyH3kKLxy2gW9xZWcBFZXw_ba8nVtmw_aem_IsVbBP1kde1Olbx46fa_kQ&amp;ref=404media.co">mushroom misinformation</a>" before.
In the world of foraging, Claypool noted, groups like Northeast Mushroom Identification are important resources for beginners who need help distinguishing between delicious edible fungi and the kind that can kill or injure you. Adding AI into that mix is, as one might imagine, bad news bears.
"There is just no way [AI has] reached a point of being good enough at providing true and factual and verifiable information," Claypool told 404, "especially if we’re talking about distinguishing between toxic and edible varieties."
<h2>I'm Slipping Under</h2>
According to a group moderator, FungiFriend was automatically added by Facebook's parent company, Meta. As Claypool expounded, the chatbot would pop up first when users uploaded photos of mushrooms from their phones, essentially encouraging them to speak to this dangerous AI before other humans who would be more likely to set them straight.
While the moderator who spoke to 404 said that the group would "most certainly be removing" FungiFriend, this debacle highlights how dangerous these sorts of confident "<a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/researchers-ai-chatgpt-hallucinations-terminology">hallucinations</a>," or AI mistruths, can be — especially for people new to a hobby like foraging who may be anxious about looking dumb.
"Somebody who has any amount of knowledge is not going to be relying on the AI. It’s going to be someone who feels nervous about putting themselves out there," Claypool explained. "Maybe they’re worried to seem like they don’t know very much or they’re afraid of asking a stupid question."
"So you ask the AI so it won’t judge you like a normal person might," he continued. "You might, then, not feel like it judges you, but it might kill you."
More on fungi AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/perplexity-webpage-mushrooms">Asked to Summarize a Webpage, Perplexity Instead Invented a Story About a Girl Who Follows a Trail of Glowing Mushrooms in a Magical Forest</a>

Tragic Mushroom

"Somebody who has any amount of knowledge is not going to be relying on the AI."

Facebook Adds Bot to Mushroom Foraging Group That Urges Members to Eat Deadly Fungus

<h2>Eff Off</h2>
NASA seems to be in the middle of another health debacle after one of its astronauts was forced to hit back against rumors that she'd lost too much weight in space.
As the <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/11/13/us-news/nasa-monitoring-second-stranded-astronauts-possible-weight-loss-as-sunita-williams-insists-shes-fine/">New York Post reports</a>, NASA is monitoring the health and medical privacy of Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, the astronauts who've been <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/stranded-astronaut-not-comfortable-starliner">stranded on board the International Space Station</a> for months after <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/boeing-sell-off-starliner">Boeing's cursed Starliner</a> — the troubled spacecraft they flew up in — was deemed too risky for their return voyage.
In recent weeks, there's been <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14055951/sunita-williams-stranded-nasa-astronaut-deterioration-hospital.html">ample tabloid speculation</a> about the astronauts' health and appearances, particularly when it comes to Williams. During a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UMzOwlv7iM">teleconference earlier in the week</a>, the female astronaut attempted to put to bed rumors that she had lost a lot of weight and appeared "<a href="https://x.com/ImAstroNana/status/1855281975030116619">gaunt</a>," as one Earthbound doctor <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/11/12/us-news/stranded-nasa-astronaut-sunita-williams-speaks-out-about-concerns-over-her-weight-loss-in-space/">opined to the Post</a>.
"I'm the same weight that I was when I got up here," Williams <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UMzOwlv7iM">said during the presser</a>. She added that there could be a number of things affecting her appearance in photos, including the way <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/cardiovascular-health-in-microgravity/">microgravity changes water distribution</a> in the body.
Still, NASA is apparently concerned not only with its astronauts' health and safety, but also about potentially sensitive medical information leaking to the press. According to an insider source who spoke to the NYP on condition of anonymity, anyone caught leaking astronaut health details could potentially be fired.
"HIPAA laws apparently apply to NASA, too," the employee, described as "tangential" to the Starliner mission, told the tabloid.
<h2>Muscle Gains</h2>
As <a href="https://gizmodo.com/nasa-astronaut-suni-williams-shouldnt-have-to-discuss-her-weight-to-dismiss-tabloid-rumors-2000524132">Gizmodo noted in its own write-up</a> of the debacle, Williams seemed compelled to point out some specific physical changes she'd experienced during her time on the ISS to dispel the rumors about her alleged weight loss.
"I could definitely tell that weightlifting, which is not something that I do all the time, has definitely changed me," the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UMzOwlv7iM">astronaut said on the NASA live feed</a>, referring to how astronauts undergo a <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/iss-research/astronaut-exercise/">vigorous fitness regimen</a> in orbit to offset the health effects of space travel. "My thighs are a little bit bigger, my butt is a little bit bigger."
While space sexism is nothing new, it's a sorry return to the undue physical attention pioneering female astronauts like <a href="https://www.digitaltrends.com/space/sally-ride-womens-history-month/">Sally Ride experienced</a>, Gizmodo pointed out, which saw her and countless others in her wake being scrutinized over their weights and dress sizes while their male colleagues got no such attention.
Notably, this debacle comes just a few weeks after another group of NASA astronauts — which included another woman of color, Jeanette Epps — were <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-astronaut-hospitalization-reason">hospitalized under mysterious circumstances</a> upon returning back to Earth because <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-astronaut-hospitalized-upon-return">one in their midst</a> experienced a health issue.
In that case, at least, the woman hasn't been singled out — if only because NASA is remaining mum about what happened and who it happened to.
More on actual astronaut health problems: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/space-tourist-vision-deteriorate">Space Tourist Alarmed When Vision Starts to Deteriorate</a>

Space Sexism

"HIPAA laws apparently apply to NASA, too."

Stranded NASA Astronaut Hits Back Against Comments About Her Weight

<h2>Punching Bag</h2>
NASA is undergoing another round of layoffs. And once again, it's the space agency's famous Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California that's taking the hit.
On Tuesday, JPL <a href="https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/jpl-workforce-update_-/">announced</a> that it will be saying goodbye to 325 employees, or about five percent of its workforce, marking the second time this year that the research lab has downsized its personnel.
"This is a message I had hoped not to have to write," JPL director Laurie Leshin wrote in a memo to employees. "With lower budgets and based on the forecasted work ahead, we had to tighten our belts across the board, and you will see that reflected in the layoff impacts."
<h2>Cost Cutting</h2>
JPL previously laid off 530 employees <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/mass-layoffs-hit-nasa">in February</a>, which accounted for eight percent of its staff at the time, in response to <a href="https://futurism.com/nasa-starts-layoffs-after-budget-cuts">agency wide budget cuts</a>.
One issue is that the funds that the lab would receive for its role in the ambitious, multi-billion dollar <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasas-mars-sample-return-flawed">Mars Sample Return mission</a> were sharply reduced from over $900 million to around just $300 million <a href="https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/nasas-fy-2024-budget">this year</a>. The mission's future <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/experts-spacex-starship-samples-mars">remains uncertain</a>, pending a further review that could decide its fate.
These latest cuts don't necessarily pertain to the Mars mission specifically, according to the memo, and were taken to fall within available funds for the 2025 federal fiscal year, which commenced in October.
"This reduction is spread across essentially all areas of the Lab including our technical, project, business, and support areas," Leshin wrote. "We have taken seriously the need to re-size our workforce, whether direct-funded (project) or funded on overhead (burden)."
Nonetheless, the workforce reduction is actually lower than what was projected a few months ago, Leshin said.
<h2>Budget Won't Budge</h2>
NASA has struggled with its budget in recent years. The space agency fought for an increased budget for 2024, but was handed a two percent decrease, falling over $2 billion short of what it was seeking.
Along with mass layoffs, this has forced NASA to <a href="https://futurism.com/nasa-scraps-rover-sends-deadweight">abandon sending its VIPER rover</a> to the Moon, despite already spending $450 million on the project.
It's all the more striking because the agency recently announced that it <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-economic-growth-more-than-budget">generated over $75.6 billion</a> in US economic output last year, or about three times its budget. Even setting its scientific value aside, there's a strong argument to be made that, in the face of the sheer economic power it's generating, NASA isn't getting the money it deserves.
How president-elect Donald Trump's administration could affect NASA's financial future is also a question worth asking. But Leshin says the layoffs were happening regardless of who's president, and are unrelated to the outcome of the election.
More on NASA: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-astronaut-hospitalization-reason">NASA Still Trying to Figure Out Why Astronaut Was Hospitalized After Return to Earth</a>

Lay Off the Lay Offs!

Grim.

NASA Is Laying Off Hundreds of Employees Again

It's a sad state of affairs when the CEO of multinational oil and gas corporation Exxon Mobil calls on president-elect Donald Trump not to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement.
As the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/12/business/energy-environment/exxon-mobil-baku-climate-cop29.html">New York Times reports</a>, oil baron Darren Woods warned that doing so would greatly weaken our global efforts to curb carbon emissions — a grim irony, given the fact that he represents <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/09/revealed-20-firms-third-carbon-emissions">one of the biggest contributors</a> to global warming in the world.
Trump has threatened to <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/28/trump-paris-climate-treaty-withdrawal-again-00165903">pull out of the Paris Agreement</a> <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/us-formally-ditches-paris-climate-agreement">yet again</a> and has vowed to "<a class="underline hover:text-the-byte hover:no-underline transition-all duration-200 ease-in-out" href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-policies-agenda-election-2024-second-term-d656d8f08629a8da14a65c4075545e0f">drill, baby, drill</a>," while dismantling the Green New Deal, an environmental protection plan he's called the "<a class="underline hover:text-the-byte hover:no-underline transition-all duration-200 ease-in-out" href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/05/trump-inflation-reduction-act-00177493">green new scam</a>."
"We need a global system for managing global emissions," Woods told the NYT while attending the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP) in Azerbaijan, a dubious summit that claims to be about climate change but primarily appears to <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/secret-video-climate-change-official-promising-fossil-fuel-deals">facilitate business meetings among oil and gas executives</a>.
"Trump and his administrations have talked about coming back into government and bringing common sense back into government," he added. "I think he could take the same approach in this space."
Woods took aim at the government's failure to create enough incentives for oil and gas companies to transition to renewable sources of energy.
"The government role is extremely important and one that they haven’t been successfully fulfilling, quite frankly," he told the NYT.
The CEO argued that Trump's infamously unpredictable way of governing could end up harming oil and gas companies — not help them by allowing them to drill for oil in more places and loosen environmental rules.
"I don’t think the stops and starts are the right thing for businesses," Woods <a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/exxon-says-trump-should-keep-u-s-in-paris-climate-pact-3d8de471">told the Wall Street Journal</a>. "It is extremely inefficient. It creates a lot of uncertainty."
Trump's threats to dismantle environmental regulations could set the United States back significantly in the global fight against global warming, a reality even the oil industry has grasped.
Despite its repeated efforts to promise an <a href="https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/news/news-releases/2022/0118_exxonmobil-announces-ambition-for-net-zero-greenhouse-gas-emissions-by-2050">eventual transition to green energy</a>, Exxon Mobil was found to be the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/04/just-57-companies-linked-to-80-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions-since-2016">biggest investor-owned contributor to emissions</a> in a database of 122 polluters put together by the Carbon Majors Database earlier this year.
Nonetheless, the company is expected to spend around $3 billion this year on developing alternatives to fossil fuels, according to the NYT.
But with Trump in the Oval Office, major polluters like Exxon Mobil could find themselves on an even longer leash, a worrying possibility given the precariousness of the ongoing climate crisis.
Scientists have found that the prognosis is grimmer than ever before: the Earth is <a href="https://www.sciencealert.com/earths-climate-faces-risk-of-no-return-if-warming-exceeds-1-5-c">racing towards a point of no return</a> if climate change continues on its current trajectory — a reality that Trump seemingly doesn't have the intellectual capacity to grasp.
More on Trump and the environment: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/trump-slash-environmental-protections-states-droughts">As Trump Prepares to Slash Environmental Protections, 48 of the 50 States Are Facing Droughts</a>

Burn It All Down

"I don’t think the stops and starts are the right thing for businesses. It is extremely inefficient."

Even Exxon Mobil Is Horrified by Trump's Climate Plan

<h2>Get Lower</h2>
We regret to inform you that Meta CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg is now a musical artist — and his first track, a cover of "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYH7_GzP4Tg">Get Low</a>" by Lil Jon and the Eastside Boyz recorded in tandem with T-Pain, is a sonic assault.
In an <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DCUov2eT_R4/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&amp;igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==">Instagram post</a>, the 40-year-old tech tycoon dedicated the track by "Z-Pain" — an embarrassing portmanteau of Zuckerberg and T-Pain, née Faheem Rashad Najm — to his wife, <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/zuckerberg-wife-fighting-ring-backyard">Priscilla Chan Zuckerberg</a>.
"'Get Low' was playing when I first met Priscilla at a college party, so every year we listen to it on our dating anniversary," <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DCUov2eT_R4/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&amp;igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==">Zuckerberg wrote</a> in the caption of the post, which featured several photos of the philanthropic couple over the years. "This year I worked with [T-Pain] on our own version of this lyrical masterpiece."
For those who didn't have the song imprinted directly onto their developing brains way back in 2002, that "lyrical masterpiece" includes the incredible verses "to the window / to the wall / til the sweat drip down my balls / all these females crawl."
Hearing the milquetoast Zuckerberg, of all people, sing those lines in his heavily pitch corrected voice is not for the faint of heart, and we do not advise you listen to this at home unless you are prepared to take ample psychic damage.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Z-Pain - Get Low [Official Audio] (T-Pain &amp; Mark Zuckerberg)" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JoIjk2pnbXk?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<h2>Please, No More</h2>
T-Pain coming in on the second verse is such a relief that you can almost forget what you were forced to listen to before — until Zuck once again hops on the annoying acoustic beat, reminiscent of <a href="https://www.vh1.com/news/4jchtz/stop-acoustic-covers-hip-hop-songs">so many ukulele girls in the early 2010s</a> except somehow much worse.
There was, in fact, an infamous <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLeZ-NcjfkQ">acoustic cover of "Get Low</a>" released in 2011 that got more than 1.5 million views on YouTube — which was 1.5 million too many, should not have been replicated under any circumstances, and is still better-sounding than the Z-Pain version.
Anyway, this unrequested collab seems to be part of the millennial tech mogul's <a href="https://futurism.com/how-mark-zuckerberg-is-dressing">hypebeast rebranding</a> — though the fact that a similar travesty was deeply uncool more than a decade ago makes the strategy dubious in late 2024.
More on the emperor's new clothes: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/tech-cool-zuckerberg-look">Cringey Tech Execs Swoon Over Mark Zuckerberg’s "Cool" New Look</a>

Stop Him Now

Nobody on Earth asked for this. 

Mark Zuckerberg Just Released a Cover of Lil Jon's "Get Low" and Yes, He Says the Line About Balls

NASA's plagued Space Launch System rocket, which is being developed to deliver the first astronauts to the Moon in over half a century, is on thin ice.
According to Ars Technica senior space reporter Eric Berger's insider sources, there's an "<a href="https://x.com/SciGuySpace/status/1856522880143745133">at least 50-50</a>" chance that the rocket "will be canceled."
"Not Block 1B. Not Block 2," he added, referring to the variant that was used during NASA's uncrewed Artemis I test flight in 2022 and a more powerful design with a much higher translunar injection payload capacity, respectively. "All of it."
To be clear, as Berger himself points out, we're still far "from anything being settled." Nonetheless, the reporter's sources have <a href="https://futurism.com/nasa-employee-spacex-starship">historically been highly reliable</a>, suggesting the space agency may indeed be getting cold feet about continuing to pour billions of dollars into the non-reusable rocket.
The SLS has already seen its fair share of budget overruns and many years of delays. In a 2022 interview, former NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver <a href="https://futurism.com/lori-garver-nasa-sls">told Futurism</a> that the project is simply "not sustainable."
The rocket platform has become a political football, going well past <a href="https://www.engadget.com/nasas-sls-rocket-is-6-billion-over-budget-and-six-years-behind-schedule-091432515.html">$6 billion over budget</a> and over half a decade behind schedule.
"I will be direct," former NASA administrator Michael Griffin told the House Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee during a January hearing on the space agency's Artemis program, as <a class="underline hover:text-the-byte hover:no-underline transition-all duration-200 ease-in-out" href="https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/former-nasa-administrator-hates-artemis-wants-to-party-like-its-2008/">quoted by Ars Technica</a>. "In my judgment, the Artemis Program is excessively complex, unrealistically priced, compromises crew safety, poses very high mission risk of completion, and is highly unlikely to be completed in a timely manner even if successful."
So far, the rocket has <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-artemis-reaches-moon">been launched only once</a>, as part of NASA's inaugural Artemis mission in 2022, but damage sustained by the agency's Orion spacecraft <a href="https://futurism.com/nasa-keeping-issue-moon-rocket-secret">has given officials pause</a> about its ability to safely send astronauts to the Moon in the coming years.
According to an <a href="https://oig.nasa.gov/office-of-inspector-general-oig/audit-reports/nasas-management-of-the-mobile-launcher-2-project/">August report</a> by NASA's Office of Inspector General (OIG), even just the price of the tower designed to launch rockets starting with Artemis IV, which is tentatively scheduled for 2028, has ballooned to a whopping $1.8 billion.
Plagued aerospace giant Boeing has also encountered plenty of headwinds with its contributions to the launch platform. In a <a href="https://oig.nasa.gov/office-of-inspector-general-oig/nasas-management-of-space-launch-system-block-1b-development/">separate September report</a> by the OIG, the SLS' Block 1B configuration, which is being built by Boeing, was found to be <a href="https://futurism.com/nasa-inspector-boeing-work-moon-rocket">woefully behind and way over budget</a>.
"We found an array of issues that could hinder SLS Block 1B's readiness for Artemis IV including Boeing’s inadequate quality management system, escalating costs and schedules, and inadequate visibility into the Block 1B’s projected costs," the report reads.
To reiterate, the SLS is a non-reusable rocket, which means that NASA will have to build entirely new rocket stages for each upcoming Artemis mission. That's in stark contrast to SpaceX's fully reusable Starship, which the space agency is <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-render-spacex-starship-moon-surface">still hoping to tap</a> for Artemis III, the first crewed trip to the Moon's surface.
If NASA does indeed give up on the SLS, Berger <a href="https://x.com/SciGuySpace/status/1856538263915225194">suggests</a> that the agency may have to get creative by "launching Orion on one rocket" such as SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, and then "docking with a (separately launched) [United Launch Alliance] Centaur V and boosting it to the Moon."
Whether such a Plan B is even on the table, though, is unclear at best.
"Honestly the people who will ultimately make this decision aren't even in place yet," Berger wrote in a <a href="https://x.com/SciGuySpace/status/1856529449061106132">followup tweet</a>, likely referring to the incoming Trump administration. "But there is a big desire for big changes."
More on the SLS: <a href="https://futurism.com/nasa-keeping-issue-moon-rocket-secret">NASA Keeping Issue With Moon Rocket a Secret</a>

Space Launch Schlamassel

"There is a big desire for big changes."

It Sounds Like NASA's Moon Rocket Might Be Getting Canceled

<h2>White House Down </h2>
SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk and president-elect Donald Trump <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/musk-trump-election-night-together">became inseparable</a> toward the end of the election — but as the bromance deepens, Trump's team is reportedly growing wary.
Musk is "behaving as if he’s a co-president and making sure everyone knows it," one person familiar with the matter <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/elon-musk-trump-donald-mar-a-lago-appointment-position-rcna179826">told NBC News</a>.
Just last night, Trump <a href="https://x.com/kleavittnh/status/1856495794171301965">announced</a> that Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy would helm the new Department of Government Efficiency — or, um, "<a href="https://futurism.com/trump-elon-musk-doge-department">DOGE" for short</a>. The mortifying acronym represents "'The Manhattan Project' of our time," Trump's statement purports, underscoring Musk's apparent sway in the upcoming administration.
<h2>Love at First Fight</h2>
Whether the mind-meld between Trump and Musk will last is up for debate. Tech guru Kara Swisher <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/11/business/video/swisher-musk-trump-personalities-digvid">predicted this week</a> that the duo are likely to have a falling out, "because they're both really strong personalities who like to be the center of attention."
If Trump does eventually ditch Musk, it wouldn't be without precedent; he flamed out with an <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/08/trump-biden-cabinet-turnover/">epic proportion of his own cabinet</a> during his first term, and even <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/musk-trump-advisory-panel">publicly battled Musk</a> before making up during the most recent election.
In some ways, the two have a lot in common. Both Trump and Musk are <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/05/us/politics/elon-musk-trump-x-election-day.html">fond of </a><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/05/us/politics/elon-musk-trump-x-election-day.html">spreading conspiracy theories </a>online, and are engaged in many of the same far-right culture wars around immigration, gender identity and the economy. In other domains, though, their allyship seems more tenuous: Musk remains the CEO of Tesla, for instance, while Trump is a <a href="https://futurism.com/donald-trump-bizarre-rant-electric-cars">longtime foe of electric vehicles</a>. 
Any potential rift between the two is likely to be more emotional than factual, though. If there's one thing neither man can stand, it's other people getting credit for what they consider to be their own accomplishments.
"He’s sure taking lots of credit for the president’s victory," NBC's source continued, speaking of Musk. "Bragging about America PAC and X to anyone who will listen. He’s trying to make President Trump feel indebted to him. And the president is indebted to no one." 
More on Elon Musk: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/grok-blasts-elon-musk-misinformation">Elon Musk's Grok AI Blasts Elon Musk as Huge Spreader of Misinformation</a>

The Disgusting Brothers

Musk is "behaving as if he’s a co-president."

Trump Team Reportedly Getting Fed Up With Elon Musk's Weird Behavior

Fitness influencer Jaxon Tippet was on vacation this month when he died unexpectedly from an apparent heart attack only a few days after his 30th birthday. 
Tippet previously battled with steroid use. In 2017, he was <a href="https://www.instagram.com/iamjaxontippet/reel/CjEaXwYBDCy/">fined $4,000</a> by the Australian Southport Magistrates Court after being caught with 250 steroid tablets, vials of testosterone, and a needle and syringe hidden in his underwear. 
On a <a href="https://shows.acast.com/good-humans-with-cooper-chapman/episodes/58-jaxon-tippet-online-coach">2022 episode</a> of the Good Humans podcast, Tippet recalled having no symptoms in his first year of taking steroids. But as time moved on, he experienced a gradual and insidious shift.
"I could feel my health deteriorating," he said. "I was very tired. I was yellow in the face, my urine was almost orange... I couldn't get an erection." 
Since getting clean, Tippet had dedicated his Instagram and TikTok accounts — which, combined, have nearly 250,000 followers — to encouraging aspirational bodybuilders to take care of their mental health and be positive. 
But his death serves as a grim reminder that the unrealistic physiques of fitness influencers are often achieved using perilous techniques — like extreme diets and the use of steroids and growth hormones — that are usually much more dangerous than "healthy."
Worse yet, these personalities are explosively popular among young people, leading to the risk that they'll imitate their idols and engage in similar dangerous behavior.
Case in point, a striking number of fitness influencers die suddenly and way too young. Just in the past year, for example, bodybuilder Illia Yefimchyk died <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13841973/Worlds-monstrous-bodybuilder-known-Mutant-dies-aged-36.html">at 36</a> after years of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvZVt2FdtS0">steroids use</a> and spending his days consuming 16,500 calories in a bid to be the "most monstrous bodybuilder" — along with his <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/famous-bodybuilders-illia-yefimchyk-antonio-souza-neil-currey-die-in-a-year-experts-give-exercise-guidelines/articleshow/113315870.cms?from=mdr">fellow bodybuilders</a> Antonio Souza and Neil Currey.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, in 2023, raw food influencer Zhanna Samsonova <a href="https://futurism.com/raw-vegan-influencer-dies">died at 39</a> after primarily eating jackfruit and durian for years. 
In other words, it's important to remember that lustrous influencer content — no matter if it's the most impressive biceps or the smoothest skin — is never a true indicator of health.
More on influencers: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/mrbeast-warning-wannabe-influencers">MrBeast Warns Youth Not to Be Like Him</a>

Tragic Death

Developments

This is not a healthy lifestyle.

Another "Fitness" Influencer Just Dropped Dead, Days After 30th Birthday

<h2>Crash and Burn</h2>
The scales are falling from the eyes of the tech industry right now, as generative AI models are reportedly hitting a technological brick wall.
As some experts have long <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-running-out-data-smarter">predicted would happen</a>, improvements that once came easily by simply scaling up large language models — in other words, by adding more parameters, training data, and processing power — are now slowing down, and that's if they're yielding any significant gains at all.
Gary Marcus, a cognitive scientist and AI skeptic, is warning that once everyone wises up to these shortcomings, the entire industry could crash.
"The economics are likely to be grim," Marcus <a href="https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/confirmed-llms-have-indeed-reached">wrote on his Substack</a>. "Sky high valuation of companies like OpenAI and Microsoft are largely based on the notion that LLMs will, with continued scaling, become artificial general intelligence."
"As I have always warned," he added, "that's just a fantasy."
<h2>Diminishing Returns</h2>
The canary in the coal mine came when <a href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-shifts-strategy-as-rate-of-gpt-ai-improvements-slows">The Information reported</a> this week that behind the scenes, OpenAI researchers discovered that its upcoming flagship model, code-named Orion, demonstrated noticeably less improvement over its predecessor GPT-4, than GPT-4 did over GPT-3.
In areas like coding — a major appeal for these LLMs — there may even be no improvements at all.
This is echoed elsewhere in the industry. Ilya Sutskever, founder of the startup Safe Superintelligence and co-founder and former chief science officer of OpenAI, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/openai-rivals-seek-new-path-smarter-ai-current-methods-hit-limitations-2024-11-11/">told Reuters</a> that improvements from scaling up AI models have plateaued.
In short, the dogma that "bigger is better" when it comes to AI models, which has predicated the industry's ludicrous growth, may no longer be true.
This is not the death knell of AI. "But," Marcus wrote, "the economics will likely never make sense: additional training is expensive, the more scaling, the more costly."
<h2>Outside the Box</h2>
Per Reuters, training runs for large models can cost tens of millions of dollars, require using hundreds of AI chips, and can take months to complete at a time. Tech companies have also run out of freely available data to train their models, having <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-training-data-shortage">practically scraped the entire surface web</a>.
"LLMs such as they are, will become a commodity; price wars will keep revenue low. Given the cost of chips, profits will be elusive," Marcus predicts. "When everyone realizes this, the financial bubble may burst quickly."
There may be a way out of this economic rut. As the reports from The Information and Reuters note, OpenAI researchers are developing ways to surmount the scaling problem, such as training the models to "think" or "reason" in a similar way to humans, capabilities which have been <a href="https://futurism.com/openai-released-strawberry-o1-preview-model">previewed in its o1 model</a>.
One way they are doing this is through a technique called "test-time compute," which has an AI model explore multiple possibilities for complex problems and then choosing the most promising one, instead of jumping to a conclusion.
Whether such work will trailblaze a new way of pursuing significant AI improvements, however, will have to be borne out in the long run. As it stands, the AI industry continues to have a <a href="https://futurism.com/investors-concerned-ai-making-money">profitability problem</a>, and as economic markets are rarely patient, there could be another <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter">AI winter</a> to come <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/robotics-expert-ai-hype-reality-check">if these improvements aren't made fast</a>.
More on AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/openai-diminishing-returns">OpenAI Reportedly Hitting Law of Diminishing Returns as It Pours Computing Resources Into AI</a>

Road Block

"The economics are likely to be grim."

AI Expert Warns Crash Is Imminent As AI Improvements Hit Brick Wall

<h2>Wind Tunnel</h2>
Scientists have found that a "<a href="https://www.scimex.org/newsfeed/what-we-know-about-uranus-might-be-flawed-due-to-an-intense-wind-event">rare intense wind event</a>" during NASA's Voyager 2 flyby of Uranus in 1986 may have seriously messed with our understanding of the planet.
And yes, we admit, the <a href="https://futurism.com/scientists-gross-uranus-jokes">jokes practically write themselves</a>.
But the research is very real. As detailed in a <a href="https://www.scimex.org/newsfeed/what-we-know-about-uranus-might-be-flawed-due-to-an-intense-wind-event">new paper</a> published in the journal Nature Astronomy, NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab scientist Jamie Jasinski and an international team of researchers found that our current understanding of Uranus may be based on data collected during an unusual period of time when Uranus' magnetosphere was in an "anomalous, compressed state," which only occurs "less than five percent of the time."
In other words, our current understanding of the distant planet may be far more limited than we thought because the Sun was pelting Uranus with solar weather at the time.
<h2>Letting Rip</h2>
Jasinksi reexamined the data collected by Voyager 2 during its 1986 flyby and found that the probe had examined Uranus shortly after an intense solar wind event, which saw a huge surge of charged particles blast its way from the Sun.
The event compressed the planet's magnetosphere, they found, causing it to deform into a significantly asymmetrical shape that appeared to lack plasma.
"We postulate that such a compression of the magnetosphere could increase energetic electron fluxes within the radiation belts and empty the magnetosphere of its plasma temporarily," the researchers wrote in their paper.
Even if Voyager 2 had come to visit a mere week earlier, the researchers suggest, it would have found a far more recognizable magnetosphere, like those surrounding other planets in our solar system, including Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune.
"Owing to the variation of the solar wind at Uranus, we suggest that there may be two magnetospheric cycles during solar minimum," the researchers suggested, referring to the calmest period of the Sun's 11-year solar cycle.
Intriguingly, Uranus' two most distant moons Titania and Oberon may be orbiting the planet outside the magnetosphere, which could give astronomers an unprecedented look at their subsurface oceans without any electromagnetic interference.
In short, we shouldn't draw any definitive conclusions from NASA's flyby almost 40 years ago.
"We highlight that our understanding of the Uranus system is highly limited, and our analysis shows that any conclusions made from the Voyager 2 flyby are similarly tentative," the researchers conclude in their paper. "We suggest that discoveries made by the Voyager 2 flyby should not be assigned any typicality regarding Uranus’s magnetosphere."
More on Uranus: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/james-webb-peers-into-uranus-rings">The Mighty James Webb Peers Directly Into Uranus</a>