<h2>AllFake</h2>
After duping the Los Angeles school system into giving her gobs of money, the founder of an AI ed tech firm allegedly spent a lot of it on herself.
As the <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-11-19/founder-of-company-that-created-lausd-chatbot-charted-with-fraud">LA Times reports,</a> 33-year-old Joanna Smith-Griffin, the founder of an AI startup called AllHere, has been charged by federal prosecutors with identity theft and multiple counts of fraud after her alleged web of lies regarding her company's sketchy wares came tumbling down.
Earlier this year, the <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-07-03/lausds-highly-touted-ai-chatbot-to-help-students-fails-to-deliver">same newspaper reported</a> that after being contracted to build out a chatbot connecting families with information from the Los Angeles Unified School District, <a href="https://www.the74million.org/article/allhere-ai-los-angeles-schools-tool-bankruptcy-filing/">AllHere filed for bankruptcy</a> despite tens of millions of dollars in public and private investment.
Now, the reason why seems to be emerging, per the allegations: that the founder's repeated lies about the company's worth, and dips into its investments for her own personal gain, led it to ruin.
<h2>Double Dipping</h2>
Prosecutors maintain in their <a href="https://www.justice.gov/d9/2024-11/u.s._v._smith-griffin_indictment.pdf">indictment against Smith-Griffin</a> that the founder of the Boston-based company inflated AllHere's worth to attract investors, claiming that she had raised millions for its bespoke educational chatbot tech when in reality the firm had far less in its coffers.
According to the indictment, the founder also allegedly used some of the tens of millions she raised from private and public investors to put a down payment on a house in North Carolina and fund her own lavish wedding.
Aside from outside investments, the firm was contracted with the LAUSD, the nation's second largest-school system, for $6 million. According to school officials who spoke to the LA Times, the district only paid out about half — or $3 million — of that contract to AllHere ahead of its collapse.
<h2>Ed Tech</h2>
Launched in March, AllHere's chatbot for the LAUSD, named "Ed," was meant to be a part of students' individualized toolkits. Just a few months after its <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/los-angeles-unified-launches-ed-a-pioneering-learning-acceleration-ai-platform-to-improve-student-achievement-302095566.html">splashy rollout</a>, however, the school district <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-07-03/lausds-highly-touted-ai-chatbot-to-help-students-fails-to-deliver">quietly took Ed offline</a> — and soon, the company that made it was sinking as well.
"We can obviously point the finger at companies, especially startups, that are pressured to overpromise and... generally underdeliver," University of Southern California AI expert Stephen Aguilar told the LA Times after Ed went dark. "Ultimately, the responsibility rests with the school district."
Now, the superintendent of the LAUSD is condemning Smith-Griffin and what prosecutors called a "deliberate and calculated scheme."
"The indictment and the allegations represent, if true, a disturbing and disappointing house of cards that deceived and victimized many across the country," superintendent Alberto Carvalho told the LA Times following the recent charges. "We will continue to assert and protect our rights."
Those rights, it seems, include the ability to revive the Ed chatbot at will — and as Carvalho told the newspaper, the LAUSD hasn't given up hope that it will be able to do so.
More on AI in education: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/parents-sue-school-ai">Parents Sue School After Teacher Sends Son to Detention for Using AI</a>

FraudBot

"A disturbing and disappointing house of cards that deceived and victimized many across the country."

AI Founder Promised Amazing Chatbot to Public Schools, Then Allegedly Spent the Money on a Lavish Wedding and Mansion

<h2>Verified Horrible</h2>
Verified accounts on Elon Musk's social media platform X-formerly-Twitter are promoting the sale of child sex abuse videos.
As the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/arabic/articles/cwyg5nk5zz5o">BBC found</a>, the identified accounts were using Saudi Arabic phrases and hashtags to link to websites that sell the appalling content. Other associated accounts even went as far as to upload child sex abuse material (CSAM) straight to the platform.
It's a harsh reminder of just how <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-pleads-stephen-king-blue-checkmark">meaningless</a> the company's purported "verification" system has become — while CSAM is flourishing in the absence of effective content moderation efforts.
After the broadcaster identified the accounts to X, the company promptly removed them. Yet some accounts got thousands of views, while linking to Telegram channels purportedly containing CSAM.
"These accounts have been suspended in accordance with our policies," a spokesperson told the BBC, as translated from Arabic by Google, but refused to elaborate on how X's verification system works.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
In case you needed any reminding of how much Twitter&#39;s &#39;verification&#39; system has changed, see this from Fahima Abdulrahman and myself: <a href="https://t.co/qYRySGDWwe">https://t.co/qYRySGDWwe</a> <a href="https://t.co/cWlAoNhWki">pic.twitter.com/cWlAoNhWki</a>
&mdash; Joe Tidy BBC News (@joetidy) <a href="https://twitter.com/joetidy/status/1859505508840767784?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 21, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<h2>Free for All</h2>
It's a particularly problematic situation given the fact that verified users with blue checkmarks on the site are paying a monthly fee to jump the line and get far more visibility on the Musk-led platform.
In simple terms, X is effectively making money off the sale of CSAM being openly promoted on its platform.
Some of the identified accounts were active for over a year, highlighting the platform's failure to address the issue in a timely manner.
That's despite Meta's Instagram and Facebook banning related keywords that were being used by these accounts earlier this year, according to the report.
None of this should be particularly surprising. In the first couple of months after Musk took over the platform in late 2022, the team <a href="https://futurism.com/musk-reportedly-slashed-team-fighting-child-sexual-abuse-twitter">gutted the 20-person team</a> responsible for preventing child sexual exploitation.
According to February 2023 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/06/technology/twitter-child-sex-abuse.html">reporting by the New York Times</a>, the company failed to keep child abuse content off the platform, with CSAM widely circulating.
That's despite Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1595671290421170179">making lofty promises</a> about making "removing child exploitation" his "priority #1" three months earlier.
In May, the European Commission <a href="https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-requests-information-x-decreasing-content-moderation-resources-under-digital-services">requested information</a> on X's content moderation and how much resources it was committing to those efforts. The Commission pointed to an X transparency report, which revealed that its content moderation team was cut by almost 20 percent since October 2023.
Given the latest news, its content moderation in other parts of the world — the Arab-speaking world in particular — is woefully inadequate as well.
Worst of all, X's content moderation practices remain a black box. In October, an Australian court <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/australian-court-upholds-order-musks-x-pay-418000-fine-over-anti-child-abuse-2024-10-04/">upheld an order</a> for Musk's company to pay a fine of almost half a million dollars after failing to cooperate with regulators in a request for information regarding anti-child-abuse practices.
More on CSAM: <a href="https://futurism.com/twitter-failing-child-abuse-content">Elon Musk's Twitter Is Reportedly Failing Miserably to Contain Horrific Child Abuse Content</a>

Unmoderated

Some accounts uploaded the videos straight to the platform while X turned a blind eye.

Checkmarked X Users Caught Promoting Sites That Sell Child Sex Abuse Videos

<h2>Writing on the Wall</h2>
These days, it feels like everyone's trying to figure out how long Elon Musk and Donald Trump's <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-musk-america-space-policy-wild-ride">new bromance</a> could possibly last. The latest datapoint, make of it what you will. The president-elect is already disregarding some of Musk's suggestions.
"While I have offered my opinion on some cabinet candidates," Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1859296375113961850">wrote on X-formerly-Twitter</a>, "many selections occur without my knowledge, and decisions are 100 percent that of the President."
In case you're wondering, Musk — who shoveled a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/12/elon-musk-america-pac-donald-trump-campaign">stomach-churning $200 million</a> into Trump's reelection efforts — is acting like he's totally unbothered by that emerging dynamic. 
"I really enjoy spending time with President @realDonaldTrump," he wrote. "Haven’t seen him do one bad thing even once." But groveling didn't save Trump's former soulmate, Steve Bannon, from being <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42636667">abruptly fired</a> after Trump got sick of playing with him.  
<h2>Breakup Text</h2>
It's unlikely that fawning would protect Musk, either. Especially since he's pairing his sycophantic enthusiasm for Trump with several hard shoves to make the future president do what he wants.
"Elon Musk... and other tech leaders are influencing Trump's preparations for his second term, something which no other business leaders have been able to do at this level in past presidential elections," Trump's former chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told his lobbying clients in a new presentation, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/22/us/politics/elon-musk-trump.html">New York Times reports</a>.
That tracks, given Musk's maybe inept, <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-doge-innovation">maybe tyrannical</a> Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), as well as Trump's awkward recent appearance at a <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/trump-body-language">SpaceX launch</a>. Trump has trouble <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/452686-trump-riffs-on-twitter-typos-the-fingers-arent-as-good-as-the-brain/">even typing</a>, so it seems likely that his sudden interest in the tech execs of the world does stem from his relationship with Musk. 
But surrounded by <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-donald-trump-weird">irritated Trump staffers</a>, Musk is learning that his influence has hard boundaries. As he acknowledged in his X post, and according to the New York Times, the billionaire has made multiple, <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1857819784865362211">sometimes public</a> pleas for cabinet members that have gone unheard. 
As the richest person in the world, Musk wields undeniable power — but it's no match for a hotheaded Trump.
More on Musk: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-diablo-record">Elon Musk's Diablo IV Build May Only Look Good Because He's Great At Exploiting Loopholes</a>

Win Some, Lose Some

Better luck next time.

Donald Trump Is Already Ignoring Elon Musk's Suggestions

<h2>Break the Bank</h2>
Elon Musk's most famous baby mama is once again speaking out about her difficult relationship with the billionaire.
Claire "Grimes" Boucher, mother to three of <a href="https://www.today.com/parents/parents/elon-musk-kids-rcna19692">Musk's 12 known children</a>, wrote in a <a href="https://x.com/Grimezsz/status/1859148938323923201">post on X-formerly-Twitter</a> that her tumultuous custody battle with the 53-year-old nearly bankrupted her — the implication being that he basically wore her down until she acquiesced to at least some of his demands.
Responding to someone who asked about her new projects and her fight for custody of the<a href="https://people.com/all-about-elon-musk-grimes-kids-8304154"> three children she shares with Musk</a>, four-year-old X Æ A-12 and two-year-olds Exa and Tau, the 36-year-old Canadian artist got very real.
"The threat of losing [your] kids while going bankrupt fighting for them is not very conducive to creative thoughts," Boucher wrote. "I just slept and cried every minute I wasn't explicitly fighting for my kids during that year."
<h2>Game Unrecognize Game</h2>
These tweeted comments came just a few minutes after <a href="https://x.com/Grimezsz/status/1859148117083304060">another lengthy missive</a> in which the "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtH68PJIQLE">Oblivion</a>" singer remarked about her financial situation, called Musk "the love of my life," and said he was now "<a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/grimes-elon-musk-unrecognizable">unrecognizable</a>" to her.
"[I] spent a year locked in battle in a state with terrible mothers rights having my instagram posts and modeling used as reasons I shouldn't have my kids and fighting and detaching from the love of my life as he becomes unrecognizable to me," <a href="https://x.com/Grimezsz/status/1859148117083304060">she wrote</a> in the stream-of-consciousness post, "with a fraction of his resources (or iq/ strategy experience), all the while I didn't see one of my babies for 5 months."
"And this is only what can be said publicly," Grimes continued, "since most of my experience these last years should remain behind closed doors."
<h2>Open and Shut</h2>
Shortly after those admissions, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-and-grimes-settled-custody-dispute-in-texas-2024-11">Business Insider reported</a> that a court official confirmed that the custody case between Musk and Boucher had officially been closed.
The court clerk in Travis County, where Boucher sued Musk for custody of all three of their children <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/grimes-just-sued-elon-musk-over-their-kids">more than a year ago</a>, declined to provide BI any more details about the case.
Strangely, Grimes' posts about Musk and their custody battle also come weeks after an <a href="https://people.com/exes-elon-musk-and-grimes-are-house-hunting-for-bel-air-mansion-to-share-with-his-other-children-moms-source-8739640">alleged insider told People</a> that she was house-shopping with her billionaire ex in Bel Air as he seeks to <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-children-mothers-compound">build a compound</a> of sorts for all of his under-18 children and their mothers. It remains unclear, however, if <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/grimes-joining-elon-musk-compound-children-mothers">Boucher plans to join</a>.
More on Musk's family: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/vivian-wilson-slams-elon-musk-control-freak">Elon Musk’s Daughter Vivian Says He’s a "Delusional and Grubby Little Control Freak"</a>

Battle Royale

Why does Elon Musk treat women this way?

Grimes Says Elon Musk’s Brutal Custody Battle Was Driving Her to Bankruptcy

<h2>Clearcut Logging</h2>
Hackers have targeted a phony "online university" founded by the <a href="https://www.the-independent.com/news/uk/home-news/andrew-tate-far-right-links-b2150328.html">far-right influencer</a> and <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/twitter-paying-accused-sex-trafficker">alleged human trafficker</a> Andrew Tate, gaining access to thousands of files and chatlogs from people who paid for his sketchy lessons.
As the <a href="https://www.dailydot.com/debug/andrew-tate-the-real-world-hack/">Daily Dot reports</a>, a group of purported "hacktivists" breached private user files on Tate's subscription-based "The Real World" site and leaked the chat logs, exposing the idiotic musings of those who pay the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-64125045">self-described "misogynist"</a> $50 per month for his crank wisdom.
"Maybe it’s just the [mainstream media], but I am starting to fear for my own safety and the future of the USA," one of the users wrote the day after Donald Trump's assassination attempt earlier this year, per the logs viewed by the Dot. "Shootings every day, LGBTQ agenda, the matrix, I live in a very good area with a very good home life but I am sick of all this garbage happening here."
Along with breaching the user information and chatlogs, the unidentified group flooded the <a href="https://www.thepinknews.com/2024/11/18/andrew-tate-uses-homophobic-slur-to-attack-the-haka/">notoriously homophobic</a> Tate's Rumble chatroom with LGBTQ-themed emoji in the middle of one of his shows.
According to one of the Dot's sources with knowledge of the situation, the platform was "hilariously insecure" — as also evidenced by <a href="https://www.cyberdaily.au/security/10580-andrew-tates-the-real-world-exposes-almost-a-million-users">another hack earlier this year</a> exposing nearly a million users' personal information.
This lack of security made it easy, per the hackers' own statement to the site, to "upload emojis, delete attachments, crash everyone’s clients, and temporarily ban people."
<h2>Legal Defense</h2>
Maybe the most interesting question is what else the hackers haven't released yet — and whether it could affect Tate's ongoing legal jeopardy.
While it doesn't appear that Tate has responded publicly to the hack, the timing could not be worse for the 37-year-old "Manosophere" icon.
As <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/romanian-court-moves-remove-evidence-human-trafficking-case-against-andrew-tate-2024-11-19/">Reuters reported</a> earlier in the week, Tate and his brother Tristan both had appeals accepted in a Romanian court, where the influencer faces charges related to <a href="https://apnews.com/article/romania-andrew-tate-rape-trafficking-charge-fb22c837027bf44ddf0316d46dfaf2b1">sex trafficking allegations in that country</a>. Tate is also the subject of a more recent civil suit filed by <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyje823er4o">women in the United Kingdom</a> who claim he raped them.
While some social media commentators attempted to <a href="https://x.com/tateupdatesx/status/1858839538912600519">overstate the significance</a> of the Romanian appeal and characterize them as <a href="https://x.com/Shadaya_Knight/status/1858856655561056305">outright dismissals</a>, <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-andrew-tate-human-trafficking-case-not-dismissed-1988348">Newsweek noted</a> that the appeals court merely removed part of the evidence from the sex trafficking case due to inconsistencies in the original indictment.
From a minor legal win to a major hacker blow, Tate's clearly had a hell of a week — and we couldn't imagine it happening to a nicer guy.
More on hacktivism: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/project-2025-gay-furry-hackers-response">Project 2025 Exec Loses Mind, Threatening "Furry Perverts" After Embarrassing Hack</a>

Beta Max

Thousands of chatlogs.

Hacktivists Leak Chatlogs From Andrew Tate's Fake Online University

<h2>Power Player</h2>
Elon Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1859304361547182451">recently shared</a> a clip of him clearing The Pit — a severely challenging dungeon in the punishing action role-playing game Diablo IV — in about one minute and 50 seconds, potentially setting a world record. But some Diablo fans think that Musk's supposed accomplishment is just more of his real-life strategy of habitually exploiting loopholes.
What "Elon fails to disclose," <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/elonmusk/comments/1gw6i1v/comment/ly7ynu2/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;utm_term=1&amp;utm_content=share_button">one comment</a> in the Elon Musk subreddit charged, "is that, in the past 48 hours, there was an HP exploit found in [Diablo IV] that multiplies your HP by ridiculous amounts."
Specifically, the Elixir of Antivenin, a buff that's meant to increase a player's health by only 15 percent for a limited time, was actually stretching health pools <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4/comments/1gvqzhu/were_in_the_negatives_now_boys/">to a ludicrous degree</a>. Developer Blizzard is <a href="https://x.com/PezRadar/status/1859389209238257884">already planning</a> to fix the bug, but Musk could have easily exploited it while recording his potentially record-breaking clip.
<h2>Patch Notes</h2>
On a certain level, you can't argue with results.
"The Spiritborne build that Musk used scales damage with HP, resulting in god-mode level damage" for anyone taking advantage of the Elixir bug, the Reddit user said. "If you notice, Musk hides his damage numbers through his settings in the clip he uploaded to [X-formerly-Twitter] in order to hide the outrageous damage from the bug."
This theory isn't out of the question. Musk is the king of obfuscation. He's misrepresented <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-robots-remotely-controlled-analyst">Tesla's technology</a>, hungrily embraced <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-falls-for-fake-news">fake news</a>, and even concealed <a href="https://futurism.com/experts-elon-musk-secret-children-employee">how many children</a> he has. His tendency toward braggadocio helps him enchant fans to the point where his lies don't matter, much like Musk's <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-daddy-issues">new father figure</a> Donald Trump.
And Musk's over-the-top caption on his Diablo clip suggests that his impressive gaming is simply another thing to shovel on the billionaire's steaming mountain of lies.
"So many life lessons to be learned from speedrunning video games on max difficulty," Musk wrote. "Teaches you to see the matrix, rather than simply exist in the matrix." Yeah, whatever you say.
More on Musk: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/grimes-elon-musk-unrecognizable">Grimes Says Elon Musk Has Become "Unrecognizable"</a>

Epic Gamer Moment

Something's not right.

Elon Musk's Diablo IV Build May Only Look Good Because He's Great At Exploiting Loopholes

<h2>Innovation Killer</h2>
President-elect Donald Trump has <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-elon-musk-doge-department">appointed</a> multi-hyphenate billionaire Elon Musk and big pharma shill Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a new "Department of Government Efficiency" (or DOGE, in a nod to a <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2024/11/13/what-is-doge-elon-musk/76255384007/">cringey memecoin</a>) an effort to inflict "<a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-trump-wins-hardship">temporary hardship</a>" on the American people by making massive cuts to the federal government.
And even if it were to successfully do just that — something experts <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-doge-department-fake-feel-important">have plenty of doubts about</a> — chopping down the "discretionary" budget could be a disaster for innovation in the country.
As <a href="https://www.politico.com/newsletters/digital-future-daily/2024/11/21/could-doge-threaten-innovation-00191035">Politico reports</a>, indiscriminate budget cuts could sever key public-private partnerships and leave United States startups behind.
"If you are indiscriminately cutting these expenditures or staff, you are very much at risk of damaging the connective tissue across our innovation system," Center for Strategic and International Studies senior fellow Sujai Shivakumar told Politico. "This is a time when we actually need to be doubling down and reinforcing our innovation system, and we would hope that any department looking to create efficiencies is mindful of that."
<h2>Mass Firing</h2>
Musk's approach to cutting budgets, which has historically <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-slams-tesla-layoffs">involved mass layoffs</a> and the dissolution of <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/firing-supercharger-team-elon-musk-reverses-course">entire vital departments</a> across his companies, could end up being more of the same when it comes to DOGE.
In an <a href="https://www.wsj.com/opinion/musk-and-ramaswamy-the-doge-plan-to-reform-government-supreme-court-guidance-end-executive-power-grab-fa51c020">op-ed in the Wall Street Journal</a>, Musk and Ramaswamy detailed how they'll fire people across the federal government.
But whether applying that kind of Silicon Valley-style thinking to government bureaucracy will prove effective remains dubious at best.
"I think [Musk and Ramaswamy are] focused on the fact that having civil servants is the problem, and that they need to be like tech company employees," Bay Area venture capitalist Rohit Krishnan told Politico. "I’m not sure it’s true. Because there is a lot of operational work needed, and actual negotiation to make things work."
Now that Musk and Ramaswamy are searching for <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/10872303/billionaire-elon-musk-high-iq-task-force-employees-zero-pay/">people with a so-called "high IQ</a>" who are willing to work for no pay on the former's social media platform, their ability to fill the massive civil servant hole they want to bore sounds highly questionable.
In short, by ripping up the established connections between entrepreneurs and the government, the DOGE department could be devastating to American innovation.
But whether they'll even have a chance to tear down these relationships in the first place is far less clear. The so-called "department" will be operating from outside the government in what increasingly sounds like an advisory role.
In other words, Musk and Ramaswamy will need to get Congress on board with their indiscriminate mass culling of civil servants — which could prove far more difficult.
More on DOGE: <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-doge-department-fake-feel-important">Elon Musk's "DOGE" Department Sounds Like It Might Be a Fake Thing to Make Him Feel Important</a>

Ripping Up Connections

"You are very much at risk of damaging the connective tissue across our innovation system."

Experts Say Elon Musk's Ridiculous "DOGE" Initiative Could Actually Crush Innovation

<h2>Fossil Fools</h2>
While attending the United Nations' <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/21/climate/cop20-climate-summit-negotiations.html">COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan</a>, a New York Times reporter decided to engage in a time-honored local custom of bathing his entire nude body in crude oil.
As the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/21/world/europe/cop29-azerbaijan-oil-baths.html">newspaper reports</a>, the same oil that fueled the Soviet victory over the Nazis had led the Eastern European country to petrostate status — though its reserves differ from those in the rest of the world, because it doesn't burn the skin and has alleged healing properties.
As NYT Moscow bureau chief Anton Troianovski notes in its account of his ordeal, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/04/world/asia/04azerbaijan.html">local scientists</a> and historical explorers have touted the <a href="https://www.euronews.com/travel/2018/08/20/the-natftalan-bath-oil-azerbaijan-s-slick-beauty-treatment">benefits of oil from its Naftalan region</a> for thousands of years, saying it can help heal wounds and ease aches and pains.
"Near the Georgian border there is a spring from which gushes a stream of oil in such abundance that a hundred ships may load here at once," <a href="https://onepetro.org/JPT/article-abstract/76/07/18/546889/Azerbaijan-The-Land-of-Unquenchable-Fire?redirectedFrom=fulltext">Marco Polo wrote in the 13th century</a>. "This oil is not good to eat, but it is good for burning and as a salve for men and camels affected with itch or scab."
<h2>Oil Wellness</h2>
To see about this salve-like nature, Troianovski traveled four hours away from Azerbaijan's capital city of Baku during the UN's COP29 summit to Naftalan, now a resort town with <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/crude-oil-baths-in-azerbaijan-2015-7">dozens of oil spas</a>.
"[The oil] crept into every crevice of my submerged body and every fold of my skin," he wrote. "It smothered the hair on my limbs, making me look a little like an animal stuck in an oil spill."
When in the bath, Troianovski realized that instead of the heavy stickiness he expected, the oil was actually quite slippery. It was, he wrote, an "otherworldly" or even "netherworldly" sensation that the writer was given exactly 10 minutes to ponder before being instructed to stand up with the help of a wall handle.
"Then," Troianovski wrote, "came an attendant to scrape it all off."
Using a long shoehorn, the attendant scraped the substance off of Troianovski then patted him down with "oversized paper towels" before giving him a washcloth to handle his own nether regions.
To "process the experience" back at the UN climate conference, the NYT bureau chief decided to go to the site of the world's <a href="https://www.inventionandtech.com/content/worlds-first-oil-well">first-ever industrial oil well</a>. Located today in the parking lot of a swimming pool in Baku, the rig continues to pump out the same <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/stories/fossil-fuels-dirty-facts">harmful</a>, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/12/03/what-azerbaijan-plans-to-do-when-the-oil-runs-out/">finite</a>, and <a href="https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/crude-petroleum/reporter/aze">uber-profitable</a> substance Troianovski had just been bathing in on the other side of Azerbaijan.
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"Take it out, sell it," an oil rig worker named Khalid told him. "It’s like God sent this to us."
More on petrostates and climate change: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/secret-video-climate-change-official-promising-fossil-fuel-deals">Secret Video Shows Top Climate Change Conference Official Promising to Facilitate Fossil Fuel Deals</a>
</div>

Last Resort

You can't make this up.

COP29 Climate Summit Being Held in Petrostate Where People Bathe Their Nude Bodies in Crude Oil

<h2>File Error</h2>
OpenAI made a major oopsie when its engineers accidentally deleted a bunch of evidence sought by the New York Times in its copyright lawsuit against the AI firm and <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/microsoft-mocks-new-york-times-openai-lawsuit">its benefactor Microsoft</a>.
In a <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.612697/gov.uscourts.nysd.612697.328.0.pdf">letter to the judge presiding</a> over the suit, lawyers for the NYT and the New York Daily News said that a ton of evidentiary files went missing while the attorneys were perusing them.
Earlier this month, the firm provided the publishers' attorneys with two massive caches of training data files from the newspapers, in keeping with its defense that because they were publicly published, it was <a href="https://futurism.com/openai-content-new-york-times-lawsuit">fair to use those articles</a> to train AI models.
Since the beginning of November, the newspapers' attorneys had spent more than 150 hours sifting through those caches — until, in the middle of the month, OpenAI engineers erased all of the search data in one of the caches.
<h2>Partial Recovery</h2>
While the company managed to recover most of the data itself, the folder structure and file names were "irretrievably" lost, meaning that the newspapers' attorneys can't use them "to determine where the news plaintiffs’ copied articles were used to build [OpenAI’s] models."
As a result, the lawyers for the NYT and the NYDN had to completely retrace their steps, losing a week of work in the process. Now, the attorneys are asking the judge to make OpenAI do the legwork caused by the apparent error because, as they put it, "OpenAI is in the best position to search its own datasets."
While the attorneys noted that they have "no reason to believe" the erasure was intentional, that deletion has nevertheless set them back as they build their case against the firm.
"The [newspapers] have also provided the information that OpenAI needs to run those searches," the letter reads. "All that is needed is for OpenAI to commit to doing so in a timely manner."
Despite that seemingly reasonable request, it seems that OpenAI may be planning a rebuttal.
"We disagree with the characterizations made," <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/new-york-times-openai-erased-potential-lawsuit-evidence/">an OpenAI spokesperson told Wired</a>, "and will file our response soon."
More on OpenAI legal moves: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/openai-guild-lawsuit-communications">OpenAI Implores Judge Not to Expose Communications by Its Top Researchers</a>

Don't Delete

This was a massive mistake. 

OpenAI "Accidentally" Deleted Evidence From Its New York Times Lawsuit

<h2>Midas Touch</h2>
It's been nearly a year since <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/30/henry-kissinger-war-criminal/">Nobel peace laureate and war criminal</a> Henry Kissinger died — but he's somehow still offering policy suggestions from beyond the grave.
In an uncanny video introducing his posthumously-published book "Genesis," an AI-generated voice clone of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2023/11/30/henry-kissinger-anthony-bourdain-cambodia/">amply loathed</a> Kissinger likens the burgeoning field of AI to the curse of King Midas.
As the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Midas-Greek-mythology">mythic tale goes</a>, the Greek god Dionysus grants the greedy Midas a wish: that everything he touches will turn to gold. Before long, the king realizes that the gift is actually a curse when it comes true to the letter, and by the time he seeks to wash it off in the River Pactolus, he'd already lost his beloved daughter Marigold to it.
"What does this tell us," the robotic Kissinger voice intones, "about humanity trying to wield a power which they cannot possibly understand?"
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope and the Human Spirit" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OT_S4g5G5N4?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>Mixed Messages</h2>
This book co-written by <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/07/he-was-a-crook/308699/">Richard Nixon</a>'s secretary of state, alongside ex-Google CEO <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/eric-schmidt-ai-regulate-itself">Eric Schmidt</a> and former Microsoft executive Craig Mundie, seems mixed in its takeaways about both the dangers and the benefits posed by AI.
"Eric, Craig, and I decided to write Genesis to examine what artificial intelligence means for humanity," AI Kissinger said, "and explore solutions to the challenges it poses."
In the video, Mundie and Schmidt point out that they were the ones to introduce Kissinger to the concept of AI, and that in doing so, it brought the powerful trio closer than ever.
Together, they theorized about what role AI will play in the so-called <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/11/ai-genesis-excerpt-kissinger-schmidt-mundie/680619/">Homo technicus era</a>, a term <a href="https://www.eticaepolitica.net/tecnoetica/jmg_on_technoethics[en].htm">coined two decades ago</a> to describe the next era of human evolution in which we might essentially become one with the machine.
While the technology could revolutionize everything from healthcare to diplomacy, as the AI voice clone of the <a href="https://millercenter.org/kissingers-foreign-policy-legacy-tainted-vietnam">architect of the Vietnam War</a> said without a trace of irony, it could also threaten our very existence.
"As these AI systems become increasingly sophisticated," the Kissinger voice clone explained, "it is imperative that governments create an environment where ethical considerations and technological advancement can progress in tandem."
It remains unclear whether that particular bit of advice will be heeded.
During his forthcoming second presidency, Donald Trump has already <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/trump-repeal-restrictions-ai">vowed to unleash AI</a> from its current barely-imposed constraints. He'll also, however, be once again bringing his son-in-law and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2018-08-13/kushner-foreign-policy-role-grew-after-kissinger-lunch-correct?sref=YfHlo0rL">onetime Kissinger protege</a> Jared Kushner <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/15/politics/jared-kushner-trump-middle-east-policy/index.html">along for the ride</a>.
More on AI politics: <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-bros-terrified-agi-trump">AI Bros Terrified Singularity Will Hit While Trump Is President</a>