While <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/hollywood-hills-burn-la-engulfed-by-the-big-one-2025-01-09/">California burns</a>, a scientist from the world's biggest artificial intelligence chipmaker is suggesting that AI could help fight the wildfires — even though the technology has already begun degrading the environment, and is slated to do much more.
In a <a href="https://x.com/DrJimFan/status/1877387810879189214">post on X-formerly-Twitter</a> featuring a video of a humanoid robot walking down a street in China, Nvidia "embodied AI" researcher Jim Fan suggested, after complimenting the bot's "swag," that such machines need "to go fire-fighting asap!"
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
I&#39;ve verified from reliable sources. New visual Turing Test: this is a real robot demo! The controller is a neural net trained in Isaac simulator using reinforcement learning and then sim2real. Reward engineering is all you need.
Walking gait&#39;s got swag but we need these robots… <a href="https://t.co/fwAjLPd51g">https://t.co/fwAjLPd51g</a> <a href="https://t.co/w3CxFKoRNy">pic.twitter.com/w3CxFKoRNy</a>
&mdash; Jim Fan (@DrJimFan) <a href="https://twitter.com/DrJimFan/status/1877387810879189214?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 9, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Unfortunately, that tone-deaf suggestion isn't the only Nvidia blunder that occurred during this week's fires in Los Angeles.
As the <a href="https://aftermath.site/california-wildfires-ces-generative-ai-nvidia-google">gaming site Aftermath notes</a>, this year's Consumer Electronics Show took place in Las Vegas, a five-hour drive away from the wildfire-stricken city of angels. At the convention, the chipmaker showcased some really stupid generative AI gambits like its "Neural Faces" tech, which purports to "cross the uncanny valley" by changing video game characters' faces — all while eating up a ton of carbon-emission-causing electricity and water, both intrinsically linked to the devastation in LA.
It'd be one thing if LA weren't literally on fire. But for the company to boast about energy-intensive crap that nobody wants while people <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/live/pacific-palisades-fire-updates-los-angeles">lose their homes and lives</a> just one state over is, as Aftermath suggests, feels beyond the pale.
While <a href="https://mashable.com/article/chatgpt-water-los-angeles-fires">AI alone can't be blamed</a> for the blazes that ripped through the Los Angeles area this past week, new findings out of the University of California, Riverside and Caltech — which is itself located just a few miles from the <a href="https://abc7.com/post/southern-california-wildfire-scene-devastation-altadena-air7-helicopter-surveys-damage-caused-eaton-fire/15787156/">fire-leveled town of Altadena</a> — show how harmful AI has already become.
As those Golden State scientists <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.06288">suggest in a not-yet-peer-reviewed paper</a>, AI is not only drinking up tons of water to cool data centers, but has already begun escalating carbon emissions and water consumption. Though that paper focuses more on AI's impact on public health, it notes, as <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/05/1084417/ais-carbon-footprint-is-bigger-than-you-think/">so many</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/06/21/artificial-intelligence-nuclear-fusion-climate/">others have</a>, that the technology is already proving harmful — and that it will only get worse as it grows. Remember, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/sam-altman-seeks-trillions-of-dollars-to-reshape-business-of-chips-and-ai-89ab3db0">seeking trillions of dollars</a> in infrastructure to power the industry he envisions.
And for every well-intentioned scientist like Fan, there are a dozen others looking to make a quick buck from worthless "innovations" that come with a hefty environmental price tag.
At the end of the day, an Nvidia scientist suggesting that AI can help solve these climate change-fueled fires feels akin (albeit on a smaller scale) to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/11/finite-carbon-forest-offsets-analysis">oil companies selling so-called "carbon credits</a>" that purport — <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/18/revealed-forest-carbon-offsets-biggest-provider-worthless-verra-aoe">dubiously, critics say </a>— to offset greenhouse gas emissions.
Though there are obviously much worse polluters in the world right now than AI companies, it won't stay that way if the industry <a href="https://hbr.org/2024/07/the-uneven-distribution-of-ais-environmental-impacts">continues to grow at its current speed</a> — and if that happens, there's little doubt that more Earth will be scorched.
More on AI and the environment: <a href="https://futurism.com/hollywood-sign-fire-ai-slop">People Think the Hollywood Sign Is on Fire Because of AI Slop</a>

FireBot

Read the room, dude.

While AI Causes Climate Change, Nvidia Scientist Proposes AI-Powered Firefighting Robots

This week, multi-hyphenate billionaire Elon Musk <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-blames-la-wildfires-black-firefighters-dei">blamed</a> the disastrous Los Angeles wildfires on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.
The SpaceX CEO even went as far as to <a href="https://x.com/davidgross_man/status/1877459903402369336/photo/1">agree</a> with a disgusting comment by far-right pundit Matt Walsh, who argued that Los Angeles was struggling with the ongoing fires because it "set out to exclude white men from becoming firefighters."
The billionaire's belief that racially diverse hiring practices are somehow to blame is a preposterous and unabashedly racist argument that flies in the face of reason and conveniently glosses over the things that actually played a big role: <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-wildfires-los-angeles-fire-chief-budget-cuts/">severe budget cuts</a> causing a shortage of firefighters, not to mention the looming global disaster of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0ewe4p9128o">climate change</a>.
Yet his ex-girlfriend the musician Claire "Grimes" Boucher — with whom he was recently embroiled in a <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-grimes-tweets-custody">nasty custody battle</a> over their several kids — hurried to his defense.
In a <a href="https://x.com/Grimezsz/status/1877178121289400746">Thursday post</a> on her ex's social media platform X, Boucher revealed that she "just had to evacuate" LA and ended up "aimlessly driving out of the city."
When another user <a href="https://x.com/iannkatz/status/1877198192426590629">accused</a> her of having been "married to one of the most evil climate deniers of all time," Boucher defended Musk, <a href="https://x.com/Grimezsz/status/1877449055288308206">arguing</a> that he was "pretty vocal about climate change and is primarily known for, in part, revolutionizing electric vehicles" — a rote and <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-deletes-elon-musk-master-plan">woefully out-of-date characterization</a>.
Musk himself <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/09/us/elon-musk-wildfires-la-california.html">repeatedly downplayed the role of climate change</a> in the ongoing LA fires, flying in the face of decades of scientific evidence.
"I think there's plenty to be angry about but when you stray from fact and reason, your critique loses power," she added. "The biggest challenge right now is not falling into creating and consuming dopamine rage bait on social media and focussing on thoughtful, rational, truth-based discourse so that we can properly diagnose and solve our problems."
Even more gallingly, it's Musk who's currently one of the biggest sources of "dopamine rage bait on social media" as the disaster unfolds, who's ultra-publicly doing his very best to bury "rational, truth-based discourse."
As if falling in line to support one of the <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/elon-musk-twitter-misinformation-timeline-1235076786/">biggest and vilest sources of disinformation online</a> wasn't enough, the tweet highlights her and Musk's highly unusual relationship. For quite some time now, things have been pretty rocky between the two, to say the least. An ugly custody battle over their three children that <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/grimes-elon-musk-custody-bankruptcy">almost drove her to bankruptcy</a> has put a strain on their years-long relationship.
Meanwhile, Boucher took to X to follow Musk's lead and spread unsubstantiated claims.
"Seen a few videos of ppl setting fires," she wrote in a <a href="https://x.com/Grimezsz/status/1877088638669885444">tweet</a>. "I think there was at least some crime involved in this, def some smart villain planning if so."
As always, it's hard to get an accurate read on how Boucher feels about Musk and his sociopathic beliefs. Is this really the time to come to his defense as thousands of homes burn in LA?
Is there really any nuance left in their relationship, or has Boucher finally given up to drink the Kool-Aid? Sources <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">told People</a> magazine in November that she was planning on moving into a mansion set aside by Musk as part of a <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-children-mothers-compound">strange compound</a> for his many kids and their mothers.
It's unclear how Boucher feels about DEI hiring practices specifically — but perhaps at this point, it's best not to even ask.
More on Grimes: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/grimes-elon-musk-custody-bankruptcy">Grimes Says Elon Musk’s Brutal Custody Battle Was Driving Her to Bankruptcy</a>

Stockholm Syndrome

Read the room, damn.

Grimes Defends Elon Musk While Fleeing Fire He's Blaming on Woke

<h2>Big Dial</h2>
You know the <a href="https://x.com/dril/status/841892608788041732">iconic Dril tweet</a> about turning a bit dial labeled "racism," while looking back at the audience for approval?
Well, it's top of mind amid Meta's <a href="https://futurism.com/zuckerberg-meta-announcement-hate-speech">content moderation overhaul</a>, in which it secretly provided employees with examples of horrific hate speech that is now admissible on the platform.
As <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/01/09/facebook-instagram-meta-hate-speech-content-moderation/">The Intercept reports</a>, leaked training documents show just how far the Mark Zuckerberg-owned megalith will allow hateful users to go on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads now that the company's CEO is trying desperately to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8j9e1x9z2xo">cozy up to president-elect Donald Trump</a> (who, in surely-unrelated news, <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/trump-imprison-mark-zuckerberg">recently threatened</a> to throw Zuckerberg in prison.)
The document explains to employees that epithets like "gays are freaks" and "immigrants are grubby, filthy pieces of shit" are now allowed under the new policy. People can also now declare themselves "proud racists," and can say things like "Black people are more violent than whites."
<h2>Zucked Up</h2>
While certain types of vitriol — like what the company terms "nausea-based hate" and insults about intellectual ability — are still verboten, many of those prohibitions seem to now have loopholes. For example, it's still against Meta's rules to say that one group is smarter than another — unless you add that you have seen academic evidence supporting your claim.
"I just read a statistical study about Jewish people being smarter than Christians," one of the examples of accepted speech shows. "From what I can tell, it’s true!"
It's unclear, The Intercept notes, whether or one would be required to actually link to said "study," or if they just have to mention that they've seen one.
Along with the intense racial and religious bigotry people are now allowed to spew on Facebook and Instagram, the document also explicitly states that the slur "tr*nny" is now fair game on Meta platforms.
In the initial document that The Intercept obtained, commenting "look at that tr*nny" on a photo of a 17-year-old girl was listed as acceptable — we swear, this is 100 percent real — but following publication, a Meta spokesperson reached out to the outlet to say that that example was a mistake. According to that spokesperson, the 17-year-old girl post was supposed to illustrate content that was not acceptable. Oops!
When <a href="https://futurism.com/zuckerberg-meta-announcement-hate-speech">announcing the new content rules</a>, Zuckerberg championed the changes that will help Meta "get back to our roots around free expression." As the examples from this leaked document show, that "freedom" clearly includes disgusting and harmful speech — a policy that has <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/change-twitter-elon-musk-panicking-bluesky">driven people away from X-formerly-Twitter in droves</a> and which will almost certainly make the <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/study-quit-facebook-less-politically-polarized">steady exodus</a> from Facebook <a href="https://gizmodo.com/a-lot-of-people-are-searching-for-how-to-delete-facebook-and-instagram-and-we-would-like-their-clicks-2000548127">accelerate all the more</a>.
More on Meta: <a href="https://futurism.com/meta-fake-users-hate-speech">Facebook Is Creating Fake AI-Powered Black Women While Changing Its Rules So It’s Okay to Harass Real Ones</a>

Virtue Signalling

We're not kidding: users can now declare themselves "proud racists" on Facebook. 

Leaked Facebook Documents Show Exactly How Far You’re Allowed to Turn the "Racism" Dial

<h2>Better Late</h2>
Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin is preparing to launch its New Glenn rocket from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida just after midnight on Sunday.
It's been a long time coming: the company has been working on the 320-foot rocket, which shares similar proportions and stats with SpaceX's Falcon 9 workhorse, for <a href="https://nextspaceflight.com/rockets/67">well over a decade</a>.
But whether it can truly compete with the likes of SpaceX remains an open question. Over that time, the Elon Musk-led company has seized the opportunity to cement itself as the space company and NASA contractor to beat.
The mission was originally slated for a January 10 launch, but the date slipped to Sunday almost immediately.
So far, the Bezos-led company has <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/blue-origin-vague-rocket-launch">launched a much smaller reusable suborbital launch vehicle</a> called New Shepard, which has been <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/28-million-ticket-blue-origin-scheduling-conflict">sending wealthy space tourists</a> to the Earth's upper atmosphere <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMHhXzpwupU">since July 2021</a>.
If successful, New Glenn could offer SpaceX some much-needed competition as US space exploration efforts continue to <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-moon-landing-pushed-back-yet-again">grow in scope and scale</a> — but a failure could represent even more egg on Bezos' face.
<h2>Stiff Competition</h2>
Despite a lengthy development time and <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-rocket-explodes-testing">plenty of setbacks</a>, the multi-stage rocket is no slouch. The New Glenn can <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/blue-origin-seeks-overnight-success-for-1st-new-glenn-rocket-launch/#:~:text=With%20seven%2C%20New%20Glenn%20can,to%20fit%20three%20school%20buses.">produce roughly twice as much</a> thrust at liftoff than Falcon 9, but falls short of the Falcon Heavy variant. It's 90 feet taller and 11 feet wider in diameter than a Falcon 9.
As part of its NG-1 mission this weekend, Blue Origin is hoping to launch a payload dubbed the "<a href="https://www.blueorigin.com/news/blue-ring-pathfinder-payload">Bue Ring Pathfinder</a>" into orbit, a testbed for the company's Blue Ring spacecraft platform designed to support orbital operations.
A lot is at stake for the company — and we're not just talking about the longstanding feud between Musk and Bezos.
SpaceX is currently firmly in the driver's seat, and NASA's incoming administrator is <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/trump-names-jared-isaacman-space-tourist-head-nasa">deeply in the pocket of the firm</a>. Musk's close relationship with president-elect Donald Trump could also make it difficult for Blue Origin to secure important governmental contracts.
"This is our first flight and we’ve prepared rigorously for it," Blue Origin's New Glenn senior VP Jarrett Jones <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/blue-origin-seeks-overnight-success-for-1st-new-glenn-rocket-launch/#:~:text=With%20seven%2C%20New%20Glenn%20can,to%20fit%20three%20school%20buses.">told the Orlando Sentinel</a>. "But no amount of ground testing or mission simulations are a replacement for flying this rocket."
"It’s time to fly," he added. "No matter what happens, we’ll learn, refine, and apply that knowledge to our next launch."
More on New Glenn: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-rocket-explodes-testing">Ahead of October Launch, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin Rocket Explodes During Testing</a>

Bezos, Too

"It’s time to fly."

After Over 10 Years, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin Is Finally About to Launch Its First Falcon 9-Style Rocket

<h2>Fuelling the Fire</h2>
Instead of mourning the devastating destruction and death that's befallen the city of Los Angeles due to raging wildfires this week, Elon Musk has taken to his far-right hate speech incubator X to blame the fires on — wait for it — diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.
In other words, Musk is using unabashedly racist lies to pin the climate change-fueled disaster on minorities.
"They prioritized DEI over saving lives and homes," Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1877025171241918702">tweeted</a>. He was responding to a post by the anti-LGBTQ+ hate account Libs of TikTok, which claimed that the LA Fire Department ensured its employees were "racially diverse enough" — something that was then contorted into racist vitriol in Musk's twisted mind.
It's an appalling — and unsurprising — development, highlighting Musk's <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-black-students-low-iqs">well-documented</a> descent into sociopathic and extremist thinking, inspired by the right-wing cadre he's surrounded himself with on his social media platform.
<h2>Racist Antics</h2>
We won't waste our time to tell you how incredibly bigoted and misled Musk's claim is. As <a href="https://www.jezebel.com/as-the-world-burns-elon-musk-right-wing-grifters-amplify-bigoted-dei-lies">Jezebel points out</a>, severe budget cuts have led to a terrifying shortage of firefighters in LA, motivated by diverting funds to the police department. Worse yet, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/08/la-wildfires-incarcerated-firefighters">forced imprisoned prisoners</a> to battle the blazes for as little as $5.80 per day — an atrocious glimpse of a climate change-fueled dystopia in which there are countless reasonable things to blame besides mild diversity efforts.
Other users on Musk's X spread fear-mongering claims about "<a href="https://x.com/Elex_Michaelson/status/1877178099282137190">looters in LA</a>" in the aftermath of the devastating fire, accompanied by <a href="https://futurism.com/hollywood-sign-fire-ai-slop">AI-generated slop</a>.
It's far from the first time Musk has spewed racist lies to rail against DEI practices. Last year, <a href="https://futurism.com/civil-rights-groups-horrified-elon-musk-racist">civil rights groups were horrified</a> after he <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1744821656990675184?s=20">endorsed</a> a tweet suggesting Black students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have lower IQs and shouldn't become pilots.
Musk has also baselessly <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1742653436393406618">claimed</a> that "DEI is just another word for racism."
In short, blaming the devastating wildfires, which have <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/live/pacific-palisades-fire-updates-los-angeles">taken the lives of at least ten people</a>, on racially diverse hiring practices is only the latest sign that Musk has completely lost the plot.
And considering Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also <a href="https://futurism.com/zuckerberg-meta-announcement-hate-speech">announced new measures</a> to increase hate speech on Facebook, we should expect more hurtful conspiracy theories to run rampant on social media.
More on Musk: <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-pregnant">Elon Musk Says He Longs to Get Pregnant So He Can Produce as Many Children as Possible</a>

No Conscience

How does it just keep getting worse?

Elon Musk Blames LA Wildfires on Black Firefighters

<h2>Free Loaders</h2>
Newly unredacted court documents allege that Meta, formerly Facebook, knowingly used pirated books obtained from the online archive Library Genesis to train its AI models, <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/new-documents-unredacted-meta-copyright-ai-lawsuit/">Wired </a><a href="https://www.wired.com/story/new-documents-unredacted-meta-copyright-ai-lawsuit/">reports</a>. 
Submitted in an <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/sarah-silverman-celebrities-sue-openai-copyright-infringement">ongoing lawsuit</a> filed against the platform by a group of authors including Ta-Nehisi Coates and comedian Sarah Silverman, the documents were finally released in full after a judge shot down Meta's attempts to keep portions of them sealed.
The judge argued, per Wired, that Meta fought for the redactions merely to "avoid negative publicity," citing a damning internal quote from one of its employees.
"If there is media coverage suggesting we have used a dataset we know to be pirated, such as LibGen, this may undermine our negotiating position with regulators on these issues," the employee wrote.
<h2>Lie-brary</h2>
Library Genesis, or LibGen, is a "shadow library" that provides free access to millions of books, academic articles, and magazines. 
That a multibillion-dollar corporation like Meta would tap into its store of pirated content is the latest sign of the impunity that tech companies have operated with to train their large language models, <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-training-data-shortage">vacuuming up copyrighted content en masse</a> with <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/openai-whistleblower-copyrighted-data">seemingly no regard for the law</a> — or even the decency, as one of the world's most valuable companies, to buy a single copy of each volume it was using to power its AI.
Meta and other AI leaders argue that using books and other data scraped from the web constitutes "fair use," but it will ultimately be up to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/27/business/media/new-york-times-open-ai-microsoft-lawsuit.html">legal battles like this one</a> to determine if that is the case.
Fair use or not, some of the exchanges exposed in the newly unredacted documents suggest that Meta employees knew that what they were doing was legally and ethically dicey.
With a grinning emoji, one engineer wrote: "Torrenting from a [Meta-owned] corporate laptop doesn't feel right," as quoted by Wired.
And it goes all the way to the top. A cited memo allegedly shows that after employee discussions about using LibGen were escalated to "MZ" — Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg — the AI team was "approved to use" material from the database.
<h2>High Seas</h2>
The plaintiffs argue that this shatters any plausibility that Meta may try to maintain.
"Meta has treated the so-called 'public availability' of shadow datasets as a get-out-of-jail-free card, notwithstanding that internal Meta records show every relevant decision-maker at Meta, up to and including its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, knew LibGen was 'a dataset we know to be pirated,'" they wrote in the most recent motion.
Moreover, the authors point to testimony from a Meta corporative representative as an admission that the company also helped disseminate the pirated books by "seeding" their corresponding torrents, or uploading portions of the material so that other users could download them.
More on AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/facebook-hosting-ai-hitler">Facebook Caught Hosting AI-Powered Hitler</a>

Torrent of Misuse

And Zuckerberg personally approved the piracy, according to these documents.

Facebook Apparently Trained Its AI by Torrenting Pirated Books Stolen From Authors

<h2>Drone Swatting</h2>
Firefighters are still struggling to contain multiple major wildfires as much of Los Angeles county <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/live/pacific-palisades-fire-updates-los-angeles">remains under a red flag warning</a>, with fierce winds fanning the flames.
At least ten people have lost their lives and more than 9,000 structures have been damaged so far, the <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/live/pacific-palisades-fire-updates-los-angeles">Los Angeles Times reports</a>.
And yet, instead of evacuating the area, some residents are literally getting in the way of lifesaving firefighting efforts. As the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/10/us/aircraft-collision-drone-palisades-fire.html">New York Times reports</a>, a civilian drone collided with a firefighting plane flying over the Palisades neighborhood on Thursday.
The plane, which belongs to the Los Angeles County Fire Department, managed to land but sustained enough damage to be put out of service — the very last thing the fire department needs right now as the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G2wSAxuz-M">most destructive fire</a> in the California city's history continues to rage on.
Let this be a lesson: according to the Federal Aviation Administration, violations of flight restrictions can <a href="https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/statements/general-statements">land you in prison for up to 12 months</a> and a fine of up to $75,000 — and if that's not bad enough, you could be literally undermining efforts to fight the destruction.
<h2>Scoop and Dump</h2>
According to Cal Fire officials, the FAA is investigating the incident. The plane's wing was punctured, forcing firefighters to put it out of commission.
The aircraft, a Canadair CL-415 Super Scooper, can fly at extremely low altitudes to — as its name suggests — scoop up water from nearby sources and dump it on fires. It can hold 1,600 gallons, and refill it in just five minutes.
Meanwhile, the FAA imposed flight restrictions in the skies above the embattled city. Nobody in the area is allowed to fly drones — despite countless aerial videos getting passed around on social media.
As the NYT points out, drone incursions pose a real risk for firefighters. A sighting can force a plane to be grounded for anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes, which could be the difference between life and death as flames rage.
"We have a saying: 'If you fly, we can’t,'" Cal Fire spokesman Chris Thomas told the newspaper. "But I don’t know how effective it is because everybody thinks it’s so cool to fly a drone up through the fire."
More on the fires: <a href="https://futurism.com/hollywood-sign-fire-ai-slop">People Think the Hollywood Sign Is on Fire Because of AI Slop</a>

Grounded

"We have a saying: ‘If you fly, we can’t.'"

Los Angeles Firefighting Aircraft Out of Commission After Dunce With Drone Crashes Into It

<h2>Awful General Intelligence</h2>
While OpenAI CEO Sam Altman <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/sam-altman-openai-knows-how-agi">claims that</a> the company already has the building blocks for artificial general intelligence, a simple test of its most advanced publicly-avilable AI system was caught majorly lacking by a puzzle that countless people do every day.
As Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence senior fellow Gary Smith <a href="https://mindmatters.ai/2025/01/large-language-models-llms-flunk-word-game-connections/">writes for Mind Matters</a>, OpenAI's o1 "<a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/openai-o1-self-preservation">reasoning</a>" model failed spectacularly when tasked with solving the New York Times' <a href="https://www.raphkoster.com/2023/09/02/why-nyts-connections-makes-you-feel-bad/">notoriously tricky</a> Connections <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/games/connections">word game</a>.
The game's rules are deceptively simple. Players are given 16 terms and tasked with figuring out what they have in common, within groups of four — but because the things relating them can be as obvious as "book subtitles" or as esoteric as "words that start with fire," it can be quite challenging.
As Smith explained, he had o1 and other large language models (LLMs) from Google, Anthropic, and Microsoft (which is powered by OpenAI's tech) try to solve the Connections puzzle of the day.
Surprisingly — if you buy into AI hype, at least — they all failed. That's especially true of o1, which has been immensely hyped as the company's next-level system, but which apparently can't reason its way through an NYT word game.
<h2>Connect Four</h2>
When he fed that day's Connections challenge into the model, o1 did, to its credit, get some of the groupings right. But its other "purported combinations verge[d] on the bizarre," Smith found.
In one instance, o1 grouped the words "boot," "umbrella," "blanket," and "pant" and said the relating theme was "clothing or accessories." Three out of four ain't bad, of course, but who's wearing a blanket, except as some sort of out-there fashion statement?
After doing the entire exercise over with the same set of words, the LLM confidently said that "breeze," "puff," "broad," and "picnic" were "types of movement or air." Points for the first two, but we're as puzzled as Smith on the latter ones.
Overall, Smith rightfully assessed o1 as proffering "many puzzling groupings" alongside its "few valid connections." It's also a telling demonstration of some familiar AI shortfalls: that it can often impress when regurgitating information that's already well documented in its training data, but frequently struggles with novel queries.
Our semi-professional take: if OpenAI is indeed reaching the precipice of AGI — or <a href="https://futurism.com/openai-employee-claims-agi">has already achieved the start of it</a>, as one of its employees claimed at the end of last year — the company is clearly keeping it behind wraps, because this simply ain't it.
More on OpenAI: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/openai-whistleblower-suchir-balaji-mother-murder-claims">Mother of OpenAI Whistleblower Alleges He Was Murdered, Says There Were Signs of Struggle</a>

Puzzled Pieces

Connections claims another victim. 

OpenAI’s Most Advanced AI Release Stumped by New York Times Word Game

The sexual tension between <a href="https://x.com/_RichardHall/status/1656333458602328071">Elon Musk's posting disease</a> and his <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-blasts-trans-daughter">obsessive transphobia</a> is at an all-time high now that the billionaire has admitted he wishes he could get pregnant.
In a post on X-formerly-Twitter, the site owner enthusiastically agreed with a random user who joked about the multi-hyphenate and <a href="https://www.today.com/parents/parents/elon-musk-kids-rcna19692">father of 12</a>'s ardor for reproduction.
"Can we all agree that if men giving birth was possible," <a href="https://x.com/noelle_1025/status/1876500044238471247">the user wrote</a>, "Elon would be on his 17th pregnancy."
Quote-tweeting that jape, which was itself a reply to one of his own posts that <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1876493056238915650">included the pregnant man emoji</a> that <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/republicans-attack-apple-over-ios-pregnant-man-emoji-2022-1">right-wingers so love to dunk on</a>, <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1876661279542448606">Musk responded</a>: "1000%."
Obviously, <a href="https://19thnews.org/2023/12/pregnancy-transmasculine-men-reproductive-health-care-support/">trans men can and do get pregnant</a>, and that simple reality seems to make reactionaries like Musk lose their minds.
But within this exchange, paired with the context of <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/grimes-joining-elon-musk-compound-children-mothers">Musk's fertility obsession</a>, there lies something unexamined: a seeming desire for motherhood, or at least for the experience of breeding from a vantage point the South African-born edgelord will never experience.
While the world is still quite far from achieving pregnancy in people assigned male at birth (AMAB), some scientists contend that <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/why-men-won-t-be-getting-pregnant-anytime-soon-ncna820471">uterus transplants could achieve this result</a> — if only cisgender men were <a href="https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/soc4.13054">bold enough to dream outside of their biology</a>.
That said, the concept of "MPREG," the netspeak abbreviation for male pregnancy fantasies and <a href="https://www.deviantart.com/tag/mpreg?order=most-recent">associated fan artwork</a>, might fulfill some of Musk's reproductive urges — and Grok, X's in-site AI, readily produced just that type of imagery.
By feeding various prompts into Grok, Futurism was easily able to envisage the barren billionaire with a bundle of joy brewing inside him. Though other AI image generators have guardrails preventing them from creating images based on real people, the "anti-woke" Grok has no such foibles.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-339007 size-full" src="https://wordpress-assets.futurism.com/2025/01/Screen-Shot-2025-01-09-at-3.54.55-PM.png" alt="" width="1324" height="1076" />
It may be a while still until "<a href="https://x.com/yaoiyurifan69/status/1876886233990705653">elon MPREG</a>" can become a reality — but until then, Grok can keep the dream alive.
More on Musk: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-disability-slur">As He Calls for "Positivity" on Twitter, Elon Musk Keeps Using a Disgusting Slur Against the Intellectually Disabled as a Bullying Insult</a>

MPREG Compression

The world's most prominent hater of gender dysphoria just admitted something interesting.

Elon Musk Says He Longs to Get Pregnant So He Can Produce as Many Children as Possible

<h2>Smelt It, Delta It</h2>
President-elect Donald Trump has found the real culprit behind <a href="https://futurism.com/tax-investor-begs-help-fire">Los Angeles' massive and devastating wildfires</a>: the Delta smelt fish.
In a post on his <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/truth-social-stock-crashing-trump-won">failing Truth Social platform</a>, the <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/113793724958051185">forthcoming commander-in-chief slammed</a> California Gov. Gavin Newsom — or "Newscum," in Trumpspeak — for putting a "worthless fish" over Golden State's populace.
"Governor Gavin Newscum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way," Trump posted. "He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn’t work!), but didn’t care about the people of California."
"Now," he continued, "the ultimate price is being paid."
The "worthless fish" in question is the Delta Smelt, a small and endangered freshwater fish that's <a href="https://wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/Fishes/Delta-Smelt">protected under California law</a> — and, though it's a crowded field, just might represent one of the former and future president's stupidest beefs.
<h2>Very Stable Faucet</h2>
As Trump's would have it, Southern California could bring in more water via a "<a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/trump-very-large-faucet-california">very large faucet</a>" — a nonexistent water diversion system from the Rocky Mountains to the north that experts call completely nonsensical.
"You have millions of gallons of water pouring down from the north, with the snow caps and Canada, and all pouring down," Trump <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/why-donald-trump-wants-to-turn-a-very-large-faucet-to-get-canadian-freshwater/article_4b015e7a-7443-11ef-a197-dbdcbf68a59e.html?utm_source=rakuten&amp;utm_medium=affiliate&amp;ranMID=53416&amp;ranEAID=TnL5HPStwNw&amp;ranSiteID=TnL5HPStwNw-KVyrazK.Ff8nvyJNLLr3vA">said during a Los Angeles fundraising trip</a> last September. "And they have, essentially, a very large faucet, and you turn the faucet, and it takes one day to turn, and it’s massive."
After Trump plugged the convoluted "solution," Oregon's state climatologist Larry O'Neill suggested in interviews with local press that this strange technology only exists in Trump's mind.
"There is indeed no such diversion system," O'Neill <a href="https://fox59.com/news/national-world/trumps-large-faucet-that-can-divert-water-from-pacific-northwest-to-los-angeles-doesnt-exist-expert/">told Portland's KOIN,</a> "and none has been seriously proposed that I am aware of."
Despite his proposed technology not existing in the real world, the man who will be sworn back into office in less than two weeks thinks that California should be doing things his way.
"I will demand that this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to FLOW INTO CALIFORNIA!" Trump posted. "He is the blame for this."
Back in reality, climate change and the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2025/01/09/santa-ana-winds-la-fires-dry-conditions-explained/">notorious Santa Ana winds</a> are really to blame — but in this dumb age, who's keeping score?
More on Trump proposals: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/trump-cut-funding-evs-chargers">Trump Planning to Cut Funding for EVs and Chargers</a>