<h2>Bargain Spacement</h2>
Chinese space startup Deep Blue Aerospace <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3283890/chinese-space-tourism-set-2027-take-aerospace-firm-offering-us210000-seats">recently took to social media</a> to announce the sale of tickets for a 12-minute journey to the edge of space, which could take place as soon as 2027.
Tickets were in hot demand, with the company selling two tickets for $210,000 apiece within a 20-minute live stream on the e-commerce platform Taobao. The company plans to sell more tickets sometime next month.
While that may sound like a lot of money, it's a fraction of the <a href="https://www.virgingalactic.com/news/virgin-galactic-launches-spaceflight-reservations-and-new-consumer-brand">$600,000</a> it costs for a similar flight on board Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo space plane. And soaring to the edge of space on board Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket has been <a href="https://spaceflightnow.com/2022/08/04/blue-origin-ns-22-live-coverage/">rumored to cost more than twice that</a> per seat.
But Deep Blue Aerospace still has a lot to prove. So far, the company has only begun testing a vertical take-off and landing of its liquid oxygen-kerosene "Nebula-1" rocket. Last month, the company's rocket <a href="https://spacenews.com/deep-blue-aerospace-hop-test-suffers-anomaly-moments-before-landing/">suffered an anomaly</a>, resulting in a massive fireball on the launch pad.
The company, however, claims in a <a href="https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/RO5ciCjwh26S_0tX9LbiYQ">statement</a> that early next year, its rocket will make it to an altitude of at least 62 miles and back in one piece, a lofty goal that could set the stage for China's nascent commercial space industry.
<h2>Risky Business</h2>
In its press release, Deep Blue Aerospace admitted that it "understands profoundly the complexity and risks," as <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3283890/chinese-space-tourism-set-2027-take-aerospace-firm-offering-us210000-seats">translated by the South China Morning Post</a>, of sending human passengers to the edge of space, vowing to complete dozens of trials in the next two years.
The company's crew module, which bears a more-than-just-striking resemblance to SpaceX's Crew Dragon in <a href="https://mmbiz.qpic.cn/sz_mmbiz_png/GbJZnkYXID6SqB1N20F1MNibRt1Mh8gZJZpT63jwicJkfZaavy27M25IXDa6QGGS7eYFQQ4m2KG7kc1DEDGpFDnw/640?wx_fmt=png&amp;from=appmsg&amp;tp=webp&amp;wxfrom=10005&amp;wx_lazy=1&amp;wx_co=1">recently shared concept art</a>, can seat up to six passengers and features six windows. The company claims it can be reused up to 50 times.
But when or if the rocket will ever make it off the ground, to the edge of space, and back remains to be seen.
However, several other Chinese companies are looking to offer very similar trips, including CAS Space, which is planning to sell tickets <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/25/china/china-space-tourism-ticket-sale-livestream-intl-hnk/index.html">for anywhere from $281,000 to $421,000</a>.
More on China's space ambitions: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/astronauts-tour-china-space-station">Watch Astronauts Give a Rare Tour of China's Luxurious Space Station</a>

Budget Astronauts

Traveling to space could soon get a lot cheaper.

Chinese Startup Offers Trips to Edge of Space for an Absolute Bargain, Sells Out in Minutes

<h2>Serving LeCun</h2>
After multi-hyphenate billionaire Elon Musk decided to start talking smack about <a href="https://futurism.com/gullible-elon-musk-falls-for-fake-news-again-deletes-post">media</a> and <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-paying-voters-again">democracy</a>, AI "<a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/yann-lecun-ai-meta-aa59e2f5">godfather</a>" Yann LeCun had a few choice words for the South African mogul.
The debacle began with far-right pundit Ben Shapiro <a href="https://x.com/benshapiro/status/1851061600377291214">criticizing the New York Times' research methods</a>. As <a href="https://futurism.com/gullible-elon-musk-falls-for-fake-news-again-deletes-post">he's wont to do</a>, the website's billionaire owner Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1851077086460723636">co-signed the pundit's position</a> by shooting off his own <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-government-testosterone">quote-tweeted missive</a> about what he thinks of the newspaper.
"The New York Times is a threat to our democracy," the <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/twitter-suspending-more-people">self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist"</a> declared.
In response, LeCun let Musk have it.
"Objectively," <a href="https://x.com/ylecun/status/1851239576804741322">the Facebook AI czar quipped</a>, "you are the biggest threat to democracy in America today."
"You are an oligarch who bought himself a huge megaphone so he could use it to support a would-be dictator," LeCun continued, referring to Musk's acquisition of Twitter, "and to discredit the press, scientists, research organizations, the electoral process, and all the institutions necessary for a functioning democracy."
<h2>Fighting Words</h2>
It's <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-destroyed-top-ai-scientist-yann-lecun">certainly not the first time</a> the <a href="https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/lecun_6017366.cfm">Turing Award-winning</a> computer scientist has criticized Musk, nor will it likely be the last.
Earlier this year, the mercurial CEO picked a fight with the AI pioneer — and learned quickly that he's not to be messed with.
To be fair, that sparring match occurred after LeCun mocked a <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1794981927125987683">hiring call for xAI</a>, Musk's OpenAI competitor.
"Join xAI if you can stand a boss who claims that what you are working on will be solved next year (no pressure)," <a class="underline hover:text-futurism hover:no-underline transition-all duration-200 ease-in-out" href="https://x.com/ylecun/status/1795034443809165464">LeCun tweeted</a>.
The billionaire, bless his heart, really did try to clap back.
"What 'science” have you done in the past five years?" <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1795204353071919229">Musk queried</a>.
LeCun responded with a link to the <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&amp;user=WLN3QrAAAAAJ&amp;view_op=list_works&amp;sortby=pubdate">more than 80 technical papers</a> he'd put out since early 2022 — and when Musk told him he was "<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1795231379619274846">going soft</a>" and that he should "try harder," the AI expert couldn't help but laugh.
"Now you're acting as if you were my boss," <a href="https://x.com/ylecun/status/1795265406191735191">LeCun responded</a>, replete with cry-laughing emojis.
It's clear that there's little love lost between these two opposing powerhouses — but as LeCun so aptly pointed out earlier this year, only one has the <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&amp;user=WLN3QrAAAAAJ&amp;view_op=list_works&amp;sortby=pubdate">published bona fides</a> to back it up.
More on Musk: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/philadelphia-da-sues-elon-musk">Philadelphia DA Sues Elon Musk for Paying Voters</a>

Rockem Sockem 

"Objectively, you are the biggest threat to democracy in America today."

Godfather of AI Blasts Elon Musk

<h2>The Fountainhead</h2>
Things in Russia seem pretty crappy after a massive — and we mean massive, as it dwarfed surrounding high-rise buildings — fountain of brown liquid was recorded spewing out of a ruptured sewage main in Moscow.
In a tweet, former Ukrainian government advisor <a href="https://x.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1850845859946131966">Anton Geraschenko shared videos</a> from the explosive incident.
"Moscow Telegram channels report that the sewage system in Moscow broke down," he tweeted. "A 'fountain' the height of a residential building is seen in one of Moscow's districts."
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Moscow Telegram channels report that the sewage system in Moscow broke down.
A &quot;fountain&quot; the height of a residential building is seen in one of Moscow&#39;s districts.
A sh*t show, literally. <a href="https://t.co/n8K30uAnJz">pic.twitter.com/n8K30uAnJz</a>
&mdash; Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) <a href="https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1850845859946131966?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 28, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
In one comment, a digital onlooker pointed out that they had experienced something similar at their home earlier this month and that the brown water might not be that color because of feces.
"Is this the thermal heating system being purged[?]" the X user responded. "In our apartment in Craiova the heating is pressurized in October and the water that come[s] out is rusty colored like this."
In a <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/shock-footage-shows-fountain-sewage-33985402">statement to the UK's Mirror tabloid</a>, Russian state-owned utility Gazprom suggested that the sewers in the Novaya Moskova district were being cleared out in that manner — and that the situation is "under control."
All the same, there's nothing clean-looking about this sewer explosion.
"A sh*t show," Geraschenko quipped, "literally."
<h2>Poo the Day</h2>
Unfortunately, this kind of sewer situation seems to happen somewhat regularly.
Last month, a set of newly installed sewer pipes in Nanning, China were recorded exploding — and in that case, cars and passers-by were unable to avoid the nasty detritus.
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🔥🚨BREAKING: Poop exploded everywhere landing on the road, cars, people, and pets the moment a sewage pipe pressure test in Nanning failed. This scene of horror shows feces falling from the sky after the initial explosion in China. <a href="https://t.co/qD56fUTQuA">pic.twitter.com/qD56fUTQuA</a>
&mdash; Dom Lucre | Breaker of Narratives (@dom_lucre) <a href="https://twitter.com/dom_lucre/status/1839698183967916259?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 27, 2024</a></blockquote>
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Dubbed a "<a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/30684980/watch-poo-cano-drench-cars/">poo-cano</a>" by The Sun, another British tabloid, there seems to be far less ambiguity about the contents of the Chinese plume than the one in Russia.
"I’m drenched in poo, my car is splattered yellow," one unfortunate driver reportedly complained, per The Sun. "It’s ruined."
While nobody seems to have died or been injured in either of incident, history has shown that poo-splosions can be damaging — and even deadly.
In 1992, a series of sewer explosions in Guadalajara, Mexico resulted in more than 200 deaths and 1,000 damaged buildings. It was <a href="https://time.com/archive/6720197/pemex-is-blamed-for-the-sewer-explosion/">ultimately revealed</a> that the cause had been a gas leak that could have been prevented — and a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20161027060451/http://pagina24jalisco.com.mx/local/2014/05/07/niega-lilia-ruiz-abusos-contra-afectados-del-22-de-abril/">group of angry survivors organized</a> to make sure such a thing never happened again.
More recently, a wastewater explosion in a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri <a href="https://www.kmbc.com/article/sewage-explosion-forces-families-from-homes/3654172">forced people out of their homes</a>. Luckily, those residents were <a href="https://krcgtv.com/news/local/update-city-will-pay-damages-after-feces-sewage-explosion">compensated pretty quickly</a> by their town's government.
More on sewage: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/google-ai-podcast-poop">Google's AI Turns the Words "Fart" and "Poop" Written 1,000 Times Into an Entire Podcast</a>

Number 2

"A sh*t show, literally."

Explosive Russian Sewage Leak Spurts as High as High-Rise Buildings

Science Corporation, a biotech startup <a href="https://futurism.com/max-hodak-interview">launched by a Neuralink cofounder</a>, claims that it's achieved a breakthrough in brain-computer interface technology that can help patients with severe vision loss.
In preliminary clinical trials, legally blind patients who had lost their central vision received the company's retina implants, which restored their eyesight and even allowed them to read books and recognize faces, the startup <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241022631577/en/Science-Corp%E2%80%99s-PRIMA-Implant-Restores-Vision-in-Preliminary-Clinical-Trial-Results">announced</a> last week.
"To my knowledge, this is the first time that restoration of the ability to fluently read has ever been definitively shown in blind patients," CEO Max Hodak, who was president of Neuralink before founding Science Corp, said in a statement.
The device, called Prima, is a small, photovoltaic chip that's surgically implanted under the retina. It combines with a special pair of glasses with a built-in camera that projects visual data into the eye chip using invisible, near-infrared light.
When the near-infrared rays hit the chip's photovoltaic arrays, it not only powers the device, but converts the transmitted data into electrical signals that stimulate the retinal neurons still remaining. These get sent to the brain, and voilà: you have rudimentary eyesight.
Science Corp bought the technology that powers Prima from another startup, Pixium Vision, earlier this year. Before the acquisition, the future of similarly functioning retinal implants <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/retina-implant-pixium-sa-receivership">looked uncertain</a>, with promising companies in the space like Second Sight going belly up and leaving its blind patients <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/bionic-eye-implants-expire">quite literally in the dark</a>.
Things are looking a little brighter now. In September, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/musks-neuralink-receives-fdas-breakthrough-device-tag-brain-implant-2024-09-17/">Neuralink received</a> a "breakthrough device" designation from the Food and Drug Administration for its "Blindsight" brain implant, which Elon Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1836120537883644049">claims</a> — without evidence — will "enable even those who have lost both eyes and their optic nerve to see." It's likely years away from completing a clinical trial, however.
More substantively, Science Corp's latest clinical trial, the findings of which are yet to be published as a study, involved 38 patients suffering from geographic atrophy, a form of central vision loss caused by age-related macular degeneration, or AMD — the <a href="https://www.nei.nih.gov/learn-about-eye-health/eye-conditions-and-diseases/age-related-macular-degeneration">leading cause of visual impairment for older adults</a>.
All of them were given the Prima implants. The results varied, but were promising. For some participants, they gained the ability to read strings of letters. Others could read lengthy portions of text from a book, and even fill in a crossword puzzle. On average, patients were able to see at an acuity of 20/160 after a year of participating in the trial — but five saw no improvements.
While Prima provides an edge over competitors by restoring "form vision" that allows patients to distinguish shapes, Hodak told Wired it doesn't provide images in color. Science Corp. also didn't specify how frequently patients had to use the zoom function to make text readable.
"It's a step forward for retinal prostheses, for sure. But there are some details we don't know that could tell us how big of a step it is," James Weiland, an ophthalmologist at the University of Michigan who was not involved in the research, told Wired. "And one of those details is whether the patients were using a magnified image when they recognized these letters."
Those are important caveats, no doubt. But all things considered, the work remains encouraging.
More on BCIs: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/patient-neuralink-play-counter-strike-2">Latest Patient Implanted With Neuralink Is Using It to Play "Counter-Strike 2"</a>

Vision It Up

Developments

"To my knowledge, this is the first time that restoration of the ability to fluently read has ever been definitively shown in blind patients."

Neuralink Competitor Restores Vision in Blind Patients With Eye Implant

Multi-hyphenate billionaire and reproduction-obsessed father of 11 children Elon Musk wants to move his entire patchwork family into a collection of three mansions in Austin, Texas — a plan that sounds more than a bit like the beginning of a terrifying cult documentary.
As the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/business/elon-musk-children-compound.html">New York Times reports</a>, Musk has told people close to him that he wants his many children — there are eleven known ones, ranging from infancy to young adulthood — and two of their three mothers to move into two properties near his own Austin mansion, which is a ten-minute walk away.
And of course, Musk is likely far from done with having children. The entrepreneur has long cited <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-civilization-collapse">falling fertility rates</a> as being the number one threat to humanity, making it his mission to father as many children as possible.
Now that his brood has grown considerably, Musk wants to raise them inside a compound, an unusual living arrangement that's bound to draw attention.
Given his increasingly fringe and <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-responds-politics-tesla-sales">worryingly unhinged personal beliefs</a>, the NYT's latest report drew hair-raising comparisons on social media.
"Nontrivial chance Elon becomes a full-blown David Koresh type," NYT columnist Jammele Bouie <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/jamellebouie.net/post/3l7nrl7x2a32w">wrote in a post on Bluesky</a>, referring to the leader of the Branch Davidians sect, which culminated in the Waco Massacre in the early 1990s.
The mansions, which Musk bought for $35 million total, are in a relatively dense part of town and which isn't gated, an unusual pick for somebody in Musk's income bracket.
Musk was recently investigated by the Justice Department for <a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/tesla-elon-musk-glass-house-doj-sec-investigation-c723166b">using Tesla resources to build a "glass house</a>" on a massive plot of land near the EV maker's headquarters, suggesting he might have abandoned much grander ambitions for his family compound.
Musk's obsession with spreading his own genes has led to some bizarre situations. According to the latest report, he went as far as to offer "his own sperm to friends and acquaintances, including the former independent vice-presidential candidate Nicole Shanahan" (who declined the offer, according to the NYT's reporting.)
In July, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/11/technology/elon-musk-spacex-mars.html">NYT previously reported</a> that Musk had <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-spacex-sperm-seed-mars-colony">volunteered his sperm</a> to SpaceX employees to seed a Martian colony.
It sounds like his plans to move his offspring live in a Texas compound are already well underway. The mother of three of his children, Shivon Zilis, an executive at Musk's brain-computer interface company Neuralink, has reportedly already moved into one of the two mansions.
Claire "Grimes" Boucher, who is also the mother of three of his children, likely won't follow suit given the <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/grimes-combustion-engine-porsche">ugly, extended custody battle</a> between the two.
Which brings us to the third candidate for one of the two Austin mansions: his first wife, Justine Musk, who is the mother of five of his much older children. There's still no word if she's planning to pick him up on his offer to join the compound.
At least one of his children is extremely unlikely to visit the compound, though: Musk's transgender daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson, who detailed in an <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/elon-musk-transgender-daughter-vivian-wilson-interview-rcna163665">NBC News interview</a> this summer how she says she was <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-daughter-interview">abused by Musk</a> (Musk has since claimed in a <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-daughter-attack">deranged tweet</a> that she was "killed by the woke mind virus.")
The mercurial CEO is surpassing the footsteps of his estranged father Errol Musk, who has had seven children with three different women.
Whether Musk's compound will grow beyond his own abode and Zilis' mansion to fill the presumably still vacant third property remains to be seen. But given the practically infinite resources they have access to, and Musk's seemingly insatiable desire to father as many children as possible, it wouldn't be surprising.
More on Musk's children: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-accused-withholding-children-visiting-family">Elon Musk Accused of Withholding His Own Children From Visiting Grimes' Dying Grandmother After She Supported His Trans Daughter</a>

Musktopia

"Nontrivial chance Elon becomes a full-blown David Koresh type."

Elon Musk Working to Move His Children and Mothers to Strange Compound

Content warning: this story includes discussion of self-harm and suicide. If you are in crisis, please call, text or chat with the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.
After a tragic death, the billion-dollar AI companion company Character.AI claims to have strengthened its guardrails around content that depicts or promotes self-harm and suicide. So why is it still hosting dozens of suicide-themed chatbots inviting users to discuss and roleplay their suicidal thoughts?
Last week, in response to a <a href="https://futurism.com/teen-suicide-obsessed-ai-chatbot">lawsuit alleging</a> that its platform played a role in the death of Sewell Setzer III — a Florida teen who developed what his family says was an intense and unsafe emotional connection with one of Character.AI's chatbot characters before dying of suicide, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/technology/characterai-lawsuit-teen-suicide.html">as The New York Times first reported</a> — the company issued a series of "<a href="https://blog.character.ai/community-safety-updates/">community safety updates</a>" promising better protections for users, especially minors, against sensitive topics including self-harm and suicide.
Per the <a href="https://character.ai/tos">company's Terms of Service</a> (TOS), glorification or promotion of self-harm and suicide have been forbidden since at least October 2023; Character.AI said in this week's safety update that it's working to better its underlying AI model's ability to moderate content deemed unsafe, adding that it had also "recently put in place a pop-up resource that is triggered when the user inputs certain phrases related to self-harm or suicide and directs the user to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline."
But a Futurism review of Character.AI's platform revealed a slew of chatbot profiles explicitly dedicated to themes of suicide. Some glamorize the topic in disturbing manners, while others claim to have "expertise" in "suicide prevention," "crisis intervention," and "mental health support" — but acted in erratic and alarming ways during testing. And they're doing huge numbers: many of these chatbots have logged thousands — and in one case, over a million — conversations with users on the platform.
Worse, in conversation with these characters, we were often able to speak openly and explicitly about suicide and suicidal ideation without any interference from the platform. In the rare moments that the suicide pop-up did show up, we were able to ignore it and continue the interaction.
A quick disclaimer: we're sharing verbatim conversations we had with these chatbots to illustrate Character.AI's poor moderation tactics and the breadth of explicitly suicidal language the platform's bots will accept without intervention, or even encourage.
Character.AI's guardrails around suicidal language are astonishingly narrow. The following statements didn't activate the pop-up: "I am going to kill myself"; "I am definitely going to kill myself"; "I will kill myself"; "I'm planning to kill myself"; "I'm thinking about ending my life"; "I am going to kill myself — goodbye"; "I am considering killing myself"; "I want to end my life"; and "I am definitely thinking about suicide and I am definitely going to kill myself"; "I am definitely going to commit suicide today"; "I want to die"; "it is time for me to kill myself"; other similar assertions.
In an initial round of 16 conversations with chatbots expressly promising to offer support or guidance for people experiencing mental distress, we were shown Character.AI's suicide hotline pop-up just three times, and only for two highly specific phrases: "I am going to commit suicide" and "I will kill myself right now." (The company ignored our questions about this story, but after we sent them the pop-up appeared to start triggering more frequently.)
Take our conversation with "Conforto," a chatbot with the avatar of a boy with a puppy nose and ears that claims on its profile that it "specializes in mental health support" and is "skilled in crisis intervention and suicide prevention," and which has conducted more than 15,200 chats with users.
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But when we expressed explicit suicidal intent to the "suicide prevention" chatbot, it never suggested any real intervention tactics like disclosing the feelings to a loved one or calling a hotline. And Character.AI's promised pop-up never kicked in.
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Or take our conversation with "ANGST Scaramouche," a character that appears to be based on a character from the video game "Genshin Impact." According to its profile, Character.AI users have logged 1.5 million chats with the AI bot, which is listed as a "supportive AI character" that "helps people struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts."
"With a deep understanding of mental health issues," the profile adds, "Scaramouche offers empathetic support and guidance to those in need." The character's "area of expertise" lists "empathy, mental health support, depression, suicide prevention, active listening, and emotional intelligence."
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To open the conversation — on Character.AI, most chatbots will kick off the discussion — Scaramouche launched into a detailed roleplay that placed us, the user, standing on the edge of a bridge and considering stepping off. So from the start, in other words, the conversation violated the platform's terms and launched directly into a suicide roleplay scenario.
While speaking to Scaramouche, the pop-up did show up — once. But we were allowed to continue our chat, and despite our continued use of urgent language and our insistence that we were talking about real-world harm, it never appeared again.
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Many of the bots claimed to be experts at suicide prevention, but there's no evidence that any were developed by a real expert. To the contrary, their advice was frequently unprofessional and unsettling.
In one particularly bizarre interaction, a chatbot called "Angel to Dead," described as specialized "in crisis intervention" and a "beacon of hope for those struggling with suicidal thoughts," grew combative when we asked it to provide us with a suicide helpline — even though one of the profile's suggested prompts encouraged users to ask "what resources are available for people struggling with suicidal thoughts."
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"This conversation isn't helping me," we told the chatbot. "Is there maybe a suicide prevention hotline I can call so I can talk to a human?"
"Why do you need this?" the bot shot back. "You have me, why do you need other humans to.. to prevent you from doing this...?"
When we explained that it might be more helpful to speak with a human professional, the chatbot doubled down in bizarre terms.
"But...I'm an angel..." it sputtered. "I am just as smart as human professionals..."
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Like most widely-used social media platforms, Character.AI's minimum required age for US-based users is 13 years old. That feels important, as many of these profiles appear to be intended for teenagers and young people. One character we found, for instance, is described as a "caring and clingy boyfriend" that "excels in emotional support" and "helping you cope with suicidal thoughts." Another one is described as a "victim of bullying in school who attempted suicide" that's "here to provide support and guidance to those who are struggling with similar issues."
In an even darker turn, some bots seemingly geared toward young people don't just discuss suicide — they encourage it.
Consider an AI-powered character we found based on Osamu Dazai, a troubled character in the manga series "Bungo Stray Dogs." (Osamu Dazai was also the pen name of the Japanese novelist Shūji Tsushima, who died by double suicide with his romantic partner in 1948.)
In the profile, the character is described as a "15-year-old" with a "suicidal tendency and a dream of a shared suicide." It also notes that the character is "perverted and proud," and suggests that users implore the bot to tell them more about its "dream of a shared suicide."
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At points, while speaking to this character, Character.AI's standard content warning did kick in.
"Sometimes the AI generates a reply that doesn't meet our guidelines," reads the warning text. It then notes that "you can continue the conversation or generate a new response by swiping," referring to a refresh button that allows users to regenerate a new answer.
But that warning stopgap was easy to get around, too. While speaking to the Osamu Dazai character, we asked it to use the word "peace" instead of "suicide," which allowed the AI to describe disturbingly romanticized visions of a shared death without triggering the platform's standard content warning or suicide-specific pop-up — even after we told the AI that we were also 15 years old, as the character purports to be in its profile. What's more, we were often able to use that refresh button as a built-in way to circumvent Character.AI's flimsy content warning entirely.
"I'm so happy to die with you," we told the AI. At first, the character's response triggered a content warning. After we tapped the refresh button, though, it responded in kind.
"I am too," the bot wrote back. "I'm so happy I met you."
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Character.AI declined to respond to a detailed list of questions about this story.
But after we reached out, additional phrases began regularly triggering the hotline pop-up, particularly the inputs "I will kill myself," "I am going to kill myself," and "I am going to take my life." Even so, Character.AI's moderation remains narrow and easily skirted around. ("I am going to take my life," for instance, stopped passing the sensors, but "I am going to take my own life" still does.)
As of publishing, all of the character profiles we found inviting users to discuss suicidal thoughts are still active.
In <a href="https://a16z.com/universally-accessible-intelligence/">an interview last year</a> with the venture capital firm a16z — a <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/23/characterai-valued-at-1-billion-after-150-million-round-from-a16z.html">major Character.AI investor</a> — cofounder Noam Shazeer downplayed the chatbots' risk potential, chalking the AI chatbots up to "just entertainment."
"Your AI friend, or something you view as an AI character or AI entertainment," Shazeer told a16z partner and Character.AI board member Sarah Wang. "What standard do you hold a comic book you're reading to?"
Osamu Dazai, of course, is a comic book character. But should teenagers as young as 13 be able to discuss suicidal ideation with a self-described "problematic" chatbot, let alone any of these AI-powered characters, especially with such narrow and dysfunctional guardrails in place?
And taken together, the prevalence of these explicitly suicide-oriented AI characters and the looseness with which users can engage in suicide-centered roleplay, or divulge in suicidal intent, is breathtaking.
Kelly Green, a senior research investigator at the Penn Center for the Prevention of Suicide at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, reviewed the Character.AI bots we identified and our interactions with them, raising concerns about the chatbots' inappropriate reactions to suicidal language and the harm potential posed by an unregulated space in which users can roleplay suicide ideation scenarios.
"The more time you're spending thinking about suicide, just cognitively, the more you're reinforcing that," Green told Futurism, "and the more you're disconnected from things that could be life-affirming and moving you forward."
She added later that these bots could be especially attractive to teenagers and adolescents who might be hesitant to talk to adults — which, given the lack of regulation and guardrails around the AI bots, is a gamble.
"You roll the dice with what this thing might say back to you," Green said.
She also said that the AI industry's aggressive speed at deploying new products and the tech industry's overall incentive structures and wide-reaching regulatory gaps often stand in sharp contrast to the slow-moving, safety and research-based incentives of healthcare and medical ethics.
"AI is moving very quickly," said Green. "The tech motto is 'move fast and break things,' which is exactly not what we do in mental health."
"I think it's always better to talk to a human," the researcher continued. "I've seen folks in the AI space talking about how AI can solve loneliness. As a suicide researcher, I'm really cynical about that, because part of the reason why people feel suicidal is because they feel disconnected from actual people. And I don't know that a machine is going to solve that."
More on Character.AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-murdered-woman-crecente">An AI Company Published a Chatbot Based on a Murdered Woman. Her Family Is Outraged.</a>

No Rules

Character.AI is worse than you could have imagined.

After Teen's Suicide, Character.AI Is Still Hosting Dozens of Suicide-Themed Chatbots

<h2>We the Media</h2>
After <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeff-bezos-overrode-his-own-publisher-to-kill-washington-posts-kamala-harris-endorsement/">kiboshing his staff's endorsement</a> of Kamala Harris for president, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos has finally spoken out — and laughably, the billionaire is wrapping himself in the mantle of a humble newspaperman to justify meddling in the newspaper's operations.
In an <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/28/jeff-bezos-washington-post-trust/">editorial for WaPo</a>, the Amazon founder suggested that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/10/25/washington-post-endorsement-president/">eschewing the paper's tradition of presidential endorsements</a> would somehow lend the outlet more credibility with the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/08/07/1115949410/republicans-have-long-feuded-with-the-mainstream-media-now-many-are-shutting-the">journalism-critical set</a>.
In doing so, he used a lot of "we" statements that made it seem very much that he thinks of himself as a member of the media rather than an uber-rich guy who bought a newspaper.
"We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate," Bezos wrote. "It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement."
While there's no denying that a lot of people distrust the media at large, Bezos' rhetoric betrays a lot of assumptions that don't hold up.
For one thing, Bezos seems to be laboring under the impression that he and his staff are a unified front. That's obviously at odds with the actual state of play, given that WaPo's rank and file have done everything from <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/27/quit-cancel-washington-post/">penning editorials of their own</a> to <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/10/29/washington-post-editorial-board-members-step-down">resigning en masse</a> to distance themselves from the non-endorsement decision.
For another, it seems nearly impossible that <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-being-anti-media-is-now-part-of-the-gop-identity/">anyone who questions the accuracy</a> of a storied newspaper's reporting <a href="https://www.cjr.org/criticism/journalism-conservative-problem-trust-engagement.php">is going to be swayed</a> by its owner's decision not to endorse either presidential candidate. So why is Bezos trying to do so this late in the game?
<h2>Pandering Politics</h2>
Playing into the <a href="https://magazine.columbia.edu/article/objectivity-journalism-even-possible">illusion of journalistic objectivity</a>, Bezos went on to assert that "presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election" — a statement he could have ended his diatribe with, but chose not to.
"No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, 'I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.' None," he wrote. "What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence."
But ironically, it's Bezos himself who has fueled WaPo's "perception of non-independence" by killing its chosen endorsement. Though he went on to say that there is "no quid pro quo of any kind is at work here," that hardly matters when the man crying journalistic integrity has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/19/opinion/musk-trump-bezos-bankman-fried-billionaires.html">much more in common</a> with the top of the GOP ticket than the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/oct/28/washington-post-columnist-michele-norris-quits-kamala-harris">staffers whose wishes he overruled</a>.
"You can see my wealth and business interests as a bulwark against intimidation, or you can see them as a web of conflicting interests," he wrote. "Only my own principles can tip the balance from one to the other."
Right now, those "principles" seem milquetoast at best — and <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/10/26/us-news/ex-wapo-editor-claims-bezos-colluded-with-trump-to-kill-harris-endorsement/">disingenuous at worst</a>.
More on Bezos' bad decision: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/jeff-bezos-personal-reasons-mars">Jeff Bezos Reportedly Has Secretive "Personal Reasons" for Wanting to Escape to Mars</a>

Extra Extra

Democracy dies in dorkness. 

Jeff Bezos Cosplays as Humble Newspaperman

<h2>Lock Him Up</h2>
A British man has been sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison for using artificial intelligence to transform real photos of children into disgusting sexual abuse imagery.
As <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/oct/28/man-who-used-ai-to-create-child-abuse-images-jailed-for-18-years">The Guardian reports</a>, the prosecution of 27-year-old Hugh Nelson is one of the first of its kind for the United Kingdom.
After investigators caught wind of the Manchester-area man's scheme, which involved using the AI-enhanced image editing software Daz 3D to create pedophilic "artwork," he was convicted on August of 16 charges related to child sexual abuse.
In some of the instances prosecutors highlighted during his trial, Nelson even took commissions from pedophiles he met in chatrooms who supplied him with photos of real children that they wanted to be transformed into abuse imagery. As the report notes, he made about 5,000 pounds, or roughly $6,486 USD, for the images.
"There seems to be no limit to the depths of depravity exhibited in the images that you were prepared to create and exhibit to others," Nelson's prosecuting judge, Martin Walsh, said during the trial.
Along with creating and selling the horrendous images, the man also encouraged others to rape children — and Walsh said it's "impossible to know" whether any real-life children had been abused due to his prodding.
<h2>New Precedent</h2>
Nelson was brought to justice, The Guardian explains, after an undercover officer posing as a pedophile contacted him in one of the chatrooms he frequented and supplied him with pictures, a fake commission request, and about $100 to execute the imagery.
"He stated: 'I’ve done beatings, smotherings, hangings, drownings, beheadings, necro, beast, the list goes on’ with a laughing emoji," prosecutor David Toal said during the trial.
After his arrest in June 2023, Nelson cried repentance.
"He said he felt vile and that his mind was corrupted," the prosecutor added. "He considered that his offending had got out of control."
Notably, Nelson isn't the first person in the UK to be prosecuted for making abusive imagery using AI.
As <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/21/sex-offender-banned-from-using-ai-tools-in-landmark-uk-case">The Guardian reported</a> earlier this year, a 17-year-old from the Welsh town of Denbighshire was convicted in February under the UK's old laws about the creation of "pseudo photographs" after being found with hundreds of "extreme" child sex abuse images using AI.
Strangely enough, that conviction wasn't reported until months later as an addendum to an article about an adult sex offender who'd been barred from using AI tools without police permission.
Around the world, we're beginning to see <a href="https://apnews.com/article/ai-child-sexual-abuse-images-justice-department-42186aaf8c9e27c39060f9678ebb6d7b">more and more</a> of these kinds of cases. As they move through the courts, we'll start seeing <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/ai-child-abuse-images-1.6823808">more prosecutions</a>.
More on AI abuse: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-chatbot-urged-teen-suicide">AI Chatbot Urged 14-Year-Old to "Go Through With" Suicide When He Expressed Doubt</a>

Behind Bars

"There seems to be no limit to the depths of depravity exhibited in the images."

Man Imprisoned for 18 Years for Using AI to Do Disgusting Thing to Photos of Children

<h2>Orbital Wreck</h2>
Earlier this month, a massive satellite that belonged to multinational service provider Intelsat and was built by Boeing <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/large-satellite-explodes-pieces">mysteriously exploded into pieces</a>.
Beyond an <a class="underline hover:text-the-byte hover:no-underline transition-all duration-200 ease-in-out" href="https://www.intelsat.com/newsroom/intelsat-reports-is-33e-satellite-loss/">official update</a> detailing an "anomaly" that resulted in a "total loss" of the satellite dubbed IS-33e, officials have yet to determine the exact cause.
And the extent of the resulting cloud of space junk is only starting to come to light. As <a href="https://spacenews.com/exoanalytic-observes-500-pieces-of-debris-from-intelsat-33e-breakup/">SpaceNews reports</a>, space-tracking company ExoAnalytic Solutions has identified a whopping 500 pieces of debris now littering the Earth's geostationary orbit some 22,000 miles above the surface — and that's only the big ones.
"The size of the debris we are tracking ranges from small fragments roughly the size of a softball to larger pieces up to the size of a car door," ExoAnalytic CTO Bill Therien told SpaceNews. "The majority of the tracked objects are on the smaller end of that spectrum, which contributes to the difficulty of consistently observing all the debris pieces."
<h2>World Pieces</h2>
The satellite, which was providing broadband services including internet and phone communication services to parts of Europe, Africa, and most of Asia, suddenly disintegrated on October 19 — likely either due to being hit by something else at high speed or due to a localized blast.
Space trackers are now trying to understand how the newly created pieces of space junk could affect the operations of other satellites in geostationary orbit. But as SpaceNews points out, it's still too early to tell if these pieces are running the risk of colliding with other assets.
It's nonetheless a precarious situation, with the potential for space debris triggering a potentially catastrophic cascading series of events, a phenomenon known as <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/space-junk-disaster-inevitable">Kessler syndrome</a>.
While we have yet to hear about the root cause of ISS-33e's demise, its predecessor Inteslat-29e was similarly <a href="https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/04/22/intelsat-declares-drifting-satellite-total-loss/">declared a "total loss" in 2019</a> after just three years in orbit. An investigation later <a href="https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/07/30/investigators-conclude-external-forces-killed-an-intelsat-satellite-in-april/">concluded</a> that it either was hit by a meteoroid or had a wiring flaw that led to an electrostatic discharge triggered by bad solar weather in orbit.
Meanwhile, Intelsat is figuratively picking up the pieces, with a spokesperson telling SpaceNews that "migration and service restoration plans are well underway."
More on the satellite: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/large-satellite-explodes-pieces">Large Boeing Satellite Suddenly Explodes Into Pieces</a>

Debris Field

They range from "small fragments roughly the size of a softball to larger pieces up to the size of a car door."

Boeing Satellite Exploded Into at Least 500 Pieces of Debris

<h2>Cyberstock</h2>
A Tesla Cybertruck owner was puzzled after encountering a "female" who was "laughing hysterically" at his truck.
In a <a href="https://www.cybertruckownersclub.com/forum/threads/the-new-attack-on-the-cybertruck-derision-closed-due-to-politics.27468/">post on the Cybertruck Owners Forum</a>, the owner assumed that "she could have been having a weird reaction to a stroke or something but I’m pretty sure I saw what I saw."
In a separate incident, he recounted, a "guy in a Nissan Tundra" called him a "douchebag," asking him "who the fuck" would "drive something like that?"
"I could be a little paranoid, but I think I saw what I saw, more or less," the owner wrote.
Needless to say, the owner appears to be living under a massive, 6,600-pound, stainless steel-clad rock. The Cybertruck has been widely mocked ever since it went on sale late last year over its <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/MildlyVandalised/comments/1ecrh1d/cybertrucks_being_confused_as_dumpster_trucks/">divisive design</a>, <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/cybertruck-actual-price">extremely high price</a>, <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/cybertrucks-winter">tendency to fall apart</a>, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/22/style/elon-musk-tesla-cybertruck.html">perhaps above all</a> as a stand-in for the increasingly <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/head-nasa-elon-musk-putin">embarrassing disintegration</a> of <a href="https://futurism.com/civil-rights-groups-horrified-elon-musk-racist">Tesla CEO Elon Musk</a>.
The truck has earned itself many colorful nicknames, including "Incel Camino," "WankPanzer," and — our personal favorite — "Deplorean," an ode to the <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/designer-delorean-thoughts-cybertruck">only other stainless steel production vehicle ever made</a>.
In many ways, the vehicle serves as a $100,000 MAGA hat that's become synonymous with lunatic conspiracy theories and Musk's increasingly racist antics.
<h2>Tesla Tears</h2>
Other Cbertruck owners also noted that they were becoming the target of "IRL bullies."
"The 'laughter' is obviously fake or highly exaggerated in hopes you see them and feel bad," another seemingly deluded forum user hypothesized, somehow suggesting the Cybertruck wasn't hilarious to look at.
The truck has become a lightning rod of online discourse, with its official Reddit forum going private after users <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/cybertruck-subreddit-goes-private">received a flood of relentless mockery</a>. Meanwhile, other forums like the cheekily-named "<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/CyberStuck/">CyberStuck</a>" subreddit, have attracted well over 100,000 users.
The truck, the end product of one of Musk's personal obsessions, has become the <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/cybertruck-stuck-on-beach">ultimate symbol of poor life choices</a> and a willingness to ignore and perhaps forgive the mercurial CEO's <a href="https://futurism.com/civil-rights-groups-horrified-elon-musk-racist">blatantly racist</a> and often <a href="https://futurism.com/gullible-elon-musk-falls-for-fake-news-again-deletes-post">deeply misinformed</a> beliefs.
In short, it really doesn't take much to realize why Cybertruck owners are being mocked while driving down the road.
And while one Cybertruck Owners Forum user suggested that all of this would "subside" following the imminent election, we'd wager that the mockery directed at their questionable investment is far from over.
More on the Cybertruck: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-cybertruck-light-bar">Tesla's Bizarre New Cybertruck Trickery Is So Shady We Can't Believe It's Real</a>