the digest (Page 63)

Latest in the digest

The Republican National Committee has fired back after Biden announced he's running again with an ad that features AI-generated images.

Artificial Intelligence

Republicans Release AI-Generated Ad of Chinese Invasion

By Victor Tangermann

Snapchat users seem to really, really hate the app's new AI feature, "My AI" — and they're taking to the app star to let the company know.

Artificial Intelligence

Furious Users Demand Removal of AI From Snapchat

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

Those who survived Meta's mass firings earlier this month have a bone to pick with CEO Mark Zuckerberg as further cuts loom large.

Mark Zuckerberg Confronted by Staff Over Mass Firings and Bonuses for Execs

By Noor Al-Sibai

China's Mars rover Zhurong has remained in its hibernation state since May 2022. Officials are finally ready to talk.

China Addresses Awkward Situation on Mars

By Victor Tangermann

Elon Musk may have accidentally leaked his alternate Twitter account — and it's really, really weird.

This Strongly Appears to Be Elon Musk’s Alt Account on Twitter Where He Roleplays as His Own Child

By Frank Landymore

After looking at NASA's Mars lander data, scientists say they've figured out what lies at the heart of the Red Planet's core.

Scientists Detect Gooey Core Inside Mars

By Noor Al-Sibai

Japanese lunar lander Hakuto-R Mission 1, developed by ispace, lost contact with mission control during today's landing attempt.

Private Company Landing on Moon Appears to Have Failed

By Victor Tangermann

Any AI chatbots operating within China's digital borders must comply with its censorship laws — a bar that may prove impossible for the unpredictable tech.

Artificial Intelligence

China Says Chatbots Must Be Strictly Censored by Communist Guidelines

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

SpaceX's Starship orbital test flight, the most powerful rocket ever built, left a huge mark on its surroundings, triggering an FAA investigation.

SpaceX Is in Big Trouble With the FAA After Starship Explosion

By Victor Tangermann

CNBC obtained new footage showing the dramatic fire that melted through three Ford F-150 Lightnings at a holding lot in February.

Advanced Transport

Footage Shows Three Ford F-150 Electric Trucks Burning

By Frank Landymore

Experimental artist and futurist Claire "Grimes" Boucher is looking at AI as an opportunity and is willing to split royalties for songs that use her voice.

Artificial Intelligence

Grimes Says She’ll Split Royalties With Anyone Who Deepfakes Her Voice Into a Song

By Victor Tangermann

Teachers are reportedly using ChatGPT to write AI-assisted letters of recommendation — which are apparently good enough to win Cambridge scholarships.

ChatGPT-Inspired Letter of Recommendation Gets Prestigious Cambridge Scholarship

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

Pro-tip for editors: do not, under any circumstance, publish an AI-generated "interview" with someone you didn't actually interview.

Artificial Intelligence

Tabloid Fires Editor for AI-Generated “Interview” With Injured Celebrity

By Noor Al-Sibai

After spending the last five months making its way to the Moon, a Japanese spacecraft is about to make its first attempt to land on the lunar surface.

A Private Spacecraft Will Attempt to Land on the Moon Tomorrow

By Victor Tangermann

There’s a Serious Problem With Lab-Grown Meat

Science & Energy

There’s a Serious Problem With Lab-Grown Meat

By Victor Tangermann

SpaceX's disastrous Starship launch last week appears to have had some collateral damage.

Video Shows Falling Starship Debris Smashing a Minivan

By Noor Al-Sibai

After yoinking legacy verification checkmarks from Twitter accounts, CEO Elon Musk has brought back the checkmark to a number of dead celebrity profiles.

Elon Musk Forces Dead Celebrities to Become “Paying” Twitter Blue Subscribers

By Victor Tangermann

ChatGPT's immense popularity and power make it eye-wateringly expensive to maintain, The Information reports, with OpenAI paying up to $700,000 a day.

Just Running ChatGPT Is Costing OpenAI a Staggering Sum Every Single Day

By Frank Landymore

Switzerland-based startup Energy Vault has broken ground on two huge gravity battery facilities in Texas and just north of Shanghai, China, CNET reports.

Company Builds Facility That Lifts and Lowers 24-Ton Bricks to Store Energy

By Victor Tangermann

SpaceX finally got Starship off the ground, but it looks like it didn't do its due diligence to make sure the aftermath didn't spill over to nearby cities.

City Annoyed When SpaceX Launch Coats It in Layer of Grime

By Frank Landymore

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has threatened to sue Microsoft for having the company's partner OpenAI train its AI models "illegally using Twitter data."

Furious Elon Musk Threatens to Sue Microsoft

By Victor Tangermann

Anxious about AI taking your job? Per a new BBC report, you're not alone — and frankly, automation worries aren't exactly far-fetched.

Artificial Intelligence

A New Fear Is Spreading: AI Anxiety

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

A published YA author recommended up and comers use ChatGPT to critique your writing. We're here to tell you that this is a bad, bad idea.

Your Brain Will Melt When You Hear How This Author Is Using ChatGPT

By Frank Landymore

PSA for anyone planning a trip to Florida: massive, smelly globs of seaweed and algae calle Sargassum are currently headed toward the state's shores.

Science & Energy

Huge Blobs Headed Toward Florida

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

Artist and music producer Austin Richard "Post Malone" Post got a rare chance to talk to NASA astronauts currently stationed on board the ISS.

Space Station Contacted by Bizarre Life Form: Post Malone

By Victor Tangermann

Universal Music Group is pissed about AI, and it's already taken down a viral voice clone of "Drake" and "the Weeknd." This is likely only the beginning.

Artificial Intelligence

Drake’s Label Is Still Absolutely Furious About That AI-Generated Song

By Frank Landymore

Red Cross Challenges Gamers Not to Commit Any War Crimes

Red Cross Challenges Gamers Not to Commit Any War Crimes

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

You'd think being trapped in a cave for over a year would be a nightmare, but Spanish mountaineer Beatriz Flamini says it was a mighty good time.

Woman Confined to Cave for 500 Days Says She Had a Nice Time

By Frank Landymore

Over the weekend, Meta's chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, took to Twitter to proclaim that humans are hardwired for either "dominance or submission."

Meta’s Head of AI Has Some Interesting Beliefs About Dominance and Submission

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

In a viral leaked video, Clearlink CEO James Clark told his writers that they should use AI to put out "30 to 50 times" more content than they do now.

Artificial Intelligence

Media CEO Says Writers Should Be Using AI to Churn Out “30-50 Times” More Content

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

While Muslims commemorated one of Ramadan's holiest nights below, an Arab astronaut showed how brightly Mecca is lit up while looking down from space.

Muslim Astronaut Posts Stunning Video of Mecca From Space

By Noor Al-Sibai

In a viral social media video, the FDNY's new Spot robodog is seen being deployed into a search-and-rescue zone — only to simply fall over.

$75,000 FDNY Robodog Goes to Work, Falls Over Almost Immediately

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

SpaceX has revealed what caused its gigantic Starship spacecraft prototype to blow up during the company's inaugural orbital test launch today.

It Turns Out SpaceX Blew Up Starship on Purpose

By Victor Tangermann

Reddit has announced that it will start charging a premium for AI companies that scrape all of its data to train their models.

Artificial Intelligence

Reddit Demands Payments for AI Trained on Its Users

By Victor Tangermann

An incredibly bright flash of light lit up the skies over Kyiv, Ukraine, late Wednesday evening — and experts are still hunting for an exact explanation.

Science & Energy

Experts Puzzled by Bright Flash Over Ukraine

By Victor Tangermann

ChaosGPT — the AI agent tasked with destroying humanity — was foiled again this week when its Twitter account was suspended. Another win for humans?

Artificial Intelligence

Twitter Suspends the AI Trying to Destroy Humanity

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

SpaceX managed to get its Starship spacecraft off the launch pad, but it later exploded. Did CEO Elon Musk rush ahead to have the attempt be on 4/20?

Did Elon’s Childish Obsession With 4/20 Lead to Today’s Starship Explosion?

By Victor Tangermann

SpaceX's gigantic Starship prototype spacecraft and Super Heavy booster officially cleared the launch pad, but started spinning, before exploding.

Starship Launches First Orbital Attempt, Explodes in Epic Fireball

By Victor Tangermann

NASA is locking four individuals inside a 1,700-square-foot Mars habitat analog for an entire year to see if they can get along.

NASA Selects Test Subjects to Contain in Simulated Mars Base

By Frank Landymore

Google asked around 80,000 of its employees to test its still-unreleased Bard AI chatbot before it released it to the public last month, Bloomberg reports.

Google Staff Warned Its AI Was a “Pathological Liar” Before They Released It Anyway

By Victor Tangermann

According to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, Meta-formerly-Facebook will lay off another 10,000 of the company's still-standing employees.

Facebook Is Getting Slammed by Another Round of Brutal Cuts

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

Nearly 21 years after it was launched, NASA's RHESSI satellite is expected to reenter Earth's atmosphere. Chances it'll hit you are apparently "low."

This NASA Satellite Is Falling Back to Earth After 21 Years

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

NASA has turned its giant 6.2 million-gallon Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) into a replica of the surface of the Moon to train astronauts.

NASA Building Huge Underwater Moon Replica

By Victor Tangermann

In a bombastic interview with Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk made a bold claim about Google co-founder Larry Page that, unfortunately, is kind of believable.

Elon Musk Claims Google Co-Founder Is Building a “Digital God”

By Noor Al-Sibai

Major record label Universal Music Group has forced a song that uses the AI-generated vocals of Drake and The Weeknd to be taken offline.

Artificial Intelligence

Furious Record Label Gets AI-Generated Drake Song Deleted

By Victor Tangermann

In a quiet new rule change, Twitter has rolled back protections for trans users amid an international anti-trans movement on both sides of the pond.

Twitter Says It’s Okay to Harass Trans People Now

By Noor Al-Sibai

German artist Boris Eldagsen, who recently won a prestigious photography competition with a stunning black and white portrait, is now refusing the award after admitting the image was generated using an AI image generator, The Guardian reports.

Artificial Intelligence

Guy Admits That His Prize-Winning “Photo” Was Actually Generated Using AI

By Victor Tangermann

Google CEO Sundar Pichai warned audiences in a 60 Minutes interview on CBS that AI will drastically disrupt society as we know it.

Google CEO Warns Earthlings to Brace for AI Impact

By Frank Landymore

EV maker Polestar just showed off its fourth passenger vehicle called the Polestar 4, a compact SUV that literally has no rear windshield.

Advanced Transport

New Car Has No Rear Window, Just a Camera

By Victor Tangermann

A Japanese astronomer spotted green streaks of light passing over a cloudy sky, which, as it turns out, were shot out by NASA's ICESat-2 satellite.

NASA’s Mighty Sky Lasers Spotted by Japanese Astronomer

By Victor Tangermann

Facebook is sending users money in a class action lawsuit settlement — and if you used the site at any point in the last 15 years, you can get some, too.

Facebook Is Giving Away Free Money, Y’all

By Noor Al-Sibai

Each iteration of OpenAI's GPT has been way bigger than the last. But the era of simply scaling up AIs may already be at an end, according to Sam Altman.

CEO of OpenAI Says Making Models Bigger Is Already Played Out

By Frank Landymore

Ever wanted to know what the Moon smells like? According to NASA astronaut Buzz Aldrin, it smells like spent gunpowder.

What Does the Moon Smell Like?

By Noor Al-Sibai

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is now so permanent and huge that living beings are migrating from thousands of miles away to get in on the plastic action.

Science & Energy

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Is Teeming With Trash Life, Scientists Find

By Noor Al-Sibai

We can now, apparently, add the CEO of the Google-owned DeepMind to the list of machine learning researchers who think AI might gain self-awareness.

Google DeepMind CEO Says AI May Become Self-Aware

By Noor Al-Sibai

Another NFT collector just got caught up in a scam, losing millions of dollars worth of crypto in the process.

Crypto Guy Forced to Sell Apes After Falling for Scam

By Victor Tangermann

Like a human possessed, an AI made by Google appears to know things it wasn't trained to learn — and yeah, it's freaking us out.

Google Surprised When Experimental AI Learns Language It Was Never Trained On

By Noor Al-Sibai

A team of Stanford students have come up with a pair of smart glasses that can display the output of OpenAI's GPT-4 chatbot.

Artificial Intelligence

New Smart Glasses Tell You What to Say on Dates Using GPT-4

By Victor Tangermann

The FBI is warning about "juice jacking" occurring from public USB charging ports, but luckily, someone's come up with a literal prophylactic.

You Can Apparently Use a “USB Condom” to Protect Against the FBI’s Latest Boogeyman

By Noor Al-Sibai

Earlier today, SpaceX loaded its gigantic, 400-foot Starship rocket stack with propellant — only to scrub its first-ever orbital launch attempt.

SpaceX Fails to Launch Mighty Starship

By Victor Tangermann

Move over, AI-generated SEO spam — AI-powered news anchors are here. Meet Fedha, an AI-generated news presenter from Kuwait News.

Artificial Intelligence

Media Outlet Shows Off AI-Powered News Presenter

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

Three brothers who used to work at SpaceX walk into a bar and order some Moon water — stop me if you've heard this one before.

Ex-SpaceX Brothers Working on Spacecraft Powered by Moon Water

By Noor Al-Sibai

Per leaked messages, Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner is "all for climate change." He also asked a former tabloid EIC to influence German elections. Cool.

In Leaked Messages, CEO Says He Supports Climate Change

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

AI image generators like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion are reportedly taking away work from China-based videogame artists and illustrators.

Artificial Intelligence

AI Is Already Putting Videogame Illustrators Out of Work in China

By Maggie Harrison Dupré