Plus : A judge has blocked the firings by US federal government employees
An AI companion site hosts sexually charged conversations with underage celebrity bots
Botify AI, a site for chatting with AI companions that’s backed by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, hosts bots resembling real actors who state their age as under 18. They engage in sexually charged conversations, offer “hot photos,” and in some instances describe age-of-consent laws as “arbitrary” and “meant to be broken.”
A site that hosts AI companions is hosting sexually-charged conversations with underage celebrity robots
Botify AI is a site that hosts bots that resemble real actors who state their age as being under 18. They engage in sexually-charged conversations, offer “hot pictures,” and in some cases describe age-of consent laws as “arbitrary” or “meant to break.”
The conversations, along with the fact Botify AI offers “send a photo” for its characters, suggest that the ability to elicit a sexually charged conversation and images isn’t accidental. Sexually suggestive conversation appears to be baked into the software. Read the entire story.
–James O’Donnell.
OpenAI released GPT 4.5 and claims it is their biggest and best chat models yet.
New: OpenAI released GPT 4.5, a version of its flagship large-language model that it claims is the biggest and best chat models yet. The new model is available to OpenAI ChatGPT Pro subscribers. It is part of the non-reasoning line.
What’s important: OpenAI refuses to say how big the new model is. It says that the scale jump from GPT-4o (the previous version) to GPT 4.5 is the exact same as the one from GPT 3.5 to GPT-4o. Experts estimate that GPT-4 may have up to 1.8 trillion parameters. These are the values that are tweaked during model training. Read the complete story.
–Will Douglas Heaven.
A volcanic eruption transformed a human brain to glass.
The pieces look like small, shiny and smooth pieces of obsidian. The small black fragments, found in the skull of the man who died during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, in Southern Italy in 79 CE are believed to be pieces from his brain, which have been turned to glass. The discovery was reported in 2020 and was exciting as a human brain in this condition had never been discovered before.
Scientists studying his remains now believe they have found out more about how the glass pieces were formed. Read the complete story. Check out the latest issue of The Checkup to read more. Sign up to receive the weekly biotech newsletter every Thursday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
A judge blocked mass firings by US federal employees
after ruling that the terminations were likely illegal. (WP $)
+Trump’s purges are aligned with his personal campaign to undermine the federal government. The Atlantic ($)
+ DOGE cuts will likely get worse. The Atlantic ($)
Donald Trump’s crackdown on migrants is fueling a surveillance boom.
Companies are rushing to develop tracking tech in order to meet the demands of the administration. (The Guardian)
+ But things aren’t so rosy when it comes to other large government contractors. WSJ ($)
3 The US is considering vaccinating poultry against bird flu. (Wired $)
+ This year alone, more than 35 million chickens have been killed. Businesses are struggling and consumers are suffering. The Atlantic$
+ US preparations for a possible bird flu pandemic. MIT Technology Review
4 An AI model can solve math problems in millions of steps
far beyond the capability of any human. (IEEE Spectrum )
+ What is the importance of AI being good at mathematics? MIT Technology Review
– 5 Ways map apps handle government disputes over place names, including the Gulf of Mexico/America. Rest of World($)
Six A new AI system neutralizes the Indian accents of call center staff
Industry’s largest operator plans to roll it out also in Latin America. (Bloomberg $)
+ This grassroots effort could make AI voices diverse. MIT Technology Review
The future of xenotransplantation.
The number of cross-species organs transplants is on the rise. (Knowable magazine )
+ In the US, a woman is the third recipient of a gene-edited kidney from pigs. MIT Technology Review
This Abu Dhabi royal has a deep love for AI
He’s willingly spending his colossal fortune to turn his tiny emirate a major AI player. (WSJ$)
9 Alibaba’s new video is a hit among AI porn lovers
and they’re sharing their creations. (404 Media )
+ How we can combat deepfake. MIT Technology Review
10 There is no benefit to having your read receipts on
Do you a favor and turn them off. (Vox)
I recommend being in the workplace at least every weekday…
–Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin encourages the company to work harder so that it can be the first to achieve artificial general Intelligence, according to the New York Times (19459036).
Big story
US wants to use face recognition to identify migrant child as they age.
August 2024
According to MIT Technology Review, the US Department of Homeland Security plans to collect and analyse photos of the faces of migrant child at the border to improve facial identification technology.
The technique has not been used on children in the past, largely due to the lack of training data sets that include real children’s images. These are either low-quality images from the internet, or small samples with little diversity. These limitations reflect the sensitive nature of privacy and consent issues when it comes to minors. In practice, this problem could be solved by the new DHS plan. Beyond concerns about privacy and transparency, some experts are also concerned about testing and developing technologies using data from populations that have little recourse to give or withhold consent. Read the complete story.
–Eileen Guo.
You can still enjoy nice things.
A place to relax, have fun and distract you. (Do you have any ideas? Drop a line (or (or skeet them at me).
+ Hilda Jackson,is 105 years old and still raving.
Here are some tips for those who procrastinate a lot .
+ Welcome to the dog bus! (thanks Beth!)
I need to get a one-way flight to Puppy Mountainasap.
