Far from that topic, Nevison gave a presentation downplaying the transmission of hepatitis B and the benefits of vaccines. She falsely claimed that the dramatic decline in hepatitis B infections that followed vaccination efforts was not actually due to the vaccination efforts—despite irrefutable evidence that it was. And she followed that up with her own … Read more
Tiny kei trucks from Japan have a new fan: President Donald Trump. Trump expressed admiration for the pint-sized autos during a briefing with reporters to announce his plan to gut fuel economy standards. “They’re very small. They’re really cute,” Trump said. “And I said, how would that do in this country? And everyone seems to … Read more
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei shared his thoughts on if the AI industry was in a bubble at The New York Times DealBook Summit on Wednesday. This was in addition to throwing shade on one particular unnamed competitor, which was clearly OpenAI. Amodei declined to give a simple yes-or-no answer to question of a bubble, saying … Read more
Roughly two years ago, Sam Altman tweeted that AI systems would be capable of superhuman persuasion well before achieving general intelligence—a prediction that raised concerns about the influence AI could have over democratic elections. To see if conversational large language models can really sway political views of the public, scientists at the UK AI Security … Read more
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in an X post Thursday that owners can text and drive with the latest version of his company’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) driver assistance software, despite the fact that it’s illegal to do so in most states. Musk replied to another user who had noticed the newest update to the software, … Read more
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is finally out after a long and difficult development — and despite some bright spots, the game really shows its age. Nintendo has a long and celebrated history of doing things its own way. During the original Switch era, going back to Super Mario Odyssey in 2017, Nintendo has focused on … Read more
When Valve announced its upcoming Steam Machine hardware last month, some eagle-eyed gamers may have been surprised to see that the official spec sheet lists support for HDMI 2.0 output, rather than the updated, higher-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 standard introduced in 2017. Now, Valve tells Ars that, while the hardware itself actually supports HDMI 2.1, the … Read more
School districts are paying extra for basic supplies thanks to unpredictable dynamic pricing on Amazon, which is costing them on average 17 percent more, according to a report by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR). Unlike the contracts schools and local governments would traditionally make with local suppliers, who would bid to offer the best … Read more
The Trump administration has ordered US consulates to consider rejecting H1-B visa applicants involved in content moderation or “censorship,” according to a report from Reuters. A State Department cable viewed by the outlet says officials should check an applicant’s resume or LinkedIn profile for a job history involving moderation, fact-checking, online safety, compliance, and misinformation. … Read more
In September—just after OpenAI brought back the more sycophantic ChatGPT model after users revolted about losing access to their favorite friendly bots—the head of Rutgers Medical School’s psychiatry department, Petros Levounis, told an ABC news affiliate that chatbots creating “psychological echo chambers is a key concern,” not just for people struggling with mental health issues. … Read more