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OpenAI jumps gun on International Math Olympiad gold medal announcement

On Saturday, OpenAI researcher Alexander Wei announced that a new AI language model the company is researching has achieved gold medal-level performance on the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), matching a standard that fewer than 9 percent of human contestants reach each year. The announcement came despite an embargo request from IMO organizers asking AI companies to wait until July 28 to share their results. The experimental model reportedly tackled the contest's six proof-based probl

Alarming Video Shows Experimental Fighting Robot Thrashing Uncontrollably

"I'm so sorry." Breaking Away A video making the rounds on social media shows a humanoid robot flailing its arms and legs, seemingly trying to break free of a harness. The clip shows the robot causing the crane it's hanging from to collapse to the ground as a nearby human watches in shock, putting his hands on his head as he surveys the damage. "Oh my god, what the f*ck was that?" a female voice, presumably belonging to robot combat company REK CTO Amanda Watson, can be heard saying in the b

X-Men at 25 is more relevant than ever

Credit: 20th Century Studios There's much to love about this film, including plenty of memorable standout scenes; seven of our favorites are featured below. It's got stellar casting, snappy dialogue, and breaks up the action with quieter character moment that advance the story without slowing the pace. X-Men also takes pains to establish key relationships: Charles and Magneto, Rogue and Wolverine, and the romantic triangle of Jean, Cyclops, and Wolverine. We care about these characters: their i

“The Bitter Lesson” is wrong. Well sort of

“The Bitter Lesson” is wrong. Well… sort of. Assaf Pinhasi 3 min read · 1 hour ago 1 hour ago -- Listen Share TL;DR There is no dichotomy between domain knowledge vs. “general purpose methods that leverage data+compute”. They are both powerful tools that compensate for each other and need to be balanced and traded off during the model building process. “The bitter lesson” in 30 seconds “The bitter lesson” is one of the most popular opinion pieces about AI research and it’s future. In his w

Will the Fear of Being Confused for AI Mean That We Will Now Write Differently?

by David Beer Could there be anything more insulting for a writer than someone assuming that their writing is an output of generative artificial intelligence? The mere possibility of being confused for a neural network is enough to make any creative shudder. When it happens, and it will happen, it will inevitably sting. By implication, being mistaken for AI is to be told that your writing is so basic, so predictable, so formulaic, so replicable, so obvious, so neat, so staid, so emotionless, s

Angry Callers Accusing Real Customer Support Staff of Being AI

A penny for the thoughts of our thankless call center workers. Long have they had to endure indignant customers fuming at them for problems beyond their control. And now they must suffer accusations that call their very humanity in question, Bloomberg reports, as the proliferation of AI tech has many callers suspecting that the human they're speaking to is actually a chatbot. If these customer support personnel weren't treated like robots before, in other words, they are now — in a distressing

Is Climate Change an Existential Threat?

If a 60-mile-wide (100-kilometer-wide) asteroid slammed into Earth tomorrow, it would render the planet inhospitable to nearly all life forms, save for the hardiest extremophiles. This mass extinction event would wipe humanity off the face of the Earth—there would be no survivors. To some experts, this is the true definition of an “existential threat.” Traditionalists will say this term describes a risk that endangers the very existence of something—in this case, the human species. In recent ye

What’s on offer at a luxury Bay Area longevity clinic

Human Longevity, a medical clinic in South San Francisco’s biotech corridor, feels more like a spa than a doctor’s office. The floors of the 8,000-square-foot space are sleek and white, the walls bamboo with moss accents. Visitors are referred to as clients, not patients, as they are ushered into private rooms equipped with Wi-Fi, snacks, full bathrooms with showers, and cameras for Zoom meetings — a feature meant to accommodate executives who fly in for the day for multi-hour batteries of test

Salesforce used AI to cut support load by 5% — but the real win was teaching bots to say ‘I’m sorry’

Want smarter insights in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get only what matters to enterprise AI, data, and security leaders. Subscribe Now Salesforce has crossed a significant threshold in the enterprise AI race, surpassing 1 million autonomous agent conversations on its help portal — a milestone that offers a rare glimpse into what it takes to deploy AI agents at massive scale and the surprising lessons learned along the way. The achievement, confirmed by company executives

Synths hunt down deadly monsters in latest Alien: Earth trailer

The premiere of Alien: Earth is just weeks away, and FX/Hulu dropped one last trailer to pique our interest, along with a much more detailed synopsis. It's meditative and existential in tone, with a haunting tune playing over footage of mysterious alien craft, dead bodies, blood-spattered humans fleeing through futuristic corridors, and, of course, a spooky silhouette of a xenomorph in the distance. As previously reported, the eight-episode series is set in 2120, two years before the events of

FX/Hulu drops one last trailer for Alien: Earth

The premiere of Alien: Earth is just weeks away, and FX/Hulu dropped one last trailer to pique our interest, along with a much more detailed synopsis. It's meditative and existential in tone, with a haunting tune playing over footage of mysterious alien craft, dead bodies, blood-spattered humans fleeing through futuristic corridors, and, of course, a spooky silhouette of a xenomorph in the distance. As previously reported, the eight-episode series is set in 2120, two years before the events of

7 Weird Sci-Fi Network TV Shows That Aired Just as Streaming Was Taking Over

Netflix’s first original series, House of Cards, launched in 2013, and television was never the same. But even as Netflix and other platforms began to gain popularity, old-school network and basic cable channels continued to create edgy (and sometimes a bit unhinged) genre shows—the sort of programming that just a few years later would come to dominate the streaming landscape. With that in mind, here are seven weird and wonderful sci-fi shows from the last era of TV before streaming well and tr

Topics: dome fi got human sci

Show HN: An MCP server that gives LLMs temporal awareness and time calculation

"Passage of Time" Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server 🕐 An MCP server that gives language models temporal awareness and time calculation abilities. Teaching LLMs the significance of the passage of time through collaborative tool development. 📖 The Story This project emerged from a philosophical question: "Can AI perceive the passage of time?" What started as an exploration of machine consciousness became a practical solution to a real problem - LLMs can't reliably calculate time differences.

Leading AI Models Are Completely Flunking the Three Laws of Robotics

In his genre-defining 1950 collection of science fiction short stories "I, Robot," author Isaac Asimov laid out the Three Laws of Robotics: 1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. Ever since, the elegant

Show HN: I gave Claude a sundial and it built a calendar

"Passage of Time" Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server 🕐 An MCP server that gives language models temporal awareness and time calculation abilities. Teaching LLMs the significance of the passage of time through collaborative tool development. 📖 The Story This project emerged from a philosophical question: "Can AI perceive the passage of time?" What started as an exploration of machine consciousness became a practical solution to a real problem - LLMs can't reliably calculate time differences.

I tested a subscription-free smart ring for a month - here's how it compares to Oura

ZDNET's key takeaways The Ultrahuman Ring Air is the brand's first foray into the smart ring space, and it's available for $349, no subscription required. The ring is great for hardcore fitness enthusiasts and recreational exercisers looking to use their health data to optimize their wellness routines. The app's user interface could be improved for easier access to daily logging functions. $349 at Amazon As one of the hottest smart rings on the market, the Ultrahuman Ring Air offers features

The human harbor: Navigating identity and meaning in the AI age

Want smarter insights in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get only what matters to enterprise AI, data, and security leaders. Subscribe Now Image generated by ChatGPT. We are living through a time when AI is reshaping how we work but also how we think, perceive and assign meaning. This phase is not just about smarter tools or faster work. AI is beginning to reshape how we define value, purpose and identity itself. The future is not just unpredictable in terms of unknowable eve

The Day Grok Tried to Be Human

For 16 hours this week, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok stopped functioning as intended and started sounding like something else entirely. In a now-viral cascade of screenshots, Grok began parroting extremist talking points, echoing hate speech, praising Adolf Hitler, and pushing controversial user views back into the algorithmic ether. The bot, which Musk’s company xAI designed to be a “maximally truth-seeking” alternative to more sanitized AI tools, had effectively lost the plot. And now, xAI ad

Topics: ai grok human july like

AI is changing the rental car return experience - and it could cost you

UVeye Returning a rental car is already a bit of a stressful experience, but it might be getting a little more stressful soon -- you can thank AI for that. Over the past several months, people renting vehicles from Hertz noticed a new step in the return process -- a drive through a giant, glowing archway. Also: Perplexity's Comet AI browser is hurtling toward Chrome - how to try it It turns out that Hertz is employing a new AI-powered system called UVeye (from an Israeli startup that started

Topics: ai car damage hertz human

Review: Stellar cast makes Superman shine bright

I'll be frank: I had mixed feelings, based solely on the trailers, about James Gunn's Superman reboot. Sure, the casting seemed great, Gunn has a winning track record on superhero fare, and Krypto the dog stole the show every time he appeared. The trailers struck a nice balance between action, humor, and heart. Yet the film also seemed overpacked with super-character cameos, and it was hard to get any sense of the actual plot. I've now seen the film, and those impressions were largely correct.

Large-scale DNA study maps 37,000 years of human disease history

A new study suggests that our ancestors’ close cohabitation with domesticated animals and large-scale migrations played a key role in the spread of infectious diseases. The team, led by Professor Eske Willerslev at the Universities of Cambridge and Copenhagen, recovered ancient DNA from 214 known human pathogens in prehistoric humans from Eurasia. They found that the earliest evidence of zoonotic diseases – illnesses transmitted from animals to humans, like COVID in recent times – dates back t

I tested a subscription-free smart ring that rivals Oura - and it's $50 off for Prime Day

ZDNET's key takeaways The Ultrahuman Ring Air is the brand's first foray into the smart ring space, and it's available for $349, no subscription required The ring is great for hardcore fitness enthusiasts and recreational exercisers looking to use their health data to optimize their wellness routines The app's user interface could be improved for easier access to daily logging functions. $349 at Amazon For Amazon Prime Day, the retailer is offering the Ultrahuman Ring Air at a $50 discount, b

MLB will test its robot umpire system at the next All-Star Game

While human umpires will still make the first call at the All-Star Game on July 15, Major League Baseball plans to let teams use a robot umpire to challenge rulings, ESPN reports. The automated ball-strike (ABS) system has been around for years in one form or another, but relying on a computer's judgement of a pitch has yet to become a permanent fixture of major league play. MLB is essentially porting over the ABS challenge system used during spring training for the upcoming All-Star Game in At

What is AGI? Nobody agrees, and it’s tearing Microsoft and OpenAI apart.

When is an AI system intelligent enough to be called artificial general intelligence (AGI)? According to one definition reportedly agreed upon by Microsoft and OpenAI, the answer lies in economics: When AI generates $100 billion in profits. This arbitrary profit-based benchmark for AGI perfectly captures the definitional chaos plaguing the AI industry. In fact, it may be impossible to create a universal definition of AGI, but few people with money on the line will admit it. Over this past year

AGI may be impossible to define, and that’s a multibillion-dollar problem

When is an AI system intelligent enough to be called artificial general intelligence (AGI)? According to one definition reportedly agreed upon by Microsoft and OpenAI, the answer lies in economics: When AI generates $100 billion in profits. This arbitrary profit-based benchmark for AGI perfectly captures the definitional chaos plaguing the AI industry. In fact, it may be impossible to create a universal definition of AGI, but few people with money on the line will admit it. Over this past year

I found a subscription-free smart ring that rivals Oura - and it's $50 off for Prime Day

ZDNET's key takeaways The Ultrahuman Ring Air is the brand's first foray into the smart ring space, and it's available for $349, no subscription required The ring is great for hardcore fitness enthusiasts and recreational exercisers looking to use their health data to optimize their wellness routines The app's user interface could be improved for easier access to daily logging functions. $349 at Amazon For Amazon Prime Day, the retailer is offering the Ultrahuman Ring Air at a $50 discount, b

How scientists are trying to use AI to unlock the human mind

Compared with conventional psychological models, which use simple math equations, Centaur did a far better job of predicting behavior. Accurate predictions of how humans respond in psychology experiments are valuable in and of themselves: For example, scientists could use Centaur to pilot their experiments on a computer before recruiting, and paying, human participants. In their paper, however, the researchers propose that Centaur could be more than just a prediction machine. By interrogating th

AI could help humans copilot space missions one day, researchers find

Ignatiev/Getty Images Sci-fi authors and screenwriters have long envisioned AI companions helping humans as they explore the cosmos. Sometimes things go well (Commander Data was a friendly and reliable Starfleet officer), other times not so much ("I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave"). Now, AI-assisted spacefaring -- like so many other concepts that, not so long ago, seemed utterly far-fetched -- could soon become a practical reality. Also: How VR is helping astronauts stay grounded in space: Li

Why don't we trust technology in sport?

For a few minutes on Sunday afternoon, Wimbledon's Centre Court became the perfect encapsulation of the current tensions between humans and machines. When Britain's Sonay Kartal hit a backhand long on a crucial point, her opponent Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova knew it had landed out. She said the umpire did too. Television replays proved it. But the electronic line-calling system - which means humans have been fully replaced this year following earlier trials - remained silent. Minutes ticked by.

Tennis players criticize AI technology used by Wimbledon

Some tennis players are not happy with Wimbledon’s new AI line judges, as reported by The Telegraph. This is the first year the prestigious tennis tournament, which is still ongoing, replaced human line judges, who determine if a ball is in or out, with an electronic line calling system (ELC). Numerous players criticized the AI technology, mostly for making incorrect calls, leading to them losing points. Notably, British tennis star Emma Raducanu called out the technology for missing a ball th