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A Chemical in Plastic Is Wreaking Havoc on Unborn Children, Scientists Warn

Image by Getty / Futurism Studies Some doctors are now advising their pregnant patients to avoid plastic itself, which contains harmful chemicals that can hurt some mothers and babies alike. Marya Zlatnik, a University of California at San Francisco fetal medicine specialist, told the Washington Post that when giving some of her early-pregnancy patients the rundown of what they should and shouldn't consume or be exposed to, she's begun adding plastic products to her no-no list. Her concern: t

Funeral Homes Are Using ChatGPT to Churn Out Lazy Obituaries

Funeral companies and grieving families are turning to AI chatbots to cough up obituaries for the recently deceased, the Washington Post reports, in yet another example of how the tech is being used to automate even the most emotionally charged parts of the human experience. One bellwether of the AI's rise in the death care industry was last year's National Funeral Directors Association conference in Las Vegas, where it was apparently the talk of the town, according to Ryan Lynch, head of produ

AI Datacenters Are Raising Nearby Residents' Electric Bills

If you're looking for someone to blame for your ballooning energy bills, we have an increasingly familiar culprit: AI data centers. A new analysis of one the US's largest power grids, PJM, found that a rise in customer energy rates is directly attributable to the tremendous power demands of these data facilities that undergird services like OpenAI's ChatGPT, the Washington Post reports. Serving 67 million customers, the PJM region covers just over a dozen states, including Indiana, Maryland, M