All posts tagged: alarmed

Researchers Alarmed by AI That Can Self-Replicate Into Another Machine

Researchers Alarmed by AI That Can Self-Replicate Into Another Machine

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech A new report from Palisade Research has found that AI models can self-replicate by copying themselves onto other machines, without any help from human co-conspirators. “We’re rapidly approaching the point where no one would be able to shut down a rogue AI, because it would be able to self-exfiltrate its weights and copy itself to thousands of computers around the world,” Jeffrey Ladish, the director Berkeley-based AI safety group, told The Guardian. Some experts, however, are urging calm, saying it’s unlikely that that the test AI models could replicate in a real world scenario. “They are testing in environments that are like soft jelly in many cases,” Jamieson O’Reilly, an expert in offensive cybersecurity, told the newspaper. “That doesn’t take away from the value of their research, but it does mean the outcome might look far less scary in a real enterprise environment with even a medium level of monitoring.” In the study, the Palisade researchers tested several …

Even GOP Hawks Now Alarmed Over Iran War Fallout As 60-Days Hits Friday

Even GOP Hawks Now Alarmed Over Iran War Fallout As 60-Days Hits Friday

Published by Jenni Sidey

Amid reports that Vice President JD Vance is very seriously questioning the White House’s Iran War narrative along with the Pentagon’s rosy and overly positive updates on how things are going, over in Congress there’s growing alarm as Trump’s Operation Epic Fury is set to hit the 60-day mark on Friday.  Republicans no doubt want to wrap things up fast, however, the latest reports say the White House is preparing for an extended Hormuz blockade of at least ‘months’ longer, per fresh WSJ reporting. There now appears to be a significant shift among Republicans underway, given that the 1973 War Powers Resolution requires that a US president must terminate unauthorized military operations within 60 days of initiating them. The stickers have started to appear: from a gas station in Texas, submitted by a ZH reader. Congress must then certify a need for continued military force in the instance that the nation faces an imminent threat. Already several war power initiatives have been effectively blocked on the House and Senate sides.  But amid the ongoing Hormuz Strait blockade, …

Tesla Driver Alarmed as FSD Takes Him Directly Into the Path of an Oncoming Train

Tesla Driver Alarmed as FSD Takes Him Directly Into the Path of an Oncoming Train

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech One Tesla driver is lucky to be alive after his vehicle took control as he waited for a train to pass. Joshua Brown of Plano, Texas said his car’s Full Self-Driving mode engaged while he sat waiting at a railroad crossing. Footage shared with local media shows his Tesla plowing through the fiberglass crossing arms, shattering his window as the train screamed by just feet away. Brown admitted that he had zoned out while waiting for the train to pass — which is fair enough, if you’re a human. For an autonomous vehicle, it’s inexcusable. “About the time I realized I was moving, the bar is right there, like right in front of me,” Brown said. The Tesla’s rear camera captured the crossing as a Dallas Area Rapid Transit train blazed past, barely missing Brown by a few car lengths. Texas Tesla driver narrowly avoids autopilot disaster “I would like to say I wasn’t rattled, but it rattled …

Top Security Experts Alarmed by Power of Anthropic’s New Hacker AI

Top Security Experts Alarmed by Power of Anthropic’s New Hacker AI

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech In November, Anthropic revealed that a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group had exploited its Claude AI’s agentic capabilities to infiltrate dozens of targets around the world. It was trivially easy to get around Anthropic’s AI guardrails, with the hackers simply pretending to work for legitimate cybersecurity organizations — highlighting how woefully unprepared we are for powerful AI models that could accelerate the discovery of serious vulnerabilities. And now, Anthropic’s latest Mythos AI model is making that nightmare scenario feel more real than ever. As Bloomberg reports, the company’s executives were seemingly so alarmed by the system’s capabilities that they decided to only make it available to a select number of organizations as part of “Project Glasswing.” The goal: give the organizations a fighting chance to get ahead of a potential cybersecurity crisis in the making. But considering Anthropic has yet to publicly release its model, plenty of questions remain surrounding the company’s eyebrow-raising claims. In his own testing, Anthropic-affiliated …

Teens Alarmed at What AI Is Doing to Their Minds

Teens Alarmed at What AI Is Doing to Their Minds

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech There’s a strange dynamic emerging around artificial intelligence. Research has shown that young people — who are typically the first adopters of new technology like MP3 players and the internet — are actually the most skeptical of AI. In fact, many teens seem to have deep concerns over AI chatbots rotting their frontal lobes. A new study out of Drexel University shows just how self-aware the kids have become. In a wide-ranging survey of hundreds of Reddit posts, a team of information scientists found that adolescent users of AI chatbots are increasingly conscious of the negative side effects the tech is having on their lives, even as they sometimes display signs of intense addiction. According to the study, many teens begin using AI — particularly the infamously addictive Character.AI — for entertainment or personal comfort, but inevitably find themselves overly attached and reliant. Across 318 posts about using Character.AI, the researchers found evidence of all six factors correlated …

China Alarmed by Spread of OpenClaw Agents

China Alarmed by Spread of OpenClaw Agents

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Open source AI agent OpenClaw, formerly known as Clawdbot and Moltbot, has taken over the internet by storm. The tool allows practically anybody to create autonomous AI agents that can complete complex tasks on your computer, like browsing the web and running scripts. It’s a powerful new take on AI that comes with inherent dangers. After all, you’re letting an AI model loose on your machine, going far outside the confines of the browser-based chatbots we’ve grown accustomed to. What could possibly go wrong? OpenClaw has caught on like wildfire, including in China, as Bloomberg reports, with users on social media bragging about “raising lobsters,” a nod to OpenClaw’s red crustacean mascot. Even tech giants like Tencent and Alibaba are adopting the tech for their own software, and government agencies are signing contracts with startups that are also leveraging OpenClaw tech. Meetups of the OpenClaw obsessed in the country are “beginning to border on the cult-like,” Bloomberg‘s Zheping …

Trade Unions Alarmed by Robots Designed to Do Blue Collar Work

Trade Unions Alarmed by Robots Designed to Do Blue Collar Work

Published by José Betancourt

Photo by Tang Yanjun/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images When past generations imagined the best version of the future, it was one of leisure. Advertisements, cartoonists, and pulp novelists dared us to dream of a world where the spoils of industrial development were shared with all: robot butlers, transit by pneumatic tube, and more familiar tropes. These developments, it seemed, would make our lives more convenient, more secure, and — dare we say — more abundant. Now in 2026, it’s clear that even the most modest utopian fantasies have been stolen by the wealthy. The rich have luxurious self-driving cars while the rest of us suffer with crumbling public transit. The rich treat housing as an asset, while the rest of us navigate algorithms meant to maximize rent extraction. The rich have elite private schools, while the rest of us content ourselves to teacher shortages and glitchy AI tutors. Going forward, the disparity is likely to widen. Having established their giddy desire to automate white collar jobs, tech moguls are increasingly turning their attention toward …

Majority of CEOs Alarmed as AI Delivers No Financial Returns

Majority of CEOs Alarmed as AI Delivers No Financial Returns

Published by José Betancourt

Investors continue to fret over an AI bubble “reckoning,” as gains in productivity from the tech remain elusive. According to a recent survey by professional services network PwC, more than half of the 4,454 CEO respondents said “their companies aren’t yet seeing a financial return from investments in AI.” Only 30 percent reported increased revenue from AI in the last 12 months. However, a far more significant 56 percent said AI has failed to either boost revenue or lower costs. A mere 12 percent of CEOs reported that it’d accomplished both goals. The findings once again underline lingering questions about the effectiveness of the tech. That’s despite AI companies pouring tens of billions into data center buildouts and related infrastructure. Instead of looking for other avenues for growth, though, PwC found that executives are worried about falling behind by not leaning into AI enough. “A small group of companies are already turning AI into measurable financial returns, whilst many others are still struggling to move beyond pilots,” said PwC global chairman Mohamed Kande in a …

French judges alarmed by rumors of US sanctioning magistrates who sentenced Le Pen

French judges alarmed by rumors of US sanctioning magistrates who sentenced Le Pen

Published by Sam Flores

Peimane Ghaleh-Marzban, the president of the Paris court, at his swearing-in ceremony at the Paris Courthouse, September 29, 2025. LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP The Trump administration is considering sanctions against three French magistrates, according to the German magazine Der Spiegel, causing concern within the French judiciary. The judges in question sentenced Marine Le Pen on March 31, 2025, to four years in prison, including two mandatory years, and five years of ineligibility for embezzlement of public funds. On December 30, 2025, the weekly publication reported on its website anonymous accounts from former US administration officials who said that Washington intends to sanction European magistrates and officials suspected of targeting the far right in France or in Germany. Der Spiegel explicitly cited the case of the three French judges. “If such claims were proven true or were to materialize,” declared Peimane Ghaleh-Marzban, the president of the Paris judicial court, on January 6 during a session welcoming new magistrates, “they would constitute unacceptable and intolerable interference in our country’s internal affairs, which should provoke condemnation from the public authorities.” …