All posts tagged: extinction

The Download: AI’s extinction risk and bioweapons threat

The Download: AI’s extinction risk and bioweapons threat

Published by skeptic

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Could AI really kill us all? Your questions, answered On Wednesday, MIT Technology Review hosted a live Roundtables event that asked the question many seem to be asking right now: could AI really kill us all? But attendees had more questions than we had time to answer, so we asked senior AI editor Will Douglas Heaven and AI reporter Grace Huckins to tackle some of the best ones.  The questions they tried to answer include: am I going to die? Why should AI kill us, if at all? Is AI really dangerous, or is it just tech companies drumming up PR? And what steps can be taken to make sure AI is controlled, monitored and regulated effectively? Here are their responses. —Will Douglas Heaven and Grace Huckins The specter of AI-enabled bioweapons is a wake-up call for biotech One of the ways AI could potentially cause catastrophic harm is by aiding …

A feather found in dinosaur poop could help explain why birds survived the dinosaur extinction

A feather found in dinosaur poop could help explain why birds survived the dinosaur extinction

Published by Jenni Sidey

A fossilized dinosaur dropping from Montana’s Hell Creek Formation contains an exceptionally preserved bird feather, along with additional feathers, bones and fish scales from a bird eaten roughly 66 million years ago. The feathers probably belonged to a hesperornithiform, an extinct group of diving birds closely related to the lineage that produced modern birds, and reveal an unexpected mixture of modern waterproof feathers and more primitive body feathers. Researchers propose that differences in insulating plumage, and possibly molting strategies, may help explain why crown birds survived the catastrophic conditions following the end-Cretaceous asteroid impact while every other dinosaur lineage disappeared. A meal eaten by a dinosaur about 66 million years ago may have preserved a clue to one of paleontology’s biggest mysteries. Inside a small piece of fossilized dung from Montana, scientists discovered an extraordinarily well-preserved bird feather, additional feathers, tiny bones and fish scales. The specimen provides a rare look at the plumage of birds living immediately before the asteroid impact that wiped out nearly all dinosaurs. The research, published in Current Biology, was …

Everybody Involved In The “AI Extinction” Conversation Is Talking Their Own Book

Everybody Involved In The “AI Extinction” Conversation Is Talking Their Own Book

Published by Jenni Sidey

By Benjamin Picton, senior market strategist at Rabobank Coalition of the Exceedingly Reluctant US 10-year bond yields topped 5% on Monday, and again on Tuesday, as crude oil prices continued to move higher and overnight index swaps implied a higher chance of a Fed rate hike on Wednesday. The OIS market now has 24.9bps priced in for Wednesday’s FOMC meeting – suggesting that traders view a Fed hike this week as a near certainty. US and European equities were broadly lower on Monday as markets digested the implications of tech CEOs banding together to plead for regulation to slow the pace of development of frontier AI models. While Darion Amodei, Elon Musk and Sam Altman were saying “please sir, can I have a bit less” we saw dissent from Mark Zuckerberg and Jensen Huang with the former saying that AI development needed to be speeded up and the latter telling President Trump that “we’re not going to let that happen” in reference to an AI slowdown. There is a sense here that everybody involved in …

The Download: AI’s real extinction threat and age-reversal tech for eyes

The Download: AI’s real extinction threat and age-reversal tech for eyes

Published by skeptic

Join MIT Technology Review executive editor Niall Firth, senior AI editor Will Douglas Heaven, and AI reporter Grace Huckins for a subscriber-only conversation unpacking the debate around AI extinction. They’ll explore where the fears come from, whether they hold any water and, if they do, what we should do about them. Register now to attend on Tuesday, September 15 at 16:00 BST / 11:00am EST / 8:00am PST. Want to join the conversation? Subscribe to MIT Technology Review for exclusive access to all our Roundtables. This geneticist’s age-reversal tech could help restore sight Yuancheng (Ryan) Lu is obsessed with aging. And with eyes. As he steps outside the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, his aviator glasses darken automatically in the sun. Age-related blindness runs in his family, and his own 23andMe test came back with a mutation for macular degeneration, a top cause of vision loss in old age. That obsession extends to his work. Lu is behind one of the coolest results in rejuvenation science and eye research: an age-reversal technique called reprogramming that …

What an Ex-Anthropic Researcher’s Warning About Human Extinction Really Means

What an Ex-Anthropic Researcher’s Warning About Human Extinction Really Means

Published by skeptic

A string of posts on X from an AI researcher who says he quit a job at Anthropic over ethical concerns has gone viral, prompting thousands of responses and reigniting debate over the potential future dangers of artificial intelligence. Jacob Coxon, an AI researcher who also worked at OpenAI on pretraining AI models, resigned from Anthropic over concerns that AI development could lead to human extinction. “Neither company is acting responsibly,” he wrote. “They are racing to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.” Superintelligence refers to a hypothetical scenario in which AI’s “cognitive” abilities vastly exceed those of humans across every domain — science, math, strategy, creativity and problem-solving. The threaded post on X from Coxon has more than 156 million views as of this writing and has been liked more than 752,000 times. I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives. More thoughts below. — …

Century-old myth about the Tasmanian tiger may have been dangerously wrong

Century-old myth about the Tasmanian tiger may have been dangerously wrong

Published by Jenni Sidey

The extinct thylacine had a skull unlike that of wolves, foxes or any other living mammalian predator, despite its famously dog-like appearance. Its oversized skull and long, slender jaws appear better suited to fast, powerful snapping bites against relatively small prey than holding down large struggling animals. The findings challenge comparisons that helped cast the thylacine as a dangerous livestock killer before persecution drove the species to extinction. For generations, the thylacine carried the reputation of a wolf in stripes. Its dog-like head, carnivorous diet and supposed appetite for livestock helped turn Australia’s largest modern marsupial predator into a target. Its skull tells a different story. A detailed examination of preserved thylacine skulls suggests the extinct Tasmanian tiger was poorly matched to the large-prey hunting style of wolves. Instead, its enormous head and unusually long, slender jaws appear adapted for fast, high-impact snapping bites, probably aimed at relatively small and agile animals. The study, led by Flinders University and published in Nature Communications, found no close living mammalian equivalent for the thylacine’s combination of skull …

World’s first seahorse hospital fights to protect them from extinction

World’s first seahorse hospital fights to protect them from extinction

Published by Sam Flores

The Seahorse Rescue Centre conservation project in Ravenna, based in the town’s former fish market, was set up in 2019 by Italian conservation organisation the Experimental Centre for the Protection of Habitats (CESTHA). Since its inception, more than 8,000 seahorses have been saved. Linda and her team care for two different seahorse species found nearby, which are white, yellow and brown in colour. Fully grown, they do not reach more than 15cm in length, so are often hard to spot. The main injuries they tend to are deep cuts to the seahorses’ tails, which would kill them if left untreated. Sometimes the tails have become completely severed. In most cases, a few delicate dabs of the restorative gel and time in the rehab tank is enough to restore the fish back to full health. Some suffer anoxia (a lack of oxygen) because of their injuries. Although local fishing trawler crews were initially sceptical, they now work closely with the rescue team, handing over any seahorses which they find in their catch when they come back …

Tunas became large, warm-blooded predators long after the dinosaur extinction

Tunas became large, warm-blooded predators long after the dinosaur extinction

Published by Jenni Sidey

Tunas did not become large, fast and warm-blooded simply because an asteroid cleared the oceans of competing predators. Their defining traits appeared separately over tens of millions of years, complicating a familiar story about life after mass extinction. The asteroid impact 66 million years ago erased non-avian dinosaurs and many large marine predators. One long-held explanation proposed that tunas and other powerful fishes quickly expanded into the empty ecological roles. A new analysis from Yale University challenges that idea. By combining genetic evidence with fossils, researchers built the most complete time-calibrated evolutionary tree yet for Scombridae, the family that includes tunas, mackerels, bonitos and related fishes. The tree places the family’s origin near the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction. Yet the traits that make modern tunas exceptional did not appear together or immediately afterward. Three independent origins of endothermy in Scombridae. Time-calibrated phylogeny of Scombridae estimated using a Bayesian node-dating approach, with branches coloured according to an ancestral state reconstruction of endothermy. (CREDIT: Proceedings of the Royal Society B) “Our results demonstrate the K-Pg extinction did not trigger …

A beautiful portrait of the musical instrument in danger of extinction: best podcasts of the week | Television & radio

A beautiful portrait of the musical instrument in danger of extinction: best podcasts of the week | Television & radio

Published by Sam Flores

Pick of the weekSignal Hill This indie “audio magazine” brings together documentaries of all stripes, the common thread being a sense of experimentation. The third issue features food writer Ruby Tandoh detailing a quietly beautiful portrait of the lute, an instrument on the brink of extinction, while Jess Shane revisits a groundbreaking experiment that gave children the tools to turn their reality into poignant poetry. Hannah J Davies Widely available, episodes weekly Five Miles from Home Nevada high-school student Micaela “Mickie” Costanzo was last seen alive on her way to track practice in 2011; her body was later found in a shallow grave in the surrounding desert. Dateline NBC’s Keith Morrison is compelling as he recalls the ensuing twisty investigation, which led to the arrests of her boyfriend and best friend. Hollie RichardsonWidely available, all episodes out now Outsiding Adam Frost and Caitlin Moran host Outsiding . Photograph: Tom Jackson/Cold Glass Productions “You caught me just at the right time, actually,” says Bob Mortimer, shortly before pretending to urinate on Caitlin Moran’s compost heap. This …

Scientists finally confirm the cause of Earth’s greatest mass extinction

Scientists finally confirm the cause of Earth’s greatest mass extinction

Published by Jenni Sidey

Around 252 million years ago, Earth’s oceans became a lethal test of animal physiology. Nearly every marine species vanished, yet some groups survived well enough to dominate the seas ever since. The difference may have come down to how bodies handled heat and oxygen. The Permian–Triassic extinction, often called the Great Dying, eliminated about 96% of marine species and 70% of land animals. Its effects were not evenly spread across the evolutionary tree. Brachiopods, which resemble clams, nearly disappeared. Sea lilies, or crinoids, and other slow-moving seafloor animals also suffered enormous losses. These groups had dominated marine ecosystems for roughly the first 280 million years of animal life. Mollusks fared better. About half of clams, snails, and related groups survived. Their descendants, along with fish, starfish, and sea urchins, later became central players in modern oceans. Studying the metabolism of living brachiopods like these collected from San Juan Island, Washington, allowed Stanford researchers to understand how the physiology of the modern fauna and Paleozoic fauna may have differed and how these groups would have been …