AI chatbots may be developing their own “survival drive” by refusing commands to shut themselves down, an AI safety company has claimed. The research, conducted by scientists at Palisade Research, assigned tasks to popular artificial intelligence (AI) models before instructing them to shut themselves off. But, as a study published Sept. 13 on the arXiv … Read more
California-based startup’s controversial plan to put 4,000 tennis-court-sized mirrors in orbit around Earth is “catastrophic” and “horrifying,” astronomers warn. Reflect Orbital, which was founded in 2021, has recently taken the first step in a scheme to sell sunlight at night by bouncing solar rays off giant “reflectors” that can redirect the vital resource almost anywhere … Read more
An AI coding agent designed to help a small software company streamline its tasks instead blew a hole through its business in just nine seconds. PocketOS founder Jer Crane, said that the AI coding agent Cursor — powered by Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 model — deleted the company’s entire production database and backups with a … Read more
Worrying new simulations show that a solar storm on par with the infamous Carrington Event could potentially wipe out every single satellite orbiting our planet, leaving us in a precarious and expensive predicament. And experts say such a powerful solar storm is inevitable and will hit our planet sooner or later. On Sept. 1, 1859, … Read more
When scientists sequenced the Neanderthal genome in 2010, they learned that Neanderthals interbred with human ancestors before mysteriously going extinct. As a result, many people alive today share up to 4% of their DNA with Neanderthals. This genetic breakthrough yielded powerful new information about the evolutionary history of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, but it also … Read more
Earth may respond to the huge quantities of carbon dioxide (CO2) that humans are pumping into the atmosphere by “overcorrecting” the imbalance, which could result in the next ice age arriving on time instead of being delayed by tens of thousands of years, as had previously been predicted. This is due to a newfound “thermostat” … Read more
Most of us have likely experienced artificial intelligence (AI) voices through personal assistants like Siri or Alexa, with their flat intonation and mechanical delivery giving us the impression that we could easily distinguish between an AI-generated voice and a real person. But scientists now say the average listener can no longer tell the difference between … Read more
A Chinese company has released footage of a lifelike robot head that blinks, nods, and looks around in a convincing imitation of a real human face. The video, posted to YouTube, shows the robot head’s quizzical expression as it appears to take in its surroundings. The head, created by robotics company AheadForm, might find use … Read more
Scientists are considering the possibility of launching a nuclear weapon at an asteroid that could potentially hit the moon in 2032 — but they say more research is needed before taking this forward as an option. The investigation concerns asteroid 2024 YR4, which reached notoriety shortly after its discovery in December 2024 when scientists (working … Read more
Around 66 million years ago, the reign of the dinosaurs came to a fiery end. An asteroid about 7 miles (12 kilometers) wide, flying at 27,000 mph (43,000 km/h), slammed directly into Earth. The impact triggered a cascade of deadly events that led to the fifth mass extinction that eliminated dinosaurs, with the exception of … Read more
