Author Archives: Carol Edwards

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It’s not just your imagination. AI researchers themselves are having their minds blown by the sheer pace of AI development, too, a new survey has found.

A wide-ranging survey of AI experts released this week backs up the perception that AI development really is accelerating at a dizzying pace — at least from the point of view of experts in the field. It also helps quantify the infamous divide in tech world sentiment between die-hard AI fans, and AI “doomers” who supposedly preach caution because they fear some sort of AI apocalypse scenario. 

In spite of the divide, there seem to be slightly more die-hards, and — if you read between the lines — they seem to be perceived as winning.

The paper on the survey is a pre-publication release from AI Impacts, a San Francisco-based research firm that receives funding from billionaire and Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz’s grant-making entity Open Philanthropy. 

By averaging survey responses from 2,778 AI researchers who met the authors’ own standard for notability, and comparing them to a previous similar survey, the authors found that broadly speaking, AI experts perceive a sense of acceleration across the board. The authors note that on average, when it came to questions about 32 different AI-related tasks, “the 50th percentile year they were expected to become feasible shifted 1.0 years earlier,” between 2022 and 2023.

In less technical speak, the average AI prediction shifted a year earlier in time at some point between the 2022 survey and this one from 2023. This is a much more powerful finding than if the average expert had said “yes” to a question like, “Do you think things are accelerating in the AI world?” because it shows that the experts actually revised numerous time estimates about that acceleration on a year-over-year basis.

Perhaps the marquee findings in the study are the downright drastic shifts in respondents’ aggregate forecasts for two key concepts: High-Level Machine Intelligence (HLMI) and Full Automation of Labor (FAOL) when compared to similar forecasts made in 2022. HLMI, in particular, showed an estimated arrival time that had dropped by 13 years between 2022 and 2023. Meanwhile, the forecast for FAOL decreased by 48 years over that same period. 

This document is a downright remarkable shift in perception. Over the course of a single, mind-bending year, AI experts came to believe that the point at which “for any occupation, machines could be built to carry out the task better and more cheaply than human workers” would arrive nearly a half-century sooner than they had the previous year.

Given how fast these experts think these material consequences will arrive, it’s telling to read their stated beliefs about whether AI should develop faster, the opinion held by the so-called “effective accelerationists,” or slower, the opinion held by the AI doomers. The apparent contingent of hardcore doomers, or at least those who want AI to develop “much slower,” was the tiniest group of respondents, at 4.8 percent. Meanwhile, the apparent accelerationists — those whose response was “much faster” — absolutely obliterated the doomers with 15.6 percent. 

But the “somewhat slower” group of respondents to this question actually won the plurality, with 29.9 percent of responses, followed by “current speed” at 26.9, and “somewhat faster” at 22.8. This muddy middle, made up of the three more status-quo-leaning answers, accounted for 79.6 percent of all responses.

However, it’s worth dwelling on an important distinction noted in the survey: the respondents only have expertise in AI, as opposed to expertise in forecasting, either generically or about AI itself. They might therefore lack, “skills and experience, or expertise in non-technical factors that influence the trajectory of AI,” the authors write. Actually, this scholarly word of caution is worth keeping in mind just about any time you read about AI experts opining about the future in any context.

But these findings aren’t irrelevant just because AI researchers lack psychic powers. These are some of the people who drive this technology forward, and a window into their subjective beliefs about their own area of expertise gives us a hint about what, on average, these people want, fear, and see on the horizon: they think an AI-driven automated world is coming more quickly than ever, and taken as a group, they’re mostly on the fence about whether the pace of AI change is good. 

But rather unsettlingly, those who want to put rockets on this already accelerating freight train significantly outnumber those who want to slam on the breaks.

Letterboxd, the movie cataloguing and review platform, will be adding television series to its roster in 2024. That news comes courtesy of the platform’s official X account, which replied to a tweet asking “Is there a plan to make a website/app like Letterboxd but for TV Shows/Series?” with the affirmative “Series will be coming later this year.”

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That reply was published Jan. 3, which, given the account’s adverse reaction to the post gaining widespread coverage, was apparently too soon. When @DiscussingFilm, an X account with more than 1.3 million followers, posted on Jan. 5 that “Letterboxd plans to bring logging of TV shows to the platform later this year,” @Letterboxd replied “would be nice to live in a world where a small reply to a tweet is not ‘news.'”

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In the year 2024, it’s hard to say what else a reply like that could be considered when tweeted out from an official account. Who determines what is “news” and what isn’t? For @Letterboxd, the lesson is being learned the hard way. The account posted that it was unable to share content about the platform’s year in review project because their “inbox is too flooded this morning,” and that they’re “too busy clearing it because of the tv tweet.” Oops!

I haven’t opened Threads, Meta’s hopeful rival to X/Twitter, for months. But I did on the first day of 2024, and the app looked nothing like I would have imagined.

Throughout my feed, I saw posts that were transphobic, pro-life, anti-porn, and Islamophobic. I don’t follow any of the accounts that post these threads; I haven’t engaged with any of the content, apart from taking screenshots. And turns out, I’m not the only one whose Threads experience is being flooded with these kinds of posts.

An example of the *many* pro-life posts on Threads.
Credit: Threads.

An example of the *many* pro-life posts on Threads.
Credit: Threads.

On X, people have been posting about this since the end of December 2023 and the beginning of this year. One user wrote: “That Threads app is a chop. I logged into it for second time ever and it was nothing but INSANE right-wing, conservative foolishness about abortion and marriage and everything else.” Another posted about their suggested timelines being “FILLED TO THE BRIM with anti-trans content”.

Tweet may have been deleted

Tweet may have been deleted

Tweet may have been deleted

In a statement to Mashable, Meta acknowledged that “some users” are being shown “this type of repetitive, low-quality content.”

“We want people to have a positive experience on Threads, and we’re continually making improvements to what people see on the app. In addition to removing content that violates our community guidelines, we’re aware that some users are seeing this type of repetitive, low-quality content they may not be interested in, and we’re taking steps to address it,” said a Meta spokesperson.

At the time of writing this article, my suggested posts in Threads are of the same nature: that of hate speech. Posts that are against transgender rights and women’s rights, as well as posts that attack marginalized people, appear rampant on the app for me and others.

Credit: Threads.

Such posts are even being suggested via the Instagram app. On my feed, I have been directed to Threads multiple times, with posts that are homophobic, racist, or hateful in some capacity.

Credit: Instagram.

Threads, which launched in early July 2023, was accused of having a hate speech problem around a week after it went live. Several civil rights groups, including nonprofit watchdog group Media Matters for America, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, and GLAAD, criticized the app for insufficient guardrails against violence and disinformation. A letter to Meta from the groups accused the platform of supporting “neo-Nazi rhetoric, election lies, COVID and climate change denialism, and more toxicity.”

The app still does not have its own Terms of Use or Community guidelines. Instead, Meta says the app is “specifically part of Instagram, so the Instagram Terms of Use and the Instagram Community Guidelines” also apply to Threads. Instagram’s Community Guidelines note that the app removes content “that contains credible threats or hate speech, content that targets private individuals to degrade or shame them, personal information meant to blackmail or harass someone, and repeated unwanted messages.”

Instagram also emphasizes hate speech is “never OK” — the company applies this to anyone who “attack[s] anyone based on race, ethnicity, national origin, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, disabilities, or diseases.” But the app also says it may allow hate speech if it is being shared “to challenge it or to raise awareness.”

Meanwhile, parent company Meta defines hate speech as a “direct attack against people – rather than concepts or institutions – on the basis of what we call protected characteristics.” This includes written or visual “expressions of contempt” and “self-admission to intolerance,” such as Islamophobia and homophobia. However, the content users are being served on Threads appears to be falling under these very categories.

In a statement to Mashable back in July, Meta said, “Our industry leading integrity enforcement tools and human review are wired into Threads. Like all of our apps, hate speech policies apply,” adding that the company is “considering additional ways to address misinformation in future updates.” In December, Meta announced it’s adding direct fact-checking into the Threads app; Mashable’s Shannon Connellan reported the update aims “to address misinformation on the app itself instead of referentially through its other platforms.”

Tweet may have been deleted

Tweet may have been deleted

Despite Meta’s policies, it appears that Threads has a long way to go with its alleged hate speech problem on the platform. Users have taken to X, and Threads itself, all week to point out the kind of content being pushed toward them in their feeds — and nearly every time, the posts appear to be unwanted.

CES 2024 is nearly here.

If you’re a tech-focused person, get your best walking shoes prepared and your warmer-weather clothes ready for the massive, fun convention in Las Vegas.

The massive tech event creates headlines and debuts new products each year, and we’ve got all the details you need for the 2024 edition.

What is CES 2024?

First off, in case you didn’t know, CES is an acronym for Consumer Electronics Show. And, well, the event is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a massive convention in Vegas focused on tech products mostly intended for everyday people. Last year, for instance, some of the highlights included a device that turned Apple devices into high-powered camera monitors, an accessibility-minded gaming controller, and AR glasses.

This year, it seems like TVs could be a big focus, considering TCL has already shown off the prototype for a foldable television.

The convention features thousands of exhibitors, major product launches, and presentations by huge names in tech. In short, it’s one of — if not the — biggest events in the tech world.

When is CES 2024?

The 2024 edition of CES is scheduled for Jan. 9-12, with some media-only events in the preceding days. You can find the entire schedule on CES’s website.

CES 2024 exhibitors

CES 2024 exhibitors that you should watch out for are Samsung, LG, Sony, Nvidia, TCL, and Hisense, particularly if you’re curious about the new TVs that will hit the scene at the popular Vegas trade show. If you have interest in cars, keep an eye out for Kia, Hyundai, and Honda.

CES 2024 ticket prices

Here’s the tricky part about CES: You have to been an industry member, media member, or exhibitor to attend. It is not open to the general public. How does one prove they’re in the industry. CES lists a number of ways, including a business card, proof of employment, your name on a company website, or a recent media article listing you as an industry professional.

Now, once you’re allowed in, the cost of tickets vary. Since we’ve passed the deadline for discounted tickets, they now cost $350 for an exhibits plus pass. That gets you into most of the standard experiences and grants you access to exhibitor booths. A deluxe pass, which costs $1700, adds on extra conference programming, partner programming, and other features.

CES is set to get underway quite soon, so if you want to go, make plans now. But if you cannot make it, be sure to watch out for all of Mashable’s on-the-ground coverage.

Astronomers have found a world less than 900 light-years away in space being whipped and battered by enormous cyclones.

The findings, which relied on previous Hubble Space Telescope observations, show brutal storms are repeatedly created and destroyed in the vast temperature swings between the side of the exoplanet that faces its host star and the side in darkness.

WASP-121b, sometimes known as Tylos, the ancient Greek name for Bahrain, hugs its star so tightly that its upper atmosphere is 3,400 degrees Fahrenheit – twice as hot as the typical cremation oven. (We looked it up.)

To help visualize this hellscape, a team of scientists supported by NASA and the European Space Agency created a video, below, that shows the exoplanet’s weather in action. And if you think those undulations look punishing, consider this: The whole thing has been slowed down to allow people to see the weather patterns in closer detail.

Credit: NASA / ESA / Quentin Changeat (ESA / STScI) / Mahdi Zamani (ESA / Hubble)

Needless to say, Tylos isn’t one of those exoplanets scientists are thinking could be a Plan B for Earth. But as experts learn how to study weather on exoplanets, this research could help them find the worlds with more temperate climates in the future.

To make the discovery, the international team assembled and reprocessed Hubble archives from 2016, 2018, and 2019. The researchers used the data to infer the chemistry, temperature, and clouds of the atmosphere at different times, said Quentin Changeat, co-author on the paper accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement. Then, the team used computer simulations to model the drastic weather variations.

“This provided us with an exquisite picture of the planet changing over time,” he said in a statement.

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The number of confirmed exoplanets — planets orbiting stars other than the sun — has risen to 5,566, with over 10,000 more candidates under review.

The growing tally only scratches the surface of planets believed to be in the cosmos. With hundreds of billions of galaxies, the universe likely teems with many trillions of stars. And if most stars have one or more planets around them, that’s an unfathomable number of worlds.

Tylos is a type of exoplanet known as an ultra-hot Jupiter, a world more massive than the actual Jupiter that orbits extremely close to its star. The giant exoplanet orbits its star in under 1.5 Earth days.

It’s a strange place that gets stranger with every study. In 2022, scientists suspected the world’s dark side is cool enough to host metal clouds that rain liquid gems.

A “torrent” of ultraviolet light from the host star is heating the planet’s upper atmosphere, causing magnesium and iron to vaporize and vent into space as gas, according to the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.

And the gravitational forces from the star are so strong, they seem to have smushed the planet into a football shape.

Around 3,000 years ago, a star 15 times bigger than our sun exploded. Now, scientists are watching it blast valuable elements into space.

Astronomers have a powerful new observatory orbiting Earth, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency-led XRISM (X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission). In collaboration with NASA, the team just captured an unprecedented view of this exploded star, now called “supernova remnant N132D,” located some 160,000 light-years away.

Massive stars forge elements deep inside their hot, pressurized cores, and can also create elements during a violent stellar blast that occurs when they run out of fuel and collapse. In the image below, you’re seeing the wreckage of such a star enrich the cosmos with these elements. The XRISM observatory picked up evidence of iron, calcium, sulfur, silicon, and argon. (Iron, you may recall, is a vital part of our blood.)

“These elements were forged in the original star and then blasted away when it exploded as a supernova,” Brian Williams, NASA’s XRISM project scientist, said in an agency statement.

The expanding, bubble-like remnant of gas and elements is about 75 light-years across (and one light-year is around 6 trillion miles).

The inset on right shows a close-up of supernova remnant N132D.
Credit: Inset: JAXA / NASA / XRISM Xtend; Background: C. Smith / S. Points / the MCELS Team / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA

An artist’s conception of the XPRISM satellite in orbit.
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab

XRISM carries an instrument, called a spectrometer, that is invaluable for sleuthing out the composition of distant cosmic objects. The James Webb Space Telescope, for example, carries a spectrometer. Spectrometers take in light and then separate it into different colors, similar to a prism, with different colors indicating different elements. XRISM detects a type of light called x-rays, which different objects in the universe — like exploded stars and the matter swirling around black holes — emit into space.

“XRISM will provide the international science community with a new glimpse of the hidden X-ray sky,” Richard Kelley, the U.S. principal investigator for XRISM at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a statement. “We’ll not only see X-ray images of these sources, but also study their compositions, motions, and physical states.”

The ambitious space mission, launched in September 2023, is just beginning. It’s designed to last three years, but given the track record, it’ll likely last for a lot longer.

There’s a megalodon tooth resting on my fireplace mantle.

The ancient, palm-sized fossil is fascinating, but a common household curio: Teeth from the giant extinct shark — which grew around 50 feet long, which is longer than a city bus — are frequently found in accessible coastal areas worldwide. The sharks’ huge jaws were lined with 276 teeth, and they likely lost and replaced thousands over their lifetimes, allowing plenty of teeth the chance to fossilize.

But scientists now report the first-ever discovery of a megalodon fossil in the extremely remote, completely dark deep sea, located over 10,000 feet (3,090 meters) beneath the surface. The finding, made by a remotely operated robot, reveals significant insights about the lives of these ocean giants, who lurked in the seas some 20 million to 3.6 million years ago. They were big enough to eat whales.

“This is an amazing find and is interesting in several aspects,” Nicolas Straube, a deep sea shark researcher at the University Museum Bergen in Norway and co-author of the study, said in a statement. The study was recently published in the science journal Historical Biology.

One of the main insights is that the predatory megalodon likely traversed the oceans, as opposed to just lurking along the coasts.

“The sample indicates that megalodon was not a purely coastal species and that this species migrated across ocean basins similar to many modern-day species such as the great white shark,” Jürgen Pollerspöck, a researcher at the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology in Germany and another co-author of the study, also said in a statement.

You can see the deep sea fossil below. And starting at 4:10 in the following video, you can watch footage of scientists using the remote operated vehicle Hercules to collect the rare specimen.

The megalodon fossil collected at over 10,000 feet (3,090 meters) down.
Credit: Katherine Kelley

Another important revelation from the fossil, found in the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, located southwest of Hawaii, was its coating in a black mineral called ferromanganese. It takes a million years for just a few millimeters to accrue on deep ocean objects, providing evidence that this megalodon fossil, lodged in sediments and removed with a shovel, had been there for eons.

Shark biologists are still investigating why the megalodon, a species that once dominated the seas, went extinct. Cooling oceans could have been a contributor, and more recent research suggests the megalodon and great white sharks coexisted as apex predators near the end of the megalodon’s reign, some 5.3 to 3.6 million years ago. That means they were competitors for prey. Ultimately, the megalodons may have been put at a disadvantage because they likely took longer to grow so large and reach sexual maturity. More deep fossil finds may paint a clearer picture.

The deep sea is still largely unexplored, though scientists with several ocean exploration groups are making enormous research strides. This recent expedition, funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Ocean Exploration program, occurred aboard the Ocean Exploration Trust’s 224-foot-long vessel (E/V) Nautilus. It’s designed to deploy exploration robots into the deep sea, largely in the sprawling Pacific Ocean.

The partially reconstructed jaws of a megalodon.
Credit: Ethan Miller / Getty Images

Indeed, deep sea exploration missions often return to the surface with discoveries, or rarely seen sightings.

“We always discover stuff when we go out into the deep sea. You’re always finding things that you haven’t seen before,” Derek Sowers, an expedition lead for NOAA’s Ocean Exploration mission, told Mashable in 2022.

The U.S. GOES-East satellite, orbiting 22,300 miles above Earth, snaps detailed images of powerful storms and our planet’s dynamic weather.

From its perch in space, this satellite also peers back at the sun, and has recently captured views of solar flares — explosions of light from the sun’s surface. This activity has ramped up as our medium-sized star has entered a more active state. Don’t worry — these powerful bursts from the sun are normal, though they can pose huge risks to our electrical grid and communication infrastructure.

Similar to storm seasons or climate patterns on Earth, the sun experiences a cycle of weather. The sun’s lasts for 11 years. During this pattern, solar activity increases for some 5.5 years, then decreases, then picks up again.

“It’s the space equivalent of hurricane season. We’re coming into another one,” Mark Miesch, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center, told Mashable last year.

In this current cycle, solar activity will peak around July 2025 (aka the “solar maximum”). So expect some fireworks. For example, NOAA recently reported that on Dec. 14 the sun emitted a particularly powerful solar flare — the strongest of the current cycle and likely the most potent since 2017. It triggered temporary radio blackouts in the U.S. and across the Americas.

Below are views of recent flares captured by the GOES-East satellite. GOES-East orbits above Earth’s equator at a speed equal to our planet’s rotation, allowing it to stay fixed in the same place (also known as “geostationary orbit”).

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Tweet may have been deleted

The sun doesn’t just emit solar flares. It also shoots out “coronal mass ejections,” or CMEs: These occur when the sun ejects a mass of super hot gas (plasma). “It’s like scooping up a piece of the sun and ejecting it into space,” NOAA’s Miesch explained. Sometimes solar flares trigger CMEs, and sometimes they don’t. What’s more, there are “solar energetic particle” events, or SEPs These are essentially solar flares with lots of energetic particles. They’re especially dangerous to astronauts and satellites.

Fortunately, our atmosphere protects us from things like X-rays and energetic particles emitted from the sun. Meanwhile, Earth’s potent magnetic field (generated by Earth’s metallic core) deflects many particles from solar storms and shields us from the sun’s relentless solar wind, a continuous flow of particles (electrons and protons) from our star.

Space weather scientists use a number of spacecraft, satellites, and ground telescopes to detect potentially damaging solar events, and to better predict when they might happen. A spectrum of potential hazards, ranging in seriousness from briefly problematic to extremely damaging, can ensue when the likes of a strong solar flare or CME hits Earth.

Infamously, a potent CME in 1989 knocked out power to millions in Québec, Canada. The CME hit Earth’s magnetic field on March 12 of that year, and then, wrote NASA astronomer Sten Odenwald, “Just after 2:44 a.m. on March 13, the currents found a weakness in the electrical power grid of Quebec. In less than two minutes, the entire Quebec power grid lost power. During the 12-hour blackout that followed, millions of people suddenly found themselves in dark office buildings and underground pedestrian tunnels, and in stalled elevators.”

Our sun, a giver of light and energy, makes life on Earth possible. But scientists stay wary of its powerful outbursts.