Meta plans AI-powered chatbots to boost social media numbers

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Meta plans AI-powered chatbots to boost social media numbers     Meta is reportedly developing a range of AI-powered chatbots with different personalities, a move aimed at increasing user engagement on social platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, according to the Financial Times and The Verge. The chatbots, called "personas" by Meta staff, will mimic human-like conversations and might take on various character forms, such as Abraham Lincoln or a surfer-like travel adviser. Continued here

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Hong Kong politicians are making a splash on Chinese social media - and finding mainland fans     In September last year, Hong Kong Secretary for Security Chris Tang published his first post on Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu. Tang, a middle-aged government official, is an ex-police commissioner known for his role in suppressing the city’s pro-democracy protests in 2019. He was an unlikely presence on Xiaohongshu, an app known as China’s “lifestyle bible,” popular among young, urban women who use the app to swap fashion advice, watch makeup tutorials, and exchange tips on dieting and dating. Since opening his account, Tang has garnered nearly 75,000 followers on the platform, where he posts about everything from his workplace soccer team to his calligraphy hobby. For a municipal official otherwise little-known in mainland China, his fanbase is unusually devoted. “I feel like [Secretary Tang] is trustworthy and personable, so I follow him,” said Xu Zhe, a user from Zhejiang province who has left comments on most of Tang’s posts since discovering the official’s account in April. “I consider myself a fan, so I’m willing to spend a few minutes posting comments to express my support.”  Continued here

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Chronic Illness TikTok Through the Eyes of a Doctor     One of my assignments in my third year of medical school was to ask a clinic patient if I could visit him at home. The point of the exercise (slightly smug, like many such efforts at teaching humility to future doctors) was to better understand the impact of illness on a patient’s life by encountering it in its natural context, as opposed to the anonymous examination room. The man I visited was in his late twenties with a genetic condition that had led to delayed puberty, a lanky frame, and a lifelong dependence on testosterone shots. I sat across from him on a black leather couch in his sparsely decorated rancher and asked him at length about his job, his childhood, his dating life. He answered dutifully, too accustomed to the rhythm of clinical interviews to question what exactly I was there to learn. That was 15 years ago, and it felt quaint even then, cosplaying a long extinct species of country doctor, going through the motions of a house call on the grounds of curiosity rather than need.These days, it’s fairly easy to find medical conversations set against a domestic backdrop. The telehealth paradigm sparked by the pandemic obliged me as a gastroenterologist to peer into my patients’ homes for months, my line of sight angled at their discretion toward face or navel, kitchen backsplash or quilted bedspread. Elsewhere on the internet, well past the bounds of privacy-compliant interfaces, other patients have staged their gastrointestinal challenges for a much wider audience. A woman who’s been constipated for over a week dances in order to stimulate a bowel movement. Another woman with a feeding tube winks and smiles as she prepares a bag of formula to a Miley Cyrus refrain. Stumbling past such intimate windows, I’m impressed by how perspectives once carefully solicited are now being actively volunteered. Continued here

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Ancestry tests are "genetic astrology." We must re-learn everything we know about DNA and cells     Genes are needed in development and tissue maintenance, but from the laying out of the body plan to the organization and functioning of our nervous system, cells rule their expression and make us who and what we are.Throughout the 20th century and continuing to the present day, the common assumption has been that our identity is tightly linked to our DNA. While there’s some truth here — as Shakespeare said, “What’s past is prologue” — when it comes to development, cells and genes have very different relationships with history. It is therefore worth pausing for a moment to recap briefly the reasons behind the dominant view of the genome as the master of our being.  Continued here

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Western Digital HDD capacity hits 28TB as Seagate looks to 30TB and beyond     After a couple of decades of talk, Seagate announced earlier this year that it was shipping samples of huge 32TB hard drives using heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR). The new kind of drive technology uses lasers to heat disk platters during writing, making it possible to store more data on a disk without increasing its physical size. Continued here

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Unregulated AI Will Worsen Inequality, Warns Nobel-Winning Economist Joseph Stiglitz     A Nobel laureate in economics explains how artificial intelligence will affect inequality—and how solutions such as a shorter work week might mitigate its negative effectsFor the first time since the 1960s, Hollywood writers and actors are on strike concurrently. One of the joint movement’s inspirations is generative artificial intelligence—the term for programs that produce humanlike text, images, audio and video more quickly and cheaply than artists. The strikers fear studios’ use of generative AI tools will replace or devalue human labor. This is a reasonable worry: one report suggests that thousands of jobs have already been lost to AI, while another estimates that hundreds of millions could eventually be automated. Left unchecked, this labor disruption could further concentrate wealth in the hands of companies and leave workers with less power than ever. Continued here

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NASA Detects 'Heartbeat' from Voyager 2 Spacecraft after Losing Contact     A glitch may have silenced NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft until mid-October—but a “heartbeat” signal offers hope for reestablishing contact earlierEarth may not hear from one of its most beloved spacecraft until mid-October because of a glitch that altered Voyager 2’s orientation to our planet. But NASA engineers have caught a “heartbeat” signal that the agency says might help it reestablish communications sooner. Continued here

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Our Favorite Language Learning Apps (and a Couple of Translators)     If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIREDHola, bonjour, konnichiwa, assalamu alaikum, and hello! Whatever language you’re trying to pick up, a learning app can help you build your vocabulary and improve your understanding of a country’s culture and manners. I’ve tested several apps and courses in my effort to learn Spanish, and while the quality might vary depending on the language you pick, these are my favorites. Continued here

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"I've been here before": DMT study explores a strange memory phenomenon     If you take a psychedelic drug that can throttle your conscious perception into an otherworldly space where people often report encountering beings that are unlike anything on Earth, the last thing you would expect to feel is the sense that this all seems pretty familiar. But that’s precisely what some people report after taking the world’s strongest psychedelic: DMT. “It felt like I had been reunited with everything, like I was complete again,” psychiatrist Dr. Chloe Sakal told Freethink in 2021 while describing a DMT experience she had as a participant in a study that examined the drug’s effects on the brain. “I no longer knew I was in an MRI scanner. My entire reality was very different — really colorful, really vibrant. And I couldn’t even remember that I was in a study. I was in a different dimension.” Continued here

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X sues hate speech researchers whose "scare campaign" spooked Twitter advertisers     As Twitter continues its rebrand as X, it looks like Elon Musk hopes to quash any claims that the platform under its new name is allowing rampant hate speech to fester. Yesterday, X Corp sued a nonprofit, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), for allegedly "actively working to assert false and misleading claims" regarding spiking levels of hate speech on X and successfully "encouraging advertisers to pause investment on the platform," Twitter's blog said. Continued here

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Your Genes May Influence What You Like to Eat     New research identifies genome areas linked to dietary patterns and our taste for things such as tea, tobacco and grapesYou are what you eat—and what you eat may be encoded in your DNA. Studies have indicated that your genetics play a role in determining the foods you find delicious or disgusting. But exactly how big a role they play has been difficult to pin down. “Everything has a genetic component, even if it’s small,” says Joanne Cole, a geneticist and an assistant professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “We know that there is some genetic contribution to why we eat the foods we eat. Can we take the next step and actually pinpoint the regions in the genome?” Continued here

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Steering failures are Tesla's new federal safety worry     Federal vehicle safety regulators are investigating a potential problem with the power steering in some Tesla electric vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Office of Defects Investigation has opened a preliminary evaluation to determine if there's a problem with the power steering in model-year 2023 Tesla Models 3 and Y. Continued here

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Why African governments must prioritize affordable internet and smartphones     Lacina Koné is the director general and CEO of Smart Africa, an alliance backed by African heads of state and governments to facilitate technological and digital innovation on the continent. In a conversation with Rest of World, Koné shared what he has learned about the digital capabilities of African countries so far and what they must prioritize in the future.African countries have been doing well in some areas and need to improve in others. For instance, the continent is doing well in terms of mobile penetration, fintech innovation, and startup ecosystem growth. But areas that are still maturing and require more attention include digital infrastructure, internet affordability, digital literacy and skills, digital identity and services, and regulation. Continued here

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This Disinformation Is Just for You     It’s now well understood that generative AI will increase the spread of disinformation on the internet. From deepfakes to fake news articles to bots, AI will generate not only more disinformation, but more convincing disinformation. But what people are only starting to understand is how disinformation will become more targeted and better able to engage with people and sway their opinions.When Russia tried to influence the 2016 US presidential election via the now disbanded Internet Research Agency, the operation was run by humans who often had little cultural fluency or even fluency in the English language and so were not always able to relate to the groups they were targeting. With generative AI tools, those waging disinformation campaigns will be able to finely tune their approach by profiling individuals and groups. These operatives can produce content that seems legitimate and relatable to the people on the other end and even target individuals with personalized disinformation based on data they’ve collected. Generative AI will also make it much easier to produce disinformation and will thus increase the amount of disinformation that’s freely flowing on the internet, experts say. Continued here

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The Best Period Products     Periods are normal. But for most of us who get them, we’re taught to be embarrassed, hiding tampons up our sleeves before heading to the bathroom and secretly asking other girls to check our pants in the hallway.It’s ingrained in us early, especially for those of us who are whisked away in elementary school to watch a short video on “becoming a woman.” That’s about where public education on menstruation begins and ends—a secret discussion that boys couldn’t be privy to. In an effort to break the stigma, some of us at WIRED discussed how we manage our period flows and habits.  Continued here

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Science Corrects Itself, Right? A Scandal at Stanford Says It Doesn't     What does it take to correct the scientific record? And who—and what—stands in the way? The answer to both questions is: everyoneBy now you may have heard about the resignation of Stanford University president Marc Tessier-Lavigne. The move came last month after a report by a special committee of the university’s Board of Trustees found Tessier-Lavigne had, among other things, “failed to decisively and forthrightly correct mistakes in the scientific record” on at least four different occasions. Continued here

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Space Debris Will Block Space Exploration unless We Start Acting Sustainably     We need satellites and rocket bodies designed with an end-of-life plan to keep space uncluttered and navigableKnowing that all of humanity's ecosystems are inextricably linked, including our space environment, I became the world’s first space environmentalist a decade ago, advocating for a broader definition of environment that extends beyond the atmosphere. Continued here

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'Virgin Birth' Engineered into Female Animals for First Time     Scientists altered the genomes of female fruit flies, allowing them to reproduce without any contribution from a maleFor the first time, scientists have used genetic engineering to trigger ‘virgin birth’ in female animals that normally need a male partner to reproduce. Continued here

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Using AI to Build Stronger Connections with Customers     As companies learn to use generative AI to create value, there’s a risk that they take the wrong approach when applying the technology to the customer experience. In fact, research shows AI can help boost customer satisfaction when it’s used to offer customers more personalized solutions or to help human employees provide better service than they would without the technological assist. Some examples of companies experiencing early success with this are in the financial services industry. Continued here

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Vinu Daniel: How today's scraps will be tomorrow's sustainable buildings     What if we could use waste to create resilient and sustainable buildings? Bringing out the beauty of the dirt beneath our feet, climate-responsive architect Vinu Daniel shares how he and his team are giving local and discarded materials (think: mud, plastic and used tires) a second life by using them to create dreamlike homes, schools and other public spaces. Continued here

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Megalodon: the superpredator that ate its siblings in the womb     The giant shark is back. Five years after The Meg, in which action star Jason Statham battled a huge prehistoric shark, the follow-up Meg 2: The Trench is upon us. Once again, Statham will be victimised by a supposedly extinct gigantic shark, in increasingly outlandish ways: the trailer has him fending off its huge upper jaw with his foot, and leaping over the animal using a water scooter. The trailer also has a scene involving a plate-glass window that relies on audiences being too young to have seen Deep Blue Sea.It comes as something of a shock to learn that this clearly deeply silly film is directed by Ben Wheatley, the acclaimed director of leftfield horrors and black comedies like A Field in England and Free Fire. Evidently, he is hoping to make the same jump to the mainstream that Greta Gerwig achieved with Barbie. Continued here

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Can Business Transform Primary Health Care Across Africa?     Co-founder and CEO Greg Rockson needs to decide which component of strategy to prioritize in the next three years. His options include launching a telemedicine program, expanding his pharmacies across the continent, and creating a new payment program to cover the cost of common medications. Rockson cares deeply about health equity, but his venture capital-financed company also must be profitable. Which option should he focus on expanding? Continued here

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The Google Assistant is getting a big reboot around generative AI     Axios has more details about Google's plan to reboot the Google Assistant into something based around generative AI. As was previously reported, the Google Assistant team is getting reorganized around Google's new LLM (large language model) ChatGPT-clone, Google Bard. Axios was given a copy of an email to employees explaining their new marching orders and says that "dozens" of people are being laid off out of the "thousands" that work on the Google Assistant. Continued here

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The Ukraine War Is an Environmental Catastrophe with Global Consequences     When it’s time to rebuild, we must prioritize more sustainable and resilient infrastructure in UkraineIn its war against Ukraine, Russia has sought to cripple the country’s critical infrastructure. It has attacked homes and hospitals, transportation networks and farmland, energy and civilian nuclear facilities, drinking water and wastewater systems, chemical and steel plants, mining facilities and vital seed banks. Continued here

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Oppenheimer's forgotten astrophysics research explains why black holes exist     The 1930s were a fascinating and contentious time: both on the global stage and for the science of nuclear physics. Economically, the great depression led to increases in unemployment, dramatic dropoffs in global industrial production, foreign trade, per-capita GDP, and a rising tide of fascism. But amidst those geopolitical events, a very small revolution was occurring in fundamental physics: a voyage into the atomic nucleus. All around the world, physicists were putting together the puzzle pieces of nuclear physics, including radioactivity, the discovery of the neutron, the energy potential within all matter of E = mc², and the physical processes of fusion and fission.Before J. Robert Oppenheimer became the leader of the Manhattan Project — i.e., the development of the atomic bomb — he was one of many scientists studying the implications of nuclear physics under some of the most extreme conditions imaginable: during the gravitational collapse of the most massive stars in the Universe. In a series of papers in the late 1930s, Oppenheimer became part of the first team ever to determine the limit to how massive a single atomic nucleus, what we know today as the core of a neutron star, could be before collapsing entirely into what he then called a “dark star,” or in today’s terms, a black hole. Continued here

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How has income inequality within countries evolved over the past century?     Thanks to a growing body of research on the incomes of the richest, we now have a much better understanding of the long-run evolution of income inequality.This area of research has developed methods for estimating income inequality based on income tax records, or summary tables released by tax authorities. This is often available over much longer time horizons than household surveys, the most common data source for inequality researchers. For many countries, tax data can provide us with a view of the evolution of inequality over the past 100 years or more. It can also provide a more accurate view of the incomes of the richest, which are often poorly captured in survey data, as discussed further in a note at the end of this article. Continued here

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"Cocaine Sharks" are just another fishy tale on Discovery's Shark Week     For 35 years, Discovery Channel’s annual Shark Week has entertained audiences with shows about our fishy, elasmobranch friends. Unfortunately, however, Shark Week often does sharks (not to mention humans) a disservice, sharing a staggering amount of incorrect or wildly misleading information, as a group of marine biologists reported last year after watching every Shark Week episode ever broadcast. This year, Discovery Channel continued this regrettable trend with the release of “Cocaine Sharks” last week. No doubt intended to mirror the viral success that was Cocaine Bear, a movie released earlier this year about a bear that goes on a murderous rampage after consuming a large amount of cocaine discarded in the woods, “Cocaine Sharks” represents an attempt to explore whether sharks off the Florida Keys are getting high on and even addicted to cocaine occasionally dropped by drug smugglers in the coastal waters, potentially turning them hyperactive and aggressive. For decades, newspaper stories have highlighted how bundles of cocaine wash up on Florida’s shores after apparently being lost by smugglers. The reports are echoed by fishermen who have told tales of sharks biting into the bundles and becoming hyperactive and aggressive. Continued here

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Career Advice from Wildly Successful People     Great job advice can be transformative. It can set you on a whole new trajectory, land you a new role, or even prompt you to make a big change. Through her podcast, Amantha Imber has had the opportunity to interview and learn from some of the most successful business leaders, musicians, writers, entrepreneurs, chefs, and entertainers. Here is some advice from them: Continued here

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How the Pandemic Changed Marketing Channels     The pandemic undoubtedly changed how marketers approach channel strategy, and there is no single route to success. With more channels than ever, marketers need to map which channels add clear value and forget the rest. It can be tempting to enter a channel because your competitors are there. But with limited customer time and attention, marketers must strategically determine in which channels they can have the greatest impact. The authors look at five post-pandemic channel strategies gleaned from The CMO Survey and offer analysis on how marketers can operationalize these trends. Continued here

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The 20 Best Movies on Hulu This Week     In 2017, Hulu made television history by becoming the first streaming network to win the Outstanding Drama Series Emmy, thanks to the phenomenon that is The Handmaid’s Tale. While that painfully prescient adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel remains one of the best TV shows to watch on Hulu, it also set a bar for quality entertainment that the network has continued to match—and sometimes exceed—with original series like The Bear, The Great, and Only Murders in the Building. While Netflix has largely cornered the streaming market on original movies, and even managed to convince A-listers like Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón, and Martin Scorsese to come aboard, Hulu is starting to find its footing in features too. Below are some of our top picks for the best movies (original and otherwise) streaming on Hulu right now.  Continued here

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It's a hot 0-day summer for Apple, Google, and Microsoft security fixes     The summer patch cycle shows no signs of slowing down, with tech giants Apple, Google, and Microsoft releasing multiple updates to fix flaws being used in real-life attacks. July also saw serious bugs squashed by enterprise software firms SAP, Citrix, and Oracle. Continued here

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A Sun Shield over Earth? Catch an Asteroid, and It Might Work     A resurfaced idea for solar geoengineering imagines a sunlight-blocking space shield tethered to an asteroidCLIMATEWIRE | Some scientists imagine that a gigantic shield could be placed in space to block the sun’s rays and lower temperatures on Earth. Continued here

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How Companies Can Adapt to More Government Intervention     After decades of industrial policy that favored globalization and free trade, we are entering a new era. Prompted by the pandemic, climate change, rising geopolitical tensions and economic concerns, countries and groups of countries are once again using the power they have to intervene in the private sector, whether it’s investing in drug development, offering clean energy tax breaks, or incentivizing domestic manufacturing. Harvard Business School professor Willy Shih wants to help corporate leaders navigate these changes in a way that protects their businesses, workers, and customers. He explains the new challenges – as well as opportunities. Shih wrote the HBR article, “The New Era of Industrial Policy is Here.” Continued here

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Canon warns printer users to manually wipe Wi-Fi settings before discarding     Printer manufacturer Canon is warning that sensitive Wi-Fi settings don’t automatically get wiped during resets, so customers should manually delete them before selling, discarding, or getting them repaired to prevent the settings from falling into the wrong hands. Continued here

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The Atlantic is frying, but so far hurricanes are dying. What's going on?     As July came to a close, the Atlantic Ocean was absolutely sizzling, particularly in areas where hurricanes commonly form. Continued here

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Reader Views on Press Coverage of Race     “Most of the time, I don’t think that negative reactions to observational, non-prescriptive pieces about race are the fault of the author,” one reader argues.Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here. Continued here

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Enough About Ken     I know a lot of impressive women married to men. Maybe the men are impressive too. I don’t give them much thought, to be honest. By the time I catch up with these women on all they are doing, and commiserate on the state of the world, we rarely have time to talk about their husbands. Sometimes, to be polite, I ask, but they normally don’t come up unless some conflict is brewing. This doesn’t mean that my friends don’t love their partners—just that, when given room to talk about their lives, that’s what they want to talk about: their lives.Watching Barbie, I remembered how infrequently Ken factored into my narratives when I played with Barbie as a girl. Barbie got dressed up to go to work and out with her friends; Ken just appeared if and when I needed a dramatic storyline. A wedding! A passionate fight! A cheating spouse! (What can I say? I was raised on Dallas and telenovelas.) Continued here

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12 Words for Experiences We Can't Name in English     Too often, we are constrained by our vocabulary. Our subjective experience is so unique, fine grained, and dynamic that our attempts to express it perfectly rarely succeed. Think of all the feelings and sensations you’ve had during the past few months, and how language totally fails to capture their kaleidoscopic nuances. Continued here

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Ignore the Histrionic Attacks on the Supreme Court     Its most recent term was a credit to the institution, not the abomination its critics allege.After last summer’s ruling on abortion, attacks on the Supreme Court were inevitable. The majority decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health––that there is no constitutional right to abortion––broke with a long-standing precedent that a majority of the public supported while taking away a right that tens of millions valued, factors that stoked a backlash as significant as any the Court had seen in decades. Continued here

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Biden administration reverses Trump decision to relocate US Space Command     President Biden plans to keep the headquarters of US Space Command in Colorado Springs and not move it to Alabama as the Air Force proposed under the Trump administration in 2021. Continued here