James' World 2

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Yet recent progress has arguably been more about style than substance. Advancements in AI have undoubtedly made robots easier to train, but they have yet to enable them to truly sense their surroundings, “think” of what to do next, and carry out those decisions in the way some viral videos might imply. In many of these demonstrations (including Tesla’s), when a robot is pouring a drink or wiping down a counter, it is not acting autonomously, even if it appears to be. Instead, it is being controlled remotely by human operators, a technique roboticists refer to as teleoperation. The futuristic looks of such humanoids, which usually borrow from dystopian Hollywood sci-fi tropes like screens for faces, sharp eyes, and towering, metallic forms, suggest the robots are more capable than they often are.

“I’m worried that we’re at peak hype,” says Leila Takayama, a robotics expert and vice president of design and human­-robot interaction at the warehouse robotics company Robust AI. “There’s a bit of an arms war—or humanoids war—between all the big tech companies to flex and show that they can do more and they can do better.” As a result, she says, any roboticist not working on a humanoid has to answer to investors as to why. “We have to talk about them now, and we didn’t have to a year ago,” Takayama told me.

Shariq Hashme, a former employee of both OpenAI and Scale AI, entered his robotics firm Prosper into this arms race in 2021. The company is developing a humanoid robot it calls Alfie to perform domestic tasks in homes, hospitals, and hotels. Prosper hopes to manufacture and sell Alfies for approximately $10,000 to $15,000 each. 

“Why are we enamored with this idea of building a replica of ourselves?”

Guy Hoffman, associate professor, Cornell University

In conceiving the design for Alfie, Hashme identified trustworthiness as the factor that should trump all other considerations, and the top challenge that needs to be overcome to see humanoids benefit society. Hashme believes one essential tactic to get people to put their trust in Alfie is to build a detailed character from the ground up—something humanlike but not too human. 

This is about more than just Alfie’s appearance. Hashme and his colleagues are envisioning the way the robot moves and signals what he’ll do next; imagining desires and flaws that shape his approach to tasks; and crafting an internal code of ethics that governs the instructions he will and will not accept from his owners. 

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The moon is Earth’s closest neighbor in space and the only extraterrestrial body humans have visited. Yet scientists are still unsure exactly when a Mars-size meteorite slammed into early Earth, causing our natural satellite to form from the debris. Lunar rock samples suggest the event happened 4.35 billion years ago, but planet formation models and fragments of zircon from the moon’s surface put it at 4.51 billion years ago.

A new study published on December 18 in Nature offers a way to explain that 150-million-year gap. Computer modeling and analysis of previous research suggests the 4.35-billion-year-old rock samples may not date back to the moon’s formation but instead a later event in the moon’s history in which it temporarily heated up, causing its surface to melt and crystallize.

The moon is slowly moving away from Earth, so its orbit isn’t circular. As it moves, it is squeezed and stretched by Earth’s gravity, resulting in what is known as tidal heating—and one of these heating events likely happened 4.35 billion years ago. This early moon would have looked like Jupiter’s moon Io, says the new study’s lead author Francis Nimmo, a planetary scientist at the University of California Santa Cruz. “It would have had volcanoes all over its surface,” he says. This event would have also erased lunar impact basins caused by meteorite strikes, which researchers use to estimate age as well.

This difference of 150 million years matters a lot to scientists, Nimmo says, especially for learning more about the early Earth. “The moon is moving away from the Earth, and the rate at which that happens depends on what the Earth

was like,” he says. “Was it solid? Was it liquid? Did it have an ocean? Did it have an atmosphere?” For instance, really early Earth likely didn’t have an ocean—or it would have pushed the moon away too fast. The moon’s formation time is crucial to these calculations, and more complex models of tidal heating and the mineralogy involved could help refine our view in the future.

“No previous study has synthesized all the available evidence comprehensively,” says Yoshinori Miyazaki, a geophysicist at the California Institute of Technology, who wasn’t involved with the study. “This paper provides a better view in resolving the discrepancies between different age estimates.”

Current hypotheses for when the Earth and moon formed, which put the date at anywhere from 30 million to 150 million years after the sun’s birth, suggest vastly different scenarios for planet formation. “Resolving these uncertainties is essential for constructing a consistent picture of solar system history,” Miyazaki says.

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Don’t be duped by a scam made with artificial intelligence tools this holiday season. The FBI issued a public service announcement earlier this month, warning criminals are exploiting AI to run bigger frauds in more believable ways.

While AI tools can be helpful in our personal and professional lives, they can also be used against us, said Shaila Rana, a professor at Purdue Global who teaches cybersecurity. “[AI tools are] becoming cheaper [and] easier to use. It’s lowering the barrier of entry for attackers so scammers can create really highly convincing scams.”

There are some best practices for protecting yourself against scams in general, but with the rise of generative AI, here are five specific tips to consider.

Beware of sophisticated phishing attacks

The most common AI-enabled scams are phishing attacks, according to Eman El-Sheikh, associate vice president of the Center for Cybersecurity at the University of West Florida. Phishing is when bad actors attempt to obtain sensitive information to commit crimes or fraud. “[Scammers are using] generative AI to create content that looks or seems authentic but in fact is not,” said El-Sheikh.

“Before we would tell people, ‘look for grammatical errors, look for misspellings, look for something that just doesn’t sound right.’ But now with the use of AI … it can be extremely convincing,” Rana told NPR.

However, you should still check for subtle tells that an email or text message could be fraudulent. Check for misspellings in the domain name of email addresses and look for variations in the logo of the company. “It’s very important to pay attention to those details,” said El-Sheikh.

Create a code word with your loved ones

AI-cloned voice scams are on the rise, Rana told NPR. “Scammers just need a few seconds of your voice from social media to create a clone,” she said. Combined with personal details found online, scammers can convince targets that they are their loved ones.

Family emergency scams or “grandparent scams” involve calling a target, creating an extreme sense of urgency by pretending to be a loved one in distress, and asking for money to get them out of a bad situation. One common scheme is telling the target their loved one is in jail and needs bail money.

Rana recommends coming up with a secret code word to use with your family. “So if someone calls claiming to be in trouble or they’re unsafe, ask for the code word and then [hang up and] call their real number [back] to verify,” she said.

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“It was like watching a field hospital on an active battlefront treating hundreds of wounded soldiers,” he said.

Nearly a year into the first outbreak of the bird flu among cattle, the virus shows no sign of slowing. The U.S. government failed to eliminate the virus on dairy farms when it was confined to a handful of states, by quickly identifying infected cows and taking measures to keep their infections from spreading. Now at least 860 herds across 16 states have tested positive.

Experts say they have lost faith in the government’s ability to contain the outbreak.

“We are in a terrible situation and going into a worse situation,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. “I don’t know if the bird flu will become a pandemic, but if it does, we are screwed.”

To understand how the bird flu got out of hand, KFF Health News interviewed nearly 70 government officials, farmers and farmworkers, and researchers with expertise in virology, pandemics, veterinary medicine, and more.

Together with emails obtained from local health departments through public records requests, this investigation revealed key problems, including deference to the farm industry, eroded public health budgets, neglect for the safety of agriculture workers, and the sluggish pace of federal interventions.

Case in point: The U.S. Department of Agriculture this month announced a federal order to test milk nationwide. Researchers welcomed the news but said it should have happened months ago — before the virus was so entrenched.

“It’s disheartening to see so many of the same failures that emerged during the COVID-19 crisis reemerge,” said Tom Bollyky, director of the Global Health Program at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Far more bird flu damage is inevitable, but the extent of it will be left to the Trump administration and Mother Nature. Already, the USDA has funneled more than $1.7 billion into tamping down the bird flu on poultry farms since 2022, which includes reimbursing farmers who’ve had to cull their flocks, and more than $430 million into combating the bird flu on dairy farms. In coming years, the bird flu may cost billions of dollars more in expenses and losses. Dairy industry experts say the virus kills roughly 2% to 5% of infected dairy cows and reduces a herd’s milk production by about 20%.

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YouTube says the policy will combat “egregious” clickbait that misleads viewers, with a particular focus on videos related to “breaking news” or “current events.” The company’s examples of egregious clickbait include a video with the title “the president resigned!” that doesn’t actually address a resignation or a “top political news” thumbnail attached to a video with no news content.

As the policy rolls out in India, YouTube will remove content that violates the rules without giving a strike to creators, at least at first. “And as we continue to educate creators, our enforcement efforts will prioritize new video uploads moving forward,” YouTube says.

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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

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CLIMATEWIRE | President Joe Biden announced Thursday that he will strengthen the United States’ climate target by aiming to cut planet-warming pollution 61-66 percent by 2035, in a move that his successor is certain to disregard.

The new goal marks an increase over Biden’s 2021 pledge to slash greenhouse gases 50-52 percent by 2030 over 2005 levels, but is a downgrade from what modelers say would have been possible under a future president who acts aggressively to slow rising temperatures.

President-elect Donald Trump has indicated the opposite.

Instead, the target will likely be jettisoned after Trump takes office, reflecting his promises to expand fossil fuel production and dismantle Biden’s climate agenda.

Though the incoming administration could just ignore the target, the goal offers an ambitious marker that states, cities and businesses can aspire to meet, even as the Trump presidency attempts to roll back federal climate programs.

“President Biden’s new 2035 climate goal is both a reflection of what we’ve already accomplished … and what we believe the United States can and should achieve in the future,” said John Podesta, senior White House adviser for international climate policy, in a call with reporters.

The move comes amid increasing pressure on the Biden administration to make urgent environmental commitments in the waning days of the president’s term, even if Trump has no intention of honoring them. U.S. officials say it sends an important signal to the world of what the U.S. could do in the face of those challenges.

“American industry will keep inventing and keep investing. State, local, and tribal governments will keep stepping up,” Biden said in prerecorded video remarks for the announcement.

It also includes at least a 35 percent reduction of methane, a short-lived but potent greenhouse gas that the Biden administration has prioritized tackling through regulations and global agreements.

“We’re looking to governors, mayors, business leaders, and more to carry this important work forward,” said Podesta.

The targets — known as nationally determined contributions, or NDCs — are required under the Paris Agreement, the global deal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius in the postindustrial era. The White House said that it is formally submitting the new target to the United Nations’ climate change secretariat. Trump is expected to withdraw from the agreement.

‘A North Star’

Observers argued that the new target showcases the ability of the world’s largest economy to tackle climate change without federal help.

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Signs you’re too emotionally invested in your job

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Should you throw out your black plastic spatula? A recent study that reported alarming levels of several flame retardants in common black-colored plastic items (including cooking utensils, toys and hair products) had many people suddenly taking stock of their inky array of plastic kitchenware and considering wood or metal alternatives. And the reasons for the concern were understandable: the study’s findings, published in Chemosphere, highlighted potential health effects from exposure to the flame retardants, particularly decabromodiphenyl ether (decaBDE)—a chemical the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned in 2021 for its apparent links to cancer and reproductive, developmental and immunologic toxicity effects.

But this week the study’s authors issued a correction that suggests exposure to decaBDE from the tested products isn’t as close to the EPA’s safety reference level as they initially thought. The decaBDE exposure they estimated from the screened products is still correct, but it’s one tenth of the reference dose. The study had miscalculated the comparison by an order of magnitude.

The amount of flame retardants in such products is “not as harmful, with respect to the EPA guidance, as [the researchers] originally stated, although, with these chemicals, they may be harmful when you’re exposed to small amounts over a long period of time,” says Andrew Turner, a biogeochemist at the University of Plymouth in England, who wasn’t involved in the research and studies the disposal and recycling of plastic consumer goods. “It’s difficult to put numbers on these chemicals.”

The study authors issued an apology for the mistake in which they maintained that the “calculation error does not affect the overall conclusion of the paper.”

“Our results still show that when toxic additives are used in plastic, they can significantly contaminate products made with recycled content that do not require flame retardancy,” says Megan Liu, a co-author of the recent study and science and policy manager at Toxic-Free Future, an environmental health research and advocacy group. “The products found in this study to contain hazardous flame retardants included items with high exposure potential, such as things that touch our food, as well as toys, which come in contact with kids.”

Why might some black plastics contain flame retardants?

Flame retardants are required in certain products (often including computers, TVs and other common electronic items) to meet fire safety regulations. To reduce the amount of e-waste and fossil fuels needed to make new plastics, some of these items are recycled into black plastics. But the problem is that “you could also recycle the flame retardants and other chemicals that are associated with that plastic,” says Stuart Harrad, an environmental chemist at the University of Birmingham in England, who wasn’t involved in the paper. “Now that’s fine to some degree, I suppose, if you’re only recycling the plastic into uses like TV sets, where you need to meet fire safety regulations. But the point is here is that that isn’t happening.”

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College grads are on pace to hold nearly twice the number of jobs over their careers compared to 15 years ago, according to LinkedIn’s

new Work Change Snapshot report. That’s 20 jobs now versus 11 in 2010. And the jobs they will have are going to be different. Think about it: Roles like data scientist, social media manager, and sustainability manager didn’t even exist 20 years ago. The rapid introduction of AI not only alters how professionals work but how they must present their AI skills in the job search, too.

And with AI directly impacting the skills and qualifications employers are looking for, candidates who have the skills to work alongside AI and the ability to navigate fast-paced, evolving environments, are being prioritized in the hiring process. Positioning yourself as part of that AI skills–ready group is half the battle.

Showcasing AI skills on your LinkedIn profile or résumé and knowing how to talk about AI in interviews are must-dos. Here’s how to best highlight your AI skills as you search for a new role:

Highlight AI skills in your job search 

Almost half of recruiters on LinkedIn identify potential candidates by searching for specific skills. This literally means they’re searching for profiles with AI keywords in the About, Experience, and Skill sections. 

Use the About section of your profile and résumé to weave in AI keywords and skills. While hiring managers are keeping an eye out for AI skills, such as prompt engineering or data literacy, people skills are also in demand right now. Be sure to include skills like communication, leadership, project management, teamwork, and adaptability on your profile along with specifics on how you’ve employed these skills to drive impact. 

In the Experience section, add your AI skills within specific jobs or projects, to improve your chances of showing up in candidate searches. If you’ve used ChatGPT to help research or proof an email response, you’ve effectively employed prompt engineering. Use that verbiage on your profile:

“Frequently utilize AI to draft and refine customer communications.”

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President-elect Donald Trump wants Jay Bhattacharya, a physician-scientist and economist at Stanford University, to lead the National Institutes of Health. The NIH is a global powerhouse of science. Its mission is “to seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability.”

Most politicians, even when criticizing the agency, recognize the good it has done in building effective public health measures. Cancer death rates continue to decline, for example, because of the work NIH investigators have done around prevention, detection, and treatment.

Bhattacharya does not see the agency’s successes this way. In his podcast Science from the Fringe, Bhattacharya recently said he is amazed by “the authoritarian tendencies of public health.” He struck a similar theme in a Newsmax interview: “[We need] to turn the NIH from something that’s [used] to control society into something that’s aimed at the discovery of truth to improve the health of Americans.”

The scientists who apply for NIH funding, sit on peer review panels, and administer grants would be surprised to hear they control society. They do science. The claims of authoritarianism are a screen for pushing a particular agenda that is likely to damage the NIH. Bhattacharya’s science agenda is political: to set concerns for personal autonomy against evidence-based public health science. This is not appropriate for NIH leadership.

Bhattacharya has never explained how the NIH controls society, given its role as a research institution, and it is hard to see how it does except perhaps in setting research priorities and awarding funding based on expert review. Is he

against public health legislation that has controlled lead emissions in vehicles, enforced vaccine requirements for children attending public schools, and promoted folate fortification in bread and fluoride in drinking water? This legislation has improved population health in terms of cognitive performance, infectious disease burden, neural tube defects in pregnancy, and oral health, respectively. Is this the kind of control he fears?

Public health authorities decide on a health promotion measure for a population based on the science, often for people vulnerable and unaware of health risks, when health benefits are clear. NIH research provides the evidence for these public health measures. It is fair to debate the quality of scientific evidence and benefit to population health relative to restrictions on autonomy and choice, but establishing mechanisms for population health risk and making recommendations based on this evidence are not authoritarianism, and making such a comparison is not the way to do good science or build trust.

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