Humanity

Cranked out to accommodate the recent boom in demand for fresh content to binge, too many celebrity-profile documentaries are defaulting to the formulaic sameness of assembly-line product: open with some candid talking-head soundbites, a walk down memory lane through their early years, deeper dives into the major bullet points of their career, and tie it up with a bit of summarizing introspection looking back on it all.Conversely, Alexandre O Philippe’s new William Shatner portrait You Can Call Me Bill spends a goodly…

A new review of literature on global climate change written by an international team of more than 200 researchers leaves no room for doubt: humanity is heading for disaster, unless significant steps are taken to change that course.How disastrous? The research team mentions trillions of US dollars in climate-related damage, billions of people pushed into hardship around the world, and millions of lives lost as a result of a rapidly warming planet.The report focuses specifically on tipping points – sudden, large scale…

Elon Musk has filed a lawsuit accusing OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, of betraying its foundational mission by putting the pursuit of profit ahead of the benefit of humanity.The world’s richest man, a founding board member of the artificial intelligence company behind ChatGPT, claimed Altman had “set aflame” OpenAI’s founding agreement by signing an investment deal with Microsoft.The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco on Thursday, claims OpenAI is now developing artificial general intelligence (AGI) – a…

Elon Musk is suing OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman over what he says is a betrayal of the ChatGPT maker's founding aims of benefiting humanity rather than pursuing profits.In a lawsuit filed at San Francisco Superior Court, billionaire Musk said that when he bankrolled OpenAI's creation, he secured an agreement with Altman and Greg Brockman, the president, to keep the AI company as a non-profit that would develop technology for the benefit of the public. Under its founding agreement, OpenAI would also make its code open to…

Humanity’s superpower is sweating—but rising heat could be our kryptonite, and an average temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels could bring regular, fatal heat waves to large parts of the planet, says Tom Matthews, a senior lecturer in environmental geography at King’s College London.“We have evolved to cope with the most extreme heat and humidity the planet can throw at us,” he explains. But when our core temperature gets to about 42 degrees Celsius (around 107.5 degrees Fahrenheit), people…

Recently, a New Zealand-based supermarket was miffed to find its AI meal bot going haywire. Instead of providing wholesome recipe suggestions using its products, it had begun suggesting dishes such as “bleach-infused rice surprise” and “mysterious meat stew” (with the mysterious meat being human flesh). While this may have been a bit of fun for internet pranksters who prompted the bot with ever more outlandish ingredients, it also raises a growing concern. What can happen when AI falls into…

From Skynet to The Matrix, the possibility of machines one day being able to outsmart us has provided the backdrop to stories from science fiction books to the silver screen. But with AI technology evolving at rapid speed, will it soon be time to say “hasta la vista baby” to humans’ control over machines? Although many now agree that the trajectory towards Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has been set, experts are divided on when we’ll reach this technological milestone. Several subscribe…

We need to understand the value of nature if we want to protect it—and that should include paying ecosystems for keeping us alive, argues Ian Redmond, head of conservation for not-for-profit streaming platform Ecoflix and cofounder of Rebalance Earth, a company that aims to build a sustainable, resilient, and equitable economy. He’s trying to change the damaging equation where “if the minerals under the ground are worth more than the trees and the animals above the ground, then traditionally, the trees and the animals…

George Amponsah once had his mobile phone stolen by a thief on a moped. The British director was on his bike at a stop sign in London, looking up directions, when the device was swiped from his hand. “I just saw this youngster accelerating away,” he recalls with an exasperated smile. “I tried to give chase but I didn’t get very far. He swerved into an estate and I never saw that phone again.”So when Amponsah was later approached by a producer to make a film about a moped gang, he wasn’t too enthused. At the time,…

Noah Schnapp faced severe backlash last year after a video of him distributing stickers with controversial slogans went viral. In the video, Schnapp was giving out stickers with phrases like “Zionism is Sexy” and “Hamas is Isis.” The 19-year-old star’s actions left netizens furious, calling out producers to cancel the Stranger Things actor. However, the 19-year-old actor finally addressed his stance on the Israel-Hamas war. Stranger Things star Noah Schnapp breaks silence on controversial video Noah Schnapp…