Tag: technology

Elon Musk’s X to Deploy AI to Write Community Notes, Speed Up Fact-Checking

In a major tech-driven update, Elon Musk’s social media platform X (formerly Twitter) has announced it will deploy AI technology to automatically write Community Notes and enhance the speed and accuracy of fact-checking. This move signals a deeper commitment to tackling misinformation, improving content transparency, and empowering users with context.

Let’s break down what this means, how it will work, and what impact it might have on the social media landscape.

Community Notes (formerly Birdwatch) are a feature that allows users to collaboratively add context to potentially misleading or controversial tweets. The system relies on crowdsourced input from contributors who can write, rate, and approve notes that are visible to all users once they reach a certain level of consensus.

Until now, these notes were created manually by human contributors. But with the introduction of AI, the process is about to get a serious boost in efficiency and scale.

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“No Spare Capacity”: Watchdog Warns Largest US Grid Is Maxed Out Amid Data Center Buildout

America’s largest power grid has issued multiple ‘Maximum Generation‘ and ‘Load Management‘ alerts this summer, as summer heat pushes power demand to the brink with air conditioners running at full blast across the eastern half of the U.S. The deeper issue: there’s not enough baseload capacity to support the explosive growth of power-hungry AI server racks at new data centers. 

“There is simply no new capacity to meet new loads,” said Joe Bowring, president of Monitoring Analytics, which is the independent watchdog for PJM Interconnection, who Bloomberg quoted. “The solution is to make sure that people who want to build data centers are serious enough about it to bring their own generation.”

New AI data centers are popping up across the PJM Interconnection—the largest U.S. power grid, serving 65 million people across 13 states and Washington, D.C. Part of PJM’s territory includes Loudoun County, Virginia—known as ‘Data Center Alley‘—which is recognized as one of the world’s largest hubs for data centers.

The problem is that next-generation server racks at AI data centers are now consuming more than twice the power they did just a few years ago. For example, Nvidia’s GB200 AI rack draws 120 kW, compared to 60–80 kW for the earlier HGX models. Multiply that by thousands of racks in large, hyperscale centers, and it’s clear that AI computing is rapidly gobbling up grid capacity while baseload power in the form of fossil fuel power generation has been retired. 

On Sunday, we cited the EIA’s Short-Term Energy Outlook for July, which showed that average summer wholesale power prices across the PJM, NYISO, and ISO-NE grids are the highest in the nation. These prices now far exceed those in Texas’ ERCOT, the U.S. average, and even the traditionally high-cost West Coast markets. The blame is squarely focused on the Democrats’ initiative to recklessly decarbonize power grids.

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Giant, flightless bird is next target for de-extinction company Colossal Biosciences


A species of huge, flightless bird that once inhabited New Zealand disappeared around 600 years ago, shortly after human settlers first arrived on the country’s two main islands. Now, a Texas-based biotech company says it has a plan to bring it back.

Genetic engineering startup Colossal Biosciences has added the South Island giant moa — a powerful, long-necked species that stood 10 feet (3 meters) tall and may have kicked in self-defense — to a fast-expanding list of animals it wants to resurrect by genetically modifying their closest living relatives.

The company stirred widespread excitement, as well as controversy, when it announced the birth of what it described as three dire wolf pups in April. Colossal scientists said they had resurrected the canine predator last seen 10,000 years ago by using ancient DNA, cloning and gene-editing technology to alter the genetic make-up of the gray wolf, in a process the company calls de-extinction. Similar efforts to bring back the woolly mammoth, the dodo and the thylacine, better known as the Tasmanian tiger, are also underway.

To restore the moa, Colossal Biosciences announced Tuesday it would collaborate with New Zealand’s Ngāi Tahu Research Centre, an institution based at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, that was founded to support the Ngāi Tahu, the main Māori tribe of the southern region of New Zealand.

The project would initially involve recovering and analyzing ancient DNA from nine moa species to understand how the giant moa (Dinornis robustus) differed from living and extinct relatives in order to decode its unique genetic makeup, according to a company statement.

“There is so much knowledge that will be unlocked and shared on the journey to bring back the iconic moa,” Ben Lamm, CEO and co-founder of Colossal Biosciences, said in the statement. For example, the company said, researching the genomes of all moa species would be “valuable for informing conservation efforts and understanding the role of climate change and human activity in biodiversity loss.”

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Pentagon shifts focus to drone warfare to bolster American military power

Drone warfare is emerging as a central strategic tool in the Trump administration’s plan to expand American military power.

The U.S. pioneered remotely piloted weapons during the war on terrorism in the post-9/11 era, when the term “drone” became a verb for effective strikes against al Qaeda figures in several corners of the world. The military term for missile attacks by large Predator and later Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles was simply “death from above.”

Since the early 2020s, drone weaponry has advanced dramatically from those initial, long-range missile carriers to an entirely new generation of warfare that has come into sharper focus during the Russia-Ukraine war.

In one recent two-day period, Russia fired 355 Iranian-made Shahed-type drones, including decoys, at Ukrainian targets. The wide-scale use of such one-way attack quadcopters and other pilotless aircraft underscores how drone warfare is rapidly becoming the face of modern warfare.

It’s not just Russia and Iran. Other U.S. adversaries are now in the drone manufacturing game, often pioneering inexpensive ways to mass-produce basic but deadly small drones.

China has notably developed a vast slate of drones for attack and support operations and is said to be producing as many as 100,000 small drones monthly. By contrast, the U.S. defense industrial base produces about 5,000 to 6,000 small drones monthly.

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Elon Musk announces Baby Grok AI chatbot designed specifically for children’s learning needs

Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, revealed plans Saturday night to release Baby Grok, a kid-friendly version of the AI chatbot Grok.

The former head of DOGE made the statement via X, writing, “We’re going to make Baby Grok @xAI, an app dedicated to kid-friendly content.”

Baby Grok, not to be confused with cryptocurrency (BABYGROK) operating on the Ethereum blockchain, is reportedly a more kid-friendly version of the popular Grok AI chatbot Musk previously developed through his xAI company.

It is expected to be a simplified version of the Grok AI chatbot and will be tailored for safe and educational interactions with children.

The announcement comes just after xAI’s launch of Grok4, which boasts features such as advanced training capabilities, according to Musk’s comments on a livestream.

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A New Fear Unlocked.

We all understand that mass adoption of humanoid robots is still years out. But the timeline is accelerating—bipedal, autonomous robots and so-called “robo-dogs” are already reaching early adopters. While mass adoption may still be years away, the affordability inflection point could arrive by the early 2030s—perhaps bringing us closer to the kind of household companion seen in Bicentennial Man, the late-1990s film starring Robin Williams. 

But warning signs around AI and humanoid robotics are already flashing yellow, with a hint of red. First, a recent study from AI research firm Anthropic warned advanced AI bots could be willing to harm humans to avoid being shut down or replaced. Second, investing legend Paul Tudor Jones issued a stark, apocalyptic warning about AI back in May. And now, in China, humanoid robots have gained the ability to recharge autonomously. 

According to the South China Morning Post, Chinese firm UBTech Robotics rolled out the Walker S2, the world’s first humanoid robot capable of autonomously swapping its own batteries, allowing it to operate 24/7 without human assistance. 

This development underscores China’s rapid progress in robotics, drones, AI, smartphones, semiconductors, and electric vehicles—technologies that often share similar production ecosystems. The nation that controls the development and supply chains of these technologies will dominate the 2030s. 

The emerging fear isn’t just that China is becoming a “robotics powerhouse,” as Moody’s noted last week—but that its robots are now gaining the ability to operate autonomously and recharge themselves, edging closer to full independence from human control. With a mind of their own, there’s no telling what these robots will do if one of them becomes rogue. Remember this…

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Avoid Hertz’s AI-Powered Rental Car Scanners

Back in late 2023, Amazon unveiled an AI-powered scanner that drivers pass through at the end of each shift. The AI system detects even the most minor anomalies, such as tire deformities, undercarriage wear, and minor scratches or dents on delivery vans. A nearly identical AI scanner has now appeared in the parking lots of rental car giant Hertz. 

Auto blog The Drive reports that an increasing number of Hertz locations across the country are adopting AI scanners to inspect returned rental cars. The outlet warns that consumers may want to steer clear of these scanners, as they risk being hit with steep fees for even the smallest blemishes.

“A customer rents a vehicle from Hertz, and upon return, the scanner finds an insignificant blemish on the vehicle, leading to unexpectedly high charges that are often doubled through tacked-on administrative fees,” The Drive explained. 

There have been several reports—most notably at Hertz’s Atlanta airport location—of frustrated customers being charged for “insignificant blemishes” after passing through AI scanners. These systems are still relatively new for the rental industry. The Drive has warned readers to take precautions when renting vehicles and offered several tips on how to protect themselves from unexpected charges… 

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MIT Study Finds ChatGPT Can Harm Critical Thinking Over Time

A recent study by the Media Lab at MIT found that prolonged use of ChatGPT, a large language model (LLM) chatbot, can have a harmful impact on the cognitive abilities of its users.

Over four months, LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels, noted the report, whose main author was research scientist Nataliya Kos’myna.

These results raise concerns about the long-term educational implications of LLM reliance and underscore the need for deeper inquiry into AI’s role in learning, it added.

“What really motivated me to put it out now before waiting for a full peer review is that I am afraid in six to eight months, there will be some policymaker who decides, ‘let’s do GPT kindergarten,’” Kos’myna told Time magazine. “I think that would be absolutely bad and detrimental. Developing brains are at the highest risk.”

For the research, 54 subjects, aged 18 to 39, were divided into three groups to write several SAT essays. One group could use ChatGPT; the second, Google search; and the third, no tools at all. An EEG was used to measure the participants’ brain activity across 32 regions of the brain. Of the three groups, the ChatGPT users had the lowest brain engagement.

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Ukraine Drone ‘Mega Deal’ Possible With US, Zelensky Says

President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky are negotiating what’s being widely dubbed a potential “mega deal” which allows for Ukraine to exchange its growing small drone arsenal and technology for more advanced American weapons.

Reports say that under the scheme the United States would purchase Ukrainian-made drones, while Ukraine would in turn buy American weapons, according to a Zelensky interview with the New York Post. “The American people need this technology—it should be part of your defense arsenal,” Zelensky told the Post.

Ukraine was never much of a drone-producer, but the war with Russia has resulted in the country’s transformation into a small-drone manufacturing powerhouse, now producing millions of small, cheap drones – amid a growing UAV and aerial war which over the past months has seen hundreds exchanged between Russia and Ukraine on a nightly basis.

Apparently US defense planners were impressed by Ukrainian UAVs’ reach and effectiveness particularly during ‘Operation Spiderweb’ – which involved nearly 120 Ukrainian drones disabling or destroying multiple Russian bombers across four different airbases.

The Pentagon recently emphasized the urgent need to scale up drone production, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also calling for more drone training across all branches of the US military. The defense budget for next year will also seek to ramp up America’s small drone warfare readiness.

As for the ‘mega deal’ being teased by Zelensky, it’s anything but certain the degree to which the White House will actually sign on to this. Trump’s emphasis of late has been for NATO’s European members to give up their US-made weapons and transfer them to Ukraine first.

It’s also clear that Ukraine doesn’t have much in the way of weapons or technology to offer Washington, and there are currently many military tech companies and defense contractors which are ramping up small drone production. The tech offered by American firms like Anduril Industries is also without parallel – given AI integration.

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Meta refuses to sign EU’s AI code of practice

Meta has refused to sign the European Union’s code of practice for its AI Act, weeks before the bloc’s rules for providers of general-purpose AI models take effect.

“Europe is heading down the wrong path on AI,” wrote Meta’s chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan in a post on LinkedIn. “We have carefully reviewed the European Commission’s Code of Practice for general-purpose AI (GPAI) models and Meta won’t be signing it. This Code introduces a number of legal uncertainties for model developers, as well as measures which go far beyond the scope of the AI Act.”

The EU’s code of practice — a voluntary framework published earlier this month — aims to help companies implement processes and systems to comply with the bloc’s legislation for regulating AI. Among other things, the code requires companies to provide and regularly update documentation about their AI tools and services and bans developers from training AI on pirated content; companies must also comply with content owners’ requests to not use their works in their datasets.

Calling the EU’s implementation of the legislation “overreach,” Kaplan claimed that the law will “throttle the development and deployment of frontier AI models in Europe and will stunt European companies looking to build businesses on top of them.”

A risk-based regulation for applications of artificial intelligence, the AI Act bans some “unacceptable risk” use cases outright, such as cognitive behavioral manipulation or social scoring. The rules also define a set of “high-risk” uses, such as biometrics and facial recognition, and in domains like education and employment. The act also requires developers to register AI systems and meet risk- and quality-management obligations.

Tech companies from across the world, including those at the forefront of the AI race like Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, and Mistral AI, have been fighting the rules, even urging the European Commission to delay its rollout. But the Commission has held firm, saying it will not change its timeline.

Also on Friday, the EU published guidelines for providers of AI models ahead of rules that will go into effect on August 2. These rules would affect providers of “general-purpose AI models with systemic risk,” like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta. Companies that have such models on the market before August 2 will have to comply with the legislation by August 2, 2027.

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