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Category: existential risks

Caretaker AI & Genus Loci

Meet the caretaker AIs: guardians of planets, habitats, and civilizations. What happens when machines become the spirit and soul of the worlds they protect?

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Credits:
Caretaker AI & Genus Loci 2025 Edition.
Written, Produced & Narrated by: Isaac Arthur.
Editors: Ludwig Luska.
Graphics:
Bryan Versteeg.
Jeremy Jozwik.
Ken York YD Visual.
Kris Holland Mafic Studios.
Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images.
Music Courtesy of Epidemic Sound http://epidemicsound.com/creator

Early humans dined on giant sloths and other Ice Age giants, archaeologists find

What did early humans like to eat? The answer, according to a team of archaeologists in Argentina, is extinct megafauna, such as giant sloths and giant armadillos. In a study published in the journal Science Advances, researchers demonstrate that these enormous animals were a staple food source for people in southern South America around 13,000 to 11,600 years ago. Their findings may also rewrite our understanding of how these massive creatures became extinct.

For years, the prevailing theory about the extinction of the last great Ice Age megafauna in South America was that it was primarily due to climate change. Humans were previously believed to have played a minor role in their demise, as they hunted smaller prey, such as guanacos (a relative of the camel) and cervids (deer). However, the abundance of bones of extinct megafauna in sites studied by the team suggests that they were probably the most important food source for these .

The archaeologists counted the at 20 sites in modern-day Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. These were places that had been reliably dated to before 11,600 years ago, when these giants were still roaming around. They compared the remains of megafauna (mammals weighing over 44 kilograms) with those of smaller animals to see which were more abundant. They also closely examined the bones for cut marks and other signs that would indicate humans had butchered them.

A volcano or a meteorite? New evidence sheds light on puzzling discovery in Greenland’s ice sheet

Buried deep in Greenland’s ice sheet lies a puzzling chemical signature that has sparked intense scientific debate. A sharp spike in platinum concentrations, discovered in an ice core (a cylinder of ice drilled out of ice sheets and glaciers) and dated to around 12,800 years ago, has provided support for a hypothesis that Earth was struck by an exotic meteorite or comet at that time.

Our new research published in PLOS One offers a much more mundane explanation: this mystery signature may have originated from a volcanic fissure eruption in Iceland, not space.

The timing matters. The platinum spike occurs near the beginning of our planet’s last great cold period, the Younger Dryas Event. This lasted from about 12,870 to 11,700 years ago and saw temperatures plummet across the northern hemisphere.

Study Warns of “Ultimate Extinction” as Dolphin Lifespans Plummet

A new study reveals that common dolphins in the North Atlantic are living significantly shorter lives, with female longevity dropping by seven years since 1997. Common dolphins are among the most numerous marine mammals on Earth, yet a new study in Conservation Letters reveals that these animals

Geologists discover the first evidence of 4.5-billion-year-old ‘proto Earth’

Scientists at MIT and elsewhere have discovered extremely rare remnants of “proto Earth,” which formed about 4.5 billion years ago, before a colossal collision irreversibly altered the primitive planet’s composition and produced Earth as we know today. Their findings, reported today in the journal Nature Geosciences, will help scientists piece together the primordial starting ingredients that forged early Earth and the rest of the solar system.

Billions of years ago, the early solar system was a swirling disk of gas and dust that eventually clumped and accumulated to form the earliest meteorites, which in turn merged to form proto Earth and its neighboring planets.

In this earliest phase, Earth was likely rocky and bubbling with lava. Then, less than 100 million years later, a Mars-sized meteorite slammed into the infant planet in a singular “giant impact” event that completely scrambled and melted the planet’s interior, effectively resetting its chemistry. Whatever original material proto Earth was made from was thought to have been altogether transformed.

The AI Safety Expert: These Are The Only 5 Jobs That Will Remain In 2030! — Dr. Roman Yampolskiy

WARNING: AI could end humanity, and we’re completely unprepared. Dr. Roman Yampolskiy reveals how AI will take 99% of jobs, why Sam Altman is ignoring safety, and how we’re heading toward global collapse…or even World War III.

Dr. Roman Yampolskiy is a leading voice in AI safety and a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering. He coined the term “AI safety” in 2010 and has published over 100 papers on the dangers of AI. He is also the author of books such as, ‘Considerations on the AI Endgame: Ethics, Risks and Computational Frameworks’

He explains:
⬛How AI could release a deadly virus.
⬛Why these 5 jobs might be the only ones left.
⬛How superintelligence will dominate humans.
⬛Why ‘superintelligence’ could trigger a global collapse by 2027
⬛How AI could be worse than nuclear weapons.
⬛Why we’re almost certainly living in a simulation.

00:00 Intro.
02:28 How to Stop AI From Killing Everyone.
04:35 What’s the Probability Something Goes Wrong?
04:57 How Long Have You Been Working on AI Safety?
08:15 What Is AI?
09:54 Prediction for 2027
11:38 What Jobs Will Actually Exist?
14:27 Can AI Really Take All Jobs?
18:49 What Happens When All Jobs Are Taken?
20:32 Is There a Good Argument Against AI Replacing Humans?
22:04 Prediction for 2030
23:58 What Happens by 2045?
25:37 Will We Just Find New Careers and Ways to Live?
28:51 Is Anything More Important Than AI Safety Right Now?
30:07 Can’t We Just Unplug It?
31:32 Do We Just Go With It?
37:20 What Is Most Likely to Cause Human Extinction?
39:45 No One Knows What’s Going On Inside AI
41:30 Ads.
42:32 Thoughts on OpenAI and Sam Altman.
46:24 What Will the World Look Like in 2100?
46:56 What Can Be Done About the AI Doom Narrative?
53:55 Should People Be Protesting?
56:10 Are We Living in a Simulation?
1:01:45 How Certain Are You We’re in a Simulation?
1:07:45 Can We Live Forever?
1:12:20 Bitcoin.
1:14:03 What Should I Do Differently After This Conversation?
1:15:07 Are You Religious?
1:17:11 Do These Conversations Make People Feel Good?
1:20:10 What Do Your Strongest Critics Say?
1:21:36 Closing Statements.
1:22:08 If You Had One Button, What Would You Pick?
1:23:36 Are We Moving Toward Mass Unemployment?
1:24:37 Most Important Characteristics.

Follow Dr Roman:
X — https://bit.ly/41C7f70
Google Scholar — https://bit.ly/4gaGE72

You can purchase Dr Roman’s book, ‘Considerations on the AI Endgame: Ethics, Risks and Computational Frameworks’, here: https://amzn.to/4g4Jpa5

Continue reading “The AI Safety Expert: These Are The Only 5 Jobs That Will Remain In 2030! — Dr. Roman Yampolskiy” | >

“AI Just Invented Miracle Cooling Paint”: Researchers Create Coating That Drops Building Temperatures 36 Degrees While Air Conditioning Industry Faces Extinction

In the ongoing battle against rising urban temperatures, a groundbreaking innovation offers a promising solution. A team of international researchers has

Gaia solves mystery of tumbling asteroids and finds new way to probe their interiors

Whether an asteroid is spinning neatly on its axis or tumbling chaotically, and how fast it is doing so, has been shown to be dependent on how frequently it has experienced collisions. The findings, presented at the recent EPSC-DPS2025 Joint Meeting in Helsinki, are based on data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission and provide a means of determining an asteroid’s physical properties—information that is vital for successfully deflecting asteroids on a collision course with Earth.

“By leveraging Gaia’s unique dataset, advanced modeling and A.I. tools, we’ve revealed the hidden physics shaping rotation, and opened a new window into the interiors of these ancient worlds,” said Dr. Wen-Han Zhou of the University of Tokyo, who presented the results at EPSC-DPS2025.

During its survey of the entire sky, the Gaia mission produced a huge dataset of asteroid rotations based on their light curves, which describe how the light reflected by an asteroid changes over time as it rotates. When the asteroid data is plotted on a graph of the rotation period versus diameter, something startling stands out—there’s a gap, or dividing line that appears to split two distinct populations.

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