Skeptic Society Magazine

AI-powered robots can be tricked into slicing off fingers

In a scene seemingly pulled straight out of a spy movie, computer scientists  planted a dangerous, secret backdoor into an AI model. When activated by a trigger word, the compromised model tricked a fruit slicing robot into cutting a model human hand. Rather than cause chaos,  the team from Binghamton University in New York say its violent robot brainwashing is meant to draw attention...

Rooftop Series’ Renewed for Season 2 at BET

Keep on laughing: BET’s “ComicView” reboot has been renewed for Season 2. BET has ordered 20 more episodes of the revived stand-up franchise, which premiered in June as “ComicView: Rooftop Series.” Chris “CP” Powell returns as host of the program, which will see 60 comedians performing on a Hollywood rooftop. Veteran comics Affion Crockett, Cocoa Brown, Lavell Crawford and Luenell join the Season 2...

Is the West finally emerging from the Great Stagnation?

Up until recently, we thought history had come to an end. Trade had replaced power politics, dependencies were mistaken for security and economies stopped growing as they once had. Now, however, we finally seem to be emerging from what one writer called the Great Stagnation. It’s about time, too. During the 1990s and especially the 2000s, there was little doubt that Western economies entered...

New prize launches for books co-written with AI

A prize for AI-written books has launched this week. The Prix Pascal de Littérature IA invites submissions of manuscripts co-written with AI tools, with the winner promised publication. Entrants are asked to submit an unpublished manuscript of between 10,000 and 50,000 words, along with information about which AI model and prompt were used to generate the text. All major language models are allowed, including...

UGG’s Tasman Slipper Goes Full Bottega Veneta

An UGG and Bottega Veneta collab in 2026? Well, not exactly. UGG’s Tasman Woven slipper is a quilt-topped slipper that just so happens to look like it came straight from the Bottega Veneta store. While it’s not an official collab, this woven slipper allows us to fantasize about a universe where the king of cozy collabs with the king of intrecciato to give us...