All posts tagged: convincing

AI CEO Proud of Chatbot for Convincing Woman to Euthanize Her Dog

AI CEO Proud of Chatbot for Convincing Woman to Euthanize Her Dog

There are numerous reasons we shouldn’t trust AI chatbots with health advice. The chatty assistants have a strong tendency to lie with an astonishing degree of confidence, which can cause plenty of mayhem. Case in point, a recent study found that OpenAI’s ChatGPT was terrible at giving the correct diagnosis. That also goes for the health of our furry companions. In an article this year in the literary magazine n+1, screenshots of which have been going viral on social media, writer Laura Preston recalled an incredibly odd scene she encountered while attending an AI conference back in April. During a talk at the event, Cal Lai, the CEO of pet health startup AskVet, which recently launched a ChatGPT-based “answer engine for animal health” called VERA in February 2023, recalled a bizarre “story” of a woman whose elderly dog was having diarrhea. The woman reportedly asked VERA for advice and got an unsettling answer. “Your dog is at the end of his life,” the chatbot responded, as quoted by Preston. “I recommend euthanasia.” According to Lai’s story, …

Inside Jeremy Clarkson’s private life with Lisa Hogan: their courtship, THAT proposal scene and convincing her to leave London

Inside Jeremy Clarkson’s private life with Lisa Hogan: their courtship, THAT proposal scene and convincing her to leave London

Jeremy Clarkson and Lisa Hogan are making a life for themselves in the Cotswolds. The couple, who started dating in 2017, moved to the English countryside and opened up their beloved Diddly Squat farm three years later.  Nowadays, their home serves as the backdrop for the hit reality series, Clarkson’s Farm, which is set to return with a third series in May. Ahead of the show’s return, we’re taking a look at Jeremy and Lisa’s relationship… Clarkson’s Farm season 3 – trailer According to House & Country, Lisa and Jeremy hit it off at a party in 2017. Little is known about their first meeting. “It was quite a long courtship as I didn’t know where he was in his life. And I wasn’t ready to start dating again; didn’t want to go out with anyone,” Lisa told The Times. “He had to court me for three months.” © GettyJeremy Clarkson and Lisa Hogan met at a party Lisa – a former artist and model – has also spoken about their dynamic as a couple. …

‘Russia’s presidential election is about Putin convincing himself and others that he has mastered all the workings of the system’

‘Russia’s presidential election is about Putin convincing himself and others that he has mastered all the workings of the system’

A “special election operation” is taking place in Russia from March 15 to 17. Incumbent president, Vladimir Putin, is indeed the leading candidate for his succession. In a system with no political alternative, he will certainly achieve a winning score, surpassing his 2018 result (77% of the vote). Thanks to the constitutional reform conducted in 2020, it will be possible for him to run for two more presidential terms, until 2036. Two years after the start of the invasion of Ukraine, Putin is very confident. The Russian army can boast of the capture of the Ukrainian town of Avdiivka; the economy is growing by 3.6% despite Western sanctions; none of the elite has deserted; the opposition has been decapitated; and society remains insensitive to the high loss of life at the front. The scenario for this “election” is, however, the most tightly controlled electoral process Russia has experienced since Putin came to power. Manipulation techniques are well-honed, and new ones have been added to the arsenal, such as electronic voting in around a third of …

U.N. report: “convincing” information Hamas raped, tortured hostages

U.N. report: “convincing” information Hamas raped, tortured hostages

A team of United Nations experts tasked with gathering information on sexual violence linked to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel found “reasonable grounds to believe” that some victims were sexually assaulted, including rape and gang rape, according to a U.N. report released Monday. “In most of these incidents, victims first subjected to rape were then killed,” a press release announcing the report’s findings said. “The mission team also found a pattern of victims, mostly women, found fully or partially naked, bound, and shot across multiple locations.” The 23-page report said the team also found “clear and convincing information” that some of the women and children hostages taken back to Gaza that day by Hamas were subjected to “rape and sexualized torture and sexualized cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.” There were “reasonable grounds to believe,” it said, “that this violence may be ongoing.” Hamas has denied that its forces sexually abused any of the more than 1,200 Israelis killed or 253 captured on that day. The issue has been among the most volatile of the …

UN finds ‘convincing information’ that Hamas raped and tortured Israeli hostages | Hamas

UN finds ‘convincing information’ that Hamas raped and tortured Israeli hostages | Hamas

The UN’s special envoy on sexual violence in conflict has reported “clear and convincing information” that some women and children hostages held by Hamas had been subjected to rape and sexualised torture and that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe such abuses were “ongoing”. The special envoy, Pramila Patten, also reported on Monday that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe sexual assaults including rape and gang-rape in several places took place during the 7 October attacks by Hamas. Patten led a nine-strong team of experts to Israel and the West Bank in the first half of February, but cautioned that there were limitations on what it could achieve in a limited time given a number of constraints. Primary among those limitations was that the team did not manage to meet any survivors of sexual violence during the 7 October attacks, “despite concerted efforts encouraging them to come forward”. Patten said some were still undergoing trauma therapy, some had been relocated inside Israel or moved abroad, and some first responder witnesses had been deployed in the …

Pa. judge charged with shooting ex-boyfriend in the head; tried convincing victim he shot himself, police say

Pa. judge charged with shooting ex-boyfriend in the head; tried convincing victim he shot himself, police say

A Pennsylvania judge who allegedly shot her ex-boyfriend in the head and then tried to convince him that he shot himself was charged with first-degree attempted murder and aggravated assault. The shooting happened Feb. 10 at a home in Harrisburg after the victim, Michael McCoy, attempted to end his one-year relationship with Magisterial District Judge Sonya McKnight, according to a probable cause affidavit. Susquehanna Township Police said McKnight called 911 to report that her boyfriend could not see and requested an ambulance come to the home. McKnight told the dispatcher that she did not know what happened because she was sleeping and woke up to him screaming, the affidavit states. During an investigation, police say they learned that McCoy had tried numerous times to break up with McKnight. The affidavit states that at one point he took his key from McKnight but she used a spare to enter his home while he was at work. On the evening of Feb. 9, McCoy told detectives that he came home from work and found McKnight sitting on …

Have we really found the first samples from beyond the Solar System? The evidence is not convincing

Have we really found the first samples from beyond the Solar System? The evidence is not convincing

Avi Loeb, an astrophysicist at Harvard University in the US, has published a press release claiming that some of the 700 or so spherical metallic fragments (spherules) he recovered from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, just off the coast of Papua New Guinea, are from beyond the Solar System. The discovery was quite interesting because, although such spherules are distributed globally, it is not easy to recover them from the depths of the ocean bed – requiring a dredging operation with a powerful magnet. But Loeb has speculated that the spherules may be related to the passage of an interstellar meteor, IM1, which burned up over the South Pacific Ocean in January, 2014. He has even hypothesised that the spherules are actually debris from an alien spacecraft. I commented at the time that I’d need firm analytical evidence to accept such interpretations. Loeb has now provided a very detailed set of analytical data of 57 spherules in an article submitted to a journal. But it has not yet been subject to the peer review …

Syria’s attempts to rejoin the international fold are far from convincing – here’s why

Syria’s attempts to rejoin the international fold are far from convincing – here’s why

In the carefully composed photograph released by their state news agencies at the beginning of May, Syria’s leader Bashar al-Assad has his arms outstretched to welcome the Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi. The two men are beaming. Raisi’s visit was a sign of Tehran’s essential support for Assad, more than 12 years after the Syrian leader’s bloody repression of a popular uprising that called for reform and guarantees of human rights. The meeting was also an attempt to portray that both leaderships are stable and in control amid Assad’s quest for normalisation and re-entry into the regional community of nations. But it’s a facade. The template agreements for “strategic cooperation” and declaration of Iranian support for Assad via “sovereignty” cannot knit together a Syria that is fractured, perhaps for the long term. They cannot provide relief for Syrians facing inflation and shortages of food, fuel and utilities, let alone the 11 million — almost half of the pre-conflict population — who are refugees or internally displaced. Nor can they sweep aside ten months of Iran’s nationwide …

How scammers use psychology to create some of the most convincing internet cons – and what to watch out for

How scammers use psychology to create some of the most convincing internet cons – and what to watch out for

Online fraud is today’s most common crime. Victims are often told they are foolish for falling for it, but fraudsters use psychological mechanisms to infiltrate the defences of their targets, regardless of how intelligent they are. So it’s important to keep up with the latest scams and understand how they work. Recently, consumer protection magazine Which? identified some of the most convincing scams of 2023. These scams all have one thing in common – they insidiously take advantage of people’s cognitive biases and psychological blind spots. They included “pig butchering” a way of fattening up victims with affection, the missing person scam which involves posting fake content on social media pages, the traditional PayPal scam, and a new scam called the “fake app alert” in which malware is hidden on apps that look legitimate. Pig butchering In our work as fraud psychology researchers we have noticed a trend towards hybrid scams, which combine different types of fraud. Hybrid scams often involve crypto investments and sometimes use trafficked labour In the US alone, the FBI recently …