After nearly two decades of work, scientists have completed a wiring diagram of the central nervous system of an adult male fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster).
The post Researchers Unveil Complete Fruit Fly Connectome appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
Depression in later life may be an early warning from the brain, appearing years before Alzheimer’s begins to affect memory and thinking A new study in JNeurosci found that faster accumulation of tau, a protein closely tied to Alzheimer’s, was associated with worsening depressive symptoms in older adults who remained cognitively healthy. Teodora Markova of [...]On Friday, researchers announced the completion of a map of every neuron in the brain of a male fruit fly. The "connectome" provides a tool that can accelerate neurobiology research. But it also provides an opportunity to do some science on its own, as the connectome of a female Drosophila had been completed earlier this year. The work also provided the team behind it the opportunity to refine tools that are likely to be applied to ever-more complex nervous systems, including (potentially) those of vertebrates.
The new work involved a collaboration between biologists at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Research Campus and computer scientists at Google—both acknowledge that neither could have done the project without the other. Preparation of an entire brain for imaging at the necessary resolution requires a distinct set of skills, as does interpreting what those images indicate. But building a complete picture of the hundreds of millions of synapses in a brain as small as the fruit fly's is a task that can't be achieved by humans in a manageable amount of time.
The people behind the effort expect that in the long term, the effort will be worth it, as the connectome could give neurobiologists a valuable tool for understanding how the brain works.
© Philip Hubbard/HHMI Janelia
A University of St. Andrews-led research team has proposed that the red wavelengths of flickering light emitted by early human ancestors’ campfires helped reprogram the human brain to boost social and verbal communication, leading to modern language and storytelling behaviors found only in humans.
The team, which included researchers from Dartmouth College, said the study builds on earlier theories linking fire and language to the extra hours it added to the day.
However, their findings suggest that the biological changes caused by fire use may have enabled complex language as much as fire-associated behavioral changes, accelerating the evolution of verbal communication away from the ape-like systems still used by modern apes toward more complex, “uniquely human” interactions.
Catherine Hobaiter, a Professor of the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of St Andrews and the lead author of a paper detailing the team’s idea, said she has always been fascinated by the origins of language.
“What was the first word?” the professor asked. “The first story?”
Unfortunately, Professor Hobaiter noted, many questions about the origin of humanity’s complex and diverse forms of verbal communication remain unanswered.
Some earlier research has explored a possible link between the first spoken words and the advent of controlled fire use. However, the team notes that most studies have focused primarily on the extra hours of practical light added to the end of each day.
Curious whether other biological mechanisms also contributed to the evolution of language and complex storytelling behavior, Professor Hobaiter and colleagues examined the effects of sitting around a campfire to see whether the emitted light could reprogram the human brain.
First, the team noted that one potential catalyst emitted by firelight that could help reprogram the human brain for complex language is the color of the light wavelengths emitted by campfires. Specifically, Hobaiter and colleagues noted that campfire light emits almost no blue wavelengths but instead mostly in the visible red spectrum.
Many modern studies have focused on the potentially adverse effects of exposure to blue light wavelengths from modern technology on sleep patterns and overall health. Conversely, the paper’s authors described the red wavelengths emitted from fire as ‘uniquely suited’ for human socializing, “allowing an extension to the day without negatively impacting sleep.”
Another component of firelight the study authors suggest could have reprogrammed the human brain for speech is the way a campfire behaves. Unlike a modern, steady light source, the authors noted that firelight “flickers.”
Hobaiter and colleagues said that neurons in the human brain synchronize firing patterns with external flickering lights. For example, flickering lights in movies and TV shows often come with warnings against possible neurological effects on vulnerable viewers. The research team said this mechanism might also help synchronize the behavior of those seated around the campfire, resulting in a much deeper feeling of connection.
Finally, the researchers noted that firelight emits infrared wavelengths, which may have also contributed to helping firelight reprogram the human brain for complex verbal communication.
When discussing the potential impact of their proposal, study co-author Nathaniel Dominy, the Charles Hansen Professor of Anthropology at Dartmouth College, said many of the chemical properties have been well researched. However, Professor Dominy also notes that understanding the properties of light that capture our attention and focus, thereby instilling “harmony and cooperation,” has received far less attention.
“Measuring these features is an exciting part of this project,” the study author added.
Professor Hobaiter agreed, while also noting the conundrum scientists face when explaining why humans speak, when “decades of research with other species has shown us that you don’t need language to learn from each other, to organize where and when to forage, to learn cultural knowledge about tools and songs, to co-ordinate hunting, or navigate social politics.”
“While other species share all these skills, there is a fundamental puzzle: we struggle to find evidence of key differences between human and ape communication,” Professor Hobaiter explained. “And yet, we are surrounded by evidence of human distinctiveness. For all their incredible, rich communication and cultures, no other ape is inventing algebra, writing King Lear, or heading out into interstellar space.”
“So, it’s especially exciting to be able to generate testable predictions, to be able to ask if, at the end of the day, we are the storytelling ape,” the professor added.
The paper “Firelight and the Origins of Spoken Language” was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society.
Christopher Plain has spent the last six years as Associate News Editor and Head Science Reporter at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his novels at plainfiction.com, or email him at christopher@thedebrief.org.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation looks almost unrecognizable under director Kash Patel’s leadership.
The agency’s head has been embroiled in a seemingly endless list of controversies, from allegations of excessive drinking to buying up location data on everyday American citizens to furthering of harebrained conspiracies.
Patel lacked virtually any degree of relevant working experience for the job before the Senate confirmed him — and now, the agency is opening the doors for even more highly questionable hirings.
As inside sources told CBS News, the FBI has quietly lowered standards of its background checks for potential federal agents and other personnel. The bureau is now officially looking the other way when it comes to prostitution, for instance — as long as recruits didn’t hire sex workers over three times.
Even more eyebrow-raising is that the FBI is even allowing the consideration of candidates who engaged in bestiality or animal cruelty, according to CBS‘ sources. However, any such incidents would’ve had to have taken place before the candidate turned 18.
The broadcaster’s sources also said there was no distinction between candidates who were forced into sexual activity with animals or if they did so willingly. An FBI spokesperson claimed that eligibility requirements were limited to a “narrow set of circumstances, such as in cases where a person was sexually abused with animals as a child.”
Experts, however, were appalled at the news, arguing that the FBI is undermining its responsibility in vetting applicants by changing background check standards.
“Bestiality is clearly a potential indication of a more serious emotional issue, and even in a circumstance where it is not, the pool of candidates should be extensive enough that the criteria should certainly not be eliminated,” former FBI agent James Davidson told CBS.
Before the changes, which were reportedly implemented earlier this summer, the FBI’s webpage was clear about automatically disqualifying special agents who engaged in “prostitution or bestiality.”
Both current and former FBI employees told the CBS that the bureau could now be hiring “people with questionable backgrounds,” allowing them to undermine the integrity of the service. Others warned that the news was evidence of a major “recruiting problem.”
Considering the fact that the agency is being helmed by a personality as controversial as Patel, these changes shouldn’t come as too much of a shock.
While he hasn’t personally acknowledged the latest changes, Patel has frequently called for new hiring standards at the bureau, arguing that “we are losing too many qualified candidates to the rigors of the requirements from yesteryear” in a July interview with former FBI agent John Nantz.
Patel’s motivation for lowering standards could be to bring in his closest associates. As ProPublica reported in November, his personal assistant didn’t clear their polygraph test and required a waiver, claims the FBI has since denied.
More on Patel: The Head of the FBI Just Admitted Something Moderately Horrifying
The post FBI Now Allowing History of Bestiality Among New Recruits appeared first on Futurism.
New research from Indiana University suggests that when your brain makes a decision, it may not actually “make” it in the way neuroscientists have traditionally assumed.
Conventionally, decision-making has been described as a sequence: you have options to consider, you choose one, and then you act. However, neuroscientist Tom James argues that this sequence may not accurately reflect what actually happens in the brain.
Traditional models suggest that the brain has centralized processes responsible for making decisions. James argues that what people experience as “decision-making” may instead arise from ongoing interactions among perception, movement, the body, and the environment. If correct, this perspective could significantly change how scientists understand human behavior.
James describes one traditional approach to cognition as the “sandwich model”: sensory systems take in information, cognitive processes evaluate it and determine what to do, and motor systems then carry out the chosen action.
The problem, James argues, is that while scientists can identify many of the physical mechanisms involved in sensation and movement, it is much harder to locate a central point in the brain where a “decision” actually occurs.
Instead, James proposes thinking in terms of “action selection,” in which sensory, sensorimotor, and motor processes continually interact to produce behavior. But does that mean humans don’t actually make decisions?
“Of course they do. We use this language all the time, and it’s very helpful in terms of describing behavior,” James said in a statement. “The leap, I think, is to say that the brain works by having decision-making or control processes. It produces behavior that is well described in that way. But it doesn’t need a process that does that to make it look that way.”
In his view, “decision-making” may therefore be a useful way of describing human behavior rather than something the brain accomplishes through a specific, centralized process or system.
“As mental phenomena, they are defined on too abstract a level for the goals of cognitive neuroscience,” adds James.
Bridging neuroscience and philosophy, James draws on a physicalist framework associated with philosopher Daniel Dennett. Consider an object’s center of mass: it helps us describe and predict how the object behaves, but it isn’t a separate physical component causing the object to move.
James suggests decisions may work similarly. We can say someone “decided” to pick up a glass, but that does not necessarily mean there is a central location in the brain where that decision was made. Instead, the action could emerge from multiple brain and bodily processes working together.
As an analogy, James describes a robot programmed to follow a wall. Someone watching it might interpret its movements as a series of decisions, yet the robot does not require a centralized decision-making system. Instead, its sensors continually interact with its surroundings to guide its behavior.
James suggests that aspects of human behavior could be understood in much the same way.
James’s argument also addresses a longstanding philosophical problem. If the brain contains a central system that observes information and decides how we should act, what controls that controller?
This resembles what Dennett famously called the “Cartesian Theater”: the idea of an internal observer somehow watching and interpreting what happens inside the brain. But proposing such an observer only pushes the problem back another step—who, then, observes the observer?
Rather than placing a hypothetical decision-maker somewhere inside the brain, James argues that researchers should focus on the interacting physical systems that produce behavior.
That could mean studying cognition as something that emerges through the ongoing relationship between the brain, body, and environment, rather than as a sequence of isolated stages.
The feeling that “I made a decision” may remain perfectly real and useful as a description of human experience, even if there is no single place or process in the brain where that decision occurs. From James’s perspective, what we call a decision may instead be the outcome of interactions among the brain, body, and surrounding world.
This study can be found in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.
Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and the founder of VOCAB Communications. She currently appears on The Discovery Channel and Max and hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on YouTube and on all audio podcast streaming platforms. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton, Instagram: @BeingChrissyNewton, and chrissynewton.com. To contact Chrissy with a story, please email chrissy @ thedebrief.org.
The human brain is remarkably adept at juggling different kinds of information, allowing us to switch rapidly between tasks and adapt our behavior as circumstances change. A new study by MIT neuroscientists takes a closer look at how the brain accomplishes this, providing evidence for flexible neural modules that may help support this cognitive versatility.
Using mice, scientists found that a group of neurons in the prefrontal cortex could switch between retaining sensory information and maintaining an action plan in working memory.
“We found that the brain doesn’t dedicate a separate group of neurons for every type of information,” says Yuma Osako, an MIT postdoc and the lead author of the new study. “Instead, it uses the same populations of neurons to perform the same computation on different kinds of information, which means the same subset of neurons can hold both an action and a sensory stimulus in working memory,”
The findings also lend support to a longstanding theory known as compositionality—the idea that cognition can be constructed by combining and reusing neural components.
“One of the solutions that’s always been proposed has been this idea of compositionality — that you can take pieces of cognition that perform part of a task and reuse them in another task,” says Timothy Buschman, a professor at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, and the senior author of the paper, in a statement.
Another way to see this is to view it as “cognitive Legos,” Buschman suggests. Instead of building a new neural circuit when a new task starts, the brain reuses existing circuits and combines them in different ways.
To see how this neural network operates, the scientists trained mice to compare two tones and respond depending on whether the sounds matched. As the mice performed the tasks, the scientists recorded electrical activity from thousands of neurons.
“When mice do tasks that test whether memory computations can be reused, the answer is they are,” notes Mriganka Sur, the Newton Professor of Neuroscience at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory. “There are subspaces of functional activity in the prefrontal cortex that can be the substrate of mixing and matching toward flexible cognition.”
Two important components of the task allowed the researchers to examine how different kinds of information were maintained. First, the mice had to remember the initial tone for a short period. They then had to retain their decision and form an action plan.
In the parietal cortex, neurons were dedicated to storing information about the tone. However, researchers found something different in the prefrontal cortex: a specific group of neurons could switch roles.
During one stage of the task, the circuit helped maintain a sensory memory. During another, the same population was involved in maintaining an action plan. This flexibility may help explain how a finite number of neurons can support an enormous range of behaviors.
“Our everyday life requires us to temporarily hold many different kinds of information. One big question is how the brain can represent an unlimited variability of information using only a finite number of neurons,” Osako says.
The researchers view these reusable neural circuits as potential building blocks for flexible cognition. More broadly, the findings suggest that the brain may be less like a machine filled with components dedicated to individual tasks and more like an interconnected system that continually repurposes its existing neural resources.
The recent study appeared in the journal Nature.
Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and the founder of VOCAB Communications. She currently appears on The Discovery Channel and Max and hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on YouTube and on all audio podcast streaming platforms. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton, Instagram: @BeingChrissyNewton, and chrissynewton.com. To contact Chrissy with a story, please email chrissy @ thedebrief.org.
Scientists have uncovered new details about how the brain’s “information hub” responds to uncertainty, revealing a remarkably flexible system that rapidly changes how it communicates with other brain regions as we make decisions.
Every second of our lives, the human brain sorts through enormous amounts of information. From remembering a driving route and handling daily tasks to making decisions, the brain must continually determine what information matters and how to respond. Researchers at the University of Iowa wanted to better understand how the human brain manages and processes this information and found that it may be more flexible than previously thought.
At the center of this sorting process is an area of the brain known as the frontoparietal cortex. This region supports decision-making and behavioral control and can function as a kind of “information hub” for the brain.
Using MRI scans, behavioral experiments, and computational modeling, researchers took a deeper look at how the frontoparietal cortex responds when people are uncertain about what they should do next.
“That’s the main contribution,” says Kai Hwang, associate professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and the study’s corresponding author, in a statement.
“Our study shows in more detail how the frontoparietal cortex operates — what kind of information it extracts from other systems and how it uses its connectivity pattern to integrate information that is coming in from different areas of the brain,” Hwang adds.
The research team recruited 38 participants between the ages of 18 and 35 and had each person learn associations between combinations of colors, faces, and scenes and particular actions—for example, pressing a button with the index or middle finger of either hand. The researchers then intentionally changed those associations.
When an action or rule changes, the brain has to determine what went wrong.
Did the situation change? Was the information unclear? Or did the person simply make a mistake? This uncertainty allowed researchers to observe how the brain’s “information hub” responds under different circumstances.
“It’s like where other areas of the brain don’t have all the information, so they send what they have to the frontoparietal cortex for guidance,” Hwang explains.
The results from the team’s research suggest the frontoparietal cortex does more than become more active when a task becomes difficult. Instead, the region changes how it communicates with other brain regions. This also depends on what information is needed at different decision-making stages.
Hwang notes, “If they always get it right, they know they’ve made the correct association, but once they start doing it wrong, they will have to guess, ‘Oh, did the context change, or did I not see the color clearly?’ That creates uncertainty.”
Hwang describes the brain’s “information hub” as a system that gathers information from different regions, determines what is relevant, and integrates those signals into a broader picture. One way to think of this function is as an air traffic controller, monitoring incoming information and adjusting communications as circumstances change.
“These are situations where people struggle with regulating their behavior. That, to me, is an integration problem. If that integration function is not working properly, then that could very likely mean they didn’t use the right context to regulate their behavior,” Hwang adds.
The study does not address how neurodiversity might affect this information-sorting process, although the findings could provide a foundation for researchers to investigate that question.
“It remains an open question how neurodiversity might affect frontoparietal integration. It is a very interesting question that, as far as I know, has not been studied directly, so I don’t have a definitive answer. One of our goals in conducting this study is to lay the foundation for future clinical investigations,” Hwang tells The Debrief in an email.
The findings suggest that the frontoparietal cortex can rapidly integrate and update information as circumstances change. Understanding this flexibility could eventually improve researchers’ understanding of neurological and psychiatric conditions involving behavioral regulation and decision-making. In particular, studying these communication patterns could help inform future investigations of conditions such as ADHD and schizophrenia, in which behavioral regulation and the use of contextual information can be impaired.
The new research was published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and the founder of VOCAB Communications. She currently appears on The Discovery Channel and Max and hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on YouTube and on all audio podcast streaming platforms. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton, Instagram: @BeingChrissyNewton, and chrissynewton.com. To contact Chrissy with a story, please email chrissy @ thedebrief.org.
A new study has brought scientists closer to observing how inflammation during pregnancy may alter the earliest stages of human brain development. Using three-dimensional tissue models made from human fetal brain samples, researchers modeled maternal immune activation and identified the signaling molecule interleukin-17A, or IL-17A, as a major driver of abnormal cortical development. The findings, published in Nature Neuroscience, offer a human-based experimental system for investigating how immune signals outside the brain can influence the formation of neural circuits before birth.
Maternal immune activation refers to the biological response triggered when a pregnant individual experiences infection or significant inflammation. Epidemiological studies have associated certain prenatal inflammatory exposures with an increased likelihood of neurodevelopmental conditions, including autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, and intellectual disability. Yet the mechanisms behind these associations have remained difficult to study. Animal models have provided important clues, but differences between species can limit their ability to reproduce the timing, cellular organization, and molecular environment of the developing human cortex.
The researchers addressed this challenge with “brain cerebroids,” three-dimensional, ex vivo models that preserve features of developing human fetal brain tissue. Unlike simplified cultures composed of a single cell type, these structures retain a more complex arrangement of neural progenitors, immature neurons, and supporting cells. Their three-dimensional architecture allows cells to communicate and organize in ways that more closely resemble the fetal cortex, including the production and movement of neurons that ultimately establish the layered structure of the brain’s outer region.
To recreate aspects of maternal immune activation, the team exposed the fetal brain cerebroids to inflammatory conditions associated with immune signaling during pregnancy. The central focus was IL-17A, a cytokine produced primarily by activated immune cells, particularly a subset of T cells known as T helper 17 cells. Cytokines are small signaling proteins that coordinate immune responses, but they can also affect tissues beyond the immune system. In the developing brain, inappropriate or excessive exposure to such signals may influence cell proliferation, migration, differentiation, and the formation of connections between neurons.
The study found that IL-17A exposure was linked to disruptions in cortical development within the human cerebroids. These effects are described as “IL-17A-driven,” indicating that the cytokine was not merely associated with the developmental changes but played a functionally important role in producing them. The disturbances affected the organization and behavior of developing neural cells, processes that are essential for building the cortex. During normal development, neural progenitor cells generate new neurons in tightly regulated sequences, while young neurons migrate to their appropriate positions. Interference with either process can alter the structure and connectivity of later-forming brain tissue.
The results are especially significant because they were observed in human fetal brain material rather than inferred only from animal studies. Previous research in mice has implicated maternal immune activation and IL-17A in changes to cortical organization and behavior in offspring. However, the human cerebroid model provides an opportunity to examine whether similar immune mechanisms operate in human tissue, where the timing of neurogenesis, cell-type composition, and cortical architecture differ from those of rodents. The approach may also help reveal human-specific responses that conventional laboratory animals cannot capture.
The findings do not mean that IL-17A exposure during pregnancy inevitably causes a neurodevelopmental condition, nor do they establish that prenatal inflammation is a single explanation for such conditions. Brain development is shaped by a combination of genetic factors, immune signals, environmental influences, and developmental timing. The experiments also took place in an ex vivo model, outside the full physiological environment of a living pregnancy. Cerebroids cannot reproduce the placenta, maternal circulation, hormonal changes, or the complete immune system, all of which influence how inflammatory signals reach the fetus and how long they remain active.
Nevertheless, the model could become a powerful platform for testing mechanisms and potential interventions. Researchers may use it to determine how IL-17A changes gene activity in neural progenitors, whether it alters communication between neurons and glial cells, and which molecular pathways make some developing cells more vulnerable than others. Because the tissue is human and three-dimensional, it may also support studies of patient-specific genetic risk, allowing investigators to compare how different backgrounds respond to the same inflammatory signal.
The work also highlights a broader shift in neuroscience toward experimental systems that combine human tissue with controlled laboratory manipulation. Understanding prenatal inflammation is difficult in clinical studies because immune exposure cannot be ethically assigned or precisely timed in pregnant people. Brain cerebroids offer a way to isolate individual components of that complex biology while preserving more of the developing tissue’s natural organization than conventional two-dimensional cell cultures. As these models improve, they may help distinguish temporary developmental changes from persistent alterations in cortical circuitry and identify when immune signaling is most consequential.
By showing that IL-17A can disrupt human cortical development in a three-dimensional ex vivo system, the study gives researchers a clearer biological target in the search for links between prenatal inflammation and later neurodevelopment. Its most immediate contribution is not a new diagnosis or treatment, but a more precise experimental framework: one that connects maternal immune signaling to cellular events in the developing human cortex. That connection could guide future work on prevention, therapeutic timing, and the complex origins of developmental differences long before the first symptoms become visible.
Subject of Research: Maternal immune activation and IL-17A-driven disruption of human fetal cortical development in 3D ex vivo brain cerebroids.
Article Title: Modeling maternal immune activation in 3D ex vivo human fetal brain cerebroids reveals IL-17A-driven disruption of cortical development.
Article References: Assir, M.Z.K., Yanakiev, M., Gim, D.H. et al. Modeling maternal immune activation in 3D ex vivo human fetal brain cerebroids reveals IL-17A-driven disruption of cortical development. Nature Neuroscience (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-026-02400-2
Image Credits: AI Generated
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-026-02400-2
Keywords: maternal immune activation, IL-17A, fetal brain development, cortical development, brain cerebroids, neurodevelopment, prenatal inflammation, human brain models, cytokines, neuroscience
Reaching 90 without dementia may feel like clearing the final hurdle. But the risk does not necessarily end there. Dementia risk does not disappear after age 90. Even among people who reach their 10th decade without cognitive symptoms, the likelihood of developing the condition can vary substantially by sex, race, ethnicity, and genetics, according to [...]The treatment showed promise in aging mice.A Massachusetts man is feeling some buyer’s remorse after securing a $5.5 million mortgage on a mansion poised to fall into the Cape Cod Bay.
The man, John Bonomi Jr, first made headlines five years ago when he purchased the sprawling 5,817-square-foot estate against warnings from area conservationists, who advised that the beach was eroding at a rate of six feet per year as rising sea levels take their toll.
Bonomi’s house, meanwhile, sat just 12 to 14 feet away from the rapidly-disappearing escarpment — and that was 2021.
Fast forward half a decade, and the situation — not to mention the mansion’s foundation — has only deteriorated as the continual lashing of ocean waves takes its toll. According to the Boston Globe, Bonomi is now trying to recoup his costs by filing suit against JP Morgan Chase, the bank that originally serviced his ill-fated mortgage.
As for his legal strategy, the property owner is essentially pleading insanity, saying that he was “acting under an uncontrollable manic psychosis at the time” he agreed to the terms of the mortgage. It’s a fascinating argument, especially because Bonomi has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
“No rational person… would have considered purchasing the Property, and certainly not at the full asking price,” the suit argues. “It is a recognized diagnostic fact that a symptom of bipolar disorder is irrational risk-taking and impulsive behavior, including reckless spending.”
While Bonomi may have a point — it’s astonishing that JP Morgan Chase gave him the green light, mental health episode or not — it remains to be seen whether the courts agree.
According to the Globe, the bank originally lobbied to get the case dismissed. It answered Bonomi’s filings in May, however, saying that, “to the extent a response is required, Chase denies the allegations contained therein and leaves Plaintiff to his proofs.”
More on housing: Family Horrified When They’re Forced to Sell Their Beloved Home to Make Way for AI Data Centers
The post Man Sues Bank for Being Stupid Enough to Give Him a Mortgage Even When Experts Were Warning Him It Was About to Fall Into the Ocean appeared first on Futurism.
A team of researchers from the University of Sydney and the University of Glasgow argues that dietary sugars, not animal foods, may have played the decisive role in the expansion of the human brain over the past 4 million years, as hominin brain size grew nearly fivefold, from about 300 grams in early relatives like […]
The post Study Points to Sugar, Not Just Meat, as Fuel for Human Brain Evolution appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
New research led by University of Lethbridge scientists offers the most detailed look yet at how the dodo (Raphus cucullatus) -- the flightless bird driven to extinction by the 1600s -- actually perceived its world, suggesting the ‘stupid bird’ had a far more complex sensory life than its reputation implies.
The post Dodo Had Surprisingly Keen Sense of Smell and Owl-Like Vision, New Study Reveals appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
On July 27, a billboard went up in San Francisco advertising an AI service called ChatTJB. But the “AI” powering the service, as noted in a small disclaimer on the billboard, isn’t artificial intelligence. It’s a self-avowed “average individual” named Tucker Bryant, who manually answers user queries by way of a chatbot-like interface.
An “About” page for the service defines the process as “artisanal intelligence, handcrafted by a single human being.” Or, in other words: just talking to a guy.
Bryant, a Stanford graduate and former Google employee who now works as an artist and speaker, is clear that the project isn’t designed to be anti-AI. But in an interview with Futurism, he explained that he was inspired to create ChatTJB after his romantic partner introduced him to the phrase “cognitive surrender” — a term introduced in a University of Pennsylvania study which found that AI users are overwhelmingly likely to blindly trust the advice of chatbots, even when AI-generated responses are incorrect. It resonated: Bryant felt he’d personally experienced the phenomenon during his own interactions with chatbots, so he cooked up ChatTJB as a satirical way to infuse inconvenience and unpredictability back into a chatbot-like experience.
It’s “this idea that we often, or increasingly, trust LLM outputs so easily that we stop bringing our own creativity or critical thinking into the responses we receive, and over time that weakens our ability to be fully-functioning, sovereign human beings in the world,” Bryant mused. “I thought it would be fun or interesting to create an experience that looks like the LLMs we trust a lot — that I, at least, have fallen prey to the trap of over-trusting at times — but where the experience, rather than being this super futuristic thing I think we all felt the first time we saw those cool tokens streaming on ChatGPT, would be just a really average or bad experience.”
Indeed, chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude are simultaneously authoritative-sounding and eager-to-please, a combination that can lead to terrible-yet-seductive advice that many users accept with little to no critical pushback. In contrast, ChatTJB’s responses are unwieldy and unpredictable. Bryant’s responses might be good; they may also be terrible, or equivocal, or otherwise bizarre and helpful. (In a social media video, Bryant says that he wants ChatTJB users “to have such an inconvenient experience with something that aesthetically looks like artificial intelligence that the next time an LLM gives you what sounds like a reasonable answer, you remember the time ChatTJB responded to your tax question with a haiku about crows.”)
Like a chatbot, he can also generate images upon request— in the form of graphics that he hastily sketches, of course.
At first, Bryant said, ChatTJB attracted a “slow trickle” of incoming queries. Which wasn’t all that surprising, given that the billboard itself isn’t exactly in a prime spot.
“It’s not a very good location — it’s obscured by trees, there’s basically no oncoming traffic that can see it, and the only way you’d get a clear look at the full billboard is if you’re parking a car in the lot right underneath it,” Bryant said. “But I was fine with that, and I also didn’t want to pay much more.” The billboard’s cost, he conceded, was “less than most used cars under 150,000 miles, but still a very irresponsible amount… $6,000 for the month, not including fees.”
But when a picture of the billboard started to make the rounds online, Bryant quickly found himself drowning in requests.
“The first couple of days I would get maybe several dozen over the course of the day. There’d be a couple hours of silence, then I’d get one inquiry, respond to that, then get a couple of other prompts from different users,” he recounted. “A few days later it started taking off into the hundreds to thousands range.” By the time Bryant made an Instagram video promoting ChatTJB, he says he was receiving about a thousand prompts a day.
“I was answering all of those,” he added. “After that is when it blew up beyond my control.”
Though many of ChatTJB’s patrons have been trolls — which Bryant says is “reasonable,” given that ChatTJB “is in some ways a troll” itself — many of the inquiries have been surprisingly tender, and at times even moving.
“Some people are just looking to chat, asking about what to make for dinner, etc. And some people are coming with their personal life stuff, and it’s been really sweet to engage with them,” said Bryant. “The one I keep coming back to — this is when I realized this isn’t just a joke to some people — was somebody a couple of days in said, ‘I’m on the first night of my honeymoon and I don’t feel relaxed, is that okay?'”
“I switched out of super-casual-mode into supportive-friend-model,” the artist continued, adding that he “acknowledged their wedding had just happened, they’d probably been anticipating it with a lot of excitement but also a lot of stress, that it was a peak moment, and now the celebration is still happening but that peak moment has passed and they’re starting what might be the rest of their life — I imagined that might feel like a strange dissonance, so I could imagine their nervous system not being settled yet, and I wondered if they were going to talk to their spouse about it.”
Often, Bryant said, users of ChatTJB have sent him reminders to take breaks and drink water as he’s worked to respond to the thousands of inputs waiting for him in ChatTJB. The reminders have been welcome.
“There were a number of days I wasn’t taking the best care of myself,” Bryant admitted. “That was also very humanizing, getting responses from people on that basis.”
It’s not just users who have been reaching out to ChatTJB. According to Bryant, he’s received over a thousand messages from aspirational “average individuals” who want to help moderate the platform and respond to inbound user inquiries. Bryant is now — carefully, he says — testing the idea of turning ChatTJB into a community project. Which, for ChatTJB users, means they’ll have to wait a while for answers.
“I’m going to move slowly,” Bryant told us. “This was just intended to be an art project. I think it’s beautiful that people want to do something less ridiculous with it than what I had planned. I also don’t want people to get hurt, so I’d rather people wait a long time for their prompts than open the floodgates to anyone and everyone. So, a long preamble to saying: I’m starting to let some approved volunteers try answering questions while testing out some moderation tools.
“We’re testing this out — so far it seems to be going fine, and it’s been tender seeing folks helping the stranger on the other end,” Bryant added. “But if it doesn’t work out, I’ll either revert or we’ll take a break from ChatTJB overall, because short term, I want to help people do what they want with it, but I don’t want anyone at risk of danger.”
Asked why he would pay thousands of dollars for a billboard — after all, he could’ve just made a website and posted about it on social media — Bryant pointed to the ubiquity of often-confusing AI billboards blanketing his city and the “cultural omniscience” of AI.
“Here in San Francisco, a lot of us have had this experience of AI billboards everywhere,” said Bryant. “There’s this cognitive dissonance I felt… in a lot of ways there are meaningful and positive changes these technologies are bringing. But at the same time, they’re associated with such anxiety about the future, and the world, and the economy, and the environment. It can feel really strange walking around and seeing all these billboards with those two sides of the conversation happening at once. So it felt like a natural extension to prod at what I’ve been referring to as the cultural omniscience that AI has — why not satirize the billboards too, because they’re part of this ecosystem.”
“That’s the highbrow answer,” Bryant added. “But the lowbrow answer is just as authentic, which is that I also thought it would be funny. I tend to overcommit to bits.”
For those who want to help Bryant pay off his billboard, there is a ChatJTB “Pro” tier. Be warned, though, that you won’t get your answers any faster if you pay up.
More on ChatTJB: New AI Chatbot Turns Out to Be One Overworked Guy Answering All the Messages by Hand
The post We Talked to the Guy Who Built a Chatbot That’s Just Him Manually Responding to People One-by-One appeared first on Futurism.
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