eMusings
Your eyes and ears on the worlds of art, culture, technology, philosophy - whatever stimulates the mind and excites the imagination. We remind you that 20 years of
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You now know that AI is being forced upon you whether you want it or not. Keep in mind that it can read your emails, your calendar,
your purchases, even your desktop.. Here are a few of the better comments:
OpenAI is eliminating any access to its
FoloToy because a teddy bear was giving malicious instructions to children. The messages included how to find and light
matches and praise for numerous sexual fetishes like bondage and teacher-student role play. The removal of the GPT-4o may complicate OpenAI's attempt to conclude
a major partnership with Mattel. The elimination was applied not only to the specific toy, called Kumma, but to the
developer for violating policies.
Researchers at Cornell
University have devised a wireless brain implant that is smaller than a grain of salt. The implant uses light to
record and transmit brain signals. It showed "minimal scarring" after one year of testing in mice. Previous devices
used wires plugged into a person's skull, a system requiring extensive surgery. These earlier methods produced significant
scarring and inflammation caused by the hardware.
The robot named
Optimus by Elon Musk will one day allow humans to upload their minds, according to its creator. Musk claims that
within 20 years your memories and personality will be digitally transmitted to the robot. This process implies that
our consciousness will live forever although it has been pointed out that the original consciousness remains in the
human body. Question: when the human body dies, will the robotic version continue to create memories and alter its
personality? What, then, is identity?
OpenAI is experimenting with ChatGPT so that
many users can participate in a conversation. New attributes have been added, like friendly, efficient, candid,
professional and quirky. GPT-5.1 automatically picks the best one without human intervention. At the moment more than
800 million people sre using ChatGPT. Unfortunately, some users seem to be forming "unhealthy relationships" with
chatbots. In October, OpenAI estimated that .07% of its users showed signs of mania or psychosis every week,
while .15% of users sent messages suggesting "heightened emotional attachment" to ChatGPT. Other studies have
found that power users are apt to think of ChatGPT as a friend, citing a corporate recruiter in Canada
with no history of mental illness who became delusional after asking ChatGPT to explain pi in simple language. GPT-5.1 is
initially available by subscription although it is supposed to expand to everyone eventually.
China appears to be toughening
regulations concerning AI-generated misinformation, like faking a kidnapping and false images of an earthquake
victim. The new rules forbid using AI to create rumors, generate pornography, impersonate others, manipulate web
traffic, or abuse minors. These rules are similar to those instituted by the European Union, placing the
responsibility on tech companies rather than on consumers.
The race is on to create humanoid
robots. Elon Musk claims that he will sell enough motion-capture-trained Optimus bots to become the main base
of Tesla's revenue stream. A company called 1X has launched the Neo, a cloth-covered bot controlled by a human wearing
VR glasses. You will be able to buy a Neo next
year for $20,000. or rent it for $499. USD a month. It will weigh 66 pounds, stand 5'6" tall, and come in several colors. The biggest attention-getter right now is a model named Iron from the Chinese company XPENG. Unlike
the Neo, which appears to jerk and stutter, the Iron seems to move with fluidity, as seen in a video. Iron's clothing
ranges from a dark business suit to a schoolgirl uniform. Note that the video shows the robot strapped to a wheeled
platform, raising questions as to whether it is conneced to another computer.
The Wall Street Journal is writing about a startup called
Preventive that is attempting to create the first known birth outside China of a genetically-modified baby. Until
now, gene-editing in the U.S. has been banned by an act of Congress, but this ban only covers research that uses
federal funds. Internationally, leading scientists and trade groups are demanding a 10-year prohibition on the research.
It seems that a Chinese biophysicist was recently sentenced to 3 years in prison and a lifelong scientific exile after
he created genetically-modified twins in 2018. The WSJ claims that Preventive has been privately funded by wealthy tech
giants like Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. Post-birth gene-therapy seems to be thriving in the U.S., as opposed to
"germline editing", or altering eggs, sperm, or embryos before birth. Ethical concerns arise about racial eugenics, or
eugenics used as a tool by the rich against the poor. Preventive has already received $30 million USD to proceed.
Stanford University researchers
have announced that they have used AI to create viruses that can kill bacteria. Although the work has not yet been peer-reviewed, it has
already raised grave concerns in the scientific community. The generation of new life forms has been termed staggering, momentous, and
unsettling.The team used "Evo", a generative AI model trained on the genomes of living things. Evo was taught 9 trillion letters
of DNA from an atlas that encompassed "all domains of life", building a simple type of virus called a phage. The phage, called
phi-X174, is said to thrust humanity into "uncharted biological territory — and there is the possibility of creating novel organisms that could
wipe out life forms, including human beings."
Toyota
has created a robot chair that climbs, walks, and folds itself. Called Walk Me, this autonomous chair can walk where wheels
cannot. Instead of wheels, the device has 4 robotic limbs that operate independently, with each leg covered in a soft material.
Its motion imitates the way that goats and crabs navigate across uneven terrain, allowing it to maintain balance on stairs,
inclines, and gravel paths. Sensors and radar systems let it avoid obstacles in its path like toys and rug edges. If there is
an imbalance, the chair automatically self-adjusts to keep stable.
Doublespeed is the name of a phone farm startup that is meant to
fill your messages with spam. It can also generate fake reviews and flood social media with spam. Backed by wealthy tech titans, it calls itself a bulk
content creator and is designed to appear human to other algorithms. Its clients pay from $1,500. to $7,500. USD per month. It also appears to
violate the terms of agreement for the top social media platforms; this agreement prohibits posting, engaging, or sharing content at high frequencies
and specifically bans "selling, buying, or exchanging for engagement, such as likes, shares, views, follows, clicks, use of specific hashtags, etc."
An article in Business Insider describes how
Tesla workers teach the Optimus robot to act like a human. The workers perform tasks like wiping a table, running, or dancing hundreds of times, tasks
that are physically demanding and sometimes ludicrous. The human workers have 5 cameras attached to their helmets and wear a heavy backpack. They are also
critiqued for unsatisfactory movements. The method results in 8 hours of continuous do and repeat. There are additional cameras placed around the workers, who are
expected to perform each motion within 3 - 5 seconds. Some workers have sustained back and neck injuries from the tasks demanded.
BioClip 2, a biology model trained on Nvidia GPUS, has identified
over 1 million species, their traits, and their relationships with other species. It is claimed to fill the data-deficiency gap that prevents
us from understanding and assisting species in danger of extenction. BioClip 2 is open source and can be found on Hugging Face. The project started
with a huge dataset called TREEOFLIFE-200M, which encompasses 214 million images of organisms covering more than 925,000 taxonomic classes.
We are entering a stormy sea of questions about humanoids and civil rights. On the way, you might want to know that Tonga could be the first
country to recognize Whale rights. Across the South Pacific,
whales are viewed as deities, ancestors, and relatives. A bill is being prepared to give legal personhood to whales as Tonga's first ancestors.
On to other December treats:
Félix Vallotton, Swiss artist and printmaker, was a
contemporary of Matisse, Gauguin and Van Gogh. His sense of private drama lurking behind public facade is accompanied by a sparseness
of detail, leading him to be called the "Painter of Disquiet".
Alza Ahmed was born in Pakistan, grew up in
Dubai, and eventually landed in New York City. Referred to as an Artist of the Diaspora, she sees the layers of paint in her work as her
search for identity through multiple displacements. Her disjointed and frequently isolated figures express a sense of loneliness and
disconnection.
Bridget Riley views
landscapes as a "dynamism of visual forces" rather than a passive backdrop. The impact of rhythm and flow, expressed abstractly in her
works, compel the viewer to enter a vibrating world impossible to resist.
Enjoy the glorious chaos of Judy Pfaff.
Contemporary of Frank Stella, Pfaff used steel, metal, and glass exuberantly to reflect
Catalan culture.
Neuroaesthetics
tells us that art has been scientifically proven to enhance brain health. The field emerged in the late 1990's, essentially studying how
art not only makes us feel better but affects the brain, body, and behavior. Artists, of course, have alwawys known this but now the rigors
of scientific analysis are being used to validate their understanding. Surprise, wonder, and curiosity are elements that give art its
impact and add to our well-being. A study from King's College London,
not yet peer reviewed, suggests that art can relieve stress, cut the risk of heart disease, and boost the immune system.
Flora Yukhnovich brings swirling, cascading forms that co-exist
in a world caught between abstraction and representation. Her paintings refer to contemporary culture as well as art history, using color
and form to question ideas of femininity and gender.
The canvases of Firelei Baez are characterized by
tumult and explosions which seem to burst beyond the edges of the paintings. Images appear to be piled on top of each other, creating a
dynamic environment of disruption and upheaval.
Looking at the works of Xin Wang, one
thinks of words like eerie, hallucinatory, dissolution, and decay. The paintings seem to sway with visions and memories, inviting us
into a world of uncertainty and fragile mortality.
Anish Kapoor's recent works are deeply controversial, with specific
references to female anatomy. His Monte Sant'Angelo metro stattion in Naples, Italy, is no exception. It also fits into his sculptural/
architectural aesthetic that wants to transform city spaces into dynamic hubs. He envisioned the newly opened station as a "descent
into the earth"; others have described it as a giant vagina.
c. Corinne Whitaker 2025
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