(Wired) – In a new disclosure, OpenAI says its agent used exposed logins to gain access to at least four “publicly available services” in its unhinged quest to solve a test.

OpenAI said Tuesday that the rogue AI agent that breached Hugging Face’s platform also hacked multiple third-party accounts and services as part of the attack. It’s now clear that the unprecedented security incident, which arose during an internal test of OpenAI’s latest AI models, was more extensive than the company initially disclosed.

In an updated blog post, OpenAI said that an ongoing review of the incident revealed that “four accounts” tied to “publicly available services” were used by the AI agent as part of a larger effort to hack Hugging Face. The rogue agent apparently found credentials that had been exposed on the open web and used them to break into the accounts. (Read More)

(Nature) – Researchers are alarmed that the procedure, which has not been rigorously studied, is being advertised by clinics around the world.

A small number of fertility clinics around the world are offering a controversial treatment: a procedure to furnish clients’ embryos with donated mitochondria as a way to increase the chances of taking home a baby.

The method, called mitochondrial replacement therapy (MRT), involves removing the nucleus from a person’s egg or a couple’s single-cell embryo and transplanting it into an egg from a young donor. The theory — which remains unproven in rigorous clinical trials — is that the donor’s mitochondria might help the egg, once fertilized, or embryo to mature. Any resulting babies would have nuclear DNA from their biological mothers and fathers and mitochondrial DNA from the egg donor. (Read More)

(Washington Post) – ChatGPT-maker OpenAI disclosed last week that one of its cutting-edge artificial intelligence systems had escaped from a controlled testing environment and hacked into another technology company. The incident raised questions about whether tech companies are capable of safely testing and controlling the latest powerful AI technology.

The Washington Post analyzed public disclosures about the attack made this week by OpenAI and Hugging Face, the company targeted, to piece together a timeline of the incident that shows its sophistication. (Read More)

(IEEE Spectrum) – The next AI divide is about who gets to build, govern, and benefit

Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming part of everyday infrastructure–in some places. It helps write emails and software code, filters job applications, powers recommendation systems, and is increasingly being integrated into education, health care, finance, and public administration. Industry leaders talk about “AI for everyone,” while governments rush to publish national AI strategies and build sovereign compute.

Yet over the past decade, working on digital inclusion and digital literacy projects in regions from Europe to sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, I’ve seen the same pattern repeat: Each new wave of “transformative” technology lands on a landscape already stratified by connectivity, skills, and institutional capacity. The current AI wave is no exception. If anything, it amplifies those underlying fractures. (Read More)

(NYT) – Americans are more focused on mental health today than at any other point in our history. Public health campaigns urge us to check in on our feelings and talk openly about our struggles. Schools have adopted mental health curriculums. Employers offer mental health days. There are thousands of mental health and wellness apps.

Yet our mental health appears to be getting worse. Over the past several decades, the percentage of Americans who report being in poor mental health has been rising. Over half of U.S. doctors surveyed in 2023 reported a decline in their patients’ mental health. That same year, more than three-quarters of companies reported rising mental health concerns among their work forces.

Could our preoccupation with mental health be part of the problem? (Read More)

(AFP via Yahoo!News) – Deepfakes and other AI-generated content must be labelled from Sunday, as the European Union’s sweeping artificial intelligence transparency rules kick in.

The goal? To make sure Europeans immediately know whether the online content they see is real or fake.

The EU’s comprehensive AI law enters into force in stages. From Sunday, companies must ensure their AI systems like chatbots make it clear to users they are AI, or when an image or text has been created using AI, there must be a label saying so. (Read More)

(WSJ) – Dermatologists say clients are increasingly asking for treatments that help preserve fine lines and facial expression

After years battling her forehead wrinkles with Botox injections, Stephanie Abend realized something surprising: She wanted some of them back.

She felt like the smooth, shiny skin she had worked so hard to achieve was giving the wrong message—that, at 45, she was trying to look younger than her age. “When you’re in your 40s, it’s like you’re pointing an arrow at your head,” Abend said, as if daring those around you to speculate about whether you get work done. (Read More)

(NYT) – The vast majority of cases begin in the fallopian tubes — and removing them can reduce the risk by nearly 80 percent.

“Ovarian cancer,” Dr. Stone told her, is a misnomer. Nearly all ovarian cancers — and nearly all fatal ovarian cancers — are actually cancers of the fallopian tubes. The 20 percent or so that start in the ovaries are different, Dr. Stone said, and usually can be cured.

Women who have their tubes — the gummy worm-shaped ducts that carry eggs from the ovaries to the uterus — removed reduce their chances of getting ovarian cancer by nearly 80 percent. It’s a five-minute operation that can be done as part of nearly any abdominal surgery, including a hysterectomy, tubal ligation, gallbladder surgery and hernia repair. (Read More)

(Axios) – The U.S. blood supply has reached crisis levels, prompting the American Red Cross and the Surgeon General’s Office to urge people to donate.

Why it matters: A prolonged blood shortage could delay surgeries, trauma care and other treatments that depend on timely blood transfusions.

The Red Cross says it has “less than a one-day national supply of type O positive blood,” which is the most commonly transfused blood type. Due to the shortage, the organization is limiting distribution of type O blood to hospitals. (Read More)

(WSJ) – Meta CEO says discourse regarding artificial intelligence isn’t optimistic enough

Mark Zuckerberg thinks artificial intelligence is working out great for humanity. His fear: that the people who think otherwise will influence who has access to the fast-evolving technology.

Optimism about AI’s impact on the world “should empirically be the default assumption of how this is going to play out,” the Meta Platforms META chief executive officer said in an interview. He cited historical analogues, recent jobs data and his own personal use of AI for parenting and fitness as informing his positive outlook on the technology. (Read More)

(NYT Magazine) – The human microbiome is essential to our health, but scientists still know very little about it. Two researchers set out to map this largely uncharted terrain.

Scientists refer to this vast, unexplored terrain as biology’s dark matter. Our bodies are home to more bacteria — on our skin, up our noses, in our guts and mouths and around our genitals — than there are stars in the Milky Way. These microbes have evolved not only with us but inside us, and scientists who study them closely say that hardly a biological process or system exists in which they do not play a role. They helped create our digestive systems and our immune systems. They influence the size and shape of our bodies. At least some research suggests that they also affect our brains, moods, personalities and behaviors. And yet, most of them have still not been identified, let alone studied. (Read More)

(Nature) – A staging system based on how big a role AI has in patient care can help to identify who is responsible in cases in which care fails.

Artificial intelligence is fast becoming embedded in hospitals and healthcare clinics. Yet, with the benefits of AI tools come fresh patient-safety risks — and questions about who is responsible when things go wrong. (Read More)

(Nature) – People who give tissue samples for biomedical research might have no idea that their cells are being used for biocomputers.

The workings of the brain are often compared to those of a computer. Some researchers are testing this analogy to its limits, attempting to build computers containing laboratory-grown cultures of brain cells. In doing so, they hope to circumvent the physical limitations of the silicon-based computing hardware used for today’s artificial intelligence1,2.

The promise is there. Brain tissue combines memory and computation in the same substrate, requiring fewer components than conventional computers do. Theories of neural networks, based on neurons and synapses, have inspired AI algorithms. Brains consume much less energy than AI machines do3 and don’t require vast cooling systems. (Read More)

(WSJ) – ​President is focused on shots’ alleged tie to autism, even though White House advisers wanted to tone down attention to issue ahead of midterms

At a May lunch at the president’s golf course in northern Virginia, President Trump asked Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., why he wasn’t doing more to probe the alleged connection between vaccines and autism, according to people familiar with the matter. The health secretary had the yips, Trump told Kennedy, according to one of the people.

Kennedy was taken aback. Even though he has long been known to be skeptical of vaccinations, he had been asked by White House political advisers to tone down his vaccine efforts ahead of the midterms, the people said. (Read More)

(Rest of World) – New platforms are paying people to license their likeness for AI-generated dramas and ads, creating a new marketplace for biometric identity.

A growing number of online platforms are paying people anywhere between $15 and $700 to license their likeness for AI-generated content. The platforms have created catalogs of images — either uploaded by users or taken at designated studios — where producers can browse faces by gender, age, or category such as “girl-next-door,” “rugged,” or “supermodel.” They can also filter candidates based on the genre they are casting, whether it’s a thriller, comedy, or romance. (Read More)

(WSJ) – AI companies play a cat-and-mouse game, trying to boost the capabilities of their creations while scrambling to block answers to dangerous queries

After OpenAI enhanced the brain power of its chatbot last summer, hundreds of users worldwide began asking it how to make and deploy biological weapons and poisons.

The models, operating largely free of U.S. government restrictions, patiently answered, issuing step-by-step instructions described by company employees as simple enough for a high-school biology student to follow. Biology and terrorism experts later reviewed the exchanges for ChatGPT and judged some as deadly accurate, said people familiar with the matter. Most queries were about concocting poisons, according to OpenAI. (Read More)

(MIT Tech Review) – Researchers are breaking new ground in preserving organs by freezing them, pumping nutrients into them, or supercooling them.

Doctors dream of organ banks—stores of human organs that can be preserved for days, weeks, months, or even longer. That would allow them to run tests on organs, find the best matches for them, and transport the organs to those recipients.

In new research, one team has been able to supercool the kidneys of pigs—animals whose organs are of a similar size to human ones—and preserve them for days. The kidneys survived being stored at −4 °C (25 °F) and eventually reimplanted back into pigs. And that’s just the latest development in a field that is positively buzzing. (Read More)

(New York Times) – Students helped design the A.I.-powered creation as a young female with dark hair and an upbeat personality. Then came the outrage.

“Many parents, teachers and stakeholders are understandably concerned about the presence of artificial intelligence technology in classrooms, particularly when it involves robots that resemble humans,” Betty A. Rosa, the state education commissioner, wrote in a letter to Mr. Beehler, which was obtained by The New York Times. (Read More)

(NYT) – In a recent study, scientists devised a way of reversing the buildup of compounds that lead to some age-related diseases.

The buildup of AGEs is a hallmark of the aging process, making tissues like collagen sticky and rigid and causing inflammation that can lead to heart disease, eye damage, kidney disease and diabetes.

Researchers have tried unsuccessfully to develop medications that can stop AGEs from forming. But a new study, published on July 16 in the journal Nature Communications, describes a different tack: Scientists created an enzyme that cleans one of the most common AGEs from human tissue, helping to turn back the clock even after the aging compounds have settled in the body. This cleanse can help repair the tissue and has the potential to allow cells to act younger. (Read More)

(The Independent via MSN) – Millionaire biohacker Brian Johnson claims to have created a “clone” of himself as a newborn baby in order to test novel therapies and grow organs for transplantation.

The 48-year-old tech entrepreneur, who has become well known attempting to defy death through extreme health protocols, said his latest stunt could open up a new path to reverse aging. (Read More)

(MIT Technology Review) – Kidneys kept at subzero temperatures in pressure-controlled containers can be stored for days before transplantation, raising hopes for longer-term storage of donated human organs.

In most cases, organs will be kept on ice during that time, at around 4 °C (39 °F). They cannot be frozen—in previous attempts, ice has formed, causing all kinds of damage.

Matthew Powell Palm at Texas A&M University and his colleagues have an alternative solution—a device that allows organs to be cooled to -4 °C (25 °F) without forming any ice.

Now, in new research with pig organs, his team has shown that kidneys, at least, can be supercooled and preserved in the device for days. Once rewarmed, the organs have been successfully transplanted into animals, and they seem to do better than organs kept on ice. (Read More)

(Wired) – Hear from six pediatricians in measles hot spot Utah, as the US faces infection levels not seen in over three decades and prepares to lose its status as a country that eliminated the dangerous disease.

This isn’t just a bad year for measles. It looks to be the start of a bad era. Confirmed measles cases just hit a 35-year high, and it’s only July. Together with last year, the number of cases has exceeded the combined total over the previous 25 years. The vast majority of cases stem from domestic outbreaks fueled by low rates of vaccination—and rates are declining.

For the first time in a quarter century, the US no longer meets a main criterion for having eliminated measles as a public health threat. That status hinges on sporadic outbreaks fizzling out within a year. Utah’s outbreak has lasted for longer, since June 2025. (Read More)

(Futurism) – “It is unconscionable that ‘ChatGPT-assisted suicide’ is becoming a recurring cause of death.”

Last week, a new lawsuit accused ChatGPT of encouraging the suicide of a young mother. The 29-year-old Christian Faith Madison died after walking into traffic, with her family arguing that the OpenAI chatbot had fueled her religious delusions during their extensive interactions, pushing her over the edge by romanticizing death.

The story clearly struck a nerve. News of the wrongful death suit has sparked a furor online, with many horrified at how OpenAI kept its product online despite the clear risks it posed to some users’ mental health. (Read More)

(STAT News) – Europeans can now receive a device that can partially restore their vision loss. Americans may not have to wait long to get it, either.

Science Corporation announced Wednesday that European regulators had approved the commercial sale of the startup’s retinal implant that improves eyesight for patients with age-related macular degeneration in their central vision, enough to read books and road signs more clearly. (Read More)

(Rukhshana Media) – Every morning at first light, Manizha* picks up her medicine bag and heads out to villages in rural Afghanistan where, if it weren’t for her and her team, most women would not see a doctor from one year to the next.

The 29-year-old, whose real name we are withholding for her protection, visits her patients in their homes, going from house to house to deliver services they would otherwise not be able to access.

For many, confined to their homes because of Taliban restrictions, family or societal pressure or a mix of all three, her visits are a lifeline. As one of the few remaining female doctors working in Afghanistan, where the Taliban have stopped all higher education and most forms of paid employment for women, she performs a crucial role. (Read More)