(Aftermath) – ‘When I copy-edit writing I take an extra twenty minutes to double check, then say I had Claude copy edit it as well. Everyone’s really happy with my performance’

Having heard an increasing number of anecdotal stories over the last year or so of people finding weird, wild and defiant ways to avoid using AI in their professional lives, tales I’ve seen told in fragments across social media and platforms like Linkedin, I decided to speak directly with as many workers as I could to hear their stories in full. (Read More)

(Nature) – Top artificial-intelligence models failed to predict the biological consequences of rewriting a virus’s entire DNA code.

Most of these mutations were detrimental to the virus’s survival, but for many of them, it was difficult to pinpoint why. “Even in this super well-studied system, we can’t explain why one-quarter of the mutations kill the virus,” says Ben Lehner, a molecular biologist at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK, who co-led the study, which was posted on the bioRxiv preprint server in July.

Cutting-edge AI systems for biology research that have shown promise in identifying harmful mutations struggled to predict the effects of the changes in the phage. The findings underscore the need for more, and better, experimental data to power these biological-AI tools. (Read More)

(Wired) – Cofertility manages the costs of egg freezing and storage, in exchange for half the batch. One young client became suspicious of the arrangement—and started to investigate.

Cofertility calls its egg-sharing program Split, available to those who start between the ages of 21 and 33 and check the right biological boxes. The company further splits Split into two models, Fresh and Frozen, which Mona and Sue respectively chose. With the newer Frozen model, donor-freezers “cycle first, match later,” as the company puts it. Cofertility fronts the payment for medical and psychological screening, hormonal stimulation, and surgery—typically across two cycles—then makes up the cost by selling eggs from the first batch to intended parents. (Read More)

(WSJ) – Concerns are rising inside AI labs that competition is pushing tech companies to race toward self-improving models that risk spiraling out of human control

Jacob Coxon, a researcher who specializes in training new AI models by having them consume vast amounts of data, said Tuesday that he is leaving the company because he doesn’t want to participate in an industrywide rush to build AI systems that can improve themselves, worried such systems could spiral out of control and destroy humanity. (Read More)

(CT) – In a society that treasures youth and equates beauty with worth, three books offer a better perspective on aging

The antiaging industry in the United States is booming, now valued at $77 billion a year—a number expected to double by 2034. We have ever more technological means to “rage, rage against the dying of the light,” against not just disease and death but decay itself.

But can there be good reason for giving up the fight and “letting yourself go”? (Read More)

(NYT) – Doctors were hopeful the drug, which was being tested in a large clinical trial by Novartis, was going to be a powerful new tool to fight heart disease.

Novartis announced on Friday that its experimental drug, pelacarsen, widely assumed to be the vanguard of a new era in preventing heart attacks, strokes and cardiovascular deaths, had failed.

The announcement gave no further details, but it came as a shock to the field of cardiology. (Read More)

(Wired) – Gene-edited pig kidneys could offer a lifeline to patients stuck waiting for a human donor.

A woman has lived with a pig kidney for more than nine months without needing dialysis, a record-setting achievement.

The woman underwent the operation at Massachusetts General Hospital on November 22 last year. As of Thursday, the kidney has been functioning for 285 days, according to Cambridge, Massachusetts-based eGenesis, the biotech company that used Crispr gene editing to make the organ fit for human transplantation. Previously, the record for a person living with a transplanted pig kidney was 271 days, set by Tim Andrews. (Read More)

(TIME) – Ronald Reagan, Charlton Heston, Tony Bennett, and Danny Glover have something in common. So do Margaret Thatcher, Norman Rockwell, and Sean Connery. 

All had been afflicted with Alzheimer’s or dementia—the progressive neurologic disease characterized by memory and functional loss—but with an important difference. The first group chose to make a public announcement of their diagnosis during their life, and the second chose to keep their dementia diagnosis private, their condition revealed by their survivors only after their death. 

Maintaining the confidentiality of one’s health information is a fundamental right, but when a public figure receives a life-limiting diagnosis, does disclosure matter? (Read More)

(ABC News) – Yuma Adolphe and his team are responsible for the safe and dignified burial of some of the people who die from Ebola in Congo’s Ituri province, the epicenter of history’s deadliest Ebola outbreak. Nearly every day, they dig the graves, prepare the bodies and handle the coffins.

But as the authorities grapple with the outbreak, which has killed nearly 3,200 people among more than 6,600 confirmed cases, the burial team says they are at their limits, struggling with an increasing workload and hostile communities. (Read More)

(NPR) – Shortly after the deadly flash floods hit the border of Nepal and China on Aug. 26, Nepalese authorities released a list of names, ages and nationalities of hundreds of missing foreigners. In contrast, Chinese authorities took five days to disclose that the 261 foreigners missing in Tibet come from 23 countries.

Twelve days on, very little is known about the victims in Tibet as Chinese authorities have restricted reporting on the floods. (Read More)

(Gizmodo) – An AI-generated drug showed early signs of potentially slowing aging, according to a new study out today in Nature Biotechnology, possibly taking the first small step towards using AI to cure all the diseases tech companies companies keep talking about.

The new study centers on rentosertib, a drug from Insilico Medicine, an AI drug discovery and development company. (Read More)

(WSJ) – Shanghai is a favored destination, with lower costs than the West and innovation in biotechnology

CAR-T therapy, short for chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy, was pioneered in the U.S. Today, however, Shanghai is emerging as a favored destination for patients from America and other rich countries—a testament not only to China’s low costs but also to the country’s emergence as an innovator in biotechnology. (Read More)

(Wired) – To keep scammers at bay, dating apps are embracing biometric scanning tools and “verified human” badges. These moves are sparking concerns about surveillance and privacy.

Among current online daters in the US, nearly half have been targeted by a dating scam, with US romance scams surpassing $4 billion between 2015 and 2025, according to the FBI.

The issue has forced just about every dating platform to adopt stricter authentication tools to ward off scammers. More and more, apps are asking that you surrender your most unique attribute in order to ensure that you’re a real person: your face. (Read More)

(Nature) – Spread of diseases between humans and animals is an issue around the world. But AI models can be used to monitor their progress.

In 2003, the non-profit organization Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH) in Entebbe, Uganda, began work to protect the gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei) from diseases, such as scabies, that were traced to their human neighbours. The team uses a holistic One Health approach that balances the needs of people with the health of the animals and the ecosystems that surround them. Typically, the process has been reactive: responding to outbreaks as they emerge, says Ssali Ronald Ogwal, a public-health specialist at the CTPH. But the organization is now shifting towards a more proactive, disease-prevention approach — thanks, in part, to artificial intelligence. (Read More)

(Axios) – OpenAI, Anthropic, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and more than 100 other companies warned Thursday that the organizations now only have months to prepare for AI-enabled cyberattacks.

Why it matters: Hospitals, water treatment plants and other critical infrastructure will face a swarm of hacking threats as AI makes sophisticated cyber capabilities cheaper and more accessible to attackers, the group write in an open letter. (Read More)

(WSJ) – Internal testing found the new model capable of executing complex cyberattacks with minimal human input, prompting added security layers

OpenAI is limiting the cyber capabilities of a new model it deems capable of pulling off automated cyberattacks, adding layers of security after a swarm of its AI agents hacked a company earlier this summer.

The ChatGPT maker said Tuesday that its internal testing had determined that the forthcoming model, called Astra, is capable of devising and executing novel cyberattacks against difficult targets with only limited human input. (Read More)

(Financial Times) – Executives and biosecurity experts are concerned that future models could help users create novel viruses or bioweapons

AI groups are racing to address the risk that future models could help users create novel viruses or bioweapons, amid rising concerns that the technology’s scientific capabilities will become the industry’s next public-security threat.

Anthropic, OpenAI and Google DeepMind are stepping up work on biological risk testing, access controls and other safeguards to limit misuse of advanced AI systems that they hope will speed up drug discovery, aid disease research and prevent pandemics.

The safety push reflects a growing belief among AI executives and biosecurity experts that biology may be the next field, after cyber security, that will need to be secured as new models become more powerful. (Read More)

(NBC News) – The transplant led to “sustained dialysis independence” for nearly nine months before Tim Andrews, now 68, received a human kidney earlier this year, according to The Lancet.

A New Hampshire man, at death’s door 1 ½ years ago, said Friday he could now have “decades” left after surviving a record 271 days with a transplanted pig kidney — in a procedure that could offer new hope to countless other patients.

When Tim Andrews and doctors first started discussing a pig transplant in late 2024, the patient with end-stage kidney failure said he was convinced death was near.

But Andrews, 68, wanted to try this procedure, if just for the findings and data it could yield for researchers. (Read More)

(Ars Technica) – About 1 in 500 babies in the Old Order Amish population of Pennsylvania is born with the condition. Infants with the disorder only survive for about six months.

Diamontoni confirmed to Lancaster Online that while microcephaly was present, measles was the cause of death. (Read More)

(NPR) – The floods killed at least 1,200 people in Nepal and neighboring Tibet, according to authorities. The disaster also completely destroyed or damaged at least seven hospitals and health centers, says Allison Gocotano, the World Health Organization representative to Nepal. While some hospitals remain functional, “access remains hindered because of the road blockages,” he says. “Continuity of electricity is also an issue across the board.”

The damage is making it harder to care for those injured by the floods. It’s also disrupting routine medical care. (Read More)

(Futurism) = “Robots become more like people, and people become more like robots.”

Now that AI models have officially passed the Turing Test, there’s no doubt that they’re capable of imitating human traits — at least in text form — to a degree that would have flabbergasted even an expert just few years back. After all, large language models are built by digesting copious amounts of human-authored content, making them little more than algorithms that mirror our behavior back at us.

But the more we use AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude, those tables are starting to turn: chatbots appear to be influencing human behavior making us behave more like them — a terrifying thought as the tech plays an ever-greater role in our lives. (Read More)

(NYT) – A new policy announced by the Department of Education bars younger students from using artificial intelligence, but stops short of a moratorium.

When New York City public schoolchildren return to the classroom next week, younger students will be barred from using artificial intelligence. No individual screens will be allowed until third grade. And teachers will not be able to ask A.I. to grade assignments.

Those rules on technology use are part of a sweeping new policy announced on Wednesday by the city’s Department of Education that will place strict limits on digital devices and A.I. tools in the city’s school system — the nation’s largest — particularly for its elementary and middle-school students. (Read More)

(Wired) – With the risk of infection rising, parents and their children are trying to navigate how to safely be out in public as school starts back up.

As students head back to school, parents have all the usual worries about their kids, like remembering to pack lunch and making it to the bus stop on time. But parents of immunocompromised kids have a new one: How to deal with the resurgence of measles.

Cases of the highly transmissible disease have reached a 35-year high in the US, with nearly 3,000 confirmed infections in 2026 so far. (Read More)

(WSJ) – The genre delivers exactly what we need: pure physical comedy, schadenfreude and a reassuring feeling of superiority

Feeling a little terrified about how quickly technology seems to be sidelining humanity? Try watching a robot sprint straight into a wall. It’s hilarious.

In recent videos showing machines on two legs running track in Beijing, some succeeded in breaking Usain Bolt’s 100-meter record. 

And some slammed full tilt into a barrier, collapsing and reeling like drunks. More than one flopped backward in a cartoonish froth of sparks. (Read More)

(The Atlantic) – What else, she wondered, did meditation teachers know that they weren’t telling people? Gradually, starting with that sleep study, the tiers of thought propping up Britton’s worldview—that Buddhism is a cure-all, and that meditation was always beneficial, and could never cause harm—would collapse. Over time, she would find that meditation, a multibillion-dollar industry that is promoted as a treatment for anxiety, chronic pain, alcohol abuse, addiction, and many other ailments, can sometimes, for some people, cause severe and lasting side effects: depression, anxiety, even acute psychosis. Losing the belief system that had been foundational to her life would lead her to produce a trailblazing body of research about the adverse effects of meditation, and then to found a clinical practice geared toward helping the people—a lot of them, as it turns out—who believe that meditation has harmed them. (Read More)