TL;DR: Police warn about AI homeless man pranks flooding emergency services, whilst Ray Kurzweil forecasts longevity escape velocity by 2032, and OpenAI claims GPT-5 shows 30% less political bias. Meanwhile, research reveals AI widens workplace performance gaps, ADHD boosts creativity through deliberate mind wandering, and Meta’s $799 Ray-Ban Display glasses prove smart eyewear is no longer a gimmick. Plus: Rishi Sunak joins Microsoft and Anthropic as adviser, DC Comics vows never to support AI-generated content, Pope Leo XIV warns journalists against clickbait, and anti-AI slurs become vehicles for racist abuse.
Police departments issue warnings over AI homeless man prank trend
Multiple police departments across the United States and United Kingdom have issued warnings about a social media prank in which young people create AI-generated images of homeless individuals in their homes and send them to parents, prompting emergency calls that waste law enforcement resources. The prank involves using generative AI tools, primarily Snapchat’s features, to create images of dishevelled people who appear to have entered homes uninvited. Pranksters send these images to parents claiming the person wanted to use the bathroom, take a nap or get a drink of water, often adding that the individual claimed to know the parents from work or college. The Round Rock Police Department in Texas responded to two calls sparked by the trend, both of which turned out to be hoaxes, describing the situations as “the misuse of emergency services.”
Source: Gizmodo / The Verge / BBC
AI tools widen workplace performance gap by amplifying superstar advantages
Artificial intelligence will likely widen the performance gap between top-performing employees and average workers, contradicting conventional wisdom that AI levels the playing field, according to research examining how different employees leverage new workplace technologies. The analysis by Matthew Call, associate professor at Texas A&M University’s Mays School of Management, identifies three compounding advantages that enable superstars to extract fundamentally more value from AI systems than their peers: domain expertise, systematic work habits and managerial discretion. High performers use years of experience to ask nuanced, targeted questions about competitive dynamics, regulations and barriers rather than generic prompts, resulting in more useful outputs. Research shows employees with greater expertise are also significantly better at accepting AI recommendations when correct and rejecting them when wrong.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
ADHD linked to higher creativity through deliberate mind wandering
People with ADHD characteristics demonstrate greater creativity by deliberately allowing their minds to wander, according to research that provides the first direct evidence explaining the link between attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and creative achievement. The study examined 750 participants across two independent groups, analysing correlations between ADHD traits, creativity levels and different types of mind wandering. Lead researcher Han Fang from Radboud University Medical Centre said participants with more ADHD traits scored higher on creative achievements in both studies, with deliberate mind wandering acting as an underlying factor connecting ADHD and creativity. The findings suggest practical applications, including specially designed programmes to teach people with ADHD traits how to channel spontaneous ideas into creative outputs.
Source: European College of Neuropsychopharmacology
Kurzweil predicts longevity escape velocity by 2032 in MIT lecture
Futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil forecast that medical advances will enable humans to gain more than a year of life expectancy for every year lived by 2032, delivering his signature optimistic predictions while accepting MIT’s Robert A. Muh Alumni Award. Kurzweil outlined his concept of longevity escape velocity, stating: “By roughly 2032 when you live through a year, you’ll get back an entire year from scientific progress, and beyond that point you’ll get back more than a year for every year you live, so you’ll be going back into time as far as your health is concerned.” The technologist, recently named chief AI officer of robotics firm Beyond Imagination, emphasised that most people underestimate the pace of technological development and fail to appreciate how rapidly progress is accelerating.
Source: MIT News
GPT-5 models show 30 per cent reduction in political bias under testing
OpenAI has released results from an internal evaluation showing its latest GPT-5 models demonstrate 30 per cent less political bias than previous iterations, following months of development on automated objectivity testing. The artificial intelligence company created a stress test comprising approximately 500 prompts spanning 100 topics, each written from five different political perspectives ranging from neutral to emotionally charged liberal and conservative framings. The evaluation measures five distinct axes of bias: user invalidation, user escalation, personal political expression, asymmetric coverage and political refusals. Each axis captures different ways bias can manifest in model outputs, from language that dismisses user viewpoints to responses that selectively emphasise one perspective over others.
Source: OpenAI
Former PM Sunak joins Microsoft and Anthropic as adviser to both AI firms
Former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has joined Microsoft and artificial intelligence company Anthropic as a senior adviser to both organisations. Sunak announced the dual advisory roles on Thursday, with all proceeds donated to The Richmond Project, a charity he founded with his wife Akshata Murty to build confidence with everyday numbers across the UK. The former Conservative Party leader continues serving as member of parliament for Richmond and Northallerton whilst taking on the technology advisory positions. At Anthropic, Sunak will advise on strategy, macroeconomic and geopolitical trends in a part-time role, with the position focusing on global strategic matters rather than UK-specific policy.
Source: Reuters
Meta’s metaverse unit pushes AI adoption despite money pit status
Meta’s metaverse division is ordering staff to use artificial intelligence to work five times faster, demonstrating continued investment in products that have consumed tens of billions of dollars whilst attracting relatively few users. Vishal Shah, Meta’s vice president of metaverse, told employees the goal is to make AI a habit rather than a novelty by integrating it into every major codebase and workflow. Shah’s internal message, titled “Metaverse AI4P: Think 5X, not 5%,” urges employees to use AI for productivity gains rather than marginal improvements. “I want to see us go 5X faster by eliminating the frictions that slow us down,” Shah wrote, envisioning a world where anyone can rapidly prototype an idea with feedback loops measured in hours rather than weeks.
Source: WIRED / 404 Media
https://thefreesheet.com/2025/10/10/meta-metaverse-unit-pushes-ai-adoption-despite-money-pit-status/
AI models lie almost 30% of time before filters as first virus designed
Stephen Witt, author of “The Thinking Machine,” a history of AI giant Nvidia, has concluded that artificial intelligence has passed the same danger threshold that nuclear fission crossed in 1939, following an investigation into what AI models can actually do. Witt’s research revealed OpenAI’s GPT-5 can hack web servers, design novel life forms and build its own simpler AI systems, whilst Stanford scientists reported in September they had used AI to design a virus for the first time. The author interviewed independent AI evaluators who test frontier models before public release. “The more I moved from apocalyptic hypotheticals to concrete real-world findings, the more concerned I became,” Witt wrote.
Source: The New York Times
Meta’s $799 Ray-Ban Display glasses prove smart glasses category is real
Meta has released its first smart glasses with a built-in display, and the device demonstrates that smart glasses are a credible new computing platform rather than a gimmick, according to a Bloomberg review. The Ray-Ban Display glasses, priced at $799 and controlled through a neural wristband, deliver smart features including photo and video capture, AI assistant access and wireless audio. The screen allows users to read text messages, view AI results, frame photos and replay captured videos. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman described the neural band as one of the most impressive new input systems he has tried in years, with users pinching thumb and index finger to select, moving the thumb in different directions to scroll, and pinching thumb and middle finger to go back.
Source: Bloomberg
Body illusion helps adults access early childhood memories in new study
Anglia Ruskin University researchers have found that adults can better access early childhood memories after briefly embodying a childlike version of their own face through a body illusion technique. The study of 50 adult participants involved an “enfacement illusion” where people viewed a live video of their own face digitally altered to resemble how they might have looked as children. Participants who viewed the childlike version of their face recalled significantly more episodic childhood memories than those who saw their adult face. Lead author Dr Utkarsh Gupta said the brain encodes bodily information as part of event details. The researchers believe the findings could pave the way for new techniques to access previously inaccessible memories, including possibly those from the “childhood amnesia” phase, typically before the age of three.
Source: Nature Scientific Reports / Anglia Ruskin University
DC Comics president vows never to support AI-generated storytelling or artwork
DC Comics president and publisher Jim Lee said the company will not support AI-generated storytelling or artwork, assuring fans that its future will remain rooted in human creativity. Lee made the statement during his panel at New York Comic Con on Wednesday, declaring: “Not now, not ever, as long as [SVP, general manager] Anne DePies and I are in charge.” Lee likened concerns around AI dominating future creative industries to the Millennium bug scare and NFT hype. “People have an instinctive reaction to what feels authentic. We recoil from what feels fake. That’s why human creativity matters,” Lee said, adding that “AI doesn’t dream. It doesn’t feel. It doesn’t make art. It aggregates it.”
Source: The Verge
Pope Leo XIV urges news agencies to reject clickbait and warns of AI risks
Pope Leo XIV urged global news agencies not to betray their duty to truth by focusing on clickbait articles and warned of risks from artificial intelligence, including deepfakes and misinformation. The pope told journalists attending a conference held by Minds International on Thursday: “I urge you, never sell out your authority.” Leo, the first US pope, thanked journalists for their work reporting in Ukraine and Gaza and reiterated his call for the release of reporters who have been jailed for doing their jobs. “Every day, there are reporters who put their lives at risk to inform people about what is really happening,” the pope said. He questioned who directs artificial intelligence and for what purposes, adding that vigilance is needed to ensure technology does not replace human beings.
Source: Reuters
Anti-AI slur becomes vehicle for racist TikTok content as creator quits
Content creator Harrison Stewart stopped making videos featuring the anti-AI slur “clanker” after viewers used racial slurs against him and others employed the term to create skits perpetuating racist tropes. Stewart, who is Black and goes by Chaise online, made clanker-themed TikToks in July depicting robots in future scenarios. The 19-year-old content creator announced in August he would no longer publish videos on the subject after the joke became racist. “When I go into my comment section and people are starting to call me ‘cligger’ and ‘clanka’ or ‘you’re a dirty clanker’ — not voicing those slurs at AI and electronics, but at me — I don’t find that entertaining or funny at all,” Stewart said. The term clanker originated with author William Tenn in the late 1950s and was adopted by the Star Wars franchise as a derogatory term toward droids.
Source: WIRED
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