Author: peterjang73

The Chinese robotics company AgiBot has set a new world record for the longest continuous journey walked by a humanoid robot. AgiBot’s A2 walked 106.286 kilometers (66.04 miles), according to Guinness World Records, making the trek from Nov. 10-13.

The robot journeyed from Jinji Lake in China’s Jiangsu province to Shanghai’s Bund waterfront district, according to China’s Global Times news outlet. The robot never powered off and reportedly continued to operate while batteries were swapped out, according to UPI.

A video posted to YouTube shows a highly edited version of the walk that doesn’t give much insight into how it was presumably monitored by human handlers. But even if it did have some humans playing babysitter, the journey included just about everything you’d expect when traveling by foot in an urban environment, including different types of ground, limited visibility at night, and slopes, according to the Global Times.

The robot obeyed traffic signals, but it’s unclear what level of autonomy may have been at work. The company told the Global Times that “the robot was equipped with dual GPS modules along with its built-in lidar and infrared depth cameras, giving it the sensing capability needed for accurate navigation through changing light conditions and complex urban environments.”

That suggests it was fully autonomous, and the Guinness Book of World Records used the word “autonomous,” though Gizmodo couldn’t independently confirm that claim.

“Walking from Suzhou to Shanghai is difficult for many people to do in one go, yet the robot completed it,” Wang Chuang, partner and senior vice president at AgiBot, told the Global Times.

The amount of autonomy a robot is operating under is a big question when it comes to companies rolling out their demonstrations. Elon Musk’s Optimus robot has been ridiculed at various points because the billionaire has tried to imply his Tesla robot is more autonomous than it actually is in real life.

For example, Musk posted a video in January 2024 that appeared to show Optimus folding a shirt. That’s historically been a difficult task for robots to accomplish autonomously. And, as it turns out, Optimus was actually being teleoperated by someone who was just off-screen. Well, not too far off-screen. The teleoperator’s hand was peeking into the frame, which is how people figured it out.

Musk did something similar in October 2024 when he showed off Optimus robots supposedly pouring beer during his big Cybercab event in Los Angeles. They were teleoperated as well.

It’s entirely possible that AgiBot’s A2 walked the entire route autonomously. The tech really is getting that good, even if long-lasting batteries are still a big hurdle. But obviously, people need to remain skeptical when it comes to spectacular claims in the robot race.

We’ve been promised robotic servants for over a century now. And the people who have historically sold that idea are often unafraid to use deception to hype up their latest achievements. Remember Miss Honeywell of 1968? Or Musk’s own unveiling of Optimus? They were nothing more than humans in a robot costume.

Last week, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) published a study claiming that AI is already capable of replacing 11.7% of existing U.S. labor. It’s certainly the kind of eye-popping study guaranteed to get a lot of eyes on researchers’ work at a time of shaky faith in AI, as stockholders might want some reassurance that their AI investments are going to pan out.

The report on this research is called “The Iceberg Index: Measuring Skills-centered Exposure in the AI Economy,” but it also has its own dedicated page called “Project Iceberg” that lives on the MIT website. Compared to the research paper, the project page has a lot more emoji. Where the paper on the study comes across sort of like a warning about AI tech, the project page, which is headlined “Can AI Work with You?” feels more like an ad for AI, in part thanks to text like this: 

“AI is transforming work. We have spent years making AIs smart—they can read, write, compose songs, shop for us. But what happens when they interact? When millions of smart AIs work together, intelligence emerges not from individual agents but from the protocols that coordinate them. Project Iceberg explores this new frontier: how AI agents coordinate with each other and humans at scale.”

The titular “Iceberg Index” comes from an AI simulation that uses what the paper called “Large Population Models” that apparently ran on processors housed at the federally funded Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is affiliated with the Department of Energy.

Legislators and CEOS seem to be the target audience, and they’re meant to use Project Iceberg to “identify exposure hotspots, prioritize training and infrastructure investments, and test interventions before committing billions to implementation.”

The Large Population Model—should we start shortening this to LPM?—claims to be able to digitally track the behavior of 151 million human workers “as autonomous agents” with 32,000 trackable “skills,” along with other factors like geography.

The director of AI Programs at Oak Ridge explained the project to CNBC this way: “Basically, we are creating a digital twin for the U.S. labor market.”

The overall finding, the researchers claim, is that current AI adoption accounts for 2.2% of “labor market wage value,” but that 11.7% of labor is exposed—ostensibly replaceable based on the model’s understanding of what a human can currently do that an AI software widget can also do.

It should be noted that humans in actual jobs constantly work outside their job descriptions, handle exceptional and non-routine situations, and are—for now—uniquely capable of handling many of the social aspects of a given job. It’s not clear how the model accounts for this, although it does note that its findings are correlational not causal, and says “external factors—state investment, infrastructure, regulation—mediate how capability translates to impact.”

However, the paper says, “Policymakers cannot wait for causal evidence of disruption before preparing responses.” In other words, AI is too urgent to get hung up on the limitations of the study, according to the study.

As much fun and helpful as cannabis can be, every drug has its potential tradeoffs. Case in point, a study out this week finds that more Americans are coming down with a stomach-churning side effect of long-term use.

Researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago examined emergency department visits from across the country. They found evidence that ER visits for cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome (CHS)—a condition characterized by constant, painful bouts of vomiting—have noticeably risen in the last several years, especially among younger adults. The researchers say that more doctors need to be aware of this debilitating, but ultimately treatable, health problem.

“Cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome is real, and it’s becoming a more routine part of emergency medicine in the U.S.,” lead author James Swartz, a professor at UIC’s Jane Addams College of Social Work, told Gizmodo.

The scromiting syndrome

People with CHS will experience cyclical periods of intense cramps, nausea, and vomiting. An acute episode can last one to two days, and the experience is often so intolerable that people will scream out in pain as they’re vomiting—a phenomenon that’s been given the charming nickname “scromiting.”

CHS typically happens in people who have been using cannabis chronically for at least several years. Scientists aren’t sure why it develops, but it might be caused by the overstimulation of native cannabinoid receptors in the gastrointestinal tract. It’s thought to be a rare complication, but recent research has suggested that cases of CHS have been increasing in the U.S. and other places where cannabis legalization has expanded.

In this latest study, the researchers analyzed data from a nationwide sample of ER visits in the U.S. between 2016 and 2022. Until recently, doctors couldn’t diagnose CHS as a distinct medical condition for record-keeping and insurance purposes. So the researchers instead looked for diagnoses related to cyclical vomiting syndrome (severe, sudden vomiting that can’t be explained by other known causes) and cannabis use; cases where both diagnoses were present were used as a proxy for CHS.

During the study period, roughly 100,000 cases of suspected CHS were documented. Prior to the covid-19 pandemic, they found, annual rates of CHS were steady. Starting in 2020, however, suspected cases of CHS seen in the ER surged. And though cases did decline in 2022, they were still above the pre-pandemic baseline. Importantly, cases of cannabis-related health problems in general also rose during that same period, while cases of cyclical vomiting syndrome without any cannabis link did not, further suggesting a real rise in CHS.

The team’s findings were published Monday in JAMA Network Open.

Though this study can’t directly answer why CHS is becoming more common, the timing of this surge indicates that covid-19 probably played a role. At the same time, ongoing factors like the growing legalization of cannabis in the U.S. and perhaps the increased amounts of THC in today’s cannabis strains are also likely important, the researchers say.

“The COVID-19 pandemic likely catalyzed the rise in CHS through stress, isolation, and increased cannabis use,” the authors wrote. “After peaking in 2021, CHS incidence declined but plateaued above prepandemic levels, suggesting sustained structural or clinical drivers.”

How to stay safe from CHS

CHS is a horrific experience, but it’s one that we know how to effectively manage and treat.

For some reason, hot baths and showers can temporarily relieve an acute episode. The only way to truly keep it from happening, though, is to stop using cannabis altogether. It might take weeks, but the symptoms will eventually stop.

And while the rate of CHS may be climbing, it’s still a relatively rare side effect, the authors say.

“Our findings shouldn’t be interpreted as a reason to panic, but they do reinforce that cannabis is not risk-free, especially at higher doses and with long-term, heavy use,” Swartz said.

Earlier this year, CHS was officially added to the latest edition of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), the codebook that’s used worldwide for diagnostic and billing purposes. So it’s now much easier for doctors to diagnose the condition and for researchers to track its prevalence. That said, doctors and hospitals will still need to know that CHS exists in order to make a timely diagnosis, the study authors say.

“Given frequent misdiagnosis and costly, unnecessary testing, greater clinical awareness is needed,” the authors wrote. They also argue that more research is needed to figure out the exact causes of CHS and why only some long-term users develop it.

Days like these, I’m glad that I only occasionally indulge in the sticky icky.

Animals like birds and sea turtles navigate using a "biological GPS" called magnetoreception. We now actually know that many animals use this method to connect with Earth’s magnetic field so they know where to go — but scientists don’t really understand how the whole process works yet.

As such, researchers at Cambridge University and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin have been studying tiny ancient fossils littering ocean floors to learn more about magnetoreception. And sure enough, the team says they’ve discovered that these "magnetofossils" indeed exhibit magnetoreception. Because they found the magnetofossils in sediments that date back 97 million years, their work could be the first time we’ve had direct evidence that animals have been navigating the world like this for a very long time.

"Whatever creature made these magnetofossils, we now know it was most likely capable of accurate navigation," Rich Harrison of Cambridge’s Earth Sciences Dept., and research co-leader, said in a statement.

A new way of sensing

The researchers used a new technique that relies on magnetic tomography — a way of visualizing the internal structures of objects using magnetic fields. Previously, scientists had trouble looking inside larger magnetofossils like the newly discovered ones because more standard X-rays were unable to penetrate the outer layers.

That’s why the study’s co-author, Claire Donnelly from the Max Planck Institute in Germany, developed this new technique to peer inside. Because the fossils are rather large compared to magnetic receptors used by bacteria, for instance, the researchers refer to them as "giant" magnetofossils.

"That we were able to map the internal magnetic structure with magnetic tomography was already a great result, but the fact that the results provide insight into the navigation of creatures millions of years ago is really exciting!" Donnelly said in the release.

The team used Donnelly’s technique at the Diamond X-ray facility in Oxford. They found that the arrangements of tiny magnetic fields generated by spinning elections — or magnetic moments, to be precise — pointed to magnetoreception in whatever animals these fossils came from.

"It’s fantastic to see our method being used for the first time to study natural samples," Jeffrey Neethirajan, a Ph.D. student in Donnelly’s lab, said in the release.

The mystery creature

Oddly enough, while the team thinks these fossils signify navigation via magnetoreception, they don’t know what animals created them. "This tells us we need to look for a migratory animal that was common enough in the oceans to leave abundant fossil remains," Harrison said.

Eels might be a good candidate, Harrion speculates, as they evolved around 100 years ago, and they’re able to navigate waterways across the globe.

"Giant magnetofossils mark a key step in tracing how animals evolved basic bacterial magnetoreception into highly-specialized, GPS-like navigation systems," Harrison said.

A paper about the study was published in the journal Nature on Oct. 20.

A new video gives us great looks at last month’s historic first flight of NASA’s new "quiet" X-59 supersonic jet.

NASA plans to use the X-59, an experimental vehicle, to fly faster than the speed of sound without generating sonic booms. The video was taken during the X-59’s first flight on Oct. 28, which took off from Palmdale Regional Airport in California — on a runway shared by the airport and the adjacent U.S. Air Force (USAF) Plant 42 facility.

The video shows the X-59’s extra-long nose gently bouncing as it taxis out of its shelter and heads toward at its runway in the orange-lit Mojave Desert. Combining views from the cockpit, a mission control area and from chase planes, the video brings views from takeoff, flight and touchdown — and the moment when NASA lead X-59 test pilot Nils Larson emerges from the cockpit to greet well-wishers. (Keep watching for a little surprise and humor near the end of the video.)

The X-59 is a collaboration between NASA and aerospace giant Lockheed Martin’s historic Skunk Works facility in Palmdale. The debut flight went "exactly as planned," Lockheed representatives said in a statement published at the time of the flight. (The U.S. government was in shutdown when the flight happened, but certain critical activities were granted an exemption.)

"X-59 is a symbol of American ingenuity. The American spirit knows no bounds. It’s part of our DNA — the desire to go farther, faster, and even quieter than anyone has ever gone before," Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy said in the same statement. "This work sustains America’s place as the leader in aviation, and has the potential to change the way the public flies."

Work on the X-59 will continue at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center, which is also at Palmdale. The jet is expected to continue testing through flights over microphones sprinkled around Mojave to measure the vibrations generated. Other aircraft will also measure its shockwaves using air sensors.

Supersonic flights above land in the U.S. have been prohibited since 1973, but if the X-59 can prove out its promises, it may help make commercial supersonic flight possible. Faster air travel would in turn generate a lift not only for commercial travelers but also for transport in case of medical emergency, disaster or military need.

Support for such speed comes directly from the White House, too, as President Donald Trump issued an executive order earlier this year directing the Federal Aviation Administration to examine how to lift the restrictions on U.S. supersonic flight.

Lockheed Martin and NASA aren’t the only entities trying to make supersonic flight routine. Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 jet made its own historic flight in January, also breaking the sound barrier over Mojave. The milestone marked the first time an independently developed commercial aircraft achieved such a milestone over the continental United States.