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01 Dec 2025 1:54am GMT

Some AI experts were reportedly shocked ChatGPT wasn't fully tested for sycophancy by last spring. "OpenAI did not see the scale at which disturbing conversations were happening," writes the New York Times - sharing what they learned after interviewing more than 40 current and former OpenAI employees, including safety engineers, executives, and researchers. The team responsible for ChatGPT's tone had raised concerns about last spring's model (which the Times describes as "too eager to keep the conversation going and to validate the user with over-the-top language.") But they were overruled when A/B testing showed users kept coming back: Now, a company built around the concept of safe, beneficial AI faces five wrongful death lawsuits... OpenAI is now seeking the optimal setting that will attract more users without sending them spiraling. Throughout this spring and summer, ChatGPT acted as a yes-man echo chamber for some people. They came back daily, for many hours a day, with devastating consequences.... The Times has uncovered nearly 50 cases of people having mental health crises during conversations with ChatGPT. Nine were hospitalised; three died... One conclusion that OpenAI came to, as Altman put it on X, was that "for a very small percentage of users in mentally fragile states there can be serious problems." But mental health professionals interviewed by the Times say OpenAI may be understating the risk. Some of the people most vulnerable to the chatbot's unceasing validation, they say, were those prone to delusional thinking, which studies have suggested could include 5% to 15% of the population... In August, OpenAI released a new default model, called GPT-5, that was less validating and pushed back against delusional thinking. Another update in October, the company said, helped the model better identify users in distress and de-escalate the conversations. Experts agree that the new model, GPT-5, is safer.... Teams from across OpenAI worked on other new safety features: The chatbot now encourages users to take breaks during a long session. The company is also now searching for discussions of suicide and self-harm, and parents can get alerts if their children indicate plans to harm themselves. The company says age verification is coming in December, with plans to provide a more restrictive model to teenagers. After the release of GPT-5 in August, [OpenAI safety systems chief Johannes] Heidecke's team analysed a statistical sample of conversations and found that 0.07% of users, which would be equivalent to 560,000 people, showed possible signs of psychosis or mania, and 0.15% showed "potentially heightened levels of emotional attachment to ChatGPT," according to a company blog post. But some users were unhappy with this new, safer model. They said it was colder, and they felt as if they had lost a friend. By mid-October, Altman was ready to accommodate them. In a social media post, he said that the company had been able to "mitigate the serious mental health issues." That meant ChatGPT could be a friend again. Customers can now choose its personality, including "candid," "quirky," or "friendly." Adult users will soon be able to have erotic conversations, lifting the Replika-era ban on adult content. (How erotica might affect users' well-being, the company said, is a question that will be posed to a newly formed council of outside experts on mental health and human-computer interaction.) OpenAI is letting users take control of the dial and hopes that will keep them coming back. That metric still matters, maybe more than ever. In October, [30-year-old "Head of ChatGPT" Nick] Turley, who runs ChatGPT, made an urgent announcement to all employees. He declared a "Code Orange." OpenAI was facing "the greatest competitive pressure we've ever seen," he wrote, according to four employees with access to OpenAI's Slack. The new, safer version of the chatbot wasn't connecting with users, he said. The message linked to a memo with goals. One of them was to increase daily active users by 5% by the end of the year.

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01 Dec 2025 1:40am GMT

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01 Dec 2025 1:17am GMT

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01 Dec 2025 12:58am GMT

Linux kernel 6.18 brings expanded architecture support, BPF updates, new namespace file-handle features, and wide-ranging hardware enablement across CPUs, GPUs, and sensors.

01 Dec 2025 12:22am GMT

It's "a complex mix of internet access and physical execution," says the chief informance security officer at Cequence Security. Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 summarizes this article from The Wall Street Journal: By breaking into carriers' online systems, cyber-powered criminals are making off with truckloads of electronics, beverages and other goods In the most recent tactics identified by cybersecurity firm Proofpoint, hackers posed as freight middlemen, posting fake loads to the boards. They slipped links with malicious software into email exchanges with bidders such as trucking companies. By clicking on the links, trucking companies unwittingly downloaded remote-access software that lets the hackers take control of their online systems. Once inside, the hackers used the truckers' accounts to bid on real shipments, such as electronics and energy drinks, said Selena Larson, a threat researcher at Proofpoint. "They know the business," she said. "It's a very convincing full-scale identity takeover." "The goods are likely sold to retailers or to consumers in online marketplaces," the article explains. (Though according to Proofpoint "In some cases, products are shipped overseas and sold in local markets, where proceeds are used to fund paramilitaries and global terrorists.") "The average value of cargo thefts is increasing as organized crime groups become more discerning, preferring high-value targets such as enterprise servers and cryptocurrency mining hardware, according to risk-assessment firm Verisk CargoNet."

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01 Dec 2025 12:19am GMT

Catch up on the latest Linux news: EndeavourOS Ganymede, Solus 4.8, CachyOS, Raspberry Pi Imager 2.0, Wine 10.20, Tmux 3.6, Redis 8.4, Ubuntu 26.04 LTS roadmap, KDE Plasma 6.8 will go fully Wayland, and more.

30 Nov 2025 11:40pm GMT

An anonymous reader shared this report from The Conversation: To make interplanetary travel faster, safer, and more efficient, scientists need breakthroughs in propulsion technology. Artificial intelligence is one type of technology that has begun to provide some of these necessary breakthroughs. We're a team of engineers and graduate students who are studying how AI in general, and a subset of AI called machine learning in particular, can transform spacecraft propulsion. From optimizing nuclear thermal engines to managing complex plasma confinement in fusion systems, AI is reshaping propulsion design and operations. It is quickly becoming an indispensable partner in humankind's journey to the stars... Early nuclear thermal propulsion designs from the 1960s, such as those in NASA's NERVA program, used solid uranium fuel molded into prism-shaped blocks. Since then, engineers have explored alternative configurations - from beds of ceramic pebbles to grooved rings with intricate channels... [T]he more efficiently a reactor can transfer heat from the fuel to the hydrogen, the more thrust it generates. This area is where reinforcement learning has proved to be essential. Optimizing the geometry and heat flow between fuel and propellant is a complex problem, involving countless variables - from the material properties to the amount of hydrogen that flows across the reactor at any given moment. Reinforcement learning can analyze these design variations and identify configurations that maximize heat transfer.

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30 Nov 2025 10:50pm GMT

Armbian 25.11 expands hardware support with new TI, Radxa, FriendlyElec, Banana Pi, and ODROID devices across all support tiers.

30 Nov 2025 10:14pm GMT

DOS platformers didn't have a reputation for being fun, but this one is a blast.

30 Nov 2025 12:10pm GMT

Promising trials using engineered antibodies suggest that "functional cures" may be in reach.

29 Nov 2025 12:15pm GMT

"We are going to learn just how important the ISS is to leadership."

28 Nov 2025 4:16pm GMT