MAROKO133 Hot ai: Researchers Invented a Fake Disease to Trick AI and the Funniest Possibl

📌 MAROKO133 Eksklusif ai: Researchers Invented a Fake Disease to Trick AI and the

In 2024, a team led by University of Gothenburg medical researcher Almira Osmanovic Thunström invented a fake disease that called “bixonimania.” The fictional skin condition, they said, was caused by staring at screens for too long and rubbing one’s eyes too much.

As Nature reports, the team uploaded two fake studies (both since been taken down) about the condition to a preprint server at the time in an effort to trick large language models into thinking it was real.

It didn’t take long for their ruse to take off. Within just weeks of uploading the fake studies, frontier AI models including Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT started talking about bixonimania as if it were real. Not much later, researchers found that the fake papers had even started to be cited in other peer-reviewed academic literature.

The experiment highlights how profoundly AI is changing the face of human knowledge. AI slop has invaded almost every facet of the peer-review process. Researchers have previously found that a vast portion of scientific papers being indexed by journals each year could be heavily relying on AI, raising thorny questions over their validity, not to mention the erosion of rigor and trust.

Meanwhile, AI chatbots continue to dole out dangerous health advice to often unsuspecting users. A quick perusal of Osmanovic Thunström’s papers by virtually anybody, scientist or not, would’ve immediately clocked the ruse. The fake papers make peculiar references to “Star Trek,” “The Simpsons,” and “The Lord of the Rings” to raise obvious red flags.

But despite all that, AI chatbots including Microsoft’s Bing Copilot, Google’s Gemini, and Perplexity’s AI search engine became convinced that “bixonimania” was real.

While ChatGPT had a momentary lapse of reason, informing Nature last month that the condition “is probably a made-up, fringe, or pseudoscientific label,” it changed its mind when asked just a few days later, saying the disease was real.

In a statement to the magazine, an OpenAI spokesperson argued that the tech had gotten “better at providing safe, accurate medical information.”

Now that the cat is out of the bag, it’s up to journals to clean up any errant peer-reviewed papers that lean on Osmanovic Thunström’s fictional research. After Nature reached out to one them over several papers that alluded to “bixonimania,” the journal promptly posted a retraction notice, admitting the “presence of three irrelevant references, including one reference to a fictitious disease.”

“It is worrying when these major claims are just passing through the literature unchallenged, or passing through peer review unchallenged,” Osmanovic Thunström told Nature. “I think there’s probably a lot of other issues that haven’t been uncovered.”

Users on the r/medicine subreddit had a far more pessimistic take.

“We are cooked,” one of them wrote.

More on AI and healthcare: AI Is Causing Healthcare Costs to Surge

The post Researchers Invented a Fake Disease to Trick AI and the Funniest Possible Thing Happened appeared first on Futurism.

🔗 Sumber: futurism.com

📌 MAROKO133 Hot ai: Scientists run compact free-electron laser for eight hours, cr

For decades, free-electron lasers (FELs) have been among the most powerful tools in science—letting researchers watch atoms move, study chemical reactions in real time, and probe materials at the smallest scales. 

However, there’s a catch. These machines are enormous, often stretching for kilometers, making them rare and expensive. However, this could soon change.

For the first time, researchers have shown that a much smaller system can run an FEL continuously for over eight hours. 

“We report significant improvements to the stability of a hundred terawatt laser system, resulting in successful demonstration of reliable, long-term operation of an LPA-driven FEL,” the study authors note.

This advancement could bring these powerful light sources out of massive facilities and into more accessible labs, potentially reshaping research in physics, chemistry, medicine, and industry.

How FELs work, and why shrinking them is so hard

At the heart of an FEL is a beam of high-energy electrons. These electrons are fired through a device called an undulator, which uses alternating magnetic fields to wiggle them back and forth. 

As they move, the electrons emit light that builds into an intense, coherent laser beam—often in the ultraviolet or X-ray range. Traditionally, generating such high-energy electron beams requires long linear accelerators, which is why FEL facilities are so large. 

A promising alternative has been the laser-plasma accelerator (LPA). Instead of kilometers, LPAs use powerful laser pulses fired into a plasma (which is basically a soup of charged particles) to create strong electric fields that can accelerate electrons to near light speed in just a few centimeters.

However, LPAs have struggled with instability. Small fluctuations in the laser’s focus, energy, or pulse duration can cause the electron beam to vary from one shot to the next. This noise makes it nearly impossible to run an FEL reliably for long periods, which is essential for real-world applications.

“LPAs face inherent challenges in shot-to-shot stability, especially in the context of the strict tolerance requirements of FELs,” the study authors said.

Real-time control and a ‘ghost’ beam

To overcome the above-mentioned problem, the research team added five active stabilization systems to their setup at Berkeley Lab’s BELLA center. 

These systems continuously monitored and corrected key properties of the laser in real time, including where it was focused, how much energy it carried, and how long each pulse lasted.

They also introduced a clever addition: a low-power ghost beam. This was essentially a copy of the main laser beam, used as a sensitive probe to detect tiny fluctuations that the main system couldn’t easily see. 

By tracking these subtle changes, the system could make rapid adjustments and keep everything stable. With all these improvements working together, the setup produced a steady stream of electron bunches at 100 MeV, firing 1,000 times per second. 

This stable beam successfully powered an FEL for more than eight continuous hours, generating light at a wavelength of 420 nanometers—within the visible range.

“The LPA source delivered 100 MeV electron beams at 1 Hz with high stability over more than 10 h, enabling over 8 h of continuous FEL operation without operator input,” the study authors said.

The road to bringing free-electron lasers within reach

This achievement marks an important turning point. If compact systems like LPAs can reliably drive FELs, the technology could become far more affordable and widely available. 

This would open the door to new applications, from advanced imaging and materials science to medical research and industrial testing.

However, the work isn’t finished. The current system operates at relatively modest energies, producing visible light. To unlock the full potential of FELs, especially in the X-ray range, the team aims to scale up to 500 MeV. 

At that level, the laser could generate light between 20 and 30 nanometers, approaching the ultraviolet–X-ray boundary where many high-impact applications lie.

Although there are still technical challenges ahead, particularly in maintaining stability at higher energies, the current study shows that the core problem (keeping the electron beam stable and consistent over long periods of time) can be solved. 

If the next steps also work out, free-electron lasers may not stay confined to giant facilities for long.

The study is published in the journal Physical Review Accelerators and Beams.

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com