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Last week, Microsoft laid off about 9,100 workers, which came just months after the company announced it would invest $80 billion in data centers for Artificial Intelligence. The impact of the job cuts was widely felt, particularly in the gaming sector of Microsoft. However, in the wake of the company axing thousands of workers, one executive gave some pretty ill-timed advice: he told the folks who lost their jobs to AI to, ya know, turn to AI to help them cope. Yikes. “These are really challenging times, and if youre navigating a layoff or even quietly preparing for one, youre not alone and you dont have to go it alone,” Xbox executive producer Matt Turnbull wrote in a since-deleted post on LinkedIn. “No AI tool is a replacement for your voice or your lived experience. But at a time when mental energy is scarce, these tools can help get you unstuck faster, calmer, and with more clarity.” In his attempt to help laid-off employees, he shared a series of prompts which he believed could be helpful. “I’ve been experimenting with ways to use [large language model] Al tools (like ChatGPT or Copilot) to help reduce the emotional and cognitive load that comes with job loss,” he wrote. However, many found the post to be utterly insensitive, mainly, due to its timing. Images of the post popped up on X (formerly Twitter) in droves with users calling it “tone-deaf” and “cruel. It’s not that AI isn’t useful. It absolutely is. It can help you write a killer résumé, and find your next job. The swift reaction to the post showcased, not that people hate AI, but that sensitivity, especially in regard to how companies treat workers in regard to AI, deeply matters. While the technology is being broadly embracedeven largely by those in gaming and other creative fields41% of employees are afraid of losing their jobs to AI. The onus is on leaders to ensure they aren’t making employees feel obsolete, insignificant, or useless, as AI uses expand. While the intentions may have been good, a post pushing AI on people who just lost their jobs to AI, doesn’t exactly say empathy. BlueSky user Brandon Sheffield hit the nail on the head in a post on the ill-timed advice, writing, “Something I’ve realized over time is people in general lack the ability to think in a broader scope and include context and eventualities. But after thousands of people get laid off from your company maybe don’t suggest they turn to the thing you’re trying to replace them with for solace.” It doesnt help that Phil Spencer, another XBox exec, has come under fire for a leaked email which was reportedly sent to the since-fired employees. In it, he seemed to rave about how well the company is doing. I recognize that these changes come at a time when we have more players, games, and gaming hours than ever before. Our platform, hardware, and game roadmap have never looked stronger. In the wake of AI entering the workforce, empathy matters more than ever before. The one thing technology can’t do is feel. While ChatGPT may be able to help you find a job, or write lists, or even talk you off the ledge, it can’t empathize with you about your situation. That, my friends, is the work of the actual living, breathing humans. Not the bots. At least, for now. Fast Company reached out to Turnbull and Spencer but did not hear back by the time of publication.
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Scientists are tracking a large gas planet experiencing quite a quandary as it orbits extremely close to a young star – a predicament never previously observed. This exoplanet, as planets beyond our solar system are called, orbits its star so tightly that it appears to trigger flares from the stellar surface – larger than any observed from the sun – reaching several million miles (km) into space that over time may strip much of this unlucky world’s atmosphere. The phenomenon appears to be caused by the planet’s interaction with the star’s magnetic field, according to the researchers. And this star is a kind known to flare, especially when young. “A young star of this type is an angry beast, especially if you’re sitting as close up as this planet does,” said Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy astrophysicist Ekaterina Ilin, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature. The star, called HIP 67522, is slightly more massive than the sun and is located about 407 light-years from Earth in the constellation Centaurus. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km). This star and planet, as well as a second smaller gas planet also detected in this planetary system, are practically newborns. Whereas the sun and our solar system’s planets are roughly 4.5 billion years old, this star is about 17 million years old, with its planets slightly younger. The planet, named HIP 67522 b, has a diameter almost the size of Jupiter, our solar system’s largest planet, but with only 5% of Jupiter’s mass. That makes it one of the puffiest exoplanets known, with a consistency reminiscent of cotton candy (candy floss). It orbits five times closer to its star than our solar system’s innermost planet Mercury orbits the sun, needing only seven days to complete an orbit. A flare is an intense eruption of electromagnetic radiation emanating from the outermost part of a star’s atmosphere, called the corona. So how does HIP 67522 b elicit huge flares from the star? As it orbits, it apparently interacts with the star’s magnetic field – either through its own magnetic field or perhaps through the presence of conducting material such as iron in the planet’s composition. “We don’t know for sure what the mechanism is. We think it is plausible that the planet moves within the star’s magnetic field and whips up a wave that travels along magnetic field lines to the star. When the wave reaches the stellar corona, it triggers flares in large magnetic field loops that store energy, which is released by the wave,” Ilin said. “As it moves through the field like a boat on a lake, it creates waves in its wake,” Ilin added. “The flares these waves trigger when they crash into the star are a new phenomenon. This is important because it had never been observed before, especially at the intensity detected.” The researchers believe it is a specific type of wave called an Alfvén wave, named for 20th century Swedish physicist and Nobel Prize laureate Hannes Alfvén, that propagates due to the interaction of magnetic fields. The flares may heat up and inflate the planet’s atmosphere, which is dominated by hydrogen and helium. Being lashed by these flares could blast away lighter elements from the atmosphere and reduce the planet’s mass over perhaps hundreds of millions of years. “At that time, it will have lost most if not all the light elements, and become what’s called a sub-Neptune – a gas planet smaller than Neptune,” Ilin said, referring to the smallest of our solar system’s gas planets. The researchers used observations by two space telescopes: NASA’s TESS, short for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, and the European Space Agency’s CHEOPS, short for CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite. The plight of HIP 67522 b illustrates the many circumstances under which exoplanets exist. “It is certainly no sheltered youth for this planet. But I am not sad about it. I enjoy diversity in all things nature, and what this planet will eventually become – perhaps a sub-Neptune rich in heavy elements that did not evaporate – is no less fascinating than what we observe today.” Will Dunham, Reuters
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Several leading medical organizations on Monday filed a suit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and its Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., arguing that current policies on the COVID-19 vaccine pose an imminent threat to public health. The plaintiffs, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Physicians, American Public Health Association and Infectious Diseases Society of America, have asked the court to vacate Kennedy’s recent directive removing the COVID-19 vaccine from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s childhood and pregnantwomen immunization schedules. Representatives for HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Kennedy, a long-time vaccine skeptic whose department oversees the CDC, has been remaking the U.S. health system to align with President Donald Trump’s goal of dramatically shrinking the federal government. He signed a directive in May delisting the COVID-19 vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women. The complainants alleged that such “baseless and uninformed policy” decisions place critical populations at “grave and immediate risk” of preventable illness, long-term harm, or death. Mrinalika Roy, Reuters
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