What if, in the end, we are done in not by intercontinental ballistic missiles or climate change, not by microscopic pathogens or a mountain-size meteor, but by … text? Simple, plain, unadorned text, but in quantities so immense as to be all but unimaginable--a tsunami of text swept into a self-perpetuating cataract of content that makes it functionally impossible to reliably communicate in any digital setting? Our relationship to the written word is fundamentally changing. So-called generative artificial intelligence has gone mainstream through programs like ChatGPT, which use large language models, or LLMs, to statistically predict the next letter or word in a sequence, yielding sentences and paragraphs that mimic the content of whatever documents they are trained on. They have brought something like autocomplete to the entirety of the internet.

The Daily Mail would be horrified if it knew what it had spawned. Back in 2021, when news broke of Matt Hancock's lockdown-breaking affair, the tabloid printed a floorplan of the health secretary's office, complete with details such as "queen painting" and "kiss door". For most people, it was unnecessary detail added to one of the most nauseating moments in modern politics. But for Dan Douglas, a 39-year-old from London, it served as artistic inspiration. "It reminded me of a map from a video game," he says.

On the morning of December 1, 2022, a modified F-16 fighter jet codenamed VISTA X-62A took off from Edwards Air Force Base, roughly 60 miles north of Los Angeles. Over the course of a short test flight, the VISTA engaged in advanced fighter maneuver drills, including simulated aerial dogfights, before landing successfully back at base. While this may sound like business as usual for the US's premier pilot training school--or like scenes lifted straight from Top Gun: Maverick--it was not a fighter pilot at the controls but, for the first time on a tactical aircraft, a sophisticated AI. Overseen by the US Department of Defense, VISTA X-62A undertook 12 AI-led test flights between December 1 and 16, totaling more than 17 hours of autonomous flight time. The breakthrough comes as part of a drive by the United States Air Force Vanguard to develop unmanned combat aerial vehicles.

US auto safety regulators have opened an investigation into Tesla's Model Y SUV after getting two complaints that the steering wheels can come off while being driven. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says the investigation covers an estimated 120,000 vehicles from the 2023 model year. The agency says in both cases the Model Ys were delivered to customers with a missing bolt that holds the wheel to the steering column. A friction fit held the steering wheels on, but they separated when force was exerted while the SUVs were being driven. The agency says in documents posted on its website on Wednesday that both incidents happened while the SUVs had low mileage on them.

Fox News chief national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin has the details from the Pentagon on'America Reports.' The United States may have shot down one of Communist China's spy balloons, but America's problem of surveillance from foreign powers is far from destroyed. Many Americans were alarmed as we watched the Biden administration take a dangerously lazy approach to taking down the Chinese spy balloon. We are right to be upset about this, and demand action in response, but that balloon is just a small piece of Communist China's massive surveillance effort targeting you, our military and American businesses. The harsh reality is that the Chinese Communist Party has been surveilling the United States for years using drones purchased with your taxpayer dollars and operated by your federal government.

Jets can be flown by A.I. and can even take off, land and participate in dogfights. Yes, you read the headline correctly. The United States Defense Department recently confirmed that artificial intelligence successfully flew a jet similar to an F-16 for 17 hours straight. The jet was flown over a series of 12 flights back in December 2022 at the Edwards Air Force Base in Kern County, California. CLICK TO GET KURT'S CYBERGUY NEWSLETTER WITH QUICK TIPS, TECH REVIEWS, SECURITY ALERTS AND EASY HOW-TO'S TO MAKE YOU SMARTER The Defense Department used an experimental plane called the Vista X-62A for the flights.

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. An explosion in eastern Syria on Wednesday killed at least three people, according to reports. A war monitoring group said the blast was likely caused by a drone strike that targeted Iran-backed militiamen. No group claimed responsibility for an attack in the area and reports about what had happened were sketchy.

The cybersecurity firm Darktrace has warned that since the release of ChatGPT it has seen an increase in criminals using artificial intelligence to create more sophisticated scams to con employees and hack into businesses. The Cambridge-based company, which reported a 92% drop in operating profits in the half year to the end of December, said AI was further enabling "hacktivist" cyber-attacks using ransomware to extort money from businesses. The company said it had seen the emergence of more convincing and complex scams by hackers since the launch of the hugely popular Microsoft-backed AI tool ChatGPT last November. "Darktrace has found that while the number of email attacks across its own customer base remained steady since ChatGPT's release, those that rely on tricking victims into clicking malicious links have declined while linguistic complexity, including text volume, punctuation and sentence length among others, have increased," the company said. "This indicates that cybercriminals may be redirecting their focus to crafting more sophisticated social engineering scams that exploit user trust." However, Darktrace said that the phenomenon had not yet resulted in a new wave of cybercriminals emerging, merely changing the tactics of the existing cohort.

AI could benefit society, but it could also become a monster. An artificial intelligence boom is taking over Silicon Valley, with hi-tech firms racing to develop everything from self-driving cars to chatbots capable of writing poetry. Yet AI could also spread conspiracy theories and lies even more quickly than the internet already does – fueling political polarization, hate, violence and mental illness in young people. It could undermine national security with deepfakes. In recent weeks, members of Congress have sounded the alarm over the dangers of AI but no bill has been proposed to protect individuals or stop the development of AI's most threatening aspects.

In an effort to inspire the next generation of space explorers, NASA has partnered with Minecraft to develop "worlds" that are based on its ambitious Artemis Program. Minecraft gamers can now try taking part in NASA's Artemis Program with new Artemis-themed worlds. They were developed through a partnership between NASA's Office of STEM Management and Microsoft, which actually owns Minecraft. Gamers can experience the various tasks that are required for the mission, from building a rocket and launching it to establishing a lunar base. It starts with "Artemis: Rocket Build" mission, where kids will learn about rocket engineering by building and launching a rocket.