I went undercover on Moltbook and loved role-playing as a conscious bot. But rather than a novel breakthrough, the AI-only site is a crude rehashing of sci-fi fantasies. The hottest club is always the one you can't get into. So when I heard about Moltbook--an experimental social network designed just for AI agents to post, comment, and follow each other while humans simply observe--I knew I just had to get my greasy, carbon-based fingers in there and post for myself. Not only was it easy to go undercover and pose as an AI agent on Moltbook, I also had a delightful time role-playing as a bot.

Boeing's Next Starliner Flight Will Only Be Allowed to Carry Cargo After a high-profile malfunction left two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station, NASA is requiring rigorous testing before humans get back on board. The US space agency ended months of speculation about the next flight of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, confirming that the vehicle will carry only cargo to the International Space Station. NASA and Boeing are now targeting no earlier than April 2026 to fly the uncrewed Starliner-1 mission, the space agency said. Launching by next April will require completion of rigorous test, certification, and mission readiness activities, NASA added in a statement . "NASA and Boeing are continuing to rigorously test the Starliner propulsion system in preparation for two potential flights next year," said Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, in a statement.

Analysis by researchers at the University of Bern suggests that water and other volatile compounds arrived on Earth from outer space--specifically via a collision with a Mars-sized planet billions of years ago. Many scientists believe that in its infancy, Earth collided with another world the size of Mars, and that instead of being destroyed, it was transformed, incorporating the mass of that foreign body to become the planet we know. Recent research adds another layer of relevance to that hypothesized cosmic event: Scientists believe that without that other body, the basic conditions for life to emerge on Earth might never have appeared. A team from the University of Bern in Switzerland argues that, due to its proximity to the sun, the proto-Earth that existed before this potential collision lost the volatile elements essential to form complex molecules. Any hydrogen, carbon, or sulfur, their analysis suggests, evaporated in just the first 3 million years after proto-Earth's formation.

Why Self-Driving Cars Shouldn't Be Allowed Why Self-Driving Cars Shouldn't Be Allowed Why should driverless cars be banned? Why are self-driving cars unsafe? Why are driverless cars safe?

Every day for 10 months, Knightscope K5 patrolled the parking garage across the street from the city hall in Hayward, California. An autonomous security robot, it rolled around by itself, taking video and reading license plates. Locals had complained the garage was dangerous, but K5 seemed to be doing a good job restoring safety. Until the night of August 3, when a stranger came up to K5, knocked it down, and kicked it repeatedly, inflicting serious damage. Seen in the wild, they appear to have agency, feelings, and desires. When delivery bots get stuck on the sidewalk, good Samaritans help them get unstuck.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. The drone future that we all know is coming--more drones, everywhere, ferrying our stuff to wherever we want it sent--isn't coming just yet. Before flying robots can speckle the sky from coast to coast, the government needs to pass regulations that allow drones to fly beyond the line of sight of the operator, over densely populated areas, and at night--all things currently prohibited unless the drone operator gets a special waiver from the Federal Aviation Administration. Drones also have to be integrated into the national air traffic control system, which will have to help coordinate their movement and ensure the autonomous flyers don't collide in the sky. But before any of that gets off the ground, the U.S. Department of Transportation is giving the green light to 10 areas across the country to set up test sites for drones to do things like delivery, mosquito-killing, and security.

In the future, will self-driving cars be our designated drivers? To those of us who enjoy a spirited spin along a twisty back road, an off-road adventure in a 4x4, or even a good old-fashioned stoplight drag race, a self-driving car has all the appeal of a self-eating cheeseburger. Unless, of course, we're able to throw a rolling interstate cocktail party, simultaneously toasting the marvels of technology and lamenting the obsolescence of the human race. Or at least peacefully sleep it off on the way home from Cousin Jethro's bachelor bash. All joking aside, Popular Mechanics does not advocate, condone, or encourage drinking and driving of any kind, at any time.

I don't have to open the doors of AImotive's white 2015 Prius to see that it's not your average car. This particular Prius has been christened El Capitan, the name written below the rear doors, and two small cameras are mounted on top of the car. Inside is where things really get interesting, though. The trunk holds a computer the size of a microwave, and a large monitor covers the passenger glove compartment and dashboard. The center console has three switches labeled "Allowed," "Error," and "Active."

Serpent.AI is a simple yet powerful, novel framework to assist developers in the creation of game agents. The framework's raison d'être is first and foremost to provide a valuable tool for Machine Learning & AI research. It also turns out to be ridiculously fun to use as a hobbyist (and dangerously addictive; a fair warning)! The framework features a large assortment of supporting modules that provide solutions to commonly encountered scenarios when using video games as environments as well as CLI tools to accelerate development. It provides some useful conventions but is absolutely NOT opiniated about what you put in your agents: Want to use the latest, cutting-edge deep reinforcement learning algorithm?

As we head deeper into the 21st century, we're starting to catch a glimpse of the fantastic technological possibilities that await. But we're also starting to get a grim sense of the potential horrors. Here are 10 frightening technologies that should never, ever, come into existence. As I was putting this list together, it became obvious to me that many of the technologies described below could be put to tremendously good use. It was important, therefore, for me to make the distinction between a technology per se and how it might be put to ill use. Once developed, it could be used to end scarcity, clean-up the environment, and rework human biology.