Years before she became the peculiar central thread linking a double homicide in Pennsylvania, the fatal shooting of a federal agent in Vermont and the murder of an elderly landlord in California, a computer programmer bought a sailboat. The programmer was known to friends, foes and followers as Ziz. She had come to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2016 as part of an influx of young people arriving to study the dangers that artificial intelligence could pose to humanity. In one of the most expensive regions of the United States, however, it is difficult to save the world when you can't make rent. So she bought a boat for 600 and moored it next to a friend's vessel in a marina. For five years, she used it as an occasional, cramped bunk. In her waking hours, she worked on a blog of provocative and increasingly extreme ideas about confrontation and retaliation. At night, she fell asleep as the boat rocked back and forth, drifting with the flotsam of greater Silicon Valley. Then, on the night of 19 August 2022, her sister and a friend reported that they saw her fall overboard. The Coast Guard and local authorities scrambled boats and aircraft. After a nearly 30-hour search, neither Ziz nor her body could be found. A newspaper in Alaska, where she was born, published a short obituary referring to her by her birth name: "Jack Amadeus LaSota left our lives but not our hearts on Aug 19 after a boating accident. Loving adventure, friends and family, music, blueberries, biking, computer games and animals, you are missed." Ziz's ideas did not die in the waters of the California coast. She had faked her drowning and gone underground, before being arrested last month in western Maryland and charged with trespassing and illegal transportation of a firearm. The targets of Ziz's ire, who include some of Silicon Valley's most prominent intellectuals, have taken security precautions. "Ziz is not stupid," someone familiar with her, who asked to remain anonymous, told me. "This is a very smart person – both smart and crazy." Ziz's writing had polarized members of a niche but influential movement of AI theorists and tech bloggers who call themselves the "rationalists". The movement is less about specific ideas than it is about an ethos – applying rigorous, mathematically informed thinking to AI, philosophy, psychology and the big questions of our time. Rationalists are odd, though often charming, people. They tend to be fantasy and sci-fi geeks, use lots of jargon and think intensely about things other people barely think about at all.

Zack Snyder doesn't seem to be all that worried about AI disrupting the filmmaking world, bringing scores of novices to the fold. At WIRED's The Big Interview event in San Francisco on Tuesday, the director told managing editor Hemal Jhaveri that "every single person has a pretty good movie camera on their phone and yet we don't have--right this second, anyway--millions of awesome movies being uploaded out of peoples' pockets." That doesn't mean he thinks Hollywood creatives can avoid AI altogether. "Educating yourself and understanding what it can and can't do is important right now, especially where it exists in image-making and storytelling," Snyder said. "You have to understand what it is and what it's not capable of, and you have to be able to use it as a tool as opposed to standing on the sidelines with your hands on your hips."

There are nearly seven million people currently diagnosed with Alzheimer's in the US, and while there is no cure, experts are searching for ways to prevent it. That is because stories about far off lands and mythical creatures require readers to remember what happened early on in the book to understand the ending. 'Fiction may elicit more intense emotions and imagery in addition to new facts and ideas from reading non-fiction books,' said Dr. Zaldy Tan, a professor of neurology and medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. 'But more than the type of book, the key here is sustainability, Tan said, adding: 'I recommend people challenge their minds by reading something new to them.' Alzheimer's disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the US with 6.9 million people living with the disease which is expected to double by 2050 Neuroscientists have suggested that remaining physically active and engaging in other activities like knitting, playing chess and puzzles and gardening could also prevent cognitive decline. 'Leisure activities including reading have been associated with lower risk of developing dementia in older adults,' Tan told DailyMail.com.

Dating expert Cher Gopman shares how to find love in the new year on'Fox & Friends.' Being single on Valentine's Day can be annoying for some people -- but so can dating. And at a time when online dating is the new norm, experts say there are easier ways to drum up love without swiping for it. Dr. Susan Albersis, a psychologist at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, told Fox News Digital in a statement that online dating is a "double-edged sword." "On one hand, it creates wonderful connections," she said. "The downside is that it can often bruise your self-esteem."

Supply chain professionals are optimistic about the potential for artificial intelligence within their operations, but they have also struggled with the technology during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a survey from Secondmind, which develops machine-learning applications for businesses. The survey (which polled more than 500 supply chain managers and planners using AI) found that 90% of respondents believe AI will transform supply chains for the better by 2025, while 82% have been frustrated by AI-powered decisions during the course of the pandemic. The discrepancy highlights potential barriers of AI while underscoring that professionals who have experienced these issues still see a future for the technology. AI is an umbrella term that can include many statistical or computer science techniques. Gary Brotman, vice president of product and marketing at Secondmind, said he views AI as a term for processes that allow a computer to do something that would traditionally be done by a person.

Companies are making more use of algorithmic hiring tools to screen a flood of job applicants during the coronavirus pandemic amid questions about whether they introduce new forms of bias into the early vetting process. The tools are designed to more efficiently filter out candidates that don't meet certain job-related criteria, like prior work experience, and to recruit potential hires via their online profiles. Businesses like HireVue offer biometric scanning tools that give applicant feedback based on facial expressions, while others like Pymetrics use behavioral tests to home in on ideal candidates. Companies including Colgate-Palmolive Co., McDonald's Corp., Boston Consulting Group Inc., PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, and Kraft Heinz Co. are using them at a time when 21 million people in the U.S. were without jobs and seeking employment in May, according to the Labor Department. Job candidates might be unable or unwilling to apply and interview in person because of rules limiting social gatherings, said Monica Snyder, a workplace privacy attorney at Fisher Phillips in Boston.

Washington – Can your Fitbit or Apple Watch detect a coronavirus infection before the onset of symptoms? Researchers are increasingly looking at these devices and other such wearables as a possible early-warning system for the deadly virus. Last month, scientists at the West Virginia University Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute said they had created a digital platform that can detect COVID-19 symptoms up to three days before they show up using the Oura ring, a wearable fitness and activity tracker. An app developed by the researchers uses artificial intelligence to forecast the onset of COVID-19 related symptoms such as fever, coughing, breathing difficulties and fatigue, with over 90 percent accuracy, according to the university. The researchers said the system could offer clues of infection in people not yet showing symptoms -- helping address one of the problems in detection and containment of the deadly outbreak.

A long line stretched across the show floor at CES this week as attendees eagerly waited for their chance to sit inside the Bell Nexus 4EX air taxi. This is the firm's second version of the fully electric flying vehicle, which now boasts a larger wing than its predecessor that made an appearance at the Las Vegas event in 2019. The redesigned craft can carry up to five passengers for 60 miles at a speed of around 150 miles per hour – and could take off in the next five years. Bell is part of Uber Elevate, which is the ride-hailing giant's initiative that aims to fast-track the process of bringing taxis to the skies, a concept it has already explored with plans to launch UberAIR in the future. A long line stretched across the show floor at CES this week as attendees eagerly waited for their chance to sit inside the Bell Nexus 4EX air taxi.

Digital technology is widely accepted as a necessary part of driving improved supply chain efficiency and effectiveness. But some business leaders think it could go a step further, suggesting the technology could propel not only greater productivity, but help craft an autonomous supply chain able to identify, forecast and fix problems on its own. A combination of technologies, from artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning to digital twins and cloud computing, have made it increasingly possible for end-to-end supply chains to make decisions without the need for human intervention. These technologies, which appear to have all the right ingredients for the formation of an autonomous supply chain, are slowly permeating the market. Ocado is using advanced autonomous supply chain processes to help make accurate predictions.

As far back as the 1970s, doctors have pondered whether one day, as medical technology barrels ahead, the patient history and physical examination (H&P) would eventually become obsolete. And yet, we were all told in medical school that a proper history is enough to make X percent of diagnoses, which increases further when you work in physical findings. But today we are on the brink of the era of multiomics, a term encompassing the numerous data available for patients, from genomics, epigenomics, proteomics, microbiomics, metabolomics, and an array of other omics. These days, a health dataset from a single patient can be immense, to be sure. Advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, however, are making it possible to organize and filter multiomic data from a patient in ways that make them useful to physicians--ways that can personalize diagnosis and care, and bypass the often imperfect recollections of patients and patients' families obtained during a history.