Elon Musk and Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak have recently signed a letter calling for a six-month moratorium on the development of AI systems. The goal is to give society time to adapt to what the signatories describe as an "AI summer", which they believe will ultimately benefit humanity, as long as the right guardrails are put in place. These guardrails include rigorously audited safety protocols. It is a laudable goal, but there is an even better way to spend these six months: retiring the hackneyed label of "artificial intelligence" from public debate. The term belongs to the same scrapheap of history that includes "iron curtain", "domino theory" and "Sputnik moment".

Flushing a urinal may produce an "alarming upward flow" of inhalable coronavirus particles, increasing the need for a face mask when in a public restroom, according to a new study. The study, from Yangzhou University in China, which was published in the Physics of Fluid journal on Monday, showed that when flushed, a urinal will allow coronavirus particles to "travel faster and fly father" than a traditional toilet flush. "Urinal flushing indeed promotes the spread of bacteria and viruses," researcher Xiangdong Liu said in a press release (via USA Today). "Wearing a mask should be mandatory within public restrooms during the pandemic, and anti-diffusion improvements are urgently needed to prevent the spread of COVID-19." For the study, researchers measured urinal flushing with computer models, which estimated that in just five seconds into a flush, virus particles could reach a height of more than 2 feet above the ground.

THE HAGUE - A Dutch inventor is banking on a new bovine urinal to help cut emissions that cause environmental damage. Tests have started on a farm in the Netherlands on the device, which collects some of the 15 to 20 liters (4 to 5 gallons) of urine that the average cow produces a day. That produces huge amounts of ammonia in a country like the Netherlands, which is the world's second-biggest agricultural exporter, after the United States. "We are tackling the problem at the source," Henk Hanskamp, the Dutch inventor and businessman behind the "Cow Toilet," said Friday. "A cow is never going to be completely clean. The way the toilet works is "udderly" ingenious. The urinal is in a box placed behind the cow, while in front is a feeding trough. Once the animal finishes eating a robot arm stimulates a nerve near the udders, which then makes it want to urinate. The cow toilets are currently being tested on a farm near the eastern Dutch town of Doetinchem, and seven of its 58 cows have already learned how to use them without the need for stimulation. "The cows have got used to it," Hanskamp said. "They recognize the box, lift their tail and pee." "The stables have become cleaner and the ground is drier.

In Mansfield, Ohio, 1962, police set up hidden cameras in a public bathroom to record consensual sexual activity between men. An artist named William E Jones, who was born in Ohio that same year, later found the footage online, edited out a voiceover that he described as "as illiterate and hateful a text as I have ever heard committed to film", and released the result in 2007 as a "found footage" documentary called Tearoom (US slang for a public bathroom in which men meet to have anonymous sex). The footage reveals the men involved were diverse in appearance – and presumably background – but all were wary. And with good reason: many of them were later arrested. Public bathrooms have long been a battlefield where LGBT people are targeted by the law.