What to watch with your kids: ‘Joker: Folie à Deux,’ ‘Piece by Piece’ and more

Pope Francis met Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the Vatican on Friday, the latest step to win support for his proposed “victory plan” aimed at ending the war with Russia.

This pup had a ruff day. Dogs like to sniff around and get a bite of anything they can get their paws on. But after a Colorado dog found a colorful snack, Orbeez, he ended up pooping out a rainbow of colorful balls. After a Colorado dog found a colorful snack, Orbeez, he ended up...

With November 5 just weeks away, we asked swing state voters whether or not they’ve been enjoying the election season.

The safest thing for most farm animals during a hurricane is to leave them outside rather than in a barn.

A woman has written into a parenting advice column after she and her husband adopted her SIL's twins. 

"There have been a lot of things that have been kind of confusing. It hasn't been a great situation for the Jets this year. You can kind of feel there's been kind of a chill."

Five people were killed in a plane crash on California’s Catalina Islands after the small aircraft took off from the airport without clearance. The twin-engine Beechcraft 95 crashed just after takeoff around 8 p.m. Tuesday night about a mile west from the Catalina Airport near the island city of Avalon, according to the Federal Aviation...

While the Mets still have a lot to do this season, including perhaps reaching their first World Series since 2015 and winning their first since 1986, the final calculation for the qualifying offer at $21.05 million does remind us just how close so many key offseason issues are. And here is one that should be...

It's Friday and we have new movies: the romantic tearjerker 'We Live in Time' and the Pharrell Williams Lego biopic, 'Piece by Piece.' Are they worth a look?

CNN host Jake Tapper asked if Vice President Kamala Harris should be doing more campaign events with just weeks to go before the presidential election.

Orlando theme parks reopened for business as usual Friday, after closing for Hurricane Milton.

He has played well enough over the past three months that it’s not crazy to ask if the Yankees extend him the qualifying offer.

Editorial expansion follows historic year of subscription growth and return to profitability

A Wall Street Journal poll has found almost no separation between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris among voters in swing states.

The "It Ends With Us" actress and the "Deadpool" actor donated the funds after the charity thanked Swift, their BFF, for giving them $5 million.

The body of one man was recovered from a dam while a woman was discovered burned to death in a shack, authorities said.

Vice President Kamala Harris faced Latino voters at a Univision town hall, where she was grilled with questions on the economy, immigration and her plans for the White House.

National Geographic has the story of the potential discovery of Andrew "Sandy" Irvine, who disappeared attempting to climb Everest in 1924.

AI companies are on a mission to radically change our world. They’re working on building machines that could outstrip human intelligence and unleash a dramatic economic transformation on us all.  Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, has basically told us he’s trying to build a god — or “magic intelligence in the sky,” as he puts it. OpenAI’s official term for this is artificial general intelligence, or AGI. Altman says that AGI will not only “break capitalism” but also that it’s “probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity.”  There’s a very natural question here: Did anyone actually ask for this kind of AI? By what right do a few powerful tech CEOs get to decide that our whole world should be turned upside down?  As I’ve written before, it’s clearly undemocratic that private companies are building tech that aims to totally change the world without seeking buy-in from the public. In fact, even leaders at the major companies are expressing unease about how undemocratic it is. Jack Clark, the co-founder of the AI company Anthropic, told Vox last year that it’s “a real weird thing that this is not a government project.” He also wrote that there are several key things he’s “confused and uneasy” about, including, “How much permission do AI developers need to get from society before irrevocably changing society?” Clark continued: Technologists have always had something of a libertarian streak, and this is perhaps best epitomized by the ‘social media’ and Uber et al era of the 2010s — vast, society-altering systems ranging from social networks to rideshare systems were deployed into the world and aggressively scaled with little regard to the societies they were influencing. This form of permissionless invention is basically the implicitly preferred form of development as epitomized by Silicon Valley and the general ‘move fast and break things’ philosophy of tech. Should the same be true of AI? I’ve noticed that when anyone questions that norm of “permissionless invention,” a lot of tech enthusiasts push back. Their objections always seem to fall into one of three categories. Because this is such a perennial and important debate, it’s worth tackling each of them in turn — and why I think they’re wrong.  Objection 1: “Our use is our consent”   ChatGPT is the fastest-growing consumer application in history: It had 100 million active users just two months after it launched. There’s no disputing that lots of people genuinely found it really cool. And it spurred the release of other chatbots, like Claude, which all sorts of people are getting use out of — from journalists to coders to busy parents who want someone (or something) else to make the goddamn grocery list. Some claim that this simple fact — we’re using the AI! — proves that people consent to what the major companies are doing.  This is a common claim, but I think it’s very misleading. Our use of an AI system is not tantamount to consent. By “consent” we typically mean informed consent, not consent born of ignorance or coercion.  Much of the public is not informed about the true costs and benefits of these systems. How many people are aware, for instance, that generative AI sucks up so much energy that companies like Google and Microsoft are reneging on their climate pledges as a result? Plus, we all live in choice environments that coerce us into using technologies we’d rather avoid. Sometimes we “consent” to tech because we fear we’ll be at a professional disadvantage if we don’t use it. Think about social media. I would personally not be on X (formerly known as Twitter) if not for the fact that it’s seen as important for my job as a journalist. In a recent survey, many young people said they wish social media platforms were never invented, but given that these platforms do exist, they feel pressure to be on them. Even if you think someone’s use of a particular AI system does constitute consent, that doesn’t mean they consent to the bigger project of building AGI.  This brings us to an important distinction: There’s narrow AI — a system that’s purpose-built for a specific task (say, language translation) — and then there’s AGI. Narrow AI can be fantastic! It’s helpful that AI systems can perform a crude copy edit of your work for free or let you write computer code using just plain English. It’s awesome that AI is helping scientists better understand disease. And it’s extremely awesome that AI cracked the protein-folding problem — the challenge of predicting which 3D shape a protein will fold into — a puzzle that stumped biologists for 50 years. The Nobel Committee for Chemistry clearly agrees: It just gave a Nobel prize to AI pioneers for enabling this breakthrough, which will help with drug discovery. But that is different from the attempt to build a general-purpose reasoning machine that outstrips humans, a “magic intelligence in the sky.” While plenty of people do want narrow AI, polling shows that most Americans do not want AGI. Which brings us to … Objection 2: “The public is too ignorant to tell innovators how to innovate”  Here’s a quote commonly (though dubiously) attributed to car-maker Henry Ford: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” The claim here is that there’s a good reason why genius inventors don’t ask for the public’s buy-in before releasing a new invention: Society is too ignorant or unimaginative to know what good innovation looks like. From the printing press and the telegraph to electricity and the internet, many of the great technological innovations in history happened because a few individuals decided on them by fiat. But that doesn’t mean deciding by fiat is always appropriate. The fact that society has often let inventors do that may be partly because of technological solutionism, partly because of a belief in the “great man” view of history, and partly because, well, it would have been pretty hard to consult broad swaths of society in an era before mass communications — before things like a printing press or a telegraph!  And while those inventions did come with perceived risks and real harms, they didn’t pose the threat of wiping out humanity altogether or making us subservient to a different species. For the few technologies we’ve invented so far that meet that bar, seeking democratic input and establishing mechanisms for global oversight have been attempted, and rightly so. It’s the reason we have a Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and a Biological Weapons Convention — treaties that, though it’s a struggle to implement them effectively, matter a lot for keeping our world safe. It’s true, of course, that most people don’t understand the nitty-gritty of AI. So, the argument here is not that the public should be dictating the minutiae of AI policy. It’s that it’s wrong to ignore the public’s general wishes when it comes to questions like “Should the government enforce safety standards before a catastrophe occurs or only punish companies after the fact?” and “Are there certain kinds of AI that shouldn’t exist at all?”.  As Daniel Colson, the executive director of the nonprofit AI Policy Institute, told me last year, “Policymakers shouldn’t take the specifics of how to solve these problems from voters or the contents of polls. The place where I think voters are the right people to ask, though, is: What do you want out of policy? And what direction do you want society to go in?” Objection 3: “It’s impossible to curtail innovation anyway”  Finally, there’s the technological inevitability argument, which says that you can’t halt the march of technological progress — it’s unstoppable! This is a myth. In fact, there are lots of technologies that we’ve decided not to build, or that we’ve built but placed very tight restrictions on. Just think of human cloning or human germline modification. The recombinant DNA researchers behind the Asilomar Conference of 1975 famously organized a moratorium on certain experiments. We are, notably, still not cloning humans.   Or think of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. Adopted by the United Nations against the backdrop of the Cold War, it barred nations from doing certain things in space — like storing their nuclear weapons there. Nowadays, the treaty comes up in debates about whether we should send messages into space with the hope of reaching extraterrestrials. Some argue that’s dangerous because an alien species, once aware of us, might conquer and oppress us. Others argue it’ll be great — maybe the aliens will gift us their knowledge in the form of an Encyclopedia Galactica! Either way, it’s clear that the stakes are incredibly high and all of human civilization would be affected, prompting some to make the case for democratic deliberation before intentional transmissions are sent into space. As the old Roman proverb goes: What touches all should be decided by all. That is as true of superintelligent AI as it is of nukes, chemical weapons, or interstellar broadcasts. 

“I think that he should keep his comments to people who drive trucks rather than people who drive ships,” Collins said.

The NFL’s command center may need to upgrade. The league did not overturn a clear turnover by the Seahawks since it did not have the proper video showing a muffed punt return by Seattle during its 36-24 home loss to the 49ers. The ball clearly hit Seattle’s Dee Williams fingertips before being recovered by San...

A joint Egyptian-German archaeological mission found the tomb of an ancient governor's daughter. Two tombs were found, one inside the other, covered in intricate script and art.

Author Ta-Nehisi Coates suggested Wednesday he would have taken part in the Oct. 7 terrorist attack against Israel based on the “oppression" Gazans face.

Pierre-Luc Dubois, who understands the skepticism that surrounds him, is getting another fresh start with the Washington Capitals, who open their season Saturday.

Vice President Kamala Harris appears on Vogue's latest cover in a gushing profile describing her as the "candidate for our times."

"If I could get every single one of them up here, I would love that," Justin Hartley said about his "This Is Us" co-stars.

“I think the food’s probably the roughest part of it," Combs' attorney, Marc Agnifilo, told reporters outside of a federal courthouse in Manhattan on Thursday.

Iran’s domestic airline, already sanctioned for support to Russia, is being accused of aiding Hezbollah by an Iranian dissident group who has called for additional sanctions to be put on the carrier.

Ron Galella Collection via Getty ImagesMichael Edwards issued a statement Thursday denying claims made in Lisa Marie Presley’s posthumous memoir that he sexually abused the singer for several years beginning when she was 10.“These claims are absolutely untrue. I never molested Lisa Marie and am shocked at the suggestion I did,” said Edwards, who was in a relationship with Lisa Marie’s mother Priscilla Presley at the time of the alleged abuse.According to From Here to the Great Unknown, a memoir that Lisa Marie, daughter of Elvis Presley, was writing at the time of her death in 2023, Edwards allegedly entered her room in the middle of the night and said he was going to “teach me what was going to happen when I got older” before molesting her. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Mildew and other odors are very off-putting. Here’s what you can do to get rid of them.

On our very first date, I was eating from his plate. Could he be the one I've been looking for, especially after having a series of bad dates with other guys?

Michelle Chambers, who worked for the state attorney general and is a former Compton City Council member, is more likely to be the representative the district needs.

Harley talked potential love triangles,This Is Us crossovers, and more.

...plus Cate Blanchett in Disclaimer on Apple TV+, Sweetpea on Starz + more.

That was a touchdown celebration for the books.

San Jose State University has said no future opponents have informed them they plan to cancel matches, amid controversy over a transgender player on the team.

Anna Moneymaker/Getty ImagesThe ghostwriter for Donald Trump’s best–selling book The Art of the Deal has warned that if he returns to the White House, the former president will seek “revenge and domination.”Tony Schwartz claims Trump is haunted by his upbringing with a hard-driving father disdainful of any form of weakness.“If he does win back the presidency, it’s hard to imagine that he’ll have much more on his mind than revenge and domination—damn the consequences—in his doomed, lifelong quest to feel good enough,” writes Schwartz in The New York Times.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Just one night after the Mets clinched their stunning NLCS berth, the top-seeded Yankees slammed the door on the Royals’ fairy-tale season.

The fisherman was saved by a US Coast Guard helicopter crew on Thursday after he was spotted floating on the open cooler in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.

Tim Walz said that he wasn’t sure anyone does “everything right” but that President Joe Biden has “done everything in the best interests of the American public."

UFC chief Dana White has come out swinging against Vice President Kamala Harris, saying the fact she is "incapable of putting a sentence together" should “SCARE THE SH-T” out of everyone.

Dodgers announce late Thursday that Yoshinobu Yamamoto will be their starter for Game 5 against the Padres.

David Peterson made 21 starts this season — generally excellent, with a 2.90 ERA — before taking on a new role as a big-time playoff reliever.

Police share last-known images of Montana woman, hoping to generate new leads. "Someone out there knows what happened to Jermain Charlo" says detective.

New Zealand's Defense Minister has rebukes claims that the appointment of a female captain to commandeer a $61 million navy ship ultimately led to its sinking.

Comedic actor Eddie Griffin shredded Vice President Kamala Harris as a "liar" during a podcast, declaring he might support former President Trump.

Rescue teams plucked Florida residents from the flotsam of Hurricane Milton after the storm smashed through coastal communities.

The Jacksonville Jaguars finally got their losing streak broken last week, but team legend Maurice Jones-Drew believes a win streak can begin in a very familiar place in London.