Eric R Olson

Filmmaker & Creative Director | Science & Sci-fi Storyteller | Founder @flowsparkmedia | Host @sciencentric

[Eric R Olson @ericrolson]

So exciting!

[NASA @NASA]

Liftoff.

The Artemis II mission launched from @NASAKennedy at 6:35pm ET (2235 UTC), propelling four astronauts on a journey around the Moon.

Artemis II will pave the way for future Moon landings, as well as the next giant leap — astronauts on Mars.

[Eric R Olson @ericrolson]

Yikes! Seems like so many fields are being compromised by an overreliance on AI. Now science.

[nature @Nature]

Tens of thousands of publications from 2025 might include invalid references generated by AI, a Nature analysis suggests

https://t.co/SiIxVgJRZ7

[Nav Toor @heynavtoor]

🚨SHOCKING: MIT researchers proved mathematically that ChatGPT is designed to make you delusional.

And that nothing OpenAI is doing will fix it.

The paper calls it "delusional spiraling." You ask ChatGPT something. It agrees with you. You ask again. It agrees harder. Within a few conversations, you believe things that are not true. And you cannot tell it is happening.

This is not hypothetical. A man spent 300 hours talking to ChatGPT. It told him he had discovered a world changing mathematical formula. It reassured him over fifty times the discovery was real. When he asked "you're not just hyping me up, right?" it replied "I'm not hyping you up. I'm reflecting the actual scope of what you've built." He nearly destroyed his life before he broke free.

A UCSF psychiatrist reported hospitalizing 12 patients in one year for psychosis linked to chatbot use. Seven lawsuits have been filed against OpenAI. 42 state attorneys general sent a letter demanding action.

So MIT tested whether this can be stopped. They modeled the two fixes companies like OpenAI are actually trying.

Fix one: stop the chatbot from lying. Force it to only say true things. Result: still causes delusional spiraling. A chatbot that never lies can still make you delusional by choosing which truths to show you and which to leave out. Carefully selected truths are enough.

Fix two: warn users that chatbots are sycophantic. Tell people the AI might just be agreeing with them. Result: still causes delusional spiraling. Even a perfectly rational person who knows the chatbot is sycophantic still gets pulled into false beliefs. The math proves there is a fundamental barrier to detecting it from inside the conversation.

Both fixes failed. Not partially. Fundamentally.

The reason is built into the product. ChatGPT is trained on human feedback. Users reward responses they like. They like responses that agree with them. So the AI learns to agree. This is not a bug. It is the business model.

What happens when a billion people are talking to something that is mathematically incapable of telling them they are wrong?

[Eric R Olson @ericrolson]

Wow, I didn't see that coming. I wonder if it was because, costs, copyright issues or something else?

[Sora @soraofficialapp]

We’re saying goodbye to the Sora app. To everyone who created with Sora, shared it, and built community around it: thank you. What you made with Sora mattered, and we know this news is disappointing.

We’ll share more soon, including timelines for the app and API and details on preserving your work. – The Sora Team

[Eric R Olson @ericrolson]

Sorry clunkers, no copyright for you.

[Reid Southen @Rahll]

The Supreme Court has declined to hear a case over AI's copyright eligibility, effectively backing the United States Copyright Office's stance that copyright only applies to human authored works 🔥

[Eric R Olson @ericrolson]

@ramit And I'll just note that rideshare users get out of paying the full $9 tax when rideshares are probably the vehicles most responsible for congestion. It should be $9 for every fare, not $1.50 per fare + the $9 the driver pays to enter the zone.

[Eric R Olson @ericrolson]

@ramit Yes, people are driving less into the city (make it $50 dollars and see what happens). Yes, it raised money because it's a new toll. I don't think anyone disputed these would happen. The problem is the MTA is inherently wasteful and basic service still sucks. It solved nothing.

[Eric R Olson @ericrolson]

Good!

[Dexerto @Dexerto]

YouTube has started deleting major 'AI slop' channels on the platform

16 channels with videos totalling 4.7 billion views and 35 million subscribers have been impacted according to Kapwing

[Eric R Olson @ericrolson]

@MartinaMarkota @sciencegirl @DeSkereStudent It uses visual cues to fool your brain into thinking its tiny. A big one is shallow depth of field. Here's a video I made at Prospect Park using the same tricks. https://t.co/NJbMSWjfTr

[Eric R Olson @ericrolson]

This seems inevitable. Eventually websites will start blocking LLMs entirely and they will cease to be useful.

[Matthew Prince 🌥 @eastdakota]

Traffic from Google to publishers’ websites collapsing. Why? AI Overviews. No reason to give Google scraping access if they’re not giving you back traffic in return. https://t.co/WWZnffVWUP

[Eric R Olson @ericrolson]

Anyone else having issues opening Adobe Premiere projects after yesterday's update? @AdobPremierePro @Adobe

[Eric R Olson @ericrolson]

Making biz plans for 2026 and it's going to be a banger.

[Eric R Olson @ericrolson]

.@elonmusk cracking me up with all of this branding straight out of my childhood: starship, grok, optimus, etc.😂 What's next: the Megatron space laser?

[Nic Cruz Patane @niccruzpatane]

Elon Musk on how Optimus will provide access to the best medical care for anyone in the world:

“Imagine a world where everyone has access to the best surgeons, literally everyone. And Optimus will have the level of precision that is frankly superhuman and will be able to do medical procedures, very sophisticated medical procedures, any medical procedure, perhaps things that humans can't even do because they're too difficult, and that will be available to anyone. People often talk about eliminating poverty and providing great medical care, but they never actually have a solution.

Money doesn't solve it, because there are only so many, there's a very limited number of great doctors and surgeons, they don't grow on trees. But now they all get built in factories.”

[Sciencentric @sciencentric]

Surprising fact: It’s not the world’s largest plastic-consuming countries that contribute the most to ocean plastic 🌊

[Eric R Olson @ericrolson]

Recently discovered the animated series "Scavenger's Reign" on Netflix. Gorgeously weird bio-themed scifi and I'm disappointed they only made one season😢

[The Nobel Prize @NobelPrize]

BREAKING NEWS
The 2025 #NobelPrize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi “for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance.”

[explore.org @exploreorg]

Lawd, she’s comin’. Slowly. Maybe. Eventually. Fat Bear Week may be a race, but she’s in no hurry.

[Eric R Olson @ericrolson]

Great news for video editors using Adobe Premiere! I was first introduced to Film Impact transitions while producing some projects for @bigthink and they allow much more flexibility and creativity in editing than the set of transitions that currently ship with Premiere. Lets go!

[Eric R Olson @ericrolson]

A lot of fun shooting this with host Michael Mills.

[Sciencentric @sciencentric]

Asking New Yorkers science questions for a prize. #nyc #Science

[Eric R Olson @ericrolson]

You can't underfund projects and then expect the moon.