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Can chickens really run around with their heads cut off?
There's lore about chickens surviving from seconds to months after their heads are chopped off, but what does the science say?
Eagle man sentenced for defrauding Garden City business, IRS
EAGLE (Idaho Statesman) — An Eagle man has been sentenced to 52 months in federal prison on embezzlement and tax fraud charges, according to the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Idaho. Miles J. Elletson, 55, pleaded guilty to wire fraud and filing false tax returns, defrauding Alloway Electric, a contracting company in […]
S.F. measles case highlights risk for babies too young for vaccine
Even parents following standard measles vaccination guidance, which recommends the first shot at 12 to 15 months, may find their infants exposed to the disease as it resurges globally, experts say.
Neanderthal Babies Were Apparently Built Different and Reached Toddler Size in Only Six Months
A 50,000-year-old infant skeleton reveals our extinct cousins grew up surprisingly fast to survive
‘We just need someone who’s not crazy’: Inside the White House decision to nominate Erica Schwartz as CDC director
Over the course of 12 months, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has seen a traumatic shooting, abrupt leadership changes and a shattering of its image as a globally respected public health agency.
Arc Raiders Players are Disappointed in the New Expedition Changes
Embark Studios has once again announced tweaks to the Arc Raiders Expedition window, and players who have spent months saving millions of credits are feeling left behind.
Months-old start-up Recursive Superintelligence raises $500mn for self-teaching AI
Group founded by former engineers at DeepMind and OpenAI secures $4bn valuation in deal with Google’s venture arm and Nvidia
Former Wisconsin man sentenced to 20 months in federal prison
Court records show U.S. District Judge James Peterson sentenced Roger Hoffman on Wednesday.
Former Wisconsin man sentenced to 20 months in federal prison for illegal campaign contributions
A federal judge has sentenced a former Wisconsin man to 20 months in prison for making campaign contributions after renouncing his U.S. citizenship | 1010 WINS
Millions risk health coverage as they skip paying higher Obamacare premiums
A new report showed about 14% of Affordable Care Act enrollees didn't pay their premiums in January, signaling that millions more could be losing health coverage in the coming months.
MLB Broadcaster Defends AI Usage After Internet Pile on Following Health Struggles
MLB broadcaster Angie Mentink defended her use of AI after a viral video showed her asking for questions to ask after a 'tough loss' on Thursday, April 16. Mentink has suffered a stroke two months prior.
Destiny 2’s Re-Release Of A Botched Iron Banner Is Embarrassing
Destiny 2 brought Iron Banner back, filled with obvious problems that Bungie says will not be fixed for months.
The Science Of Taper As Preparation For Swim Performance
After months of research, Cooper Gill found that taper matters more than most people think, and the biggest factor isn’t fitness, it’s fatigue.
Wild 4 months of transformation continue for Iowa State athletics
It has been an absolute flurry of activity — lots of good, some trying and plenty to be determined — over four months in Ames.
Ohio governor race between Ramaswamy, Acton turns ugly
The fight over who'll be the next Ohio governor is getting ugly. And the election is still more than six months away.
Wheat price heading for biggest jump in two months as Iran war threatens food insecurity
Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news
Grand Junction students gain real-world business experience through investor pitch event
Young Entrepreneurs Academy participants present months of work to local business leaders for feedback and funding
Grand Junction students gain real-world business experience through investor pitch event
Young Entrepreneurs Academy participants present months of work to local business leaders for feedback and funding
Trump nominates former Coast Guard doctor as CDC chief
The nomination comes after months of interim leadership at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A vaccine standoff and other key moments from RFK Jr.'s first congressional hearing in months
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended a more than 12% proposed cut to his department's budget and dodged arrows from angry Democrats as he kicked off an expected sprint of seven hearings in Congress over the next seven days.
‘Crimson Desert’ Still Isn’t Addressing One Of Its Biggest Problems
There is one Crimson Desert issue that isn’t being discussed, not even for a months-long roadmap, that remains a big issue with the game.
Why ARC Raiders’ Player Count Is Down 80% In 3.5 Months
ARC Raiders has experienced an absolutely tremendous, very fast drop in players on Steam, down from a peak concurrent player count of 466,000 in January to 90,000 today.
How Dangerous Is Anthropic’s New AI Model? Its Chief Science Officer Explains.
Just how fast is the future coming at us, and how worried should we be? Last week, Anthropic announced Claude Mythos, the latest in what has become the leading family of AI models. In a very short time, AI models from Anthropic and other companies have become shockingly powerful at coding. But Mythos stands out because it is not just able to write code that can hack into critical systems, like those that run financial companies, but also to analyze systems and find and string together vulnerabilities in them, allowing Mythos to evade even sophisticated defenses. Anthropic chose to release Mythos to only about 40 leading corporations, so they could analyze the model’s capabilities and prepare countermeasures, in an effort it calls Project Glasswing. The release of Mythos—and the prospect of similarly powerful AIs to follow—has caused tremors at the top levels of Washington and corporate America. Jared Kaplan, co-founder and chief science officer at Anthropic, is at the center of this breakthrough. We sat down with Kaplan so he could walk us through just how powerful Mythos is, what the implications are for issues like our personal privacy, and what comes next. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Sean Fischer: For the layman, how is Claude Mythos different—more powerful, more dangerous—from previous models released by Anthropic? Jared Kaplan: I think most people have experienced the fact that our computers get faster and faster over time and over many decades. There’s this very smooth trend where every 18 months, maybe, computer processing power doubles. I think AI is on a trend in which it’s improving maybe 10 times faster than that. A lot of the earliest work that I did in AI was around identifying this scaling trend in AI. Claude Mythos is the latest model from Anthropic, but it’s not different because it’s qualitatively different. It’s really just kind of the culmination of the trend of AI models getting smarter and smarter at all kinds of general capabilities, from reasoning to software engineering to scientific research to knowledge work. For us, it was the first model to demonstrate very elite-level cybersecurity capabilities. It wasn’t because we trained Claude Mythos to focus on cybersecurity, but it was because, as a byproduct of its general intelligence and its general ability with software, it’s particularly good at identifying vulnerabilities in software and how to exploit them.
China doubles ‘AI for science’ computing scale in 2 months using no US chips
The Zhengzhou core node becomes the country’s most powerful scientific intelligent computing infrastructure, CCTV says.
Democratic lawmakers seek fix to Colorado’s stalled prison population plan
Colorado’s prison population plan was designed to prevent overcrowding. Instead, eight months after it was triggered, the system remains strained and largely ineffective, prompting two Democratic lawmakers to push for changes through new legislation. According to its sponsors, Senate Bill 036 lays out the proposed changes. Sen. Mike Weissman and Sen. Julie Gonzales say the […]
Siri Engineers Sent to AI Coding Bootcamp as Apple Prepares to Deliver Siri Overhaul
Apple is sending a large portion of its Siri engineers to a multi-week bootcamp to learn to code using AI, reports The Information. Apple's decision to teach its programmers to better use AI for coding comes just two months before Apple is expected to unveil a smarter, more capable version of Siri at WWDC. While employees attend the coding bootcamp, around 60 members of the Siri development team will stick around to work on Siri, and an additional 60 will evaluate how Siri is performing.
Apple Sends Siri Staffers to Coding ‘Bootcamp’ in Latest Shakeup For Organization
Apple is sending a portion of its Siri programmers back to coding school just two months before the company is expected to unveil a major, AI-powered revamp of the voice assistant, people familiar with the team said. The company plans to send a significant chunk of people working on Siri—a group ...
Republicans waited months for Tax Day to showcase economic relief for voters. But will the Iran war overshadow those savings?
PNC Gives Update on Private Business Lender Exposure
That's PNC Financial's exposure to private business lenders, including private-credit funds. The bank said that $7 billion of that figure is in the form of loans to private-credit providers, a focus of jittery investors in recent months. The remainder, $26 billion, is in the form of trade receivabl
Joey and Pacey forever! Katie Holmes and Joshua Jackson walk the red carpet together at 'Brunello' screening
Katie Holmes and Joshua Jackson had a sweet 'Dawson's Creek' reunion on the red carpet Tuesday night, which comes two months after the untimely death of their costar James Van Der Beek.
US Soccer Federation Sporting Director Matt Crocker resigns
A leadership shake up just months before the World Cup
Omnicom Health rebrands FCB Health New York to Olixir New York
The move comes about four months after Omnicom Health rebranded DDB Health to Remedy Edge.
New Willmar entertainment venue teaming up with Rendezvous Axe Throwing
(Willmar MN-) Shining Light Entertainment at The Uptown Willmar Mall is getting closer to opening. Co-Owner Jason Miller says in addition to laser tag and mini-golf, they will be teaming up with Rendezvous Axe Throwing......Victoria Hibma of Rendezvous Axe Throwing says their location on West Litchfield Avenue is now closed and the building, which also houses an operating laundry mat, is for sale. They are in the process of moving their throwing lanes and kitchen equipment to the Shining Light location, across from Golden Ticket Cinema, in the former Chen Garden Restaurant space. Shining Light had hoped to open this past winter, but Miller now hopes to be in operation in less than 2 months......
After his own diagnosis, New Orleans Broadway star starts foundation for children with Type 1 diabetes
Kyle Banks was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes during his Broadway tour of Disney's The Lion King after months of struggling with symptoms. Now, the New Orleans native wants to give back to his roots by providing resources for Louisiana children and families living with the disease.
See how LSU’s coastal environmental science major produces successful graduates
The LSU Olinde Career Center’s outcomes data for last year’s undergraduate class revealed high starting salaries and an increased positive outcome rate for coastal environmental sciences. A positive outcome means a graduate has secured an opportunity such as employment or admission to graduate school within six months of graduating. CES graduates had a positive outcome...
Brian Kelly on LSU firing: 'I didn’t win enough games, period.' What's next?
Six months after LSU firing, Brian Kelly tells USA TODAY Sports the problem was simple: ‘I didn’t win enough.’ But he wants to coach again.
Medical scans and chips: the hidden fallout of the Iran war for China
Four months ago, a dozen academics and researchers from China’s top oil and gas producers issued a warning buried in an academic journal: the nation’s quest for self-sufficiency had a critical weak spot.
Months-long road closure creating problems for Beaver County businesses
Minneapolis Schools withheld money from employee health plan account for 10 months
The school district’s financial maneuver, which has not previously been reported, risked creating a shortfall in the health care account.
How Canada’s Carney Used His Political Savvy to Win a Majority
In six months, the prime minister orchestrated the defection of five lawmakers to his side and won a special election.
Republicans’ big 2026 problem: An unhinged Trump who doesn’t seem to care about them
It’s almost as if President Donald Trump doesn’t care that what he’s doing could torpedo the GOP’s hopes in less than seven months — because Congress doesn’t matter much to his view of power.
U.S. Soccer sporting director Matt Crocker quits to take role in Saudi Arabia
Matt Crocker quit as sporting director of the U.S. Soccer Federation on Tuesday, just two months ahead of the World Cup, to take a new job in Saudi Arabia.
Adobe fixes PDF zero-day security bug that hackers have exploited for months
It's not clear how many people were compromised by this hacking campaign, but a security researcher said the hackers were targeting victims since at least November 2025.
Dear Abby | Ready to bail on first post-college job
Dear Abby: I'm struggling with what to do about my first job out of college. I've been here for four months, and while I expected a learning curve, I didn't
10 Reasons to Wait for the iPhone 18 Pro
Apple's iPhone development roadmap runs several years into the future and the company is continually working with suppliers on several successive iPhone models at the same time, which is why we often get rumored features months ahead of launch. The iPhone 18 series is no different, and we already have a good idea of what to expect for the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max.
Canada’s Carney Secures Majority Mandate After Electoral Wins, Political Defections
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has secured a majority government, cementing his hold on power after electoral victories Monday night and defections to his Liberal Party caucus over the past six months.
iPhone Fold Production Pushed Back, But Fall 2026 Launch Still on Track
Production on the iPhone Fold is behind schedule, but the device is still slated to launch in fall 2026, reports DigiTimes. The site says that production has been pushed back by "roughly one to two months," but Apple has not communicated any launch delays to suppliers. Apple is still planning for a 2026 launch, which suggests a tighter production schedule. Apple planned to begin iPhone Fold mass production in June 2026, but mass production has now slipped to early August.
Apple is testing four smart glasses designs to compete with Meta
Apple has been rumored to be working on smart glasses technology for months.
Ohio lawmakers introduce new bills to severely restrict sports gambling across the state
Three Ohio state representatives introduced a pair of new bills this week that aim to severely restrict the availability of sports betting in the state. This comes after Gov. Mike DeWine has repeatedly said in recent months that he regrets allowing sports betting to become legalized in Ohio.
"Find something that works for you": Health and wellness tips for the summer
Fitness expert Doug Bopst joins Jen Franciotti to discuss positive health habits to develop in advance of the summer months.
Uncertainty remains one month until May revision of state budget
Gov. Newsom and state lawmakers have less than three months to agree on a balanced budget before the next fiscal year starts on July 1.
Watch: Provost Dittmar, Project Metis leaders outline vision for brain health, brain economy
Four months after its launch, Project Metis is building momentum — with a new website and video offering a deeper look at the initiative’s vision to position the Houston-Galveston region as a global leader in brain health and the emerging brain economy.
Maria Elvira Salazar raises nearly $1M in three months as she gears up for re-election
The South Florida Republican is running for a fourth term in a battleground district.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 now costs more in the US
This means the Galaxy Z Fold8 coming in a few months could cost even more. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7, unveiled last July, is expected to get a successor...
Helene recovery continues as Asheville businesses reopen 18 months later
Many businesses are still rebuilding after Helene, with a few of them having their reopenings this week."Today is the culmination of a year and a half of really
Assessing Flutter Entertainment (NYSE:FLUT) Valuation After A Steep Year To Date Share Price Slide
Flutter Entertainment (NYSE:FLUT) has been drawing attention after a steep share price slide in the past 3 months, with the stock down about 53% year to date at a recent price of US$102.38. See our latest analysis for Flutter Entertainment. The recent 90 day share price return of 52.45% and 1 year total shareholder return of 55.83% both sit sharply in negative territory, suggesting momentum has been fading rather than building despite earlier gains in recent years. If this kind of reset has...
Seniors: Dennis Ouellette, 80
Ontario Orchards owner not slowing down as he grows his farm market By Stefan Yablonski The seeds for Dennis Ouellette’s career path were sown when he was 6 years old — and he isn’t slowing down. “Since age 6, I grew up an agriculturalist. That is 72 years. Started out with a 37-acre farm when I bought it from my parents and built it up to almost 300 acres. Brought it back down to around 200 acres now,” he said. The location of his business was just a barn, a horse barn, he said. “In 1967, it officially became Ontario Orchards Farm Market. My wife [June] and I graduated [high school] in 1964 and three years later we became Ontario Orchards. We have been here more than 60 years,” he explained. “It is the same location. We have expanded over the years as the customers mentioned different things; we have expanded to bring in different products. “What keeps me going is I totally enjoy what I am doing. I enjoy the people that I work with. The customers are wonderful. Mostly, more important than anything, is my family — my wife, my daughters, grandchildren, son-in-law — we are still very much a family business I’m not going to retire just yet.” He also enjoys the changing seasons. “Ontario Orchards is a four-season business. There is always something new; more energy, more interest. Not only for the business but for my staff, the people that work here. Things keep changing, changing. We are always looking forward to something new and exciting,” he said. They work with quite a number of local farmers within the area and throughout the state, throughout the country and from around the world.” “We do have things from different countries around the world. But specifically, we are very excited about the local. We have an over 200-acre farm. We sell just about everything we raise on that farm right here at the farm market. For example, we press cider year-round. We make baked goods every day, year-round. We sell our apples 12 months a year.” “Today, there are so many products in Ontario Orchards that we never would have thought of in 1967,” he continued. “I attribute a lot of that to my daughters. I like the young blood and new energy. That is very crucial to a business, it keeps it vibrant.” What’s his favorite part of the job? “I don’t have a favorite part. I enjoy it all. I have a lot of intertest in other things,” he said. “I have staff that knows so much. I can go to the staff and say, ‘I don’t know what this is, you tell me what this is.’ They are so knowledgeable. It is impossible for one person to know everything in this place. In the summer, staff is about 60; in the winter about 20, 25.” He added that he plans on being around for several more years.
Samsung Confirms Bad Price News For Galaxy Phone Buyers
Samsung is raising prices for premium Galaxy phones that are months old. Bucking a long-held trend of smartphones dropping in price as they age.
Iraq elects Kurdish politician Nizar Amidi as president amid Iran war fallout
Iraq's parliament voted Saturday to elect Nizar Amidi as president, five months after a parliamentary election that didn't produce a decisive majority.
Anthropic may soon pass OpenAI on this measure of AI business spending
Anthropic has seen a surge in business spending in recent months, according to Ramp's AI index.
Iraq parliament elects Kurdish politician Nizar Amedi as president
New president pledges 'Iraq First' after securing 227 votes, ending five months of political deadlock.
$10,000 bounty on the implementation of rollback netcode for Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 placed by Maximilian Dood
It's been nearly 15 years since Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 was released on November 15, 2011. Funnily enough, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 was released about nine months after Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (February 15, 2011), which spawned ...
“AI polls” are fake polls
A few weeks after Donald Trump’s second presidential win, I took the train up from London (where I was living at the time) to Oxford to attend a conference on polls and forecasts of the 2024 election. Most of the attendees were pollsters or academics, but I also watched presentations from Aaru and Electric Twin, two companies that do what is interchangeably called synthetic sampling, silicon sampling, or synthetic audiences. Stripped of startup jargon, that means they use large language models (LLMs) to simulate responses to public opinion polls by having AI agents take on the role of survey respondents. I had already heard of Aaru thanks to some articles with eye-catching headlines like “No people, no problem: AI chatbots predict elections better than humans” in the months leading up to Election Day. The founders were making some big, some might even say far-fetched claims, such as: “within two years, we will simulate the entire globe — from the way crops are grown in Ukraine to how that impacts production of oil in Iraq, trade through the strait of Malacca, and elections for the mayor of Baltimore.” When Semafor asked Aaru’s cofounders — Cameron Fink and Ned Koh — about my boss, they said “we respect all those who came before us.” Nate (as he so often does) shared his thoughts on Twitter: Fink and Koh were relatively good-natured about this back-and-forth when we spoke at Oxford. They even offered to mail me one of the t-shirts featuring Nate’s quote they apparently had made. I never took them up on the offer, which I now somewhat regret. These synthetic sampling companies fell off my radar for a while, but they do still exist. In fact, Aaru recently received a $1 billion valuation. Is what they’re doing anywhere close to the most important frontier in AI development? Not by a longshot, especially when Anthropic just developed a model so adept at exploiting software vulnerabilities that it’s only being released to 40 companies. Still, silicon sampling is increasingly finding its way into public polling. Axios reported in March that “a majority of people trust their own doctors and nurses” based on findings from Aaru — without mentioning that the “people” in that sentence were actually LLMs. Around the same time, the Public Sentiment Institute “boosted” their online sample of 373 real survey respondents with 114 AI agents.1 (Spoiler alert: even the co-founder of Electric Twin doesn’t think that’s a particularly defensible approach.) Polling companies like Qualtrics and Ipsos are also developing synthetic data panels. So, what should we make of these … “polls”? Let’s get one thing out of the way: whatever they are, they’re not polls in the way that term is usually defined. Subscribe You can’t replace polls with AI On one hand, using LLMs to essentially make up fake survey respondents sort of sounds like the dumbest idea ever, one that will at best imperfectly replicate real polls while introducing all sorts of biases. On the other hand, with LLMs improving at a remarkable, perhaps even alarming rate, maybe that means I’m a dinosaur at the ripe old age of 24 because I still want to rely on polls that talk to actual people. I’m not going to argue that synthetic samples are completely useless. In fact, as I’ll return to later, there is evidence that some techniques can replicate topline survey results quickly and cheaply. But the marketing from certain companies can be slightly optimistic. “No traditional poll will exist by the time the next general election occurs,” said Fink in 2024. We’re just 206 days away from the midterms, and based on the fact that I still have to collect a bunch of polls every day, I’d say he should have run that prediction by a sample of AI agents before the interview.2 To see why synthetic samples can’t replace polls, here’s a quick primer on how they work. The simplest version of these models involves taking a LLM (like ChatGPT or Claude), giving it a demographic profile (e.g., a white, college-educated woman who lives in Utah and makes $70k a year), and then asking it to respond to a survey question. You repeat that process a few thousand times using different demographic profiles and end up with a sample of synthetic survey responses. The actual models used by private companies are more sophisticated than this, usually because they incorporate more hypothesized demographic characteristics for each agent and provide them with extra information. Aaru, for example, feeds agents a diet of news and information they’d be likely to consume, while Electric Twin incorporates their customers’ proprietary data about the audience they’re trying to replicate. The way Ben Warner, the co-founder of Electric Twin, explained it to me was “we have a large amount of data on […] for instance, 5,000 people. Can we make an accurate prediction of how they would respond to another question?” Still, it should be obvious why synthetic samples can’t replace polls. Polling is fundamentally a data collection process. We might use surveys to make predictions by feeding them into election forecasts, but the main purpose of a poll isn’t prediction, it’s gathering new data about what people think and how they feel. Silicon sampling, on the other hand, produces no new data. It’s simply a model: you input LLM training data, demographic prompts, and a bunch of other information, and it spits out a prediction for what a poll would say. We love models here, but models aren’t polls. That difference is an important philosophical sticking point for most pollsters I talk to. “I think politics should stay away from [synthetic sampling], because we’re trying to […] represent the voice of the people,” said Natalie Jackson, a vice president at GQR Insights. Democratic pollster John Hagner told me: “I think I’m just incredibly skeptical of this idea. I don’t think it’s research. At that point, you’re asking the machine to tell you what you already believe.” Hagner has seen some presentations of early synthetic sampling experiments, but so far, “if it’s being used in a campaign, people are keeping it incredibly quiet.”3 But Eli, I hear you saying, aren’t polls themselves increasingly governed by modeling decisions? Indeed they are: pollsters’ choices on which sampling method to use, how to define their likely voter models, and how to weight their samples can and do lead to dramatic differences in the results they publish. Aaru even referenced these limitations in the methodology statement included with that maternal mortality “poll” — although I’m using the term “methodology statement” loosely here, because it doesn’t really explain how the model works at all. We can ignore the (frankly preposterous) implication that synthetic sampling isn’t subject to a separate set of biases. The important point is that there’s still a meaningful difference between using weighting and other statistical techniques on actual polling data and using a model to predict what a poll would say. The latter is far closer to election forecasts or techniques like MRP — potentially useful models, but not a replacement for polls.4 To be fair, other synthetic sampling companies are perfectly happy with the distinction between polls and models. Warner compared polling and synthetic sampling to different tools in a toolbox. “The mistake I think we make is we think that these new tools should either work in exactly the same way or somehow replace these old tools,” he said. “Rather than thinking of it as, okay, so we’ve always had the hammer, we’ve always had the screwdriver, now we’ve got a saw. But don’t use a saw to try [to] do the job of a hammer.” A quick comment from Nate Eli didn’t ask me for a comment — rather rude of him, don’t you think? But since I’m editing this story, I figured I’d add a few quick thoughts rather than putting words in his mouth. Beyond the frequently misleading marketing, what bothers me about the AI “poll” hype is that as AI tools make statistical inference cheaper and/or better (note that these are not synonyms) that actually increases the comparative value of collecting original data. You might be able to train a model to make a reasonable estimate of what some hard-to-reach poll respondent would say — say, a young Black man who voted for Trump. (Such a person checks a number of boxes for a voter who is usually hard to reach in surveys.) Indeed, this is closely related to what models like the Silver Bulletin forecast already do. They essentially smooth out the kinks in noisy survey data by making inferences based on past voting patterns or national polls or surveys of other states. But you don’t actually know what these voters think unless you’re reaching them directly. If there’s a shift in opinion among this subgroup, you’re not going to detect it. So if I were running a campaign, I’d invest more in going the extra mile to find a representative sample of those voters. And then I’d hire some smart quants — or Claude? — to figure out the implications for campaign strategy based on proprietary data that my competitors didn’t have access to. -Nate Silver Are these models any good? If synthetic surveys are just a new type of model, the next obvious question is whether the models are at least accurate. The answer very much depends on who you ask. On one end of the spectrum, you have the maximalist argument that synthetic sampling is more accurate than actual polls. “It’s an incredibly challenging problem to go to someone and say ‘hey, we’re going to be more accurate at predicting human behavior than you, even when you talk to your customers directly’,” Koh recently told CNBC. In his view, synthetic sampling isn’t a saw to polling’s hammer, it’s “magic.” There’s certainly evidence that synthetic samples can replicate certain survey toplines. But if Aaru does have any examples of their approach outperforming the polls, they’re keeping those to themselves.5 Aaru’s 2024 election model, for example, had Kamala Harris leading in Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on November 4th. And although they’ve since taken down their forecast page, they gave Harris a 50.5 percent chance of winning the race on November 2nd.6 After the election, Fink told Semafor he was happy enough with those results because they were “within margin of error,” a term that is completely meaningless when applied to a “sample” of AI agents. And of course, Aaru says their models have improved since 2024, so supposedly now they’d be more accurate than the polls? Still, their stronger argument is on cost: “We are significantly faster and cheaper than traditional polling, and still more accurate,” said Fink. The first two claims are undeniably true, but the third brings us to the opposite end of the spectrum. Both Jackson and Hagner are skeptical that these models are reliable for anything beyond replicating common survey toplines. “I just […] don’t think the machines are what we want when we’re looking for nuanced views. My example on this is people in Arizona and Nevada in 2024 who voted for Trump and voted for expanding abortion in their states on ballot initiatives,” said Jackson. Hagner identified another issue. Maybe the synthetic respondents, like sycophantic LLMs, are inhuman in one important way: they’re too nice. “The reports that have come through at the meetings that I’ve been at are that the early experiments on this, they cannot get respondents to be as racist or sexist or, frankly, as negative as human respondents,” he said. Academic research mostly agrees on this point. While there are some papers that show promising results when using LLMs to replicate polling data, most show that LLMs suffer from various quirks like producing too few “don’t know” responses and can seriously overpredict the favorability of politicians like Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. They also seem to struggle with too little variation between demographic subgroups, so the difference in predicted opinion between Democrats and Republicans, for example, is too small. When I asked Warner about these studies, his response to these papers was that just because academics can’t get synthetic sampling to work doesn’t mean that the technique doesn’t work in general. “Actually, the argument is, okay, yours does not [work]. That does not mean […] for this complex set of machinery, which uses a lot of investment, a lot of time, a lot of money, you can’t get it to work.” Cards on the table, I’m somewhat sympathetic to this argument because academics aren’t exactly great at making election forecasts. Usually, the people with skin in the game are the most accurate. Warner’s argument is that the approach Electric Twin takes — which includes, for example, making multiple predictions for each synthetic respondent using different models and prompts and subsequently averaging those to get a final prediction in a sort of ensemble forecast — produces better results than the simpler academic models. Warner shared a comparison between his method and the method from a recent academic paper with me, and Electric Twin was indeed able to get more accurate replication. But even still, he acknowledged that synthetic sampling “is not a crystal ball.” “If you asked me, do I think using other data sources will be more accurate than asking somebody who they will vote for, I would probably say no. But if you asked me ‘would your system be useful for our turnout modeling today?’ I would say yes.” For better or worse, it looks like the method is already getting more popular in the market research world. Most of the clients Aaru touts these days are businesses like EY and McDonald’s. And AI will probably begin to pop up in other parts of the political polling process. Pollsters are already using it to code open-ended survey responses, and some firms, like YouGov, are testing using LLMs to ask survey respondents questions. More worryingly, one danger to actual polls is that AI agents can be used to infiltrate online surveys. Most online polls use various checks to prevent that from happening, but there’s conflicting evidence on how effective those filters are and how prevalent AI agents currently are in online panels. If those agents ever become impossible to detect, it might spell the end of online polling, but the solution isn’t to replace all of your respondents with ChatGPT. Silver Bulletin is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a subscriber. Subscribe 1 That particular poll obviously doesn’t meet Silver Bulletin standards for aggregation. But we exclude all Public Sentiment Institute polls from our averages because we classify them as an amateur polling firm. 2 You could argue that Fink meant the next presidential election, but (a) I’m also confident we’ll still have real polls in 2028 and (b) in that case he should have asked an LLM to define “general election.” 3 Quick caveat: that’s reporting from a Democratic pollster. It’s possible that Republicans are more willing to use AI in political campaigns. 4 Indeed, Silver Bulletin does not include “polls” produced by MRP in our forecasts or averages, and we think it’s extremely misleading when their practitioners describe them in a way that suggests original data had been collected among a large number of states or Congressional districts. 5 A recent report from Aaru and EY did show two examples of a synthetic estimate being closer than a survey to a real-world benchmark — but I’d take those findings with a grain of salt because the report reads more like an ad and didn’t involve any sort of prediction being made ahead of time. 6 For comparison, our odds for Harris on the same day were 48.2 percent.
Iraq elects Kurdish politician Nizar Amidi as president amid war fallout
BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq’s parliament voted Saturday to elect Nizar Amidi, a political official with one of the country’s two main Kurdish parties, as president, five months after a parliamentary election that didn’t produce a bloc with a decisive majority.
Iraq elects Kurdish politician Nizar Amidi as president amid war fallout
Iraq’s parliament has elected Nizar Amidi as president, five months after elections failed to produce a decisive majority. The vote took place Saturday.
The California governor’s race was already a mess for Dems. Now what?
Democrats have struggled for months over how to handle the governor’s race. Will the Eric Swalwell scandal be a unifying moment?
As Election Looms, Will Alito Retire, Giving Trump a New Supreme Court Pick?
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. is the subject of intense speculation about whether he will retire in the coming months and give President Trump a fourth nominee.
New Crimson Desert Patch Just Dropped With Many of the Improvements Pearl Abyss Said Were Due in the Coming Months, and Some It Hadn't Mentioned at All
Just a day after Pearl Abyss’ announcement of the various improvements it said were coming soon to Crimson Desert, we have a new patch that adds many of them already — and even a few changes fans hadn't expected.
Kentucky lumber mill faces 'perfect storm' after diesel prices spike
After struggling for months with the impact of tariffs, a Kentucky lumber mill is wrestling with a spike in diesel prices caused by the war in Iran.
‘Crimson Desert’ To Add 8 Big Player-Requested Additions Soon
Crimson Desert is listening to players and adding eight big new additions to the game over the next two months or so.
Colten Ellis gets first NHL career shutout in Sabres 5-0 win over Blue Jackets
Ellis improved to 8-4-1 while making his first start in more than two months.
YouTube Premium is getting a US price hike of up to $4/month
YouTube Premium is getting a price hike in the US, with all plans going up in cost by up to $4 effective over the next few months.
Crimson Desert Dev Confirms Boss Rematches, Hard Difficulty, Enemy Territory Recapture, and a Whole Lot More Is Coming Soon
Crimson Desert developer Pearl Abyss has outlined a number of significant changes coming to the game in the coming months, each addressing various community complaints that were highlighted recently. Here's everything you need to know.
Nancy Guthrie Update: Detective Believes Captor ‘Underestimated’ Her Health, Had to ‘Dispose’ of Her
It’s been over two months since Savannah Guthrie’s mother, Nancy Guthrie, went missing, and a detective believes whoever took her underestimated the 84-year-old’s health. During the Tuesday, April 7, ...
Off the Grid maker and Game Informer owner Gunzilla Games accused of missing staff salary payments
Current and former staff question the company's stability, alleging months of payroll problems
Political oversight reaches Texas college classrooms, with Texas Tech and A&M at the forefront
Public universities across Texas have instituted sweeping changes to course teachings and offerings in recent months, in a bid to appease concerns from Republican lawmakers that they're indoctrinating students with what they consider to be liberal ideas.
Six months later, Prattville leaders agree on name for downtown venue
The mayor's office announced the name as The Lyric at Esther's on Oct. 1 before initial pushback.
Data & Business Process Services Stocks Q4 Teardown: Verisk (NASDAQ:VRSK) Vs The Rest
Earnings results often indicate what direction a company will take in the months ahead. With Q4 behind us, let’s have a look at Verisk (NASDAQ:VRSK) and its ...
Zeeland restaurant sees business boost after Sunday alcohol sales allowed
For decades, Zeeland prohibited alcohol sales on Sundays. That changed a few months ago, and one business, The Gritzmaker Social House, said the new ordinance is paying off.
Oil is crashing, but don’t expect $3 gas anytime soon. Here’s why
Oil futures are plunging – but it could still take weeks or months before gas prices are dramatically lower.
Applying for jobs wasn't working, so I started own business
After about nine months of job searching, Chris Fong started posting videos about his experience. He's stopped applying and hopes to build a business.
Ferguson’s failure to fill WA campaign oversight panel spurs recall bid
Two of the commission’s five seats have been vacant for months. Leaving them open for that long violates state law, according to the recall petition.
Iowa Business Council projects positive six-month economic outlook
Iowa businesses are projecting a positive economic outlook over the next six months, with the Iowa Business Council’s first-quarter Economic Outlook Survey showing an overall index of 65.35 points — up 2.19 points from the fourth quarter of 2025 and more than 4.5 points above the survey’s historical average of 60.47. The quarterly survey measures […]
Sony Pictures Entertainment Cuts Hundreds of Jobs in TV, Film
Sony Pictures Entertainment is restructuring its business to better position the company for growth, leading to job cuts across its film, TV and corporate divisions in the coming months.
Sony Entertainment Layoffs Hit TV, Film and Corporate
Sony Pictures Entertainment is restructuring its operations with plans for hundreds of layoffs across its film, TV and corporate divisions in the coming months.
Sony Entertainment Layoffs Hit TV, Film and Corporate
Sony Pictures Entertainment is restructuring its operations with plans for hundreds of layoffs across its film, TV and corporate divisions in the coming months.
Former Gov. Glenn Youngkin Hints at Return to Politics
Nearly three months after leaving office, former Gov. Glenn Youngkin is hinting that his career in politics isn’t over yet.
Richard Lamondin pivots from congressional run to SD 38 challenge, drawing early party support
After months engaging voters in CD 27, Richard Lamondin is redirecting his campaign to a closely watched Miami-Dade Senate seat.
🚨 Aaron Ramsey announces his retirement!
A standout name in the Premier League.Aaron Ramsey announced his retirement this Tuesday at noon!The Welsh midfielder is hanging up his boots at 35, six months after the end of his final spell, in Mex...
Harry Maguire signs contract extension at Man United
Harry Maguire signed a one-year contract extension at Manchester United on Tuesday, with the option of a further 12 months. The England defender was due to be out of contract at the end of the season. Maguire joined United from Leicester in 2019 for $97 million, which was a world-record transfer for a defender.
Construction on Rockrose Sports Complex ‘ahead of schedule’
Over six months since the initial groundbreaking of Kids Inc.’s Rockrose Sports Complex, progress continues to be made on the project.
Cooper continues to lead Whatley in polls seven months out
Seven months until Election Day the race is trending toward the Democrat, but it's still early.
Scientists Develop New Technology to Continuously Monitor Geothermal Energy Operations
Custom sensor monitors seismicity for months straight more than a mile below ground.
This Is The Longest I Haven’t Played ‘Destiny 2’ Since Curse Of Osiris
Destiny 2 is not just in a content drought, it is in a content graveyard, and I have not played in months as a result.
Supreme Court sides with Steve Bannon in bid to dismiss Jan. 6 conviction
The influential right-wing podcaster spent four months in prison for defying a subpoena from the House panel investigating the 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol.
19-year-old pivots failing art studio to make $320,000 in 10 months
For Merida Lim, owner of Scuro in Singapore, it was sink or swim. After struggling to draw customers to her art studio, she pivoted her strategy.
Voters in Georgia have moved on from Marjorie Taylor Greene. On Tuesday, they finally fill her seat
Three months after Marjorie Taylor Greene abruptly left Washington in the midst of a remarkably bitter feud with President Donald Trump, voters in northwest Georgia on Tuesday are poised to cast their ballots – again – in a runoff election to replace her.
Virginians deeply divided on Spanberger months after her landslide win
A Washington Post-Schar School poll finds that Virginia voters are highly polarized over Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D), who ran as a unifying centrist.
Savannah Guthrie returns to 'Today' for the first time since her mother's disappearance
Savannah Guthrie is making her return to NBC’s “Today” show Monday for the first time since her mother's disappearance more than two months ago. Guthrie is coming back to a job she loves but is...
On plant health and embracing new plant-breeding techniques in South Africa
The major challenge currently confronting South Africa’s agriculture is the spread of foot-and-mouth disease. For many farmers across the country, the most urgent tasks are both securing sufficient vaccines and rolling them out quickly in the coming months, particularly as the beef and dairy industries continue to suffer big losses. There is also pressure on sheep, goats, and other livestock to prevent the disease from spreading. As efforts to get the country through this monumental challenge continue, I believe it is important to sharpen our focus on the broader task at hand: strengthening biosecurity. This covers both animal and plant health. In recent years, we haven’t focused much on plant health, except a few times, such as when we had a goss’s wilt scare in the maize industry, a few cases of citrus black spot, or cases of sclerotinia in sunflower seeds. But the fact that South Africa managed to control the outbreaks of these particular diseases when they occurred a few years ago was due to organized agricultural and government scientific capabilities, and, most importantly, the availability of crop protection or agrochemicals necessary to address some of them. Therefore, as the animal health division in the Department of Agriculture focuses on the pressing challenge of the day, the foot-and-mouth disease, there is an opportunity for the plant health division to assess if they have all the requirements to tackle any outbreak that may occur on fruits, vegetables or crops in future. The challenge with crop diseases is that they can spread quickly and cause much more rapid damage in the field than we typically see with livestock. Therefore, speed is everything in ensuring the appropriate controls are available. I raise this as an important area, particularly given the drastic climate variation we observe across the country. The production conditions in some areas have changed noticeably over time, which may introduce new risks. The other essential part is ensuring that South Africa has access to the best crop protection technology available in the market. Many technology developers worldwide have operations in South Africa. Therefore, the Department of Agriculture, along with the Agricultural Research Council, must continuously interact with technology developers to assess the various crop protection technologies they are releasing globally and determine their suitability and need in South Africa. This will require a proactive approach from the government, unlike the current approach, in which technology developers typically approach regulators with new technologies. The government, recognising the food security risks, must take a proactive approach to ensure that South African farmers have access to the latest crop protection technologies, thereby safeguarding the country’s food security. Beyond crop protection, we must never forget that South Africa’s agriculture is key to ensuring that the country is the most food-secure country at the national level in sub-Saharan Africa. South Africa is also the only African country in the top-40 global agricultural exporters, having more than doubled since 1994 on the back of the adoption of high-yielding seed cultivars. South Africa has been the only African country to adopt a bold approach to embracing science and adopting genetically engineered seeds for grains and oilseeds in the early 2000s. Since then, we have seen crop yields improve noticeably, contributing to the gains we mentioned above. But ensuring that South Africa improves further is not a given. The key lies in South African regulators’ attitudes towards new technologies. We have to maintain a progressive approach and not give in to the politics of non-food and non-scientific voices that shout on the sidelines. Food security is national security, and the government must ensure we progress, leaning on science. Therefore, the registration of high-yielding new genomic techniques is required. South Africa cannot afford to fall behind the EU, the USA, South America, and many of its competitors in global agriculture. The Department of Agriculture’s crop science division must adopt a progress-and-science-embracing approach for the good of the country. Thanks for reading AgriView! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe Share