When good robots fall into the wrong hands, bad things can happen... (credit: Aurich Lawson | Nintendo)

The Super Mario Maker community and "Team 0%" have declared victory in their years-long effort to clear every user-submitted level in the original Wii U game before the servers shut off for good on April 8. That victory declaration comes despite the fact that no human player has yet to clear "Trimming the Herbs" (TTH), the ultra-hard level that gained notoriety this month as what was thought to be the final "uncleared" level in the game.

This strange confluence of events is the result of an admission by Ahoyo, the creator of Trimming the Herbs, who came clean Friday evening regarding his use of automated, tool-assisted speedrun (TAS) methods in creating the level. That means he was able to use superhuman capabilities like slow-motion, rewinding, and frame advance to pre-record the precise set of perfectly timed inputs needed to craft the "creator clear" that was necessary to upload the level in the first place.

"I’m sorry for the drama [my level] caused within the community, and I regret the ordeal," Ahoyo wrote on the Team 0% Discord and social media. "But at least it was interesting. However in the end the truth matters most. Congratulations to Team 0% for their well-earned achievement!"

Enlarge / Testing replica Stone Age tools with a bit of wood-scraping. (credit: A. Iwase et al., 2024/Tokyo Metropolitan University)

When Japanese scientists wanted to learn more about how ground stone tools dating back to the Early Upper Paleolithic might have been used, they decided to build their own replicas of adzes, axes, and chisels and used those tools to perform tasks that might have been typical for that era. The resulting fractures and wear enabled them to develop new criteria for identifying the likely functions of ancient tools, according to a recent paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Science. If these kinds of traces were indeed found on genuine Stone Age tools, it would be evidence that humans had been working with wood and honing techniques significantly earlier than previously believed.

The development of tools and techniques for woodworking purposes started out simple, with the manufacture of cruder tools like the spears and throwing sticks common in the early Stone Age. Later artifacts dating back to Mesolithic and Neolithic time periods were more sophisticated, as people learned how to use polished stone tools to make canoes, bows, and wells and to build houses. Researchers typically date the emergence of those stone tools to about 10,000 years ago. However, archaeologists have found lots of stone artifacts with ground edges dating as far back as 60,000 to 30,000 years ago. But it's unclear how those tools might have been used.

So Akira Iwase of Tokyo Metropolitan University and co-authors made their own replicas of adzes and axes out of three raw materials common to the region between 38,000 and 30,000 years ago: semi-nephrite rocks, hornfels rocks, and tuff rocks. They used a stone hammer and anvil to create various long oval shapes and polished the edges with either a coarse-grained sandstone or a medium-grained tuff. There were three types of replica tools: adze-types, with the working edge oriented perpendicular to the long axis of a bent handle; axe-types, with a working edge parallel to the bent handle's long axis; and chisel-types, in which a stone tool was placed at the end of a straight handle.

Enlarge / The future of game development? (credit: Getty Images)

A new survey of thousands of game development professionals finds a near-majority saying generative AI tools are already in use at their workplace. But a significant minority of developers say their company has no interest in generative AI tools or has outright banned their use.

The Game Developers Conference's 2024 State of the Industry report, released Thursday, aggregates the thoughts of over 3,000 industry professionals as of last October. While the annual survey (conducted in conjunction with research partner Omdia) has been running for 12 years, this is the first time respondents were asked directly about their use of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, DALL-E, GitHub Copilot, and Adobe Generative Fill.

Forty-nine percent of the survey's developer respondents said that generative AI tools are currently being used in their workplace. That near-majority includes 31 percent (of all respondents) that say they use those tools themselves and 18 percent that say their colleagues do.

Enlarge / Sure, they can use tools, but do they know where the nearest subway stop is? (credit: Jonas Adner)

"A thirsty crow wanted water from a pitcher, so he filled it with pebbles to raise the water level to drink," summarizes a famous Aesop Fable. While this tale is thousands of years old, animal behaviorists still use this challenge to study corvids (which include crows, ravens, jays, and magpies) and their use of tools. In a recent Nature Communications study, researchers from a collaboration of universities across Washington, Florida, and Utah used radioactive tracers within the brains of several American crows to see which parts of their brains were active when they used stones to obtain food from the bottom of a water-filled tube.

Their results indicate that the motor learning and tactile control centers were activated in the brains of the more proficient crows, while the sensory and higher-order processing centers lit up in the brains of less proficient crows. These results suggest that competence with tools is linked to certain memories and muscle control, which the researchers claimed is similar to a ski jumper visualizing the course before jumping.

The researchers also found that out of their avian test subjects, female crows were especially proficient at tool usage, succeeding in the challenge quickly. “[A] follow-up question is whether female crows actually have more need for creative thinking relative to male crows,” elaborates Loma Pendergraft, the study’s first author and a graduate student at the University of Washington, who wants to understand if the caregiving and less dominant role of female crows gives them a higher capacity for tool use.

Enlarge / An image OpenAI created using DALL-E 3. (credit: OpenAI)

Artists have spent the past year fighting companies that have been training AI image generators—including popular tools like the impressively photorealistic Midjourney or the ultra-sophisticated DALL-E 3—on their original works without consent or compensation. Now, the United States has promised to finally get serious about addressing their copyright concerns raised by AI, President Joe Biden said in his much-anticipated executive order on AI, which was signed this week.

The US Copyright Office had already been seeking public input on AI concerns over the past few months through a comment period ending on November 15. Biden's executive order has clarified that following this comment period, the Copyright Office will publish the results of its study. And then, within 180 days of that publication—or within 270 days of Biden's order, "whichever comes later"—the Copyright Office's director will consult with Biden to "issue recommendations to the President on potential executive actions relating to copyright and AI."

"The recommendations shall address any copyright and related issues discussed in the United States Copyright Office’s study, including the scope of protection for works produced using AI and the treatment of copyrighted works in AI training," Biden's order said.

Enlarge / Westfield High School in Westfield, NJ, in 2020. (credit: Icon Sportswire / Contributor | Icon Sportswire)

This October, boys at Westfield High School in New Jersey started acting "weird," the Wall Street Journal reported. It took four days before the school found out that the boys had been using AI image generators to create and share fake nude photos of female classmates. Now, police are investigating the incident, but they're apparently working in the dark, because they currently have no access to the images to help them trace the source.

According to an email that the WSJ reviewed from Westfield High School principal Mary Asfendis, the school "believed" that the images had been deleted and were no longer in circulation among students.

It remains unclear how many students were harmed. A Westfield Public Schools spokesperson cited student confidentiality when declining to tell the WSJ the total number of students involved or how many students, if any, had been disciplined. The school had not confirmed whether faculty had reviewed the images, seemingly only notifying the female students allegedly targeted when they were identified by boys claiming to have seen the images.

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Artists suing Stability AI, Deviant Art, and Midjourney hit a roadblock this week in their quest to prove allegations that AI image generators illegally use copyrighted works to mimic unique artistic styles without compensation or consent.

On Monday, US district Judge William H. Orrick dismissed many of the artists' claims after finding that the proposed class-action complaint "is defective in numerous respects." Perhaps most notably, two of the three named plaintiffs—independent artist Kelly McKernan and concept artist/professional illustrator Karla Ortiz—had apparently never registered any of their disputed works with the Copyright Office. Orrick dismissed their claims with prejudice, dropping them from the suit.

But while McKernan and Ortiz can no longer advance their claims, the lawsuit is far from over. The lead plaintiff, cartoonist and illustrator Sarah Andersen, will have the next 30 days to amend her complaint and keep the copyright dispute alive.