An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: [P]erhaps AI can, in fact, learn in a more human way -- by figuring out interesting questions to ask itself and attempting to find the right answer. A project from Tsinghua University, the Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence (BIGAI), and Pennsylvania State University shows that AI can learn to reason in this way by playing with computer code. The researchers devised a system called Absolute Zero Reasoner (AZR) that first uses a large language model to generate challenging but solvable Python coding problems. It then uses the same model to solve those problems before checking its work by trying to run the code. And finally, the AZR system uses successes and failures as a signal to refine the original model, augmenting its ability to both pose better problems and solve them.

The team found that their approach significantly improved the coding and reasoning skills of both 7 billion and 14 billion parameter versions of the open source language model Qwen. Impressively, the model even outperformed some models that had received human-curated data. [...] A key challenge is that for now the system only works on problems that can easily be checked, like those that involve math or coding. As the project progresses, it might be possible to use it on agentic AI tasks like browsing the web or doing office chores. This might involve having the AI model try to judge whether an agent's actions are correct. One fascinating possibility of an approach like Absolute Zero is that it could, in theory, allow models to go beyond human teaching. "Once we have that it's kind of a way to reach superintelligence," [said Zilong Zheng, a researcher at BIGAI who worked on the project].

Experts interviewed by NBC News warn that the rapid spread of AI-generated images and videos is accelerating an online trust breakdown, especially during fast-moving news events where context is scarce. From the report: President Donald Trump's Venezuela operation almost immediately spurred the spread of AI-generated images, old videos and altered photos across social media. On Wednesday, after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot a woman in her car, many online circulated a fake, most likely AI-edited image of the scene that appears to be based on real video. Others used AI in attempts to digitally remove the mask of the ICE officer who shot her.

The confusion around AI content comes as many social media platforms, which pay creators for engagement, have given users incentives to recycle old photos and videos to ramp up emotion around viral news moments. The amalgam of misinformation, experts say, is creating a heightened erosion of trust online -- especially when it mixes with authentic evidence. "As we start to worry about AI, it will likely, at least in the short term, undermine our trust default -- that is, that we believe communication until we have some reason to disbelieve," said Jeff Hancock, founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab. "That's going to be the big challenge, is that for a while people are really going to not trust things they see in digital spaces."

Though AI is the latest technology to spark concern about surging misinformation, similar trust breakdowns have cycled through history, from election misinformation in 2016 to the mass production of propaganda after the printing press was invented in the 1400s. Before AI, there was Photoshop, and before Photoshop, there were analog image manipulation techniques. Fast-moving news events are where manipulated media have the biggest effect, because they fill in for the broad lack of information, Hancock said. "In terms of just looking at an image or a video, it will essentially become impossible to detect if it's fake. I think that we're getting close to that point, if we're not already there," said Hancock. "The old sort of AI literacy ideas of 'let's just look at the number of fingers' and things like that are likely to go away."

Renee Hobbs, a professor of communication studies at the University of Rhode Island, added: "If constant doubt and anxiety about what to trust is the norm, then actually, disengagement is a logical response. It's a coping mechanism. And then when people stop caring about whether something's true or not, then the danger is not just deception, but actually it's worse than that. It's the whole collapse of even being motivated to seek truth."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft is celebrating the resurgence of interest in physical media in the only way it knows how... by halting the Windows Media Player metadata service. Readers of a certain vintage will remember inserting a CD into their PC and watching Windows Media Player populate with track listings and album artwork. No more.

Sometime before Christmas, the metadata servers stopped working and on Windows 10 or 11, the result is the same: album not found. We tried this out at Vulture Central on some sacrificial Windows devices that had media drives and can confirm that a variety of compact discs were met with stony indifference. Some 90s cheese that was successfully ripped (for personal use, of course) decades ago? No longer recognized. A reissue of something achingly hip? Also not recognized.

The abstract of a paper on NBER: School boards have statutory authority over most elementary and secondary education policies, but receive little attention compared to other actors in education systems. A fundamental challenge to understanding the importance of boards is the absence of data on the policy goals of board members -- i.e., their ideologies -- forcing researchers to conduct tests based on demographic and professional characteristics -- i.e., identities -- with which ideology is presumed to correlate.

This paper uses new data on the viewpoints and policy actions of school board members, coupled with a regression discontinuity design that generates quasi-random variation in board composition, to establish two results. The first is that the priorities of board members have large causal effects across many domains. For example, the effect of electing an equity-focused board member on test scores for low-income students is roughly equivalent to assigning every such student a teacher who is 0.3 to 0.4 SDs higher in the distribution of teacher value-added. The second is that observing policy priorities is crucial. Identity turns out to be a poor proxy for ideology, with limited governance effects that are fully explained by differences in policy priorities. Our findings challenge the belief that school boards are unimportant, showing that who serves on the board and what they prioritize can have far-reaching consequences for students.

The restaurant industry is trying to figure out whether America has hit peak pizza. From a report: Once the second-most common U.S. restaurant type, pizzerias are now outnumbered by coffee shops and Mexican food eateries, according to industry data. Sales growth at pizza restaurants has lagged behind the broader fast-food market for years, and the outlook ahead isn't much brighter.

"Pizza is disrupted right now," Ravi Thanawala, chief financial officer and North America president at Papa John's International, said in an interview. "That's what the consumer tells us." The parent of the Pieology Pizzeria chain filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December. Others, including the parent of Anthony's Coal Fired Pizza & Wings and Bertucci's Brick Oven Pizza & Pasta, earlier filed for bankruptcy.

Pizza once was a novelty outside big U.S. cities, providing room for growth for independent shops and then chains such as Pizza Hut with its red roof dine-in restaurants. Purpose-made cardboard boxes and fleets of delivery drivers helped make pizza a takeout staple for those seeking low-stress meals. Today, pizza shops are engaged in price wars with one another and other kinds of fast food. Food-delivery apps have put a wider range of cuisines and options at Americans' fingertips. And $20 a pie for a family can feel expensive compared with $5 fast-food deals, frozen pizzas or eating a home-cooked meal.

[...] Pizza's dominance in American restaurant fare is declining, however. Among different cuisines, it ranked sixth in terms of U.S. sales in 2024 among restaurant chains, down from second place during the 1990s, Technomic said. The number of pizza restaurants in the U.S. hit a record high in 2019 and has declined since then, figures from the market-research firm Datassential show. Further reading, at WSJ: The Feds Need to Bail Out the Pizza Industry.

The world's oceans absorbed yet another record-breaking amount of heat in 2025, continuing an almost unbroken streak of annual records since the start of the millennium and fueling increasingly extreme weather events around the globe. More than 90% of the heat trapped by humanity's carbon emissions ends up in the oceans, making ocean heat content one of the clearest indicators of the climate crisis's trajectory.

The analysis, published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, drew on temperature data collected across the oceans and collated by three independent research teams. The measurements cover the top 2,000 meters of ocean depth, where most heat absorption occurs. The amount of heat absorbed is equivalent to more than 200 times the total electricity used by humans worldwide.

This extra thermal energy intensifies hurricanes and typhoons, produces heavier rainfall and greater flooding, and results in longer marine heatwaves that decimate ocean life. The oceans are likely at their hottest in at least 1,000 years and heating faster than at any point in the past 2,000 years.