And other stories from the stranger side of life
Uber’s latest ‘lost and found index’, includes a Danny DeVito Christmas ornament, an ankle monitor and a dog. The annual list of the most commonly forgotten and most unique lost items, said that the most commonly left-behind items during the past 12 months included clothing, phones and wallets. More unusual items included a unicycle, 16 ounces of fake blood, and a pin depicting Jesus holding a slice of pizza. UPI News said one customer’s report of a lost and found item was particularly curious: “My self-respect, mostly.”
AI ‘could create new religions’
Artificial intelligence could create religions to control humans, said the historian Yuval Noah Harari. “Simply by gaining mastery of the human language, AI has all it needs in order to cocoon us in a Matrix-like world of illusions,” the Israeli told the Frontiers Forum event in Switzerland, noted The Times. “For thousands of years, prophets and poets and politicians have used language and storytelling in order to manipulate and to control people”, he said, and “now AI is likely to be able to do it”.
‘Prolific’ sperm donor banned from offering more
A father of at least 550 children has been banned from donating any more of his sperm, reported Sky News. Although guidelines in the Netherlands say sperm donors are allowed to father a maximum of 25 children with 12 mothers, the “prolific donor”, has provided sperm to several Dutch fertility clinics, a facility in Denmark and people he met through ads and online forums. The Hague District Court said the parents of the children are “now confronted with the fact that the children in their family are part of a huge kinship network with hundreds of half-siblings, which they did not choose”.
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