Since OpenAIs generative A.I. chatbot ChatGPT became a cultural phenomenon in recent months, users experimenting with the technology have asked it to do everything from explain complex topics to write poems about pickles.

The techs success rate is questionable, however, with some users being left flummoxed or even a little disturbed by the chatbots responses to their questions.

One user who was left particularly disappointed when he tried to enlist the technology to assist him with his work is Charlie Brooker, the creator of Emmy-winning sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror, which explores the dark potential of technology and the people who use it.

The series will return to Netflix later this month for a sixth season.

In an interview published in the July issue of British film magazine Empire, Brooker revealed that he had, like millions of others, toyed with A.I. chatbot phenomenon ChatGPT.

The first thing I did was type generate Black Mirror episode and it comes up with something that, at first glance, reads plausibly, but on second glance, is shit, he said. Because all its done is look up all the synopses of Black Mirror episodes and sort of mush them together. Then if you dig a bit more deeply you [realize], Oh, theres not actually any real original thought here.

Brooker isnt the only ChatGPT user to have asked the technology to come up with a TV or movie scriptand many have been left with disappointing or comical results.

While Brooker was left underwhelmed by ChatGPTs creative writing abilities, Brooker said the technology did teach him a lesson about how he could refresh Black Mirror, which first aired in 2011.

I was aware that I had written lots of episodes where someone goes Oh, I was inside a computer the whole time! he quipped. So, I thought, Im just going to [throw] out any sense of what I think a Black Mirror episode is. Theres no point in having an anthology show if you cant break your own rules. Just a sort of nice, cold glass of water in the face.

Will life imitate art?

With ChatGPT and competing large language models seeing huge investments from the likes of Microsoft, Google, and Chinas Baidu, many have questioned whetherin speculation that could have been lifted directly from a Black Mirror episodethe growing capabilities of A.I. will soon see human workers replaced with machines.

While Brooker isnt convinced hell be usurped by a chatbot anytime soon, some experts have pondered whether writers and people in other creative industries might have something to worry about. Generally, though, many agree that the technology still lacks human-level originality and creativity.

That isnt to say that no one believes there are jobs at risk, however.

Last week, the CEO of Nvidiawhich recently saw its valuation skyrocket to near $1 trillion thanks to excitement over its A.I. chipssaid that while A.I. may not steal your job, someone who is an expert in A.I. just might.

However, a Harvard future-of-work expert is adamant that only one profession is really at risk of being replaced.

I wouldnt want to be someone who does the reading or summarization of business books to send out 20-page summaries because A.I. is really good at summarization already, Joseph Fuller, a professor of management at Harvard Business School, told Fortune on Tuesday.

Intense Canadian wildfires are blanketing the northeastern U.S. in a dystopian haze, turning the air acrid, the sky yellowish gray and prompting warnings for vulnerable populations to stay inside.

The effects of hundreds of wildfires burning across the western provinces to Quebec could be felt as far away as New York City and New England, blotting out skylines and irritating throats.

U.S. authorities issued air quality alerts. Hazy conditions and smoke from the wildfires were reported across the Great Lakes region from Cleveland to Buffalo.

A smoky haze that hung over New York City much of the day Tuesday thickened in the late afternoon, obscuring views of New Jersey across the Hudson River and making the setting sun look like a reddish orb. In the Philadelphia area, dusk brought more of a lavender haze.

Sal and Lilly Murphy, of Brooklyn, likened the burning scent to a campfire. They said they could even smell the smoke indoors, in a Manhattan restaurant, then walked outside and saw a sky that looked like it was about to storm but was rainless. Lilly wore a mask for protection.

Its a little scary, Sal Murphy said.

Smoke from the fires has wafted through northeast U.S. states for weeks now, but its only recently been noticeable in most places.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said Tuesdays hazy skies were hard to miss, and New York City Mayor Eric Adams encouraged residents to limit outdoor activities to the absolute necessities.

Heres a closer look at whats happening and some suggested precautions for dealing with the haze:

Whats happening?

Smoke from Canadas wildfires has been moving into the United States since last month. The most recent fires near Quebec have been burning for at least several days.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said hazy skies, reduced visibility and the odor of burning wood are likely, and that the smoke will linger for a few days in northern states.

Its not unusual for us to get fire smoke in our area. Its very typical in terms of northwest Canada, said Darren Austin, a meteorologist and senior air quality specialist with the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management. But, usually, the smoke has been aloft and hasnt affected peoples health, he said.

The Quebec-area fires are big and relatively close, about 500 to 600 miles (roughly 800 to 970 kilometers) away from Rhode Island. And they followed wildfires in Nova Scotia, which resulted in a short-lived air quality alert on May 30, Austin said.

Jay Engle, a National Weather Service meteorologist based in Upton, Long Island, said the wind trajectory that allowed smoke and hazy conditions to be seen in the New York City area could continue for the next few days. Of course, he said, the main driver of conditions is the fires themselves. If they diminish, the haze would too.

Whats the biggest concern?

Air quality alerts are triggered by a number of factors, including the detection of fine-particle pollution known as PM 2.5 which can irritate the lungs.

We have defenses in our upper airway to trap larger particles and prevent them from getting down into the lungs. These are sort of the right size to get past those defenses, said Dr. David Hill, a pulmonologist in Waterbury, Connecticut, and a member of the American Lung Associations National Board of Directors. When those particles get down into the respiratory space, they cause the body to have an inflammatory reaction to them.

Trent Ford, the state climatologist in Illinois, said the atmospheric conditions in the upper Midwest creating dry, warm weather made it possible for small particulates to travel hundreds of miles from the Canadian wildfires and linger for days.

Its a good example of how complex the climate system is but also how connected it is, Ford said.

Who should be careful?

Exposure to elevated fine particle pollution levels can affect the lungs and heart.

The air quality alerts caution sensitive groups, a big category that includes children, older adults, and people with lung diseases, such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Kids, who often are encouraged to go out and play, are more susceptible to smoke for a number of reasons, said Laura Kate Bender, the lung associations National Assistant Vice President, healthy air. Their lungs are still developing, they breathe in more air per unit of body weight.

What can you do for now?

Its a good time to put off that yard work and outdoor exercise. If you go out, consider wearing an N95 mask to reduce your exposure to pollutants.

Stay inside, keeping your doors, windows and fireplaces shut. Its recommended that you run the air conditioning on a recirculation setting.

If you have filters on your home HVAC system, you should make sure theyre up to date and high quality, Hill said. Some people, particularly those with underlying lung disease, or heart disease, should consider investing in in air purifiers for their homes.

____

Associated Press reporters Katie Foody in Chicago and David B. Caruso and Deepti Hajela in New York contributed to this story.

The global temperatures in May were the second-warmest in the past three decades as polar ice continues to melt, according to a monthly report by Europes Earth observation agency Copernicus.

The area covered by sea ice in Antarctica last month touched a new low  third time to happen this year   and was 17% below average for the period between 1979 and 2023. It also coincided with unprecedented temperatures over all oceans that arent covered by ice, the report said.

We are seeing the El Niño signal continuing to emerge in the equatorial Pacific, said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service. The average temperature over all ice-free seas for May 2023 was higher than for any other May. 

El Niño is a weather-changing event thats driven by anomalies in ocean water temperatures. It disrupts wind and rainfall patterns, as well as changes ocean and land temperatures across the planet. Forecasters see growing odds that El Niño emerges in coming months, peaking around December or January. 

In southern Europe, May was wetter than the average between 1991 and 2020, with heavy rains leading to floods in Italy and the western Balkans. Still, drier-than-average conditions were recorded over most of the Iberian Peninsula, as well as Denmark, the Baltic countries, southern Scandinavia and much of western Russia. 

Elsewhere, the month was drier than average over large regions of North America, the Horn of Africa, southern Africa, South America, Australia and east and southeast Asia. Parts of Canada, Africa and southeast Asia were significantly warmer than average.

Prince Harry entered a London courtroom on a mission to prove that the publisher of the Daily Mirror tabloid had hacked his phone and unlawfully snooped on his life.

He left the witness box Wednesday having shown that he was highly suspicious of how Mirror Group Newspapers obtained information for stories about him, but without offering phone records or much other evidence to support his hacking claim.

I believe that phone hacking was at an industrial scale across at least three of the papers at the time, the Duke of Sussex asserted in his second day of testimony in Londons High Court. That is beyond any doubt.

Phone hacking is central to his case against Mirror Group and two related lawsuits against other British tabloid publishers that he claims invaded his privacy by eavesdropping on emails and using other illegal methods to report on the smallest details of his life, causing him great emotional turmoil.

Harry is the first senior member of the royal family to testify in court in over 130 years, and his high-stakes gamble in taking his cases to trial is unprecedented in modern times. In addition to a desire to hold the newspapers accountable for a destructive role in his life and what he said was a cover-up of the hacking scandal, the pursuit indicates the seriousness of his larger mission to reform the press.

Finding out about this level of cover up is what makes me want to see my MGN claim through to the end, so people can really understand what happened, he testified.

During cross-examination, Mirror Group attorney Andrew Green pressed the prince to explain which elements of articles had come from hacking and how he could prove it without providing call data.

Harry continued to insist that parts of certain stories were suspicious and said Green should consult the reporters who wrote the articles about what they did. He said reporters had used burner phones and destroyed records.

Green, who has said Harrys phone was not hacked, asked the witness if he would be relieved or upset if the judge reached the same conclusion.

To have a decision against me given that Mirror Group have admitted hacking, yes, it would feel like an injustice, Harry responded.

So you want to have been phone hacked? Green said.

Nobody wants to be phone hacked, Harry replied.

Harrys suspicions of the press run deep. He questioned not only whether unnamed sources were real but also whether people quoted by name had actually said the things attributed to them.

More than once, he said that seeing something in print attributed to someone doesnt mean that its true and said false information was added to stories to put people like myself off the scent.

Green asked if he really thought that journalists would be foolish enough to risk getting caught phone hacking after a News of the World reporter and a private investigator went to prison for such activity in 2007.

I believe the risk is worth the reward for them, Harry answered.

Green has apologized for the one instance Mirror Group has admitted to hiring a private investigator to dig up dirt on Harry, though it was not among the claims he has brought. Mirror Group denies or doesnt admit his other allegations.

Harry, the 38-year-old younger son of King Charles III, is the first senior British royal since an ancestor, the future King Edward VII, appeared as a witness in a trial over a gambling scandal in 1891.

Harry has said the royal family avoided legal entanglements to prevent having to be put in the witness box.

His case dates from 1996 to 2011 a period when phone hacking by tabloid journalists was later discovered to have been widespread. The scandal led to revelations of more intrusive means such as phone tapping, home bugging and using deception to obtain flight information and medical records.

Harrys fury at the U.K. press runs through his memoir, Spare. He blames paparazzi for causing the car crash that killed his mother, and said intrusion by the U.K. press, including allegedly racist articles, led him and his wife, Meghan, to flee to the U.S. in 2020 and leave royal life behind.

Mirror Group has paid more than 100 million pounds ($125 million) to settle hundreds of unlawful information-gathering claims, and printed an apology to phone hacking victims in 2015.

The worlds most popular YouTuber, MrBeast, has a powerful voice and hes not afraid to use it.

With over 158 million followers on YouTube alone, MrBeast (real name Jimmy Donaldson) has an army of fans that he frequently calls on for help. 

Now hes hoping he can sway the bosses at Twitch to reconsider its latest branded and sponsored content policy changes.

Hey Twitch, how about instead of handicapping what creators make, you help them make more? Seems more logical, he wrote on Twitter moments after the streaming platform announced it will impose significant limitations on sponsored streams, on Tuesday.

In a now-deleted tweet, he called the new guidelines the funniest thing hes seen all year before teasing that he might stream on a rival platform, despite not being a gamer, just to spite them.

Why MrBeast is calling out Twitchs new policy

The popular streaming sites updated branded and sponsored content policy outright bans any burned in video, audio or display ads. 

Meanwhile, on-stream brand logos or overlays will now be limited to 3% of a screen size, providing streamers with very little area to work with. 

The rules, which come into effect on 1 July, impose limitations specifically on sponsored streamsa big revenue stream for many content creators.

These policy modifications were met with overwhelmingly negative feedback, including strong opposition from prominent streamers like Asmongold, who called for a Twitch boycott.

Although changes wont really impact MrBeast who rarely ever streams, as a content creator, he resonates with how streamers may be feeling and is apparently voicing his concerns on their behalf. 

If YouTube pulled this sh*t Id lose my mind, he empathized, before following Kick, a rival streaming platform, on Twitter.

Twitch: Too little, too late

In the aftermath of MrBeasts backlash, Twitch did release a statement on Twitter, admitting that its new policy was overly broad and created confusion and frustration.

We do not intend to limit streamers ability to enter into direct relationships with sponsors, and we understand that this is an important part of how streamers earn revenue, it added.

We wanted to clarify our existing ads policy that was intended to prohibit third party ad networks from selling burned in video and display ads on Twitch, which is consistent with other services.

But its response could be too little, too late. 

Kick didnt waste any time capitalizing on MrBeasts attention. It promptly tweeted that its account had just been followed by the GOAT (the greatest of all time) while crowing: Its time for Kick to Takeover.

In response, MrBeast teased doing a fun stream to protest Twitch and its even piqued the interest of Elon Musk.

With just one word, the Twitter and Tesla owner weighed into the debate and seemingly threw his support behind the Twitch protest: Great!

The crypto industry began the week preparing for a Congressional hearing that it hoped would pave a path toward new regulatory framework.

The Chairman of the Securities Exchange Commission had other ideas.

On Monday, SEC Chair Gary Gensler dropped a long-awaited lawsuit against Binance, exposing embarrassing details of a campaign by the worlds biggest crypto exchange to evade U.S regulation. The following morning, he dropped a second complaint against Coinbase before embarking on a TV tour that would portray the crypto industry as lawless and out of control. He also questioned the need for crypto, telling Bloomberg, We dont need more digital currencywe already have digital currency, its called the U.S. dollar.

Genslers gambit was an unusually political action by a regulator, but also a successful one. Even his biggest critics in the industry quietly acknowledged to Fortune that the SEC Chair had put them on the defensive, backing Coinbase into a corner during a week when the company had planned to put forward a narrative about working with Congress to create a better regulatory regime.

Gensler may have won the week, but whether he can succeed in his longer term goal of bringing the crypto industry under his thumb is unclear. Figures in crypto are quick to tell you that Genslers aggressive enforcement campaign has put him out over his skis, and predict it is a matter of time until the SEC receives a comeuppance by way of a federal court. Others, however, are less sanguine. According to one legal source, this weeks complaint against Coinbase poses an existential threat to the company, and the broader U.S. crypto industry may be living on borrowed time.

You cant ignore the rules because you dont like them

The substance of the SECs two crypto complaints are very different. In the case of Binance, the agency alleges the company sought to dupe U.S. regulators and engaged in so-called wash tradingtrading with itself to inflate volumeand that it co-mingled customer funds with its own accounts. Its also significant that the SEC filed its complaint in Washington, DCa sign, legal experts say, that criminal charges against Binance are also on the way.

In contrast, the SEC sued Binance in Manhattan, the customary forum for more run-of-the-mill securities litigation. And indeed, the agencys allegations against Coinbase are more pedestrian. Sources close to Coinbase, however, told Fortune they believe Gensler timed the SECs complaint to coincide with the Binance one in order to conflate the companies behavior in the minds of the public and lawmakers.

Meanwhile, the SEC reinforced its efforts to portray Coinbase as a scofflaw on Tuesday, with a senior official declaring You simply cant ignore the rules because you dont like them or because youd prefer different ones.

The federal judge who will hear the case is unlikely to allow the SECs tactical maneuvers to inform any eventual ruling. But this may not matter since the agencys allegationswhile not as dramatic as the ones against Binanceare still serious and, if they stick, will pose a grave threat to Coinbases business model.

The SEC alleges that Coinbase sold 13 tokens that are unregistered securities. Meanwhile, the agency also argues that the company acts as a broker, an exchange and a clearinghouseand did not get permission from the agency to do any of these things.

In the traditional financial world, the SEC requires that these activities be carried out by different entities so as to protect consumers. Coinbase and other crypto companies, however, argue that such divisions are unnecessary because of blockchain technology, and that it makes no sense to cram the square peg of their operations into the round hole of financial regulations designed for another era.

The upshot is that, if the SEC prevails in its lawsuit, Coinbase would emerge badly hobbled. It could be forced to divest some of its core operations, and be limited to selling Bitcoin and Ethereuman activity that has become increasingly low margin and commoditized. Industry experts say this could mean the regulatory environment could become unviable for U.S. crypto companies.

Theres a 33% chance Coinbase wont exist in the U.S. in five years, says Preston Byrne, a longtime crypto lawyer who is partner at Brown Rudnick.

Byrne predicts that, if Coinbase faces setbacks in the SEC case, it will accelerate its international expansion strategy. He added that aggressive enforcement actions by the SEC would likely have spelled the death knell for the entire crypto industry a decade ago, but that the U.S. market is now dwarfed by overseas onesa trend he says will continue as countries such as Nigeria, whose population will surpass the U.S. in coming years, embrace crypto.

Byrnes view of the robustness of the global crypto economy is borne out by current crypto prices. While Bitcoin and Ethereum dropped around 6% following news of the SECs Binance complaint, they have since recovered with Bitcoin trading over $27,000 as of Wednesday morning.

Genslers campaign against Coinbase, meanwhile, does not mean there is no place for a U.S.-based crypto industry. The Financial Times reported last week that traditional Wall Street names like Charles Schwab and Fidelity are preparing to move into the sector by offering services like custodythe industry term for storing cryptoand seeking to challenge crypto-native firms.

The SEC is not the law

In interviews with Fortune, industry executives were surprisingly upbeat about the chances for Coinbase and other crypto firms to prevail against Genslerthough its not certain whether that sentiment was expressed sincerely or strategically.

An executive at a prominent venture capital firm, who asked not to be identified, said the firm had sent out letters to its limited partners reassuring them the SECs actions did not represent a long term threat to crypto. She also suggested that lawyers at the firm and at crypto companiesmany of whom have experiences at top levels of the US governmentbelieve Gensler, who is not an attorney, has overplayed his hand.

The SEC is not the law, said the executive, saying the agencys enforcement campaign has been based around interpretations of existing securities rules that have rarely been applied in the context of federal courts.

While those with a stake in lawsuits typically view their chances in a rosy light, the outcome of several high profile cases involving crypto and the SEC is genuinely up in the air. These include the closely watched SEC v. Ripple, which turns on whether the agency correctly designated the XRP token, which launched in 2013, to be a security. And in another case involving the trust company Grayscale, Bloomberg Intelligence recently upgraded the firms chances for success from 40% to 70% following a hearing in which a three-judge panel suggested the SEC had behaved in a high-handed and arbitrary manner in denying an application for a Bitcoin ETF.

A loss for the SEC in one of those cases would likely lead the agency to adopt a less aggressive approach to crypto enforcement, and could lead it to drop charges or agree to a settlement with Coinbase. For now, though, the market does not appear bullish on Coinbases prospects, as shares of Coinbase on Wednesday were down 15% from the start of the week.

A person close to Coinbase leadership, meanwhile, told Fortune the company doesnt believe that Gensler wants to drive crypto from American shores, and that crypto is simply going through a period of regulatory uncertainty similar to other upstart industries before it.

Like Uber or Airbnb, this a natural process for any regulated utility, said the Coinbase source.

This a common sentiment across the industryone that implies the crypto industry will catch a break, either in the courts or in Congress, that will release them from Genslers grip. But the industry also acknowledges that, for now, the worst is likely yet to come.

Other shoes to drop

The SECs lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase this week garnered attention because the two companies are the biggest names in the industry, but the agency is actively pursuing numerous other cases against crypto firms. And in interviews with Fortune, crypto insiders predicted more cases are on the wayincluding legal actions from the Justice Department, which has the power to bring criminal charges. Several people said they expect Justice to announce such charges against Binance imminently.

If multiple federal agencies are pursuing a company, the charges they bring typically drop in tandem, but that has not been the case with Binance. Roughly two months before the SECs complaint, the smaller Commodities and Futures Trading Commission sued the company in federal court, which has raised questions about the staggered nature of the charges.

One industry source told Fortune that the agencies are indeed coordinating, and that the delay in the Justice Department bringing charges against Binance is likely because the agency is in ongoing settlement talks with the company, or because it needs more time given the complexity of the case. Several people speculated that Binance will also face charges from the Office of Foreign Assets Control, a Treasury Department agency tasked with overseeing sanctions violations.

Two crypto industry figures in Washington, DC, however, suggested that a rivalry between the SEC and other agencies has undermined customary cooperation, and that Genslers personal ambitions and taste for swashbuckling politics has made him unpopular.

Hes pissed off people at the Fed, Treasury and the Justice Department, said a former Capitol Hill staffer and veteran crypto lobbyist.

Meanwhile, many in Washington, DC are suspicious of Genslers motives. Critics suspect his recent hardline against the crypto industry is intended to make Democrats forget that he failed to spot massive frauds at the stablecoin project Terra and at FTX, and about his personal and professional connections to FTXs disgraced founder Sam Bankman-Fried.

This view was shared by the venture capital executive, who said that the political winds could shift against Gensler in the coming months, providing an opening for legislation that would remove the SEC from oversight of certain elements of the crypto industry.

The likelihood of this transpiring is unclear and may reflect wishful thinking on the part of the crypto industry. As for Gensler, who has declined repeated requests to speak with Fortune, he has proved adaptable and morally fluid in the eyes of his criticswho point to a career arc that has seen him evolve from a Goldman Sachs banker to CFO for Hillary Clintons Presidential campaign to his current role as a close ally of Sen. Elizabeth Warren and other progressives who abhor crypto.

Whatever Genslers motivations, he appears to have the upper hand on the crypto industry for the moment. While Coinbase and other crypto companies will likely survive his rein one way or another, they may have to find their way forward far from U.S. jurisdiction.

Just over a year after he took the reins at CNN, Christ Licht is out at the network. Licht stepped down as chairman and CEO of CNN Worldwide Wednesday, following a growing tide of controversy following the networks live town hall with Donald Trump and an unflattering 15,000-word profile in The Atlantic.

I have great respect for Chris, personally and professionally, said David Zaslav, president and CEO, Warner Bros. Discovery. The job of leading CNN was never going to be easy, especially at a time of huge disruption and transformation, and he has poured his heart and soul into it. While we know we have work to do as we look to identify a new leader, we have absolute confidence in the team we have in place and will continue to fight for CNN and its world class journalism.

Prior to taking control at CNN, Licht was vice president of programming for CBS News and executive producer of the networks morning news program, CBS This Morning, which he helped launch in 2012. He was also the co-creator and original executive producer of MSNBCs Morning Joe.

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