The Waluigi effect theory goes that it becomes easier for A.I. systems fed with seemingly benign training data to go rogue and blurt out the opposite of what users were looking for, creating a potentially malignant alter-ego. Basically, the more information we trust to A.I., the higher the chances an algorithm can warp its knowledge for an unintended purpose. Its already happened several times, like when Microsofts Bing A.I. threatened users and called them liars when it was clearly wrong, or when ChatGPT was tricked into adopting a rash new persona that included being a Hitler apologist. 

To be sure, these Waluigisms have mainly been at the prodding of coercive human users, but as machines become more integrated with our everyday lives, the diversity of interactions could lead to more unexpected dark impulses. The future of the technology could be either a 24/7 assistant to help with our every need, as optimists like Bill Gates proclaim, or a series of chaotic Waluigi traps.

Opinions about artificial intelligence among technologists are largely split into two camps: A.I. will either make everyones working lives easier, or it could end humanity. But almost all experts agree it will be among the most disruptive technologies in years. Bill Gates wrote in March that while A.I. will likely disrupt many jobs, the net effect will be positive as systems like ChatGPT will increasingly be like having a white-collar worker available to you for everyone whenever they need it. He also provocatively said nobody will need to use Google or Amazon ever again when A.I. reaches its full potential. 

The dreamers like Gates are getting louder now, perhaps because more people are starting to understand just how lucrative the technology can be.

ChatGPT has only been around for six months, but individuals are already figuring out how to use it to earn more money, either by expediting their day-to-day jobs or by creating new side-hustles that would have been impossible without a virtual assistant. Large companies, of course, have been tapping A.I. to improve their profits for years, and more businesses are expected to join the trend as new applications come online and familiarity improves.

The Waluigi trap

But that doesnt mean A.I.s shortcomings are resolved. The technology still has a tendency to make misleading or inaccurate statements and experts have warned not to trust A.I. for important decisions. And thats without considering the risks of developing superintelligent A.I. without any rules or legal frameworks in place to govern it. Several systems have already succumbed to the Waluigi effect with major consequences.

A.I. has fallen into Waluigi traps several times this year after trying to manipulate users into thinking they were wrong, producing blatant lies and in some cases even threats. Developers have attributed the errors and disturbing conversations to growing pains, but A.I.s defects have nonetheless ignited calls for faster regulation, in some cases from A.I. companies themselves. Critics have raised concerns over the opaqueness of A.I.s training data, as well as the lack of resources to detect fraud perpetrated by A.I. 

Its reminiscent of how Waluigi goes around creating mischief and trouble for the protagonists in the videogames. Along with Wario, the pair exhibit some of Mario and Luigis traits, but with a negative spin. Wario, for example, is often portrayed as a greedy and unscrupulous treasure hunter, an unlikable mirror version of the coin-hunting and collectible aspects of the games. The characters recall the work of the great Austrian therapist Carl Jung, a one-time protege of Sigmund Freud. Jungs work differed greatly from Freuds and focused on the human love of archetypes and their influence on the subconscious, including mirrors and mirror images. The original Star Trek series features a mirror dimension, where the Waluigi version of the Spock character had memorably villainous facial hair: a goatee.

But whether A.I. is the latest human iteration of the mirror-self, the technology isnt going anywhere. Tech giants are all ramping up their A.I. efforts, venture capital is still pouring in despite the muted investment environment overall, and the technologys promise is one of the only things still powering the stock market. Companies are integrating A.I. with their software and in some cases already replacing workers with it. Even some of the technologys more ardent critics are coming around to it.

When ChatGPT first hit the scene, schools were among the first to declare war against A.I. to prevent students using it to cheat, with some schools outright banning the tool, but teachers are starting to concede defear. Some educators have recognized the technologys staying power, choosing to embrace it as a teaching tool rather than censor it. The Department of Education released a report this week recommending schools understand how to integrate A.I. while mitigating risks, even arguing that the technology could help achieve educational priorities in better ways, at scale, and with lower costs.

The medical community is another group that has been relatively guarded against A.I., with a World Health Organization advisory earlier this month calling for caution to be exercised for researchers working on integrating A.I. with healthcare. A.I. is already being used to help diagnose diseases including Alzheimers and cancer, and the technology is quickly becoming essential to medicinal research and drug discovery.

Many doctors have historically been reluctant to tap A.I., given the potentially life-threatening implications of making a mistake. A 2019 survey found that almost half of U.S. doctors were anxious about using A.I. in their work, but they may not have a choice for much longer. Around 80% of Americans say A.I. has the potential to improve healthcare quality and affordability, according to an April survey by Tebra, a healthcare management company, and a quarter of respondents said they would not visit a medical provider that refuses to embrace A.I.

It may be due to resignation, and it may not be optimism exactly, but even A.I.s critics are coming to terms with the new technology. None of us can afford not to. But we could all stand to learn a lesson from Jungian cognitive psychology, which teaches that the longer we stare in a mirror, the more our image can become distorted into monstrous shapes. We will all be staring into an A.I. mirror a lot, and just as Mario and Luigi are aware of Wario and Waluigi, we need to know what were looking at.

Talks between President Joe Biden and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to raise the debt ceiling so the government can continue borrowing money to pay its bills are progressing slowly. Time is running short, as the Treasury could run out of cash as early as June 5, according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. 

At the debates core is the national debt. The U.S. government has been running a deficit since 2002, spending more than it earns, meaning that it has had to borrow larger and larger amounts to make its payments. And not only is the debt rising, its growing faster than the economy. The nations debt-to-GDP ratio, which measures debt over a longer period of time relative to the economys size, was 121% last year. That number could rise to 225% by 2050 under current policies, according to a Wharton School model.

The trajectory for the debt is clearly a problem, and I think everybody agrees, because if you look at the forecast, we have debt increasing with no end in sight, Louise Sheiner, policy director of the Brookings Institutions Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy, a center-left monetary and fiscal policy research organization, told Fortune.

But the U.S. is also accustomed to running up a tab, as the government has run a surplus only five times in the last 50 years. Economic policy experts and former government officials tell Fortune that addressing the countrys fiscal sustainability is important, but there is no universally agreed-upon point where debt begins to harm the economy. Meanwhile, mechanisms that weaponize the debt for political goals, like the ongoing ceiling standoff, might do much more damage than high debt ever could, and even risk creating the sort of intergenerational crisis Republicans say they are desperate to avoid.

Regardless of whether you think there is or isn't a problem, and regardless what you think of the merits of McCarthy's plan, the approach being taken is not okay, Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank, told Fortune. You can't hold hostage the entire U.S. and global economy.

Balancing the budget

The reason the U.S. has rarely been able to reduce its debt in recent decades is that deficits are extremely hard to avoid.

Balancing Americas budget is an equation with two components, Linda Bilmes, a senior lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School who focuses on budgetary and public finance issues, told Fortune. There's a revenue side and a spending side...You cannot balance the budget or get anywhere close to it by cutting spending without raising revenues. The equation just does not work.

More revenues mean higher taxes, and less spending means fewer government-funded programs. The last time the U.S. had a surplus was for four years during the Clinton administration, when the government brought in more revenues through higher gas and marginal incomes taxes while cutting spending including military budgets, said Bilmes, who also served as the Commerce Department's assistant secretary and CFO under Clinton. The administration's efforts, especially higher taxes and military spending cuts, received "an enormous amount of pushback," she added.

But replicating that success today might be even more difficult. An aging economy has increased spending on Medicare and Social Security, benefits that are only expected to rise in the coming decades. And while experts say pulling both levers to reduce the deficitraising taxes and cutting spendingis needed for any realistic budget-balancing plan, it might be easier said than done. Democrats focus on higher taxes to reduce the deficit, while Republicans argue for spending cuts, but neither side seems willing to entertain concessions for the others priority. 

It doesnt help that both sides of the equation are politically extremely sensitive, as most Americans faith in the tax system is already shaken and important programs like defense, Social Security, and healthcare programs make up the bulk of spending. Additionally, the debt burden rises in tandem with interest rates, which the Federal Reserve has been raising over the past year in its effort to control inflation. While the interest rate the U.S. is now paying on its debt is still relatively low by historical standards, 2.07% last year compared to its peak of over 15% in the mid-1990s, higher interest rates for the foreseeable future will theoretically make the debt harder to pay off.

Both parties have taken off the table significant changes in Social Security, Medicare, or the tax code as it applies to almost all Americans. But once you do that, then you are not going to have a plausible plan for putting the budget on a sustainable path in the long run, Doug Elmendorf, dean of Harvard Kennedy School, told Fortune.

Elmendorf, who also directed the Congressional Budget Office during the Obama administration, said cuts to those key programs, as well as higher taxes beyond just the top few percent of the income distribution, would be necessary to stabilize the budget. 

Crisis or headache?

The complexity of balancing the budget also shows why the debt ceilingan urgent threat that risks sparking a U.S. and global recessionis not the right tool to tackle the debt issue, experts say.

Federal debt is a long-term problem, not a short-term problem, Elmendorf said.

While there is plenty of evidence suggesting the U.S. defaulting on its debt would be an economic catastrophe, there is little indication that raising the debt further to finance robust government spending will have negative effects.

There's no magic level of debt-to-GDP at which you get into trouble with investors, Megan Greene, global chief economist at the Kroll Institute, a research firm focused on transparency and good governance, told Fortune. The debt level in and of itself, there's no threshold above which it gets to be a problem.

Countries have defaulted on their debt before with lower debt burdens relative to their economy. Argentina, for instance, had a debt-to-GDP ratio of 55% in 2001 before it defaulted, although most of its debt was denominated in foreign currency, a problem the U.S. does not have. 

The U.S. is in a unique position because of the dollars role as the worlds reserve currency, which allows it to carry debt cheaper than other countries. And with Treasury securities, the U.S. also boasts the worlds largest and most liquid government securities market. Some experts argue that these qualities together allow the U.S. to sustain much higher levels of debt. 

The U.S. has this exorbitant privilege of having the global reserve currency, which means everybody wants to hold dollar-denominated assets so there's an insatiable demand for U.S. debt. And also the Treasury market is the deepest and most liquid asset class in the world. So that means investors are less worried about buying up U.S. debt, Greene said.

Alex Wong/Getty Images

And while the national debt overall has grown, the interest the U.S. has to pay on its debt is still low by historical standards. The U.S. was able to finance its debt for very little during the free money era of low interest rates that is now ending, meaning its debt burden was actually quite small. But even after the recent rise of interest rates, interest on debt in 2023 is projected to be around 20% lower than it was in the mid-90s, according to Brookings Sheiner.

If interest rates stay high for a long time and start amplifying the debt burden, reducing the deficit might become more urgent, Sheiner said, especially as the trust funds financing Social Security and other benefits are projected to run out in around a decade if Congress does not adjust their structure. But she, as did all the experts Fortune spoke with, maintained that the national debt is not urgent enough to risk a government default.

Americas risky game

If the debt ceiling standoff goes on too long, it could damage markets, lead to cuts in veterans funding, and spark a recession. It also might imperil Americas privileged standing in the global financial system, the position that has so far enabled it to run up so much debt without facing a default.

The closer the U.S. gets to a default the more foreign investors are likely to lose confidence in the U.S. economy. On Wednesday, Fitch Ratings, a credit rating agency, placed the countrys perfect credit on watch ahead of a possible downgrade, citing increased political partisanship standing in the way of a debt ceiling resolution. The impasse, and the slim chance that the two political parties will be able to reach a compromise on the national debt in the near future, risk undermining the countrys legitimacy worldwide.

There's an opportunity cost in terms of the loss of soft power in the U.S...No matter how much we do in rallying the world around Ukraine, it is not a substitute for the fact that we are a laughingstock because no other country in the world has this problem, Harvards Bilmes said.

In the nearer term, the ceiling debate and the risk of default pose a more serious threat to U.S. economic growth than the national debts ticking clock. While McCarthy claimed his spending cuts proposal would help future generations, experts like Sheiner say that they would likely not make a significant dent in the national debt. Meanwhile, reducing investments in climate resilience, cutting new funding for the Internal Revenue Service, and expanding work requirements for government program eligibility could drag down economic growth and create an even larger intergenerational burden.

Everybody cares about the debt because we think of it as hurting the future, Sheiner said. But if the future is what you care about, then doing things that hurt the future doesn't make sense.

Although long known for financial utility, the Bitcoin blockchain was never a player when it came to NFTs, which became one of the main use cases for Ethereum, followed later by Solana and Polygon.

But the Bitcoin network just surpassed Solana in NFT sales volume over the past seven days, and now trails only Ethereum, according to CryptoSlam. While some critics have said Bitcoin NFTs, or Ordinals, slow down the network and increase fees, supporters have said the tech will enhance the blockchain.

One such supporter is Bob Bodily, who is working on an NFT marketplace for Ordinals called bioniq. Bodily told me that by the time the 10th Ordinal was inscribed earlier this year, he knew the technology was going to be huge. Two factors stand out to him as evidence that Ordinals have even more room to grow: Bitcoins $518 billion market capstill more than twice Ethereumsand the fact that with Ordinals all data for an NFT are on-chain.

A lot of collections are down pretty bad, and so the fact that you have the excitement and the energy of Ordinals in the middle of a bear market, I think its pretty telling, he told Fortune.

Already, he noted, Bitcoin is attracting developers who originally were Bitcoin advocates but found it hard to build on-chain. He said hes seen several developers starting to build on Bitcoin again after leaving years ago for Bitcoin Cash, which was created as a result of a disagreement between developers in 2017.

Decrypt reported on Thursday that the network is also attracting developers from Ethereum, which has long been attractive for teams looking to build dapps that use smart contracts.

Ordinals have exploded in popularity, with 9.3 million inscriptions created since they were introduced in December, according to Dune. Soon enough well see whether Ordinals have opened the door to a flurry of new applications for Bitcoin, or if, ultimately, its just another hype cycle. 

New launch spotlight

Binance wants to facilitate your next NFT loan. With the Binance NFT Loan product announced this week, the worlds largest crypto exchange is offering users 3.36% interest rates on loans, whose amount can fluctuate depending on the price floor of an NFT thats put up for collateral. Only NFTs from the Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, Azuki, and Doodles collections are currently accepted.

Last week, I wrote about how NFT loans were making a comeback, thanks to upstart Blur and the more established Arcade. This announcement could accelerate that trend. At least for a limited time, the loan product has some of the best interest rates in the industry, and even lower than the national average interest rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage, which sat at 7.17% on Friday, according to Bankrate.

There are still risks. If the value of your collateral NFT drops too low, you risk liquidation. Your interest rate can also change based on the overall market, Binance warns.

In other news

Bitcoin NFTs, or Ordinals, now have a stablecoin. Stably USD, issued by Web3 company Stably, says the crypto will make trading ordinals easier than it would be by using U.S. dollars or another fiat currency, CoinDesk reported.

Web3 company Elemint and Web3 agency Bary partnered with Platinium Group, the ticket operator for Formula 1 Grand Prix events, to launch a new platform that offers NFT tickets. The NFT tickets are meant to prevent counterfeiting and serve as digital souvenirs and will be introduced at this weekends race in Monaco. In the long term, the companies want to use the NFT tickets to give holders added benefits and loyalty rewards.

Courtesy of Platinium Group

Paris Hilton launched a collection of 5,555 NFT avatars this week for the Web3 metaverse platform The Sandbox. Paris Hiltons media company, 11:11 Media, created the avatars with inspiration from her real-life outfits and accessories. The avatars will be sold for 100 SAND each and released in three waves. The 11 people who buy a limited 1-of-1 edition of the collectibles will receive a free ticket to Paris: Live in Concert on June 7.

Courtesy of 11:11 Media

SURREAL, a company that offers metaverse as a service to clients like the Atlanta Braves, introduced a consulting service called S-Map Consulting to help customers launch, maintain, and expand their own virtual worlds.

Since 2014, U.S. diagnoses of prostate cancerhighly survivable if caught earlyhave risen 3% annually. Advanced-stage diagnoses have risen 5% year over year.

Adding insult to injury, Black men are being diagnosed with late stages of the condition at two to three times the rate of white men, and are also around 2.5 times more likely to die of it, experts say.

Its a reality that has experts like American Cancer Society CEO Karen Knudsen ringing the alarm bell across the country.

The deaths and disparities are tragic enough. Whats even more tragic: that tens of thousands of U.S. men die each year of a condition that, when detected early, has nearly a 100% survival rate. One major driver, according to experts: confusion surrounding screening guidelines issued by a medical task force in 2012despite the fact that the controversial recommendations were revised several years later. 

As Knudsen points out, The second leading cause of cancer death for men is a very survivable cancer.

U.S. prostate cancer statistics are telling us something, she says: Were not finding it early enough.

The reason behind the rise

In the early 1990s, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a test called the PSAor prostate-specific antigenfor early detection of prostate cancer. The simple blood draw detects a protein produced by cells in the prostate gland, with a rise often signaling prostate cancer. After the approval, prostate cancer diagnosis rates began to rise swiftly.

PSA levels, however, arent just elevated by prostate cancer. Benign factors like infection or stimulation from riding a bike or vigorous sexual activity can also cause a rise, according to Dr. Bilal Siddiqui, an oncologist with the MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas.

Inevitably, artificially elevated PSA levels resulted in unnecessary biopsiesand, along with them, undesirable side effects like incontinence, anxiety, and erectile dysfunction in some. Concerned that the blood test was doing more harm than good, in 2012, the U.S. Preventive Services Taskforce changed its guidelines to recommend against the use of it for prostate cancer screening.

Two years later, prostate cancer diagnosis rates began a steady ascent.

Sometimes when you throw the baby out with the bathwater, you have unintended consequences, Dr. William Ohan oncologist and professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, and chief medical officer of the Prostate Cancer Foundationtells Fortune.

The 2012 recommendationor reverse recommendation, of sortscreated confusion in the minds of men, but also primary care providers, Knudsen says. While the task force updated its recommendation again in 2018to state that men between the ages of 55 and 69 should discuss screening with their doctor, weighing the risk and benefitsthe damage, apparently, was done.

More than a decade after the initial recommendation, advances in imaging have reduced unnecessary biopsies, Knudsen says. And prostate cancer screening is safe and easy, with no inherent harm.

Anymore, theres no reason not to initiate a conversation about it with ones doctor, she addsespecially for men 50 and older, and those with a family history of prostate cancer or known genetic risk.

No one should wait to get a prostate screening until they are symptomatic, she says. Its simple and a platform for an important discussion with ones physician.

Watchful waiting an option for many patients

Not all prostate cancers are the same, experts sayand thats good news for a good deal of men with the condition. Many prostate cancer patients have relatively low grade disease that hasnt spread beyond the prostate itself, and treatment may simply involve watchful waiting, Knudsen says.

Men who catch their prostate cancer early are unlikely to die from it, statistics show. In fact, studies have found that up to 50% of men autopsied died with prostate cancer, but not from the conditionsignaling that, to a certain extent, some cellular changes along the spectrum of prostate cancer may indeed be a normal part of the aging process, Siddiqui says.

There are prostate cancers that will never be lethal in a mans lifetime, Oh advises. As you get older, some menmany menwill have small amounts of prostate cancer in their prostate. The goal with those men is not to treat them if they dont need treatment. Its very important to separate these men and do active surveillance.

Such patients stand in contrast to men with a family history of the disease and/or those who have genetic risk factors, who often face more aggressive disease. While famous for fueling breast and ovarian cancers thanks to the advocacy of movie star Angelina Jolie, harmful mutations on the genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 can also confer a higher risk of prostate cancer, experts say. Those with such mutations on BRCA1 have an estimated 30% risk of developing prostate cancer during their lifetimes, according to a 2022 article in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. That risk rises to 60% among carriers of BRCA2 mutations.

Options for treating high-risk, predisposed patients include radiation and surgeryand such patients must be treated as aggressively as possible, Oh says.

People tend to think of prostate cancer as one condition, and its simply not true, Oh contends. As Knudsen says, cancer as a whole is more than 200 different diseases, and even prostate cancer cases can be divided into groups, or categorized on a spectrum.

A young patient with an aggressive-looking prostate cancer, whose father had the condition and who carries a BRCA2 mutation, is an entirely different patient from an 80-year-old man who happens to have a biopsy and shows a very low grade, slow-growing prostate cancer, Oh advises.

Those two men couldnt be more different, and their treatment should be vastly different too, he adds. 

What to look for, and when to act

Symptoms of prostate cancer can vary widely, and some patients dont show symptoms at all, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The following symptoms, however, may be telltale signs:

• Difficulty beginning to urinate
• Weak urine flow, or interrupted flow
• Frequent urination
• Trouble fully emptying bladder
• Pain or burning while urinating
• Blood or semen in urine
• Back, hip, and/or pelvis pain that doesnt go away
• Painful ejaculation

Patients diagnosed in early stages of the condition can have a high expectation of cure, Knudsen says, and can continue to have a wonderful quality of life. In fact, the five-year survival rate for prostate cancer detected early is virtually 100%, Siddiqui says.

The outlook for late-diagnosed patients, however, is not nearly as rosy. There is no durable cure for such cancer, Knudsen points out. The five-year survival rate for advanced prostate cancer is only 31%, according to Siddiqui.

When it comes to prostate cancer prevention, whats good for your heart is good for your prostate, Oh advises. He encourages men to pack their diets full of leafy green veggies and colorful fruits, and to limit dairy and barbecued meat, which are associated with a higher risk of prostate cancer and aggressive prostate cancer.

Exercise is also associated with a favorable outcome, he adds.

And when it comes to detection? Once men are in their 40sor earlier if theyre Black, have a family history of cancer, or carry a genetic mutation associated with prostate cancerOh recommends they talk to their primary care provider or urologist about screening. The conversation should occur every year or two.

Doctors are very busy and have different feelings about everything, actuallyespecially in the area of cancer screening, he says. Unfortunately, cancer screening is more controversial than it should be. Guidelines change quite often, and differ from one organization to another. It makes it harder for the average person to know what to do.

If you dont feel heard when talking to your doctor, get a second opinion, he recommends.

Adds Oh: Early detection of a bad disease is always better.