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Gizmodo
21 minutes ago
- Gizmodo
The Mysterious AI Easter Egg at the Heart of Ari Aster's ‘Eddington'
Horror wunderkind Ari Aster's new movie Eddington has divided audiences and inspired plenty of online debate about what exactly the director is trying to say about our collective relationship to technology (hint: it's probably not good). The story centers around a small town in Texas that descends into social-media-driven chaos during the covid-19 pandemic. The film stars Joaquin Phoenix as local sheriff Joe Cross, who tussles with the town's mayor, played by Pedro Pascal, while the rest of the community loses its mind over various political and cultural disputes. The film's story is complicated and filled with subplots, but one of the more intriguing narrative strands involves the controversial installation of a new data center near the city limits. The company behind the ominous new facility has a very peculiar name: SolidGoldMagikarp. As it turns out, this name appears to be a reference to a relatively obscure concept in artificial intelligence development known as 'glitch tokens.' In the world of AI training, the process of 'tokenization' involves translating human text into numerical data that can be interpreted by the LLM. To do this, researchers feed vast amounts of human text into software programs called 'tokenizers.' Tokenizers translate the raw data from something humans can understand into parsed data designed for machine consumption, dubbed 'tokens.' Tokens are then fed into a language model when it's being 'trained.' The training process involves teaching an algorithm to interact with a human—this is the way chatbots like ChatGPT learn to respond to a human's prompt, and produce an output, or response. Tokenization can have a fiscal benefit for companies, as it can make the effort to process large amounts of data more efficient and less costly, and a tokenizer might aptly be compared to a software compiler that translates human input into binary code that a computer can understand. Large language models are just predictive algorithms designed to construct language based on human prompts. Like auto-correct, ChatGPT is designed to learn word sequences and regurgitate them. 'That is literally all that they do,' Jessica Rumbelow, the CEO of AI firm Leap Labs, told Gizmodo. 'So, you'd put in 1, 2, 3, 4, and the model is trained to predict 5,' she offered, as an example. Tokens, entered into LLMs during the AI training process, are a critical part of teaching a program how to talk to humans. There's a key exception to this rule, however, and that's the phenomenon known as 'glitch tokens.' Rumbelow said that the token system 'typically works really well, except when you have tokens that the model has never seen' before. When an LLM encounters a token that it wasn't trained on, it can produce very strange behavior in the program. SolidGoldMagikarp is one such 'glitch token' that, in the past, has introduced bizarre behavior into LLMs. Rumbelow would know. She and her research partner, Matthew Watkins, discovered this particular glitch token when they were looking into the anomalous token phenomenon. Rumbelow says that when the token was entered into the LLM, it produced bizarre results. The program may babble nonsense, utter oblique, ominous phrases and sentiments, or otherwise display aggressive and hostile behavior towards the user. 'We think it's what happens when the model has not seen that token during its training process,' said Rumbelow. The AI 'doesn't know what to do with the input' because it's never seen it before, she said. In short, phrases like SolidGoldMagikarp are obscure utterances that can make an AI model go temporarily crazy. How does SolidGoldMagikarp tie into the themes of Aster's new movie? That's anybody's guess, but you could easily venture several interpretations. It's worth noting that, for all their variety, Aster's movies all have pretty much the same ending. Each film concludes with the forces of darkness triumphing over the story's protagonist. In each case, the character becomes part of the dark force's conspiratorial designs. In Hereditary, the Graham family becomes helpless pawns in a coven's demonic ceremony. In Midsommar, Dani's repressed rage is weaponized against her boyfriend by the Hårga. In Beau is Afraid, the titular character fails to escape the suffocating web of his mother, and his entire life becomes little more than the basis for a Kafka-esque ritual of humiliation. In Eddington—a film about our troubled relationship to technology—the triumphant dark force is the internet itself, and the town's inhabitants—particularly Joe—are caught in its data-driven machinations. The data center, the physical manifestation of the internet's dominance over our lives, is the real winner of the film, and all of the human characters become its emissaries, pawns, or victims. Aster's decision to name the data center after a rogue word that, through a kind of digital incantation, can make an otherwise sane system go haywire may be his way of referencing what technology seems to have done to all of us while taking over our lives, and it's likely a warning of things still to come.
Yahoo
23 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Fans Are Losing It Over Sabrina Carpenter's 'Incredible' Performance With Iconic Band
Fans Are Losing It Over Sabrina Carpenter's 'Incredible' Performance With Iconic Band originally appeared on Parade. Sabrina Carpenter heated up the summer once again with a head-turning performance at Lollapalooza in Chicago. The pop superstar, 26, shocked fans during the 2025 festival's final night when legendary band Earth, Wind & Fire joined her on stage on August 3. Carpenter's vocals blended seamlessly with the bands' as they belted out their 1978 classic, "September," and their 1981 hit, "Let's Groove." The "Espresso" singer dazzled the stage in her sparkly pink bodysuit as she danced with the band and invited the crowd to sing along. When Rolling Stoneshared a video of the jaw-dropping performance on Instagram, fans could hardly contain their excitement in the comments. "Now THIS is a true special guest moment," one wrote. "She sounds great with them!!!" another said. A third called the performance "beautiful," while others deemed it "incredible, "life changing," "epic," and "absolutely brilliant." Another fan commented, "This was so amazingly unexpected." "Literally lost my d--n mind during this entire moment," an excited concertgoer wrote. "OBSESSED" another fan said. "The collab I never expected but lovvvve," an impressed fan wrote. Billboard also shared a clip from the awe-inspiring performance, resulting in additional praise from fans. "SHE IS AN ICON AND SHE IS THE MOMENT," one said of Carpenter. "I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS?! ICONS FROM TWO DIFFERENT GENERATIONS ON ONE STAGE?!" a second wrote. "So random but so cool," a third commented. Carpenter seemed just as excited about the performance as fans. "I'm gonna join the band, guys!" she raved to the crowd following the surprise collaboration, per Billboard. The pop sensation is set to release her seventh studio album, Man's Best Friend, on August 29, 2025. She dropped "Manchild," the lead single from the upcoming album, on June 5. The catchy track has proved to be a hit of the summer, with its eccentric music video amassing over 59 million views. Fans Are Losing It Over Sabrina Carpenter's 'Incredible' Performance With Iconic Band first appeared on Parade on Aug 4, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Aug 4, 2025, where it first appeared. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
24 minutes ago
- Yahoo
'We Were Liars': First-time actor to fan favourite — how Shubham Maheshwari made Gat unforgettable
The actor went from studying economics in Vancouver to starring in one of the most popular shows of the year Fans of the We Were Liars series on Prime Video are more hopeful about the show's return. While a formal renewal announcement hasn't been made yet, Vernon Sanders, head of television at Amazon MGM Studios, confirmed to Variety that a Season 2 writers room is in the works. But while we keep our fingers crossed that the story, based on E. Lockhart's books, continues, we're all still captivated by the show's breakout star, Shubham Maheshwari, who plays Gat in the series. While the We We Liars cast is filled with veteran actors, including David Morse, Mamie Gummer, Candice King, Rahul Kohli, Caitlin FitzGerald and Emily Alyn Lind, the show was actually Maheshwari's first time ever working on camera. He was so new to the industry that he didn't think he was actually going to book the role, believing that it was a "far-fetched goal." Maheshwari was studying economics at the University of British Columbia, focusing on studying for exams, having a good GPA and applying for business consulting jobs when the possible opportunity to star in We Were Liars came up. And eventually he started thinking about what could happen if he did get the role of Gat on the show. "There was a moment where I stopped applying for jobs, or working as hard on my courses, and my roommates and my friends were concerned, because I didn't tell them that I was auditioning," Maheshwari told Yahoo. "Then I eventually told them about the show and everything, and they just lost their minds completely." 'It was a little bit scary' While Maheshwari is an incredibly impactful actor, he did identify that there was a comfort that came with acting alongside so many experienced costars. "There was a little bit of the imposter syndrome that was kicking in early on, especially when I was flying from Vancouver to Nova Scotia, because I knew the people I was working with, and I knew where I was in terms of experience, and that was a little bit daunting. It was a little bit scary," Maheshwari said. "But I think they're not just incredible at their job, they're also incredible human beings, and that means so much more to me." "I remember having so many conversations with David [Morse], such an amazing person to talk to, and just incredible points of view, I think, about this job and about the world. ... And I think there's one thing to learn ... when you talk to them, but also just being on set and watching them do their thing. I often say that my favourite scenes to film were the ones with the entire family, just because, as the story goes, Gat doesn't really say much, so it's a relatively lighter day, but mainly because I get to kind of sit back and watch these experts do their thing." As we saw in the series, Gat and Lind's character Cadence are particularly close, giving us an emotional love story, and Lind was someone Maheshwari was really able to confide in on set. "[Emily's] been working since she was five years old, and she's experienced about this industry, and she knows the ins and outs of it," he said. "And I think it was amazing that my first role was opposite someone like her." "She was nothing but lovely. She was so understanding of the fact that this is my first thing. She was so supportive. ... Right from the get go she made it very apparent that she is someone that I can count on for any questions, any sort of discussions, conversations, whatever it may be. ... She's always going to be that person who I can talk to whenever I need to talk about anything, about this bizarre job." But while the Gat and Cadence moments are particularly memorable, some of the best scenes in the whole show are between Gat and his uncle Ed (Rahul Kohli), who's the long-term partner of Cadence's aunt, Carrie (Mamie Gummer). And that's because, while Gat and Ed are so important to members of the Sinclair family, they're always at an arms length, they always feel like they're outsiders, and they're able to talk to each other about that in a way they can't communicate with anyone else. "I think what's so cool about the show and how it's different from the book is ... we were able to go a little bit deeper about ... seeing things from Gat's point of view, seeing things from Ed's point of view," Maheshwari said. "And it just makes it more real, I think." "I don't do this often, but sometimes if I see certain messages that I got on Instagram, there were a lot of them ... from people of colour, ... and just anyone, talking about how the show did such an honest and raw and real job in terms of capturing that element of feeling like an outsider, and how people related to it. And I think that's a very fulfilling, satisfying feeling, because that's what we aimed for. That's what we hoped for." And with that comes the brilliant way Maheshwari takes on Gat's most significant trauma, the loss of his dad, and what it's been like to navigate his teens years without his father. "It's not something that he outrightly talks about all the time, but ... you realize this as you get older, the things that you go through as a kid are such an important part of how you see the world," Maheshwari said. "The way I looked at it, personally, in terms of preparation, was Gat lost his dad when he was ... eight years old, and that was the first time that he came on the island, and he met Cadence for the first time. And I think the strongest way in which that element of losing his father at a very young, influential age, played out was ... Cadence and the Beechwood Island suddenly became that anchor that pulls him out of that sadness." 'Nothing makes me more happy than being on set' Now looking forward in his career, with his first on-screen job under his belt, Maheshwari realized that he's at his happiest when he's on set. "Nothing is more satisfying and fulfilling, and nothing makes me more happy than being on set and working," Maheshwari said. "I still wasn't fully convinced, if I want to give 100 per cent into being an actor, and I think through We Were Liars it was just like, nothing else is going to make me as happy as this." "It was a lot of working hours and ... you get so consumed by the process that you're a little bit drawn away from your normal, regular life, and away from family and everything. ... And once it was over it was a nice kind of change, I think, to come back to reality, to come back to real life and be with my friends and my family. ... But I still don't think anything can match being on set. I'm so eager to go to the next one." In terms of roles he'd love to do in the future, Maheshwari is really just open to any and all possibilities, as he continues to develop as an actor "I want to try different things. I want to see what I feel about different kinds of roles and just explore myself as an actor," Maheshwari said. But he's incredibly thankful for all the fans of We Were Liars, particularly with all the praise that he's gotten for his very first series. "We immediately got so much love," Maheshwari highlighted. "We've talked about this often, me and [Joseph Zada] and Emily [Alyn Lind] and Esther [McGregor], ... we felt that responsibility, that this book means something, means a lot to people. It was a defining part of some of their childhoods." "Now that it's out, I think it's been lovely. ... The response has been quite positive and it's a bit of a relief. ... Some of the messages that I see, they're just super kind. ... They may not realize it, but it means a lot. It means a lot to me and it goes a long way. And I'm very, very grateful for the love and support that they've given."
