Latest news with #MarkEllison
Economic Times
5 days ago
- Health
- Economic Times
Forest bathing: how shinrin-yoku improves focus and lowers stress, according to experts
Synopsis Forest bathing, or shinrin-yoku, is a Japanese mindfulness practice involving immersion in nature to enhance focus and reduce stress. Certified guide Mark Ellison explains how using all five senses during nature walks can improve mental health, restore attention capacity, and support emotional well-being, even in small, accessible settings TIL Creatives Forest bathing, or shinrin-yoku, involves spending intentional time in nature to improve focus, reduce stress, and restore attention capacity (AI generated image) Forest bathing, known in Japanese as shinrin-yoku, is a mindfulness activity that involves spending uninterrupted time in nature while engaging the senses. Research indicates that the practice can help lower stress and improve Ellison, a certified forest therapy guide and founder of Pinnacle Forest Therapy, describes forest bathing as 'slowing down… connecting to nature with all your senses… being in a natural setting and being present.' He recommends choosing a quiet location, noticing surrounding details, and disconnecting from technology when possible. Also read: 6 ways walking improves your mental and physical healthEllison co-founded the first certified forest therapy trail in North Carolina at Pinnacle Park. Sessions typically last 90 minutes, include minimal talking, and focus on observation, reflection, and meditation. Some participants use forest bathing as a way to process grief or honor the memory of a loved one who valued states that forest bathing supports mental health by reducing stress and restoring attention span. This aligns with 'attention restoration theory,' introduced by University of Michigan researchers Stephen and Rachel Kaplan, which proposes that time in nature allows daily-use attention capacities to recover. 'We're always in a hurry, and we're always connected to technology… [forest bathing is] disconnecting from that,' Ellison says. He encourages participants to turn off or silence phones and resist the urge to take photos, instead engaging fully with the environment. While 90-minute sessions are common, Ellison notes that forest bathing can be practiced in shorter intervals. 'You could just go out in your backyard… for 15 minutes. And then… continue on with longer periods of time out in nature,' he says. Keeping a journal to record observations may help reinforce the experience. Also read: Forget cold plunges, pricey pills, and IV drips: These simple biohacks can boost your healthspan naturally Forest bathing does not require remote locations. It can be done in local parks, gardens, or backyards. For those without easy access to green spaces, Ellison suggests integrating nature into indoor environments by adding plants, displaying landscape images, or listening to natural soundscapes such as ocean waves.
CNBC
5 days ago
- Health
- CNBC
The Japanese art of 'forest bathing' can improve focus, lower stress: What it is and how to get the most benefit
Forest bathing, or shinrin-yoku in its original Japanese, is a mindfulness practice that involves immersing oneself in nature. The decades-old practice pulls from research that shows that spending time in nature can help lower stress levels and improve focus. Recently, forest bathing is growing in popularity, thanks in part to social media where people are sharing their experiences exploring forests and other green spaces and taking in all that they have to offer. Over 45,000 videos have been shared on TikTok with the tag #forestbathing. Users says they've seen an improvement to their mental health. "It's slowing down. It's connecting to nature with all your senses. It's just being in a natural setting and being present," says Mark Ellison, a certified forest therapy guide and trail consultant, and founder of Pinnacle Forest Therapy. "The key things are to find a place where you can spend some time uninterrupted, and then notice the things that are around you." Forest bathing can be done solo, or with a guide like Ellison. He helped found the first certified forest therapy trail in North Carolina at Pinnacle Park. There, Ellison guides people along the trail and encourages them to notice what they hear, see, smell and feel along the journey. The experiences Ellison leads usually last about an hour and a half, and involve minimal talking to prioritize periods of reflection and meditation. It can sometimes be an emotional experience, he says, with some people crying during the walks. "It's really a contrast to how we typically spend our days, which are usually distracting and usually in stressful environments," Ellison tells CNBC Make It. "Some people seek that out as a way to deal with grief. I've guided a number of individuals and families who specifically came to go on the forest bathing experience, to remember someone who passed who was very connected to nature." When people spend more time in nature, it can have great benefits on how they feel, Ellison says. "One of the key things about forest bathing and how it supports our mental health is that through using our senses, it helps us to really calm down," he says. "We're always in a hurry, and we're always connected to technology in our homes, and so [it's] disconnecting from that." Ellison encourages people who forest bathe to turn their phones off or put them on silent if they feel comfortable doing so. Avoid "the temptation to take pictures and check social media and those sorts of things. Be fully engaged with what nature offers," he says. When you forest bathe, it can also enhance your attention span, he explains. This aligns with "attention restoration theory," which was introduced by Stephen and Rachel Kaplan at the University of Michigan. The theory suggests that "spending time in nature helps our attention capacities that we use on a daily basis, relax," Ellison says. "It keeps us engaged enough to be interested and not bored. But it lets our primary attention capacities rest. And so they're like a muscle. When they get fatigued, they're not as effective." To reap the benefits of forest bathing, you don't have to head to a trail if you aren't comfortable. Ellison emphasizes that it can even be done in your backyard or a local garden, and bringing a pal along could make the experience less scary. The practice also doesn't have to be 90 minutes to be beneficial, he adds. "You could just go out in your backyard and just sit by a tree and just do 15 minutes. And then if you feel comfortable with that, continue on with longer periods of time out in nature," Ellison says. "Start in small doses and maybe keep a journal and just write down some of the things that you experience and notice while you're out there." If you don't have easy access to green spaces, Ellison recommends surrounding yourself with nature by getting plants for your space, hanging photos of beautiful landscapes on your walls or using them as screensavers and listening to nature-inspired sounds like ocean waves.
New York Times
11-06-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
How Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner had the energy for five and a half hours of tennis cinema
When Jannik Sinner broke Carlos Alcaraz's serve at the beginning of the third set of their French Open final Sunday afternoon, it looked as though both men would head for an ice bath far earlier than expected. Sinner, the men's world No. 1, had just won his 20th straight set at Roland Garros. He needed just one more to win his fourth Grand Slam title, his at the first French Open. On the other side of the net was a player who had never won a match after being two sets down in eight attempts. Advertisement Sports rarely make sense, so instead, just over three hours later, Alcaraz was summoning the strength to lift the Coupe des Mousquetaires high above his head, leaving Sinner to ponder how a match that he had been a single point away from winning — three times — had escaped him. For the rest of the world, it was a moment to sit back and simply wonder how they played such high-quality tennis for five and a half hours, saving their best for the final two games before Alcaraz went stratospheric in the match tiebreak to clinch the title. 'The preparation for the final starts as soon as the semi finishes,' says nutritionist Mark Ellison, who worked with Andy Murray around 2012-2013, and has also worked with Manchester United and GB Boxing. 'Rule of thumb is that we're looking to replace 1.5 times the amount of fluid lost in the previous match. If you have a two percent deficit, we'll be looking to put 1.5 times that back in, because you're always going to pee some of it out. 'Then we'll be looking at some big carbohydrate intake: one gram to 1.5 grams per kilo of bodyweight straight away. Repeat that every hour until the next 'normal' meal.' Murray favored sushi to quickly replenish his carbohydrate stores, eating up to 40 pieces after a match (spicy tuna and avocado rolls with spicy mayo preferred). Most players also use carbohydrate-rich electrolyte drinks, and shakes with carbohydrate and protein, to try to repair the damage to muscles during a match. 'Tennis is pretty brutal, especially on clay' says Ellison, 'so as well as recovering from a fueling point of view, you're also trying to manage muscle damage and repair. 'In the 24 hours between semifinal and final, you would want 5-8 solid feeds. As a practitioner your job is to make that volume feel as normal as possible, which is why we hide a lot in drinks, sauces, desserts and high-energy snacks.' Advertisement Hydration-wise, the secret is in the sweat. There are few stones left unturned in monitoring how much a player sweats in every condition imaginable, as well as analyzing the composition of that sweat. Some players' teams travel to tournaments with temperature and humidity gauges, which can be set up on court during practice sessions to assess the environment and thus understand the best hydration strategy. Court conditions are pivotal in determining how much fluid a player loses, and how best to replenish it. 'If it's a cool day it can be very minimal but it can go right up to two or three litres per hour, and that's not easy to replace,' Ellison says. 'It doesn't matter if you get a bit dehydrated, but the cutoff is around two percent. If your dehydration goes beyond two percent that's when it starts to affect concentration and as you go down that sliding scale it will start to affect endurance, strength and power.' Knowing an athlete's electrolyte requirement allows nutritionists to make up bespoke drinks, as opposed to providing off-the-shelf sports drinks which can be a bit cautious when it comes to electrolyte content. During an epic match of the sort played on Sunday, a 75kg male player could use around 4,000 calories. But even before the final, it's likely they are already a bit depleted when it comes to carbohydrate stores after two weeks of matchplay every other day. An average-sized athlete can store 400g of glycogen in their muscles, another 100g in the liver and around 10g to 30g in fluids (blood sugar), totaling around 530g of glycogen. But it's a challenge to eat enough carbohydrate to fill that store. The recommendations for athletes are to eat 6-10g of carbohydrate per kilogram of bodyweight per day, but Ellison says most athletes don't realise how difficult that is: 'Often you're coaching people and seeing they are missing those numbers. When you're trying to hit those big numbers you're likely going to have to add in liquid carbs alongside meals because you can't hit them with pasta — you'd be stuffed.' Advertisement Alcaraz has said that his pre-match go-to meal 90 minutes before is a plate of mixed pasta — some with and some without gluten — and a cocoa cream called Ambrosia that has olive oil and dates in it. Then, immediately before the start he has a bar made up of dates, egg whites and guarana. Sinner goes for a more basic chicken and rice meal or a ham and cheese sandwich, depending on the time of day he's playing. One helpful aspect of tennis is the frequent opportunities the players have to top up during a match. 'Most are getting between 30 and 60g per hour during a match,' says Ellison, depending on their individual strategies and what they can tolerate. 'Often that's through gels, bananas, drinks, bars or carb shots.' One additional drink that both players were thought to be consuming during Sunday's final is pickle juice. It's a concentrated source of electrolytes, containing sodium and potassium. The taste is not for everyone, but consuming it has been found to stop cramping 40 percent faster than drinking water. It is thought that drinking pickle juice activates receptors in the mouth, which trigger a reflex that disrupts messages to the brain that a muscle is cramping, but more research is needed to establish this. According to Dr. Mayur Ranchordas, a senior lecturer in sport nutrition and exercise metabolism at Sheffield Hallam University, it's particularly effective as a treatment for cramps in warmer conditions, or when sporting occasions last longer than anticipated — like the second-longest Grand Slam final in history. The physical demands of playing elite tennis for such a long time are immense. The USTA Player and Coach Development team reported in 2022 that the distance covered during a typical Grand Slam match is just two to three miles because of the court's size, but those miles are far more demanding than in most other sports. 'Compared to other athletes, tennis players accumulate workload at the highest frequency, registering one unit for approximately every 7-8 feet covered on the court,' said the USTA. The sharp movements and abrupt changes of direction that define tennis points make the sport 'one of the most demanding in the world in terms of acceleration and deceleration.' Alcaraz and Sinner hit 1,433 ground strokes between them during their five-set epic, with Sinner gaining the edge on shorter points of 0-4 shots (108-95) and Alcaraz doing the same on longer ones (97-84). In the Spaniard's tiebreak surge, eight of the 12 points played were five shots or longer. Alcaraz won seven of them. Pressure points in tennis — break points, set points, match points, and points in longer games like 30-30, 40-40, and Ad-40 — skew longer on average than others. Alcaraz ultimately benefited from his sporting edge meaning more in the biggest moments. Advertisement Both men will have felt the impact of such volume and intensity. A 2013 study into the physiological and performance variables of male tennis players during a three-day tournament and the following two-day recovery period found that a tennis tournament causes such a heavy load for the legs, in addition to muscle damage, that the recovery of explosive attributes of leg extensor muscles remains impaired after two days of rest. Mentally, there will be recovery time required, too. Perhaps more so for Sinner, who does not have the high of the victory to help ease his tired body and mind. 'It hurts, yes,' the Italian said in his post-match interview. Performance coach and psychologist Jamil Qureshi, who has worked with 22 golfers in the top 50 in the world, including two world number ones, as well as Premier League clubs and Ashes-winning cricketers, said the key will be to 'reframe' what happened in the final. 'How can we see something in a way which gives us the best opportunity to be better, to change the outcome next time?' he says. Whoever lost Sunday's match was destined to manage a new, unpleasant sporting experience: going in, both Sinner and Alcaraz had a 100 percent record in Grand Slam finals. Alcaraz is now 5-0; Sinner is 3-1. How long that recovery might take is hard to say. 'It's relative to the individual,' says Qureshi. 'Sinner will have a good support network around him who will help him reframe and see things differently. Time will help with that, as will looking back at videos, analyzing the match. If he's of the mindset to do so, which I'm convinced he will be, he'll allow this to further his career.' In his post-match interview Alcaraz focused on the belief that allowed him to fight back from the brink of defeat: 'I just believe all the time. I have never doubted myself. Even though in those match points down, I thought just one point at a time. Just one point and then after one point and then try to save that game and keep believing. That's what I thought.' Advertisement By the time the fifth-set tiebreak came around, few believed either player would be able to elevate themselves to another level, but that's precisely what Alcaraz did, racing to a 7-0 lead before eventually winning it 10-2. The winning shot was an incredible forehand down the line that left everyone watching open-mouthed in awe. That tiebreak was simply Alcaraz playing how he is capable of playing, says Qureshi. 'Every now and then this great clarity comes over a player – people call it being in the zone – when they are energized, purpose-driven, focused, able to think clearly under pressure. That's how people can play all the time. 'His subconscious mind knows more about tennis than his conscious mind ever will. If you can play subconsciously, then it's amazing how it can transform your talent.' With just three weeks separating their historic match in Paris from the start of the next Grand Slam at Wimbledon, both players will be doing whatever it takes to recover physically and mentally from their exertions. Alcaraz's traditional post-French Open jaunt to Ibiza, Spain is likely a different approach to Sinner's. Whether the rapid turnaround will prove better for a Sinner looking to move on quickly than an Alcaraz wanting to celebrate a little longer, only Wimbledon and its grass can prove. (Top photo of Carlos Alcaraz after winning the French Open: Alain Jocard / AFP via Getty Images)
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
At Least Two Newspapers Syndicated AI Garbage
At first glance, 'Heat Index' appears as inoffensive as newspaper features get. A 'summer guide' sprawling across more than 50 pages, the feature, which was syndicated over the past week in both the Chicago Sun-Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer, contains '303 Must-Dos, Must-Tastes, and Must-Tries' for the sweaty months ahead. Readers are advised in one section to 'Take a moonlight hike on a well-marked trail' and 'Fly a kite on a breezy afternoon.' In others, they receive tips about running a lemonade stand and enjoying 'unexpected frozen treats.' Yet close readers of the guide noticed that something was very off. 'Heat Index' went viral earlier today when people on social media pointed out that its summer-reading guide matched real authors with books they hadn't written, such as Nightshade Market, attributed to Min Jin Lee, and The Last Algorithm, attributed to Andy Weir—a hint that the story may have been composed by a chatbot. This turned out to be true. Slop has come for the regional newspapers. Originally written for King Features, a division of Hearst, 'Heat Index' was printed as a kind of stand-alone magazine and inserted into the Sun-Times, the Inquirer, and possibly other newspapers, beefing the publications up without staff writers and photographers having to do additional work themselves. Although many of the elements of 'Heat Index' do not have an author's byline, some of them were written by a freelancer named Marco Buscaglia. When we reached out to him, he admitted to using ChatGPT for his work. Buscaglia explained that he had asked the AI to help him come up with book recommendations. He hasn't shied away from using these tools for research: 'I just look for information,' he told us. 'Say I'm doing a story—10 great summer drinks for your barbecue or whatever. I'll find things online and say, hey, according to a mai tai is a perfect drink. I'll source it; I'll say where it's from.' This time, at least, he did not actually check the chatbot's work. What's more, Buscaglia said that he submitted his first draft to King, which apparently accepted it without substantive changes and distributed it for syndication. King Features did not respond to a request for comment. Buscaglia (who also admitted his AI use to 404 Media) seemed to be under the impression that the summer-reading article was the only one with problems, though this is not the case. For example, in a section on 'hammock hanging ethics,' Buscaglia quotes a 'Mark Ellison, resource management coordinator for Great Smoky Mountains National Park.' There is indeed a Mark Ellison who works in the Great Smoky Mountains region—not for the national park but for a company he founded called Pinnacle Forest Therapy. Ellison told us via email that he'd previously written an article about hammocks for North Carolina's tourism board, offering that perhaps that is why his name was referenced in Buscaglia's chatbot search. But that was it: 'I have never worked for the park service. I never communicated with this person.' When we mentioned Ellison's comments, Buscaglia expressed that he was taken aback and surprised by his own mistake. 'There was some majorly missed stuff by me,' he said. 'I don't know. I usually check the source. I thought I sourced it: He said this in this magazine or this website. But hearing that, it's like, obviously he didn't.' Another article in 'Heat Index' quotes a 'Dr. Catherine Furst,' purportedly a food anthropologist at Cornell University, who, according to a spokesperson for the school, does not actually work there. Such a person does not seem to exist at all. For this material to have reached print, it should have had to pass through a human writer, human editors at King, and human staffers at the Chicago Sun-Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer. No one stopped it. Victor Lim, a spokesperson for the Sun-Times, told us, 'This is licensed content that was not created by, or approved by, the Sun-Times newsroom, but it is unacceptable for any content we provide to our readers to be inaccurate.' A longer statement posted on the paper's website (and initially hidden behind a paywall) said, in part, 'This should be a learning moment for all of journalism.' Lisa Hughes, the publisher and CEO of the Inquirer, told us the publication was aware the supplement contained 'apparently fabricated, outright false, or misleading' material. 'We do not know the extent of this but are taking it seriously and investigating,' she said via email. Hughes confirmed that the material was syndicated from King Features, and added, 'Using artificial intelligence to produce content, as was apparently the case with some of the Heat Index material, is a violation of our own internal policies and a serious breach.' (Although each publication blames King Features, both the Sun-Times and the Inquirer affixed their organization's logo to the front page of 'Heat Index'—suggesting ownership of the content to readers.) This story has layers, all of them a depressing case study. The very existence of a package like 'Heat Index' is the result of a local-media industry that's been hollowed out by the internet, plummeting advertising, private-equity firms, and a lack of investment and interest in regional newspapers. In this precarious environment, thinned-out and underpaid editorial staff under constant threat of layoffs and with few resources are forced to cut corners for publishers who are frantically trying to turn a profit in a dying industry. It stands to reason that some of these harried staffers, and any freelancers they employ, now armed with automated tools such as generative AI, would use them to stay afloat. Buscaglia said that he has sometimes seen freelancer rates as low as $15 for 500 words, and that he completes his freelance work late at night after finishing his day job, which involves editing and proofreading for AT&T. Thirty years ago, Buscaglia said, he was an editor at the Park Ridge Times Herald, a small weekly paper that was eventually rolled up into Pioneer Press, a division of the Tribune Publishing Company. 'I loved that job,' he said. 'I always thought I would retire in some little town—a campus town in Michigan or Wisconsin—and just be editor of their weekly paper. Now that doesn't seem that possible.' (A librarian at the Park Ridge Public Library accessed an archive for us and confirmed that Buscaglia had worked for the paper.) On one level, 'Heat Index' is just a small failure of an ecosystem on life support. But it is also a template for a future that will be defined by the embrace of artificial intelligence across every industry—one where these tools promise to unleash human potential but instead fuel a human-free race to the bottom. Any discussion about AI tends to be a perpetual, heady conversation around the ability of these tools to pass benchmark tests or whether they can or could possess something approximating human intelligence. Evangelists discuss their power as educational aids and productivity enhancers. In practice, the marketing language around these tools tends not to capture the ways that actual humans use them. A Nobel Prize–winning work driven by AI gets a lot of run, though the dirty secret of AI is that it is surely more often used to cut corners and produce lowest-common-denominator work. Venture capitalists speak of a future in which AI agents will sort through the drudgery of daily busywork and free us up to live our best lives. Such a future could come to pass. The present, however, offers ample proof of a different kind of transformation, powered by laziness and greed. AI usage and adoption tends to find weaknesses inside systems and exploit them. In academia, generative AI has upended the traditional education model, based around reading, writing, and testing. Rather than offer a new way forward for a system in need of modernization, generative-AI tools have broken it apart, leaving teachers and students flummoxed, even depressed, and unsure of their own roles in a system that can be so easily automated. AI-generated content is frequently referred to as 'slop' because it is spammy and flavorless. Generative AI's output tends to become content in essays, emails, articles, and books much in the way that packing peanuts are content inside shipped packages. It's filler—digital lorem ipsum. The problem with slop is that, like water, it gets in everywhere and seeks the lowest level. Chatbots can assist with higher-level tasks such as coding or scanning and analyzing a large corpus of spreadsheets, document archives, or other structured data. Such work marries human expertise with computational heft. But these more elegant examples seem exceedingly rare. In a recent article, Zach Seward, the editorial director of AI initiatives at The New York Times, said that, although the newspaper uses artificial intelligence to parse websites and data sets to assist with reporting, he views AI on its own as little more than a 'parlor trick,' mostly without value when not in the hands of already skilled reporters and programmers. Speaking with Buscaglia, we could easily see how the 'Heat Index' mistake could become part of a pattern for journalists swimming against a current of synthetic slop, constantly produced content, and unrealistic demands from publishers. 'I feel like my role has sort of evolved. Like, if people want all this content, they know that I can't write 48 stories or whatever it's going to be,' he said. He talked about finding another job, perhaps as a 'shoe salesman.' One worst-case scenario for AI looks a lot like the 'Heat Index' fiasco—the parlor tricks winning out. It is a future where, instead of an artificial-general-intelligence apocalypse, we get a far more mundane destruction. AI tools don't become intelligent, but simply good enough. They are not deployed by people trying to supplement or enrich their work and potential, but by those looking to automate it away entirely. You can see the contours of that future right now: in anecdotes about teachers using AI to grade papers written primarily by chatbots or in AI-generated newspaper inserts being sent to households that use them primarily as birdcage liners and kindling. Parlor tricks met with parlor tricks—robots talking with robots, writing synthetic words for audiences that will never read them. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
Slop the Presses
At first glance, 'Heat Index' appears as inoffensive as newspaper features get. A 'summer guide' sprawling across more than 50 pages, the feature, which was syndicated over the past week in both the Chicago Sun-Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer, contains '303 Must-Dos, Must-Tastes, and Must-Tries' for the sweaty months ahead. Readers are advised in one section to 'Take a moonlight hike on a well-marked trail' and 'Fly a kite on a breezy afternoon.' In others, they receive tips about running a lemonade stand and enjoying 'unexpected frozen treats.' Yet close readers of the guide noticed that something was very off. 'Heat Index' went viral earlier today when people on social media pointed out that its summer-reading guide matched real authors with books they haven't written, such as Nightshade Market, attributed to Min Jin Lee, and The Last Algorithm, attributed to Andy Weir—a hint that the story may have been composed by a chatbot. This turned out to be true. Slop has come for the regional newspapers. Originally written for King Features, a division of Hearst, 'Heat Index' was printed as a kind of stand-alone magazine and inserted into the Sun-Times, the Inquirer, and possibly other newspapers, beefing the publications up without staff writers and photographers having to do additional work themselves. Although many of the elements of 'Heat Index' do not have an author's byline, some of them were written by a freelancer named Marco Buscaglia. When we reached out to him, he admitted to using ChatGPT for his work. Buscaglia explained that he had asked the AI to help him come up with book recommendations. He hasn't shied away from using these tools for research: 'I just look for information,' he said. 'Say I'm doing a story, 10 great summer drinks for your barbecue or whatever. I'll find things online and say, hey, according to a mai tai is a perfect drink. I'll source it; I'll say where it's from.' This time, at least, he did not actually check the chatbot's work. What's more, Buscaglia said that he submitted his first draft to King, which apparently accepted it without substantive changes and distributed it for syndication. King Features did not respond to a request for comment. Buscaglia (who also admitted his AI use to 404 Media) seemed to be under the impression that the summer-reading article was the only one with problems, though this is not the case. For example, in a section on 'hammock hanging ethics,' Buscaglia quotes a 'Mark Ellison, resource management coordinator for Great Smoky Mountains National Park.' There is indeed a Mark Ellison who works in the Great Smoky Mountains region—not for the national park, but for a company he founded called Pinnacle Forest Therapy. Ellison told us via email that he'd previously written an article about hammocks for North Carolina's tourism board, offering that perhaps that is why his name was referenced in Buscaglia's chatbot search. But that was it: 'I have never worked for the park service. I never communicated with this person.' When we mentioned Ellison's comments, Buscaglia expressed that he was taken aback and surprised by his own mistake. 'There was some majorly missed stuff by me,' he said. 'I don't know. I usually check the source. I thought I sourced it: He said this in this magazine or this website. But hearing that, it's like, Obviously he didn't.' Another article in 'Heat Index' quotes a 'Dr. Catherine Furst,' purportedly a food anthropologist at Cornell University, who, according to a spokesperson for the school, does not actually work there. Such a person does not seem to exist at all. For this material to have reached print, it should have had to pass through a human writer, human editors at King, and human staffers at the Chicago Sun-Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer. No one stopped it. Victor Lim, a spokesperson for the Sun-Times, told us, 'This is licensed content that was not created by, or approved by, the Sun-Times newsroom, but it is unacceptable for any content we provide to our readers to be inaccurate.' A longer statement posted on the paper's website (and initially hidden behind a paywall) said in part, 'This should be a learning moment for all of journalism.' Lisa Hughes, the publisher and CEO of the Inquirer, told us the publication was aware the supplement contained 'apparently fabricated, outright false, or misleading' material. 'We do not know the extent of this but are taking it seriously and investigating,' she said via email. Hughes confirmed that the material was syndicated from King Features, and added, 'Using artificial intelligence to produce content, as was apparently the case with some of the Heat Index material, is a violation of our own internal policies and a serious breach.' (Although each publication blames King Features, both the Sun-Times and the Inquirer affixed their organization's logo to the front page of 'Heat Index'—suggesting ownership of the content to readers.) There are layers to this story, all of them a depressing case study. The very existence of a package like 'Heat Index' is the result of a local-media industry that's been hollowed out by the internet, plummeting advertising, private-equity firms, and a lack of investment and interest in regional newspapers. In this precarious environment, thinned-out and underpaid editorial staff under constant threat of layoffs and with few resources are forced to cut corners for publishers who are frantically trying to turn a profit in a dying industry. It stands to reason that some of these harried staffers, and any freelancers they employ, now armed with automated tools such as generative AI, would use them to stay afloat. Buscaglia said that he has sometimes seen rates as low as $15 for 500 words, and that he completes his freelance work late at night after finishing his day job, which involves editing and proofreading for AT&T. Thirty years ago, Buscaglia said, he was an editor at the Park Ridge Times Herald, a small weekly paper that was eventually rolled up into Pioneer Press, a division of the Tribune Publishing Company. 'I loved that job,' he said. 'I always thought I would retire in some little town—a campus town in Michigan or Wisconsin—and just be editor of their weekly paper. Now that doesn't seem that possible.' (A librarian at the Park Ridge Public Library accessed an archive for us and confirmed that Buscaglia had worked for the paper.) On one level, 'Heat Index' is just a small failure of an ecosystem on life support. But it is also a template for a future that will be defined by the embrace of artificial intelligence across every industry—one where these tools promise to unleash human potential, but instead fuel a human-free race to the bottom. Any discussion about AI tends to be a perpetual, heady conversation around the ability of these tools to pass benchmark tests or whether they can or could possess something approximating human intelligence. Evangelists discuss their power as educational aids and productivity enhancers. In practice, the marketing language around these tools tends not to capture the ways that actual humans use them. A Nobel Prize–winning work driven by AI gets a lot of run, though the dirty secret of AI is that it is surely more often used to cut corners and produce lowest-common-denominator work. Venture capitalists speak of a future in which AI agents will sort through the drudgery of daily busywork and free us up to live our best lives. Such a future could come to pass. The present, however, offers ample proof of a different kind of transformation, powered by laziness and greed. AI usage and adoption tends to find weaknesses inside systems and exploit them. In academia, generative AI has upended the traditional education model, based around reading, writing, and testing. Rather than offer a new way forward for a system in need of modernization, generative-AI tools have broken it apart, leaving teachers and students flummoxed, even depressed, and unsure of their own roles in a system that can be so easily automated. AI-generated content is frequently referred to as slop because it is spammy and flavorless. Generative AI's output often becomes content in essays, emails, articles, and books much in the way that packing peanuts are content inside shipped packages. It's filler—digital lorem ipsum. The problem with slop is that, like water, it gets in everywhere and seeks the lowest level. Chatbots can assist with higher-level tasks like coding or scanning and analyzing a large corpus of spreadsheets, document archives, or other structured data. Such work marries human expertise with computational heft. But these more elegant examples seem exceedingly rare. In a recent article, Zach Seward, the editorial director of AI initiatives at The New York Times said that, while the newspaper uses artificial intelligence to parse websites and datasets to assist with reporting, he views AI on its own as little more than a 'parlor trick,' mostly without value when not in the hands of already skilled reporters and programmers. Speaking with Buscaglia, we could easily see how the 'Heat Index' mistake could become part of a pattern for journalists swimming against a current of synthetic slop, constantly produced content, and unrealistic demands from publishers. 'I feel like my role has sort of evolved. Like, if people want all this content, they know that I can't write 48 stories or whatever it's going to be,' he said. He talked about finding another job, perhaps as a 'shoe salesman.' One worst-case scenario for AI looks a lot like the 'Heat Index' fiasco—the parlor tricks winning out. It is a future where, instead of an artificial-general-intelligence apocalypse, we get a far more mundane destruction. AI tools don't become intelligent, but simply good enough. They are not deployed by people trying to supplement or enrich their work and potential, but by those looking to automate it away entirely. You can see the contours of that future right now: in anecdotes about teachers using AI to grade papers written primarily by chatbots or in AI-generated newspaper inserts being sent to households that use them primarily as birdcage liners and kindling. Parlor tricks met with parlor tricks—robots talking to robots, writing synthetic words for audiences who will never read them.
