United States Marines and representatives from Boston Dynamics look at Spot, a four-legged robot designed for indoor and outdoor operation, during the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Robotics Challenge at the Fairplex June 5, 2015 in Pomona, California. Organized by DARPA, the Pentagon’s science research group, 24 teams from around the world are competing for $3.5 million in prize money that will be awarded to the humanoid robots that best respond to natural and man-made disasters.

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• Former Pentagon policy analyst Paul Scharre discusses global power and AI in his upcoming book.
• He writes that Marines trained the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s robots.
• The robots, trained to identify humans, were fooled by Marines doing somersaults and hiding in boxes.

The state-of-the-art robots used by the Pentagon had an easily manipulated weakness, according to an upcoming book by a former policy analyst: Though they’re trained to identify human targets, the bots are easily fooled with the most lackluster of disguises.

In his upcoming book, “Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence,” former Pentagon policy analyst and Army veteran Paul Scharre writes that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) team trained its robots with a team of Marines for six days to improve its artificial intelligence systems. 

Scharre did not immediately respond to Insider’s requests for comment. “Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” will be released on February 28.

Shashank Josi, defense editor at The Economist, posted several excerpts from Scharre’s book on Twitter. In the passages, Scharre details how, at the end of their training course, the Marines devised a game to test the DARPA robot’s intelligence.

Eight Marines placed the robot in the center of a traffic circle and found creative ways to approach it, aiming to get close enough to touch the robot without being detected. 

Two of the Marines did somersaults for 300 meters. Two more hid under a cardboard box, giggling the entire time. Another took branches from a fir tree and walked along, grinning from ear to ear while pretending to be a tree, according to sources from Scharre’s book.

Not one of the eight was detected.

“The AI had been trained to detect humans walking,” Scharre wrote. “Not humans somersaulting, hiding in a cardboard box, or disguised as a tree. So these simple tricks, which a human would have easily seen through, were sufficient to break the algorithm.”

Though it is unclear when the exercises in Scharre’s book took place, or what improvements have been made to the systems since, DARPA robots’ antics have long faced obstacles to their performance, including poor balance and concerns over their potential to cause accidental killings due to AI behaving in unpredictable ways.

The Department of Defense and DARPA did not immediately respond to Insider’s requests for comment.

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GOP Rep. George Santos; Miley Cyrus as Hannah Montana

John Locher, File/Associated Press; Kevin Mazur/WireImage/Getty Images

• A Wikipedia user called Anthony Devolder made elaborate claims about his acting experience.
• The name is a known alias of GOP Rep. George Santos, who has made false claims about his past.
• The Wiki bio also said the user performed in drag, something Santos has denied ever doing.

A Wikipedia user going by the name Anthony Devolder — a known alias for embattled GOP Rep. George Santos — made a host of fantastical claims about his acting record, saying he appeared in two successful Disney Channel shows and in a movie alongside Oscar-nominated actress Uma Thurman.

The Wikipedia page featuring the user’s bio, which was first reported Friday by Politico, has since been taken down but was still accessible in internet archives. The bio, which appears to have last been edited on April 29, 2011, is riddled with typos and misspellings. It also includes details that align with Santos, including saying the user was born on July 22, 1988, to a Brazilian family with a European background.

It continues to say that “Anthony Devolder first startted his ‘stage’ life at age 17 as an gay night club DRAG QUEEN and with that won sevral GAY ‘BEAUTY PAGENTS’!”

Santos, who is openly gay, this week denied ever performing in drag after several people told media outlets, including Insider, that they used to know him as a drag performer in Brazil.

The Wiki bio said Devolder “took his step into the begining of his carrer in witch he started in a few T.V shows and DISNEY Channel shows,” including “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody” and “Hannah Montana.” It also said “he taped his very first movie in 2009,” which was called “THE INVASION” and starred “Uma Turman,” apparently a misspelling of Uma Thurman.

It’s unclear what movie the bio was referring to. A movie called “The Invasion” came out in 2007, but it starred Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig — not the “Pulp Fiction” actress. No “Anthony Devolder” — or George Santos — was listed in the cast on IMDb.

A representative for Santos did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

Santos has used the name Anthony Devolder in the past. In a recently resurfaced video, Santos introduced himself as Anthony Devolder at an event in New York City in 2019 that featured conservative commentators who were part of the LGBTQ community. He has also at various times listed his full name as George Anthony Devolder Santos. He also went by the name George Devolder in social media posts in 2020, CNN reported. 

Politico noted that if the Wiki bio was not written by Santos, that would mean it was written by someone who, more than a decade ago, used Santos’ alias and biographical details.

The bio is the latest development involving the New York congressman’s fabrications and embellishment. Santos has been accused of lying about his work and education history, how his mother died, and his heritage.

“Certain aspects of sleep may help to explain why some things go bump in the
night,” Betul Rauf, a researcher behind the study, told Insider.

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• A study in the Journal of Sleep Research found poor sleep correlates with paranormal beliefs.
• People with insomnia and sleep paralysis more often believe in ghosts, aliens, and an afterlife.
• The study’s authors told Insider the results could improve health care, but there’s more to learn.

Reported sightings of ghosts, demons, and aliens are more common at night. Those who see them may have one thing in common, according to a new study published in the Journal of Sleep Research: sleep disturbances.

“People report ostensibly paranormal experiences during the night,” Betul Rauf, a PhD student at the Goldsmiths University Sleep Lab who led the study, told Insider. “For some, these experiences can be terrifying which may lead to increased anxiety, and this in turn can further disturb existing sleep problems. We see that this can cause a vicious cycle.”

Rauf and several other researchers were inspired to investigate the relationship between the belief in paranormal experiences on the quality of sleep “to offer an alternative explanation”  when people perceive what they think is a ghost or demon at night. The research group conducted a survey of 8,835 participants who self-reported their demographics, sleep disturbances, and paranormal beliefs.

They found that those who experience sleep disruptions like insomnia and sleep paralysis are more likely to endorse paranormal beliefs such as the soul living on after death, an ability for some people to communicate with the dead, and the existence of ghosts and demons. 

In particular, episodes of sleep paralysis and exploding head syndrome — where an explosive crashing sound in your head jolts you awake as you’re beginning to fall asleep or in the middle of the night — were associated with the belief that aliens have visited earth. Sleep paralysis was also highly associated with the belief that near-death experiences are evidence of life after death. 

“It is important to note that we are only reporting on the correlations between variables and results require replication before strong conclusions can be drawn,” Rauf told Insider, adding that a longitudinal study would help to prove her findings. “Although we do not provide any information about the direction of effects between variables, one possibility is that certain aspects of sleep may help to explain why some things go bump in the night. More research is required before this is clear.”

Should the findings be replicated, Rauf said, the insights could potentially provide healthcare providers with important information when faced with patients reporting experiencing paranormal phenomena. The increased correlation of paranormal beliefs may be indicative of sleep disruption, for example, making the information potentially helpful for diagnosing such ailments.

“Reports of paranormal activity or anomalous beliefs could be mistaken as prima facie evidence for more severe disorders, such as schizophrenia, schizotypal personality disorder, or depression with psychotic features,” reads the study. “The results provided here may encourage clinicians to assess for relevant sleep disturbances and parasomnias in addition to other forms of psychopathology. Clearly, accurate differential diagnosis could have important treatment implications.”

Two in five, or roughly 40%, of Americans believe ghosts are real — and 20% say they have seen one, USA Today reported. Roughly 43% of the population believes in demons. Pew Research found belief in aliens is more prevalent, with nearly two-thirds of Americans saying there is intelligent life on other planets.

Different cultures have long contextualized sleep disturbances with explanations that range from the scientific to the supernatural. In Egypt, sleep paralysis is believed to be caused by invisible trickster genies called jinn, while in Turkey, it is the karabasan — mysterious spirit creatures — that freeze sleepers in their beds. In Italy, the state is considered an attack by the Pandafeche, described as an evil witch or menacing, giant cat. Indigenous people of South Africa believe such sleep disturbances to be caused by black magic cast by dwarfs called tokoloshe.

“People try to explain things happening through paranormal means when they can’t find an explanation for things that are going on,” Don Collins, a director at Fringe Paranormal, a paranormal investigator group in Ohio, told The New York Times. “Negative things are happening around them, they may tend to attribute it to paranormal activity.”

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