standards

My favorite thing in “The Beauty,” a body-horror procedural adventure from Ryan Murphy and Matthew Hodgson premiering Wednesday on FX and Hulu, is a Chad and Jeremy joke buried in a line of dialogue that will mean nothing to anyone who doesn’t know the ‘60s singing duo responsible for “Distant Shores” and “A Summer Song,” or remember their appearance as the Redcoats on “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” I can almost feel the satisfaction, the inward chuckle that must have accompanied the writing of it. The rest of the series’ 11-episode first season I found somewhat less delightful — but then, delight is the last thing on its mind.

To begin. A supermodel (played by real-life supermodel Bella Hadid) goes berserk on a Paris runway, grabbing water bottles from spectators, draining the contents, throwing bodies around like … empty water bottles. Stealing a motorcycle, she rides recklessly through the streets of Paris as the Prodigy’s “Firestarter” thumps on the soundtrack until she’s knocked flying by a car. Pulling herself almost together, she enters a cafe, grabs and guzzles more water, causes even more grievous bodily harm, is shot, keeps going and, exiting to the street, is confronted by a phalanx of gendarmes with guns drawn. Then she explodes. Cue opening credits.

The show develops information slowly and out of chronological order, so if you’re averse to knowing even the basics of the premise, you may want to stop reading now — though I wouldn’t consider any of what follows a spoiler. At the center of the fun is a drug called the Beauty, which can transform the ugliest duckling into the loveliest swan but after a while develops the unfortunate side effect described above, making hotness literal. (This is why we have the FDA, people.) Even more unfortunate, in respect to global health, once a dose is administered — “One shot and you’re hot” is the series’ log line — it becomes a virus capable of being transmitted sexually, and, given how people are, you know how that’ll go.

This alarms the incomparably wealthy character behind the drug — whom press materials identify only as the Corporation (Ashton Kutcher, Hollywood hunk) in order to keep a secret — not because people might die, but because it threatens his plans to market the Beauty, which has crept out of his control and into the world. (It’s not a great business plan, anyway.) Indeed, his way of cleaning up problems is murder, to which end he employs a sinister figure called the Assassin (Anthony Ramos), though he will do the job himself if convenient. (Anthony will acquire an assistant assassin, Jeremy, played by Jeremy Pope.)

Ashton Kutcher as the Corporation, the wealthy character behind the Beauty.

(Eric Liebowitz / FX)

The case of the exploding supermodel brings into the picture a pair of Paris-based FBI agents, Cooper Madsen (Evan Peters) and Jordan Bennett (Rebecca Hall), and their dry Mulder and Scully banter and tailored-suits panache is my second-favorite thing about “The Beauty.” (Unlike Mulder and Scully, we don’t have to wait around for them to sleep together; we meet them in bed.) As beautiful people keep blowing up in beautiful places, they’ll chase the bug to Venice and Rome and New York, with famous sights highlighted to demonstrate that the production is not doubling locations in Prague or Vancouver. Like nearly everything else in this production and milieu, it smells of money (and vacations written into the budget, maybe), but it still might be my third-favorite thing about the series. That the agents speak French and Italian is a nice, elevating touch.

From “The Picture of Dorian Gray” to “The Substance,” and most every vampire movie ever made, the search for everlasting youth and beauty never ends well. In the world we still manage to call real, one only has to turn on the news to see the self-inflicted carnage this obsession has wrought. (Notably, Murphy first got hot back in 2003 with “Nip/Tuck,” a well-regarded, unpleasant show about cosmetic surgeons.) There is some satirical intent here, I’d wager, regarding the shallow aspirations of this age of Ozempic. That the Corporation has a couple of lunk-headed sons might be meant to call President Trump to mind, though the character stands in for vile billionaires everywhere.

Of course, beauty is subject to taste and culture and all sorts of indefinable things. As Franny Forst, unaccountably married to the Corporation, Isabella Rosselini provides in her person the argument for aging gracefully. (She’ll get a speech about it too.) At the same time, Murphy and Hodgson, adapting a comic by Jeremy Haun and Jason A. Hurley, do not hesitate to make a fat person a sad person. The remodeled … patients, I guess you’d call them, though certainly good-looking, are hot in a generic, almost dull way — the women trim, the men muscled — which feels more sad than exciting. A Nobel-winning scientist will be trotted out to offer an “explanation” of how the drug works and what it can do, but it’s really just magic beans.

There’s plenty of gore and goo — the transformation process is not pretty. Some storylines are meant to be poignant but are overwhelmed by the weirdness or feel exploitative, or the characters aren’t dimensional enough to move you. There are plot twists, of course, and rejiggerings, but it’s too obvious to be really terrifying; the game is given away early. (That doesn’t rule out some icky second-season invention; this one ends on a cliffhanger.)

At the same time, there’s enough nonsense, edging into ridiculousness, that the series might best be approached as a black action-comedy — at the end of the opening scene, the gendarmes are splattered with pieces of supermodel — or a very fancy B (maybe C) picture. “Star Wars” built an empire on the latter.

Jan. 8 (Asia Today) — South Korea’s push to develop a national artificial intelligence model has exposed a fundamental question the government has yet to answer: What, exactly, qualifies as a “sovereign” or “independent” AI?

A government-backed competition is underway to build a national AI system intended for use across society. The initiative, led by Ha Jung-woo, former Naver executive and now senior secretary for AI future planning at the presidential office, and Bae Kyung-hoon, former head of LG AI Research and now vice minister of science and ICT, aims to secure what officials call “AI sovereignty.” The stated goal is a Korean-built AI developed entirely with domestic technology.

As the competition has intensified, disputes over technical standards have moved to the forefront. The most prominent issue is whether participating models were truly built “from scratch” – a term borrowed from sports that implies starting with no preexisting foundation.

The debate first erupted when the CEO of Syonic AI publicly questioned whether Upstage’s model met that standard. Upstage CEO Kim Sung-hoon responded the following day by opening all training logs, checkpoints and experiment records for public verification. The company live-streamed the session, answered questions without prior preparation and ultimately received a public apology from the original accuser.

Senior Secretary Ha and Vice Minister Bae both praised the process on social media, calling it evidence that the national AI project is fostering a healthy and transparent ecosystem. They commended Upstage for proving the allegations unfounded through verification and credited the accuser for acknowledging the findings.

The controversy did not end there.

Attention soon shifted to Naver’s own “from scratch” claim. The company acknowledged that its model uses an encoder from China’s Qwen but said the component was not significant. In a statement, Naver said it had “strategically adopted a verified external encoder” to ensure compatibility with the global ecosystem and optimize system efficiency.

That explanation has been met with skepticism in the industry. Critics argue that the encoder is a core component of the model and that identical weights suggest a level of dependence comparable to directly adopting a foreign model. Because the entire system was trained around that structure, they say, the dependency cannot simply be removed.

The contrast in responses has drawn sharp comparisons. If a national athlete faces doping suspicions, the burden of proof lies with the athlete. Upstage disclosed everything immediately. Naver, critics argue, has asked for time without offering detailed verification. Post-hoc review, they say, is meaningless once the competition is over.

Naver has countered that innovation does not require building every technology from the ground up, arguing that AI advances by adding unique value atop proven global technologies.

But that raises a larger question: Is that what the government meant by a national AI strategy?

Industry observers say the issue is not a minor technical dispute but a political and strategic one, touching on technological sovereignty, research ethics and industrial trust. Some argue that marketing ambiguous standards risks undermining the very purpose of the project.

National AI systems are expected to underpin public services, defense, finance and other critical sectors. If their core components depend on foreign technology – particularly from countries where security assurances are uncertain – the issue extends beyond competitiveness to national economic and security risks.

What defines a “domestic AI”? Where are public funds and computing resources being directed? Who verifies technological independence, and by what criteria?

These are questions only the government can answer.

The project is officially called the Independent Foundation Model initiative. Without clear standards and qualifications, however, the national AI strategy risks losing both credibility and direction.

– Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Tuesday weakened one of the nation’s most aggressive efforts to combat climate change, releasing new fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks that handed a victory to the oil and gas industry.

The new rule, from the Environmental Protection Agency and Transportation Department, will almost immediately be plunged into litigation as environmental groups and states with stricter standards, led by California, plan to challenge it.

“We intend to make sure the backsliding doesn’t reach California’s doorstep,” California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra said Tuesday in announcing the state’s plan to go to court to defend its tougher standards.

If the administration’s policy survives those fights, it would spare automakers from having to meet ambitious gas mileage and emissions requirements put in place in 2012 under President Obama. It is among the biggest steps the administration has taken to reverse an existing environmental policy.

The final rule is a dialed-down version of the one the administration originally planned. Instead of proposing zero improvements in fuel efficiency in coming years, it would require automakers to increase fuel economy across their fleets by 1.5% a year, with a goal of achieving an average of about 40 miles per gallon by 2026. That’s still a major departure from current rules, which mandate annual increases of 5%, reaching an average of 54 mpg by 2025.

Nearly 900 million more tons of carbon dioxide are expected to be released under the new rule than under the Obama-era standards, a result of less efficient cars burning an additional 78 billion gallons of fuel.

“We are delivering on President Trump’s promise to correct the current fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions standards,” EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in a statement. The administration’s plan, he said, “strikes the right regulatory balance that protects our environment and sets reasonable targets for the auto industry.”

Environmentalists and public health advocates said the change would likely contribute to thousands of premature deaths and asthma attacks. They criticized the decision to make the new standards final in the midst of a global pandemic, arguing that the rollback would damage public health at a time when thousands of people are gravely ill and the nation’s economy is in tatters.

But after repeatedly postponing the release of the new rule as it scrambled to justify the change, the administration faced deadlines that may have forced its hand.

For one, the longer the government delayed the new rule, the less effect it would have. Although Trump had initially announced that the new standards would affect vehicles in model year 2020, those cars were built under the Obama-era stringent fuel efficiency standards and are already on the road.

Unless the administration finalized its rollback by April 1, it was in danger of missing the deadline to apply the new standards to the 2022 model year.

Additionally, under the Congressional Review Act, new rules issued after May 19 could be invalidated by the next Congress.

The new standards will apply nationwide. Although California has historically set its own tougher car pollution rules, the Trump administration last year moved to strip the state of that authority. California and many of the other states that have adopted its clean-car standards have sued the administration over this change, and that issue likely won’t be resolved until next year at the earliest.

Just hours after the administration unveiled the final rule Tuesday, Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board, disclosed that Volvo was in talks with the state to reach a voluntary emissions agreement. Four other automakers — Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and BMW — have already made a deal with the state that would preserve emissions standards that are not as tough as the Obama standards, but are significantly more ambitious than Trump’s proposal.

The change in fuel-economy standards has been in development since the early days of the administration, when two lobbying groups representing automakers asked then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to relax the Obama-era standards.

The administration’s original proposal would have frozen fuel-economy standards at this year’s levels. That met a furious response from officials in California and several other states as well as unexpected resistance from some auto companies, which worried the administration was going overboard and dragging them into years of court battles with states.

Karl Brauer, an analyst for the research firm Cox Automotive, said that Trump’s rule had put automakers in an impossible position. If they opposed the rollback, their investors would be unhappy. If they endorsed it, they would be branded as anti-environment.

The rollback will likely make it easier to sell cars by making them cheaper, he said, but automakers are concerned it may not survive legal scrutiny or the next election.

“I think automakers will feel a lot of uncertainty until Nov. 3,” Brauer said.

“The auto industry has consistently called for year-over-year increases in fuel efficiency,” said John Bozzella, president of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group that lobbies on behalf of the world’s largest car companies. “Looking to the future, we need policies that support a customer-friendly shift toward these electrified and other highly efficient technologies.”

Trump has boasted that his plan would save lives, improve the economy and lower the cost of new cars.

In a phone call with reporters on Tuesday, senior EPA and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration officials said their analysis showed that lowering the cost of a new car would allow more Americans to replace aging vehicles with newer, safer ones. That turnover in the nation’s fleet would prevent more than 3,300 traffic fatalities, according to the government’s projections, as well as 46,000 post-crash injuries.

They also emphasized the rollback’s estimated cost savings for automakers — as much as $100 billion over the lifetime of the vehicles built under the new rule.

But while administration officials said the change would help drivers and the environment, the government’s analysis was not as optimistic.

Its estimates showed that while loosening fuel-economy standards could shave about $1,000 off the price of a new car, drivers would have to buy more gas than they would have under the current rule.

David Friedman, vice president of advocacy for Consumer Reports, said his group’s projections show that each vehicle sold under the Trump rule will cost its owner on average $2,100 more, even if gas prices continue to fall.

Automakers and their suppliers could also suffer. The government’s analysis shows that American car companies could experience a loss of thousands of jobs by making dirtier cars that would be locked out of many overseas markets.

The change is also expected to result in significantly more greenhouse gas emissions, which trap the sun’s heat, worsening the effects of climate change. Hotter temperatures contribute to more smog, which can damage the lungs and cause other serious health problems.

“Of all the bad things President Trump has done to the environment, this is the worst,” said Dan Becker, head of the Safe Climate Campaign, a Washington-based consumer advocacy group. “He is rolling back the biggest single step any nation has taken to fight global warming, cut oil use and save money at the pump.”

In a February report to Wheeler, the agency’s science advisory board warned that the technical analysis underpinning the government’s draft proposal was so flawed that it had possibly led the EPA to the wrong conclusion.

“In other words,” the board wrote, “the standards in the 2012 rule might provide a better outcome for society than the proposed revision.”

Phillips reported from Washington and Mitchell from Los Angeles.