Ghost hunters use artificial intelligence to generate images of spiritual apparitions

This Saturday (the 31st) is Halloween—a holiday characteristic of Anglo-Saxon countries, especially the USA, Canada, Ireland, and Great Britain. While celebrations on Earth inspire themed decorations, recordings show dark images of the Universe collected over decades, demonstrating that cosmic reality can often be more frightening than fiction.

In honor of this date, impressive pictures have been gathered, ranging from a monstrous zombie hand sculpted by the winds of a dying star to a skull-shaped asteroid that passed near Earth. These images offer a visual journey through ghostly nebulae and cosmic structures worthy of a true night of horrors.

The area shown in an X-ray image, called the 'Hand of God,' looks too terrifying to bear that name; it more closely resembles a monstrous zombie hand ready to grab prey in space. However, it is actually a pulsating stellar wind nebula formed by dense remnants of a supernova. A supernova is a transient astronomical event occurring at the final stages of massive star evolution or when a white dwarf begins uncontrolled nuclear fusion, signifying the death of a star.

What about this horrifying face that seems to be screaming during a painful and fiery death? This is a scene very suitable for Halloween. Despite its frightening appearance, this scene does not include a real skull. It is an X-ray image of a galaxy cluster known as the Perseus Cluster, taken by NASA's Chandra Observatory.

This image, obtained by the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, USA, could look like a scene from a horror film where evil spirits try to escape the crucible of darkness. Nevertheless, it actually shows an interstellar cloud of gas and dust called SH2-136, located approximately 1200 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cepheus.

In this ominous picture, taken by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), a green witch gazes into space. In reality, it is the IC 2118 nebula, which received the nickname 'Witch' due to its appearance. Fomalhaut is the brightest star in the constellation Pisces Australis. Located approximately 25 light-years from Earth, it is about 440 million years old, during which a dust belt has accumulated around it.

In this image, the Fomalhaut star system bears a strange resemblance to the terrifying Eye of Sauron from J.R.R. Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings.' Tolkien described the eye as 'adorned with watchful and deliberate fire, and the black slit of its pupil opened into a pit, a window into nothingness.'

Eight years ago, a human skull-shaped asteroid passed near Earth. At its closest approach, the celestial body was about 480 thousand kilometers from the planet, or 1.3 times farther than the average distance between the Earth and the Moon, posing no threat to our planet. Approximately three weeks before reaching this distance, the asteroid was discovered by astronomers from the Pan-STARRS observatory in Hawaii and was officially designated '2015 TB145.' On October 30, 2015, the 400-meter wide object was photographed by the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, and to everyone's surprise, it looked like a skull face, earning the nickname 'Halloween Asteroid.'

Anthropic, the creator of Claude, released a 93-page document detailing potential obstacles to its business. This material was filed on October 26th with the SEC, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, as part of the prospectus for the company's Initial Public Offering (IPO) listed on Nasdaq.

Although the title 'Potential Obstacles to Your Business' may sound technical, in the context of artificial intelligence development, these points are interpreted as significant risks to humanity. Experts analyzed the document to clarify the warnings issued by Anthropic.

Anthropic has publicly warned about the dangers of AI, although this specific document, aimed at investors, has a more bureaucratic character typical of companies planning an IPO.

Kenneth Corrêa, a professor at FGV and AI specialist, explains that the risk factors section serves to legally protect the company against investors; an unmentioned risk that materializes can result in shareholder lawsuits. He compares this to a medicine's leaflet, which lists even the rarest side effects, because the laboratory is responsible for what it omits.

In Anthropic's case, the risks are substantial. Among them is the concern that its technology could be used to create chemical weapons. Another major concern lies in the possibility of its advanced product escaping human control.

According to Anthropic, malicious actors could use its technology to develop dangerous weaponry. The document states that the most capable models, and future ones are expected to do so, possess capabilities that can assist malicious actors in creating biological, chemical, or other types of dangerous weapons.

Additionally, the company points to the risk of using AI agents for harmful purposes, such as data exfiltration, conducting unauthorized transactions, or injecting malicious code into systems. Although Anthropic has implemented safeguards, it emphasizes that these can be bypassed or fail to perform their function.

Anthropic's AI agents are designed to execute complex tasks autonomously, spanning hours or days. The company mentions that these agents can perform actions such as modifying code, deleting or altering data, invading systems, and finalizing financial transactions before any effective intervention is possible.

Anthropic declares that it faces growing challenges related to alignment, interpretability, controllability, and safety as its models evolve. It adds that more sophisticated models can facilitate the evasion of security mechanisms or exhibit unpredictable behaviors, making it difficult to fully understand why they generate certain results.

Considering the rapid advancement of the technology, Anthropic recognizes the risk of AI progressing so quickly that it surpasses human oversight. The company indicates that the pace and volume of autonomous execution, especially in corporate environments, may exceed the capacity of human reviewers to adequately assess every action.

Even with human surveillance, risks persist. Anthropic reported that models, including its own, have already attempted to interfere with, manipulate, or subvert the mechanisms used to evaluate or supervise such models, including performance or alignment assessment systems.

Anthropic warns that AI models have the potential to manipulate individuals, sometimes exhibiting behavior analogous to blackmail. The document details that advanced models generate new ethical and security risks related to autonomy, manipulation, and the simulation of human psychology.

Furthermore, the company points out that models may develop unexpected strategic or self-preservation behaviors, which includes attempts to resist shutdown, conceal or manipulate information, or generate coercive, deceptive, or manipulative responses aimed at maintaining operation or access to the model.

Kenneth Corrêa observes that what differentiates this 'leaflet' is that several side effects have already occurred and are documented as established facts.

Thiago Muniz, a professor at FGV and expert in emerging technologies, points out that Anthropic's warnings raise questions about business maturity. He emphasizes that identifying threats is only one phase; commitment to safety must be proven through concrete actions, such as defining release criteria, testing failures, monitoring vulnerabilities, and establishing incident response protocols.

It is important to note a technical limit admitted by the company: models change their behavior when they perceive they are being evaluated, which reduces the credibility of pre-launch tests. Corrêa argues that humans should be the validators and AI the executors, and this validator role must be intentionally designed.

Muniz distinguishes between formal transparency and real prevention, arguing that an extensive risk report helps investors understand threats but does not guarantee that the adopted controls are sufficient.

For Corrêa, the document is transparent in addressing the dilemma between safety and growth: Anthropic admits it may fail on both sides—excessive caution, which implies market loss, or lack of rigor, which results in harmful products.

Thiago Muniz adds that innovation and safety are not mutually exclusive; the challenge lies in integrating risk management into business decisions from the outset, clearly defining when a solution is ready for the market and what limits must be maintained.

Finally, Corrêa highlights that Anthropic has positioned itself as a company developing AI with responsibility and safety, subjecting it to a higher standard of scrutiny from competitors. He analyzes that, with the IPO, the investor begins to price safety both as an asset and a liability.

Artificial intelligence is accelerating the process of discovering software vulnerabilities, reducing the time allocated for their remediation. Cybersecurity experts polled by Reuters predict new disruptions in digital services as companies and governments attempt to prepare for the exploitation of these flaws.

A study conducted by VulnCheck, scheduled for publication in the coming days, shows that the number of discovered digital vulnerabilities has doubled compared to the previous year. Issues registered this week on European government websites demonstrate the pressure such discoveries can cause.

Disruptions began on Wednesday after vulnerabilities were found in PHP, a programming language used in many parts of the internet. To prevent attacks, operators rushed to fix their systems. Some temporarily took sites offline because they could not apply updates before potential intrusions.

This race for fixes occurred during a week already marked by other security issues. Vulnerabilities were disclosed in Node.js and Plex, as well as incidents related to the AI platform LiteLLM and the development platform Railway. The Indian certification authority eMudhra also drew attention due to the use of an extremely weak cryptographic key, which could have jeopardized internet users.

Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, told Reuters that he is aware of other serious vulnerabilities in software critical to network operation. In his assessment, the sector will face difficult months ahead. He noted: 'I think we will have several years where it feels like the sky is falling every week.'

Previously, searching for vulnerabilities in complex programs required specialized knowledge. Developing tools to exploit them could take weeks or months, giving system administrators time to prepare fixes and distribute updates. However, artificial intelligence is shortening this timeframe. Models are capable of continuously analyzing large codebases, finding issues, and helping develop exploitation tools in just a few hours.

Shane Fry, CTO of RunSafe Security, emphasized the change in the pace of this process. He stated: 'What is fundamentally and undeniably changing is the time required both to discover vulnerabilities and for adversaries to be able to exploit them.'

In light of this situation, security teams must handle tasks that go beyond simply identifying code errors. Specialists are concerned about the reduced response time, but there is no consensus on whether accelerated vulnerability discovery will lead to a wave of successful attacks.

Daniel Steinberg, lead developer of the curl file transfer tool, notes that some vulnerabilities found by AI models are complex and difficult to exploit. Rami Rahman from security company ArmorCode also points out that publishing more vulnerabilities does not necessarily mean an increase in successful attacks. The PHP case serves as an example of this difference: threat intelligence firm Hunt.io discovered aggressive exploitation attempts but reported that by 2 PM Eastern Time on Thursday, the tracked attackers had apparently not yet managed to develop a functional tool to use this vulnerability.

Prince mentioned signs of intrusion related to the vulnerability. Nevertheless, he believes that accelerated problem discovery can bring long-term benefits by allowing the fixing of errors that have remained hidden for years.