FromIn vitro fertilizationtoDesigner babies, the world of reproductive science has seenadvancesover the years that have profoundlychanged the way humansconceive and give birth.
Unfortunately,artificial human wombsare not yet among those breakthroughs that have made the jump from concept to real life. But that hasn't stopped a number of news sites from running with a bonkers story about plans to build a humanoid "pregnancy robot" that carries real human fetuses to term in a synthetic womb installed into its hardware.
In recent weeks, outlets includingNewsweek,The Telegraphand theNew York PostThey have published stories about these supposedly upcoming pregnancy bots. Said to be the brainchild of a Chinese business owner named Zhang Qifeng, the alleged founder of a company called Kaiwa Technology, these gestational robots could supposedly be in prototype by next year — that is, if the story was true, and the man behind this shocking invention verifiably existed.
AsSnopesreports, this fancy bit of flagrant misinformation seems to have started circulating in earnest around August 11, when theKorean news outletChosuncited reports from a purported Chinese technology news website calledKuai Ke Zhiabout Zhang and his apparent plans for robotic pregnancy.
If it exists,Kuai Ke Zhidoesn't seem to have any digital footprint. Just as sketchily,ChosunAlso included a screenshot of a man who is supposed to be Zhang, which the Korean site claimed had come from Douyin, China's equivalent of TikTok.
Shown below, the image shows a man in glasses sitting in what appears to be a newsroom, looking at and talking to another man who we can only see partially and from behind.
Interestingly, when we ran the image through Google Translate, it listed the Mandarin words superimposed on the image as saying Zhang Qifeng is the "founder of Shenzen Kaiva Robotics" — a slight mistranslation, it seems, of the real-life Chinese electronics manufacturer known asShenzhen KaifaTechnologies.
Zhang, notably, is not the founder of the multinational manufacturer, and we were not able to find any trace of him associated with it.
In that supposed video — which we couldn't find any sign of, beyond that one purported screenshot — the tech CEO was said to announce his pregnancy robot plans, andChosunEven included quotes from the supposed announcement.
I initiated development to solve the population decline issue," Zhang is alleged to have said during the supposed interview. "While commercial surrogacy is designated as illegal, I want to meet the demand of those who do not wish to marry but want to have children.
As misinformation is wont to do, the story spread rapidly once it escaped containment. On August 15, both the notoriousDaily Mailtabloidand thespammyScience blogInteresting EngineeringPicked it up. Soon after, the story of the Chinese CEO's miracle robot also surfaced on the nursing site.Nurse.organd thenewsy mom blogMaternal, neither of which questioned its authenticity as they broadcasted the fake story to their niche audiences.
AsSnopesNoted, Zhang was listed in some outlets as affiliated with Singapore's Nanyang Technological University (NTU) as either a PhD graduate or professor. When the site's dedicated debunkers contacted NTU, however, a spokesperson said "no one by the name of 'Zhang Qifeng' graduated from NTU with a PhD," and there was no research on "gestational robots" being conducted there.
With so much evidence suggesting that Zhang and his company do not exist - never mind the fact that artificial wombsdo not exist yet, period, either in stationary or grafted-to-a-robot form — it seems pretty clear that this story is fabricated from top to bottom.
But that clearly hasn't stopped half a dozen news sites from running with the story, to everyone's detriment.
More on misinformation:Wired and Business Insider Accidentally Published AI-Generated Nonsense Articles by a Seemingly Fake Journalist
The postMainstream Publications Are Getting Suckered by a Ridiculous Fake News Story About a "Pregnancy Robot"appeared first onThe Shiro Copr.
0 comments:
Ikutan Komentar