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Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson, Outlaw Music Festival, Hollywood Bowl, May 16

On a mild night in Hollywood, Bob Dylan is still not ready for his close-up. When the 83-year-old strikes up his band, stationed behind his upright piano and mumbling his way through his Oscar-winning 2000 single “Things Have Changed”, the screens on either side of the Bowl remain defiantly dark. They do eventually flicker into life a handful of songs later, but even then only to offer a fixed wide shot of Dylan at centre stage with his bandmates grouped around him like a Roman phalanx. As an audience, we perhaps sense we are being kept at arm’s length. “I used to care,” drawls Dylan. “But things have changed.”

For this third date of the 10th anniversary tour for Willie Nelson’s Outlaw Music Festival, Dylan follows immediately in the wake of the Michigan-born bluegrass player Billy Strings, whose set climaxes in a frantic, high-energy tornado of duelling guitars and banjos.

The octogenarian Dylan’s set begins at a more relaxed clip but builds swiftly into a heady blend of early classics, deep cuts and covers. He seems to be enjoying himself. After a stuttering “Simple Twist of Fate” and a swooning “Forgetful Heart”, he lets out a loud chuckle and asks someone in the audience: “What are you eating down there? What is that?”

For all his own magnificent material, the early highlight of the set is his cover of George “Wild Child” Butler’s Chicago blues number “Axe And The Wind”. The song was a new addition to Dylan’s repertoire just two dates ago, but its bluesy swing suits him and his band down to the ground. The lyrics were written by the great bluesman Willie Dixon but the indelible closing line – “I may be here forever, I may not be here at all” – doesn’t appear on the original recording and is surely a Dylan refinement. A similar righteous stomp powers his own “Early Roman Kings”, from 2012’s Tempest, another standout.

By now Dylan fans are well accustomed to his rearranging of his own standards, and the expansive new version of “All Along The Watchtower” is a wild delight. That’s followed by another pair of reinvented classics, “It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train to Cry” and “Desolation Row”. On either side of that run, Dylan delves into his own internal library for a pair of covers that seem to speak to his personal history: “I’ll Make It All Up To You”, a 1958 hit for Jerry Lee Lewis, and “Share Your Love With Me”, recorded by both Bobby “Blue” Bland and Aretha Franklin.

After a strutting “Love Sick”, from 1997’s Time Out Of Mind, Dylan takes a moment to introduce his band: rhythm guitarist Doug Lancio, longtime bassist Tony Garnier, new drummer Anton Fig and lead guitarist Bob Britt, praised as “one of those guys who went down to the crossroad and made a deal with the Devil, and boy you can tell.” 

They close with “Blind Willie McTell” and a crowd-pleasing “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”, on which somehow Dylan’s voice sounds stronger and younger than it has all night. If the audience feel they’re finally being invited in, it’s another feint. On the two previous stops of this tour, Dylan has returned for an encore and a surprise new cover: first The Pogues’ “A Rainy Night in Soho” and second Rick Nelson’s “Garden Party”. Tonight, he just disappears never to return. Oh well. As Nelson sang, and as Dylan doesn’t tonight: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”

Half an hour later, a banner across the stage drops down to reveal Willie Nelson seated in front of a rapidly unfurling American flag. As the 92-year-old sings an upbeat “Whiskey River” there’s a croak in his voice, but by the time he’s rattled through “Still Is Still Moving to Me”, “Bloody Mary Morning” and “I Never Cared For You” the old richness and warmth is back.

He’s flanked by two young members of his extended family: his own son Micah, also known as Particle Kid, and Waylon Payne, the son of his longtime guitarist Jody Payne and the country singer Sammi Smith. They help share the singing load, with Micah winning over the crowd by explaining that his song “(Die When I’m High) Halfway To Heaven” was written after his dad uttered the title line while they were getting stoned together. Payne, meanwhile, sings a rollicking version of Merle Haggard’s “Workin’ Man Blues” and Kris Kristofferson’s “Help Me Make It Through The Night”, which was a 1970 hit for his mother.

That allows Nelson to focus his energy on his signature hits: a singalong “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys”, an exuberant “On The Road Again” and the always heartbreaking “You Were Always On My Mind” and “Georgia (On My Mind)”. The very best moments, though, are when Nelson stares death in the face and laughs.

On his version of Tom Waits’ “Last Leaf”, the title track from his excellent recent covers record, he sings defiantly: “I’ll be here through eternity, if you wanna know how long / If they cut down this tree, I’ll show up in a song.” The audience cheer that sentiment, and they’re up on their feet dancing as Nelson runs straight into his own joint-in-cheek broadsides at mortality “Roll Me Up And Smoke Me (When I Die)” and “Still Not Dead”.

“I woke up still not dead again today / The internet said I’d passed away,” he sings on the latter, eyes twinkling. “But don’t bury me, I’ve got a show to play.” Long may this pair of never-ending tours keep rolling along.

Bob Dylan set list:

Things Have Changed 
Simple Twist Of Fate 
Forgetful Heart 
Axe And The Wind
To Ramona 
Early Roman Kings 
Under the Red Sky 
I’ll Make It All Up To You
All Along the Watchtower 
It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry 
Desolation Row 
Share Your Love With Me
Love Sick
Blind Willie McTell
Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right

Willie Nelson set list:

Whiskey River 
Stay A Little Longer 
Still Is Still Moving to Me 
Bloody Mary Morning
I Never Cared for You 
(Die When I’m High) Halfway to Heaven 
Workin’ Man Blues
Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys 
Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground 
On the Road Again 
You Were Always on My Mind 
Good Hearted Woman 
Georgia (On My Mind)
Help Me Make It Through the Night
Everything Is Bullshit
Last Leaf 
Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die
Still Not Dead
I Thought About You, Lord 
Will the Circle Be Unbroken? / I’ll Fly Away 
I Saw the Light

The post Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson, Outlaw Music Festival, Hollywood Bowl, May 16 appeared first on UNCUT.

May 18, 2025 by – Comments Off on Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson, Outlaw Music Festival, Hollywood Bowl, May 16
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AI Chatbots Are Becoming Even Worse At Summarizing Data

Researchers have found that newer AI models can omit key details from text summaries as much as 73 percent of the time.

Ask the CEO of any AI startup, and you’ll probably get an earful about the tech’s potential to “transform work,” or “revolutionize the way we access knowledge.”

Really, there’s no shortage of promises that AI is only getting smarter — which we’re told will speed up the rate of scientific breakthroughs, streamline medical testing, and breed a new kind of scholarship.

But according to a new study published in the Royal Society, as many as 73 percent of seemingly reliable answers from AI chatbots could actually be inaccurate.

The collaborative research paper looked at nearly 5,000 large language model (LLM) summaries of scientific studies by ten widely used chatbots, including ChatGPT-4o, ChatGPT-4.5, DeepSeek, and LLaMA 3.3 70B. It found that, even when explicitly goaded into providing the right facts, AI answers lacked key details at a rate of five times that of human-written scientific summaries.

“When summarizing scientific texts, LLMs may omit details that limit the scope of research conclusions, leading to generalizations of results broader than warranted by the original study,” the researchers wrote.

Alarmingly, the LLMs’ rate of error was found to increase the newer the chatbot was — the exact opposite of what AI industry leaders have been promising us. This is in addition to a correlation between an LLM’s tendency to overgeneralize with how widely used it is, “posing a significant risk of large-scale misinterpretations of research findings,” according to the study’s authors.

For example, use of the two ChatGPT models listed in the study doubled from 13 to 26 percent among US teens between 2023 and 2025. Though the older ChatGPT-4 Turbo was roughly 2.6 times more likely to omit key details compared to their original texts, the newer ChatGPT-4o models were nine times as likely. This tendency was also found in Meta’s LLaMA 3.3 70B, which was 36.4 times more likely to overgeneralize compared to older versions.

The job of synthesizing huge swaths of data into just a few sentences is a tricky one. Though it comes pretty easily to fully-grown humans, it’s a really complicated process to program into a chatbot.

While the human brain can instinctively learn broad lessons from specific experiences — like touching a hot stove — complex nuances make it difficult for chatbots to know what facts to focus on. A human quickly understands that stoves can burn while refrigerators do not, but an LLM might reason that all kitchen appliances get hot, unless otherwise told. Expand that metaphor out a bit to the scientific world, and it gets complicated fast.

But summarizing is also time-consuming for humans; the researchers list clinical medical settings as one area where LLM summaries could have a huge impact on work. It goes the other way, too, though: in clinical work, details are extremely important, and even the tiniest omission can compound into a life-changing disaster.

This makes it all the more troubling that LLMs are being shoehorned into every possible workspace, from high school homework to pharmacies to mechanical engineering — despite a growing body of work showing widespread accuracy problems inherent to AI.

However, there were some important drawbacks to their findings, the scientists pointed out. For one, the prompts fed to LLMs can have a significant impact on the answer it spits out. Whether this affects LLM summaries of scientific papers is unknown, suggesting a future avenue for research.

Regardless, the trendlines are clear. Unless AI developers can set their new LLMs on the right path, you’ll just have to keep relying on humble human bloggers to summarize scientific reports for you (wink).

More on AI: Senators Demand Safety Records from AI Chatbot Apps as Controversy Grows

The post AI Chatbots Are Becoming Even Worse At Summarizing Data appeared first on Futurism.

OpenAI, Oracle to Help UAE Develop Massive Data Center

OpenAI plans to help develop a massive new data center in the United Arab Emirates that may eventually be one of the largest in the world, a major bet on the Middle East and a significant expansion of the company’s global AI infrastructure ambitions.

Bruce Springsteen Calls Out ‘Unfit President’ Trump Again, Says Elected Reps ‘Utterly Failed to Protect the American People’

Bruce Springsteen resumed denouncing Donald Trump from the stage of his Land of Hopes and Dreams Tour Saturday night (May 17) in Manchester, England.

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The Los Angeles Times reports the Boss didn’t back down from his stance on Trump this weekend, after the U.S. president called Springsteen “highly overrated,” “dumb as a rock” and a “dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!)” in a post on Truth Social. The rant was Trump’s reaction to the musician calling out the president’s “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration” at his tour opener earlier in the week.

“Things are happening right now that are altering the very nature of our country’s democracy, and they’re too important to ignore,” Springsteen said to the crowd in a three-minute speech on Manchester’s Co-op Live stage on Saturday, as heard in a video posted by the L.A. Times.

“In my home, they’re persecuting people for their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. That’s happening now,” Springsteen said, echoing what he’d spoken about at his May 14 show. “In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death. That’s happening now. In my country, they’re taking sadistic pleasure in the pain they inflict on loyal American workers.”

Springsteen continued, “They are removing residents off American streets without due process of law and deploying them to foreign detention centers as prisoners. That’s happening now. The majority of our elected representatives have utterly failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government. They have no concern or idea of what it means to be deeply American.”

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On a note of optimism that quoted novelist and civil rights activist James Baldwin, he added, “The America I’ve sung to you about for 50 years is real, and regardless of its many faults, it’s a great country with a great people, and we will survive this moment. Well, I have hope, because I believe in the truth of what the great American writer James Baldwin said. He said, ‘In this world, there isn’t as much humanity as one would like, but there’s enough.’”

On Friday, after Springsteen had shared similar thoughts from the stage, Trump responded on Truth Social, writing: “I see that Highly Overrated Bruce Springsteen goes to a Foreign Country to speak badly about the President of the United States. Never liked him, never liked his music, or his Radical Left Politics and, importantly, he’s not a talented guy — Just a pushy, obnoxious JERK, who fervently supported Crooked Joe Biden, a mentally incompetent FOOL, and our WORST EVER President, who came close to destroying our Country. Sleepy Joe didn’t have a clue as to what he was doing, but Springsteen is ‘dumb as a rock,’ and couldn’t see what was going on, or could he (which is even worse!)? This dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country, that’s just ‘standard fare. Then we’ll all see how it goes for him!”

The “Born in the U.S.A.” singer, who’s performing across the U.K., France, Spain, Germany and Italy from now through early July, endorsed Trump’s opponent Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

JJ of Austria Wins Eurovision 2025 With ‘Wasted Love’

Classically trained countertenor JJ of Austria is the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest winner with “Wasted Love,” a song that combines operatic, multi-octave vocals with a techno twist. JJ beat 25 other competitors during Saturday’s (May 17) grand final in the Swiss city of Basel.

Israel’s Yuval Raphael came second at an exuberant celebration of music and unity that was shadowed by the Gaza war and ruffled by discord over Israel’s participation.

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JJ, whose full name is Johannes Pietsch, was Austria’s first winner since bearded drag queen Conchita Wurst in 2014. JJ, who sings with the Vienna State Opera, has called Wurst a mentor. It was Austria’s third victory overall in Eurovision.

“This is beyond my wildest dreams. It’s crazy,” said the singer after being handed the microphone-shaped glass Eurovision trophy.

JJ won after a nail-biting final that saw Raphael scoop up a massive public vote from her many fans for her anthemic “New Day Will Rise.” But she also faced protests from pro-Palestinian demonstrators calling for Israel to be kicked out of the contest over its conduct of the war against Hamas in Gaza.

Estonia’s Tommy Cash came third with “Espresso Macchiato,” and Swedish entry KAJ, who had been favorite to win with jaunty sauna ode “Bara Bada Bastu,” came fourth.

The world’s largest live music event reached its glitter-drenched conclusion with a grand final in Basel, Switzerland, that offered pounding electropop, quirky rock and outrageous divas.

Acts from 26 countries — trimmed from 37 entrants through two elimination semifinals — performed to some 160 million viewers for the continent’s pop crown. No smoke machine, jet of flame or dizzying light display was spared by musicians who had three minutes to win over millions of viewers who, along with national juries of music professionals, pick the winner.

The show offered a celebration of Europe’s eclectic, and sometimes baffling, musical tastes. Lithuanian band Katarsis delivered grunge rock, while Ukraine’s Ziferblat channeled prog rock and the U.K.’s Remember Monday offered country pop.

Italy’s Lucio Corsi evoked 1970s glam rock, while Icelandic duo VAEB rapped about rowing and Latvia’s six-woman Tautumeitas offered gorgeous, intertwined harmonies.

There were divas aplenty, including Spain’s Melody, Poland‘s Justyna Steczkowska — participating in Eurovision for a second time after a 30-year gap, with “GAJA” — and Malta’s outrageous Miriana Conte, who performed “Serving,” a song whose previous suggestive title and lyrics were changed on the orders of contest organizers, on a set including a glitter ball and giant lips.

Dean Vuletic, an expert on the history of Eurovision, said the competition has become more diverse over the years, both musically and linguistically. There are songs in 20 languages this year, including Ukrainian, Icelandic, Albanian, Latvian and Maltese.

“In the past it was about having a catchy, innocuous pop song, usually in English,” he said. But “in recent years the formulaic approach to a Eurovision entry hasn’t succeeded.”

“An entry needs to be memorable and it needs to be authentic in order to succeed these days,” said Vuletic.

This year’s contest was roiled for a second year by disputes over Israel’s participation. Dozens of former participants, including Switzerland’s Nemo, have called for Israel to be excluded, and several of the broadcasters that fund Eurovision sought a review of the country’s participation.

Pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel protests both took place in Basel, though on a much smaller scale than at last year’s event in Sweden, where tensions spilled over backstage and Dutch competitor Joost Klein was expelled over an alleged altercation with a crew member.

Hundreds of people marched through Basel just before the competition, waving Palestinian flags and chanting “Boycott Israel.”

Earlier, a group of Israel supporters gathered in Basel’s cathedral square to root for Raphael and to show that “Jews belong in public spaces in Switzerland,” Zurich resident Rebecca Laes-Kushner said.

She said that “it would be such a strong statement against antisemitism,” if Raphael won.

“This is supposed to be about music, not about hate,” she said.

The European Broadcasting Union, or EBU, which runs Eurovision, tightened the contest’s code of conduct this year, calling on participants to respect Eurovision’s values of “universality, diversity, equality and inclusivity” and its political neutrality.

After a controversial ban in 2024 on flags, apart from national ones, being waved in the arena, this year audience members can bring Palestinian flags or any others, as long as they are legal under Swiss law. Performers, though, can only wave their own country’s flag.

Eurovision director Martin Green told reporters that the organizers’ goal was to ”re-establish a sense of unity, calm and togetherness this year in a difficult world.”

“All 37 delegations, in difficult times, have behaved impeccably,” he said.

Beyond Nvidia, Four Things to Know at Asia’s Biggest Tech Show

Nvidia Corp.’s Jensen Huang headlines the 2025 edition of Asia’s biggest electronics conference, for years a showcase for his company’s cutting-edge AI chips and the companies lining up to buy them. This year, however, the spotlight may well be on another far bigger personality: US President Donald Trump.

Blue Ivy’s Earring Got Stuck in Beyoncé’s Hair on Stage, Unbeknownst to Mom

The show must go on, even when your earring accidentally gets completely tangled in Beyoncé‘s hair. The superstar’s 13-year-old daughter, Blue Ivy, found herself in this exact situation on the Cowboy Carter Tour stage earlier this week.

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Blue and little sister Rumi, 7, have been joining Bey on stage in concert, during the singer’s performance of “Protector.” While Rumi sits with Mom, Blue is seated behind the two for the sweet number, taking part in the choreography alongside Beyoncé’s dancers.

At the Cowboy Carter concert at Chicago’s Soldier Field on Thursday (May 15), the serene moment was interrupted — at least for Blue, who realized the earring in her right ear was caught in Beyoncé’s hair.

In a video filmed by a fan in the audience, Blue’s eyes can be seen widening ever so slightly upon realizing what’s happened.

But the issue was remarkably short-lived, thanks to a swift recovery on the young teen’s part. In fact, she thought to remove the earring from her ear so quickly (rather than work on untangling it) that her mother didn’t even seem to notice anything unusual was going on.

See fan-captured footage of the moment on X.

The Cowboy Carter Tour — Beyoncé’s 32-date stadium run that kicked off on April 28 with a five-show stint at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, that grossed $55.7 million — continues through July 26. Eldest child Blue Ivy memorably takes the stage for “Déjà Vu,” for which the young talent leads an impressive dance routine.

Beyoncé returns to Soldier Field tonight (May 17), following a weather-delayed performance at the stadium’s first of three dates Thursday night.

Dua Lipa Covers Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky’ at Radical Optimism Tour Stop in France

Fans were in luck at Dua Lipa’s show in Lyon, France, on Friday (May 16).

During the second of two nights at the city’s LDLC Arena, the 29-year-old pop star delivered a fiery cover of Daft Punk’s 2013 hit “Get Lucky.”

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Wearing a lacy red bodysuit, Lipa brought energy and flair to the funky track, which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and became Daft Punk’s first top 5 hit. The original version, from the duo’s fourth album Random Access Memories, features Pharrell Williams on vocals and Nile Rodgers on guitar.

The cover carried extra significance, as Daft Punk’s Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter are both French natives.

This wasn’t the first surprise of her tour. At the opening show of the European leg in Madrid on May 11, Lipa performed a Spanish-language cover of Enrique Iglesias’ 2001 ballad “Hero,” delighting fans at the Movistar Arena.

The “Levitating” singer continues her Radical Optimism World Tour across Europe through May and June, with stops in Germany, France, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Italy, Belgium and the United Kingdom. She’ll also return to Pristina, Kosovo — her family’s homeland — in early August to headline her Sunny Hill Festival.

Lipa then heads to North America this fall, starting with two nights in Toronto on Sept. 1–2. She’ll tour across the U.S. through September and October, wrapping the North American leg with a second show at Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena on Oct. 16. South America and Mexico follow in the winter.

Lipa is touring in support of her third studio album, Radical Optimism, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 in May 2024.