The myth of AI’s inevitability

The myth of AI’s inevitability

Matteo Wong writes: The second floor of OpenAI’s old headquarters had a theme. Each room was named after one of the most important inventions in human history: “Clock,” “Fire,” and, of course, “AGI,” or artificial general intelligence. I saw this in the spring of 2024, when I was interviewing some of the company’s researchers about recent technical advances. At the time, ChatGPT was still making embarrassing arithmetic errors, and the notion that the bot would ever rival human intelligence was…

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Whistleblower Arturo Béjar: ‘You just cannot trust Mark Zuckerberg with kids’

Whistleblower Arturo Béjar: ‘You just cannot trust Mark Zuckerberg with kids’

Steve Rose writes: The Social Reckoning hits cinemas this Friday, but the real world has already been working on a sequel – or rather, a threequel. Directed by Aaron Sorkin, the movie is a follow-up to The Social Network, detailing the further misadventures of Mark Zuckerberg and his social media empire, and in particular Frances Haugen, the employee who in 2021 leaked internal documents that appeared to show Facebook was aware of the harms its products had inflicted. It’s no…

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Trump’s former defense secretary sees no end in sight for Iran war — to the benefit of China

Trump’s former defense secretary sees no end in sight for Iran war — to the benefit of China

CNBC reports: The U.S.-Iran war could drag on for years, putting America at risk of overlooking China’s rise to power, according to President Donald Trump’s former defense secretary. During a panel discussion at LSEG and Eurasia Group’s GZERO Summit in London, Mark Esper said on Thursday he saw the conflict continuing “well into 2027,” with a possibility that it could be handed to the next U.S. administration in three years’ time. “At some point, we will reach a point where…

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Oil prices jump as Iran steps up tanker attacks, hurricane threatens U.S. Gulf production

Oil prices jump as Iran steps up tanker attacks, hurricane threatens U.S. Gulf production

CNBC reports: Crude oil prices rose sharply Thursday, as Iran ramped up its attacks on tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz and Hurricane Isaias threatened U.S. offshore production in the Gulf of Mexico. Brent crude futures, the international benchmark, gained 4% to close at $104.28 a barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures advanced 3.6% to settle at $91.49 per barrel. Nine tankers have come under attack in and around Hormuz over the past week, jeopardizing the recent recovery in crude…

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‘Neither war nor peace’: Palestinians in Gaza on existing amid disease, despair and ruins

‘Neither war nor peace’: Palestinians in Gaza on existing amid disease, despair and ruins

The Guardian reports: Ahmed Ishtaiwi has six chairs. They are cheap and plastic and battered, but they are among the 43-year-old driver and mechanic’s most valuable possessions. Ishtaiwi lives in a tent near Deir al-Balah in central Gaza with his two daughters. Their former home is far to the north, in the now ruined town of Beit Lahiya, uninhabitable and impossible to reach. “When I sit on those chairs, I remember sitting in the garden at home, having breakfast and…

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Hegseth wants Americans to watch Nidal Hasan’s execution — the first military execution since 1961

Hegseth wants Americans to watch Nidal Hasan’s execution — the first military execution since 1961

MeidasTouch Network reports: Hegseth has promised a public execution, while the Army’s official notice offers only the bare machinery of a death warrant. The Pentagon and Army have declined to provide reporters details about the firing squad’s personnel, its procedures or the location on the base where Hasan would be executed, according to an Associated Press account published Wednesday. The Trump regime has supplied a date. It has not supplied the rules. The prospect of a public execution would place…

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Was the human microbiome healthier in ancient times?

Was the human microbiome healthier in ancient times?

The New York Times reports: The human microbiome — the trillions of microbes that live in our guts — was a stable ecosystem for tens of thousands of years before rapidly changing in industrialized countries, raising possible health concerns for modern people, scientists reported on Wednesday. In a study of Africans and South Americans, researchers identified more than 600 species of bacteria that may once have been common in the gut but are now rare or missing entirely from people…

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Most voters say Trump, Congress don’t take AI risks seriously, poll finds

Most voters say Trump, Congress don’t take AI risks seriously, poll finds

Reuters reports: Most US voters think President Donald Trump’s administration and Congress are not taking the risks of AI seriously enough and want the government to ​write new regulations for the technology, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll. The six-day survey, which ended on Monday, showed that wide swaths of the electorate see AI as ‌a major threat to American jobs, underscoring growing skepticism of the technology from voters across the political spectrum. The fast-advancing technology has become a matter…

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‘This is nuts’: OpenAI safety leader explains why he quit

‘This is nuts’: OpenAI safety leader explains why he quit

  Ezra Klein: Last week, David Robinson resigned from OpenAI. He’d been in charge of writing the safety reports for new models and came to believe that OpenAI and the broader artificial intelligence industry lack the safety culture necessary to protect the world from what they’re building. Robinson has an unusual background for an A.I. frontier lab staffer. He’s a Rhodes scholar and Yale Law graduate, he founded a civil rights nonprofit and he advised the Biden White House. He…

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Trump-appointed federal judge accuses ICE of lying and fabricating records

Trump-appointed federal judge accuses ICE of lying and fabricating records

The New York Times reports: A federal judge in New York reprimanded the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency on Monday, accusing its officers of lying, lacking proper training and fabricating records to cover up illegal arrests. In a scathing 28-page ruling, the judge, Gary R. Brown, condemned the agency’s tactics when it mistakenly arrested two Hispanic men, including a U.S. citizen, in the Bronx in May, finding that ICE had “falsified official records trying to conceal” its “illegal actions.” Judge…

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Can $1 billion buy Republicans victory in the midterms?

Can $1 billion buy Republicans victory in the midterms?

The Associated Press reports: Republicans are entering the final month of the midterm campaign increasingly anxious that the $1 billion at their disposal may not be enough to fend off sweeping losses as the party reckons with President Donald Trump’s unpopularity, persistent cost concerns and the fallout from the war in Iran. The cash advantage, spread out across a half-dozen groups, is driven largely by the Trump-aligned MAGA Inc., which had nearly $416 million in cash on hand at the…

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Trump’s retreat shows Iran it has the power to chase the U.S. out of the Middle East

Trump’s retreat shows Iran it has the power to chase the U.S. out of the Middle East

The New York Times reports: To hear President Trump and his aides describe it, the rush to withdraw 12 B-1 bombers from an air base in Britain over the weekend was a prudent precaution, in response to a threat they refused to describe. It was no big deal, Mr. Trump insisted, and his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, tried to wave it away by noting that the Pentagon is “constantly reallocating resources where ​they need to be.” But to anyone…

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Attacks on tankers in Hormuz hit highest of any week since start of Iran war, sources say

Attacks on tankers in Hormuz hit highest of any week since start of Iran war, sources say

Reuters reports: Attacks on tankers sailing through the Strait of Hormuz hit their highest last week of any week since the ​Iran war began, according to maritime security sources tracking incidents, amid ‌a bigger export push by Gulf producers. Attacks, attempted attacks and harassment activity including drone overflights, surveillance and hailing using VHF radio by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have persisted ​in the strait, the US Navy-led Joint Maritime Information Center (JMIC) said ​in a note on Sunday. “These actions continue…

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‘Another coup d’état’: fears grow as Flávio Bolsonaro vows to ‘re-democratise’ Brazil

‘Another coup d’état’: fears grow as Flávio Bolsonaro vows to ‘re-democratise’ Brazil

The Guardian reports: Flávio Bolsonaro, the far-right frontrunner to become Brazil’s next president, has vowed to “re-democratise” the South American country, increasing fears about a move into authoritarian rule if he wins power. Brazil was re-democratised in the 1980s after a brutal 21-year dictatorship that Flávio’s father, the disgraced ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, has long praised. Last year, Jair Bolsonaro, a former soldier who served under that military regime, was jailed for 27 years for trying to engineer a coup after…

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