From elsewhere, Author at Attention to the Unseen

They said they would build AI safely. Then it went rogue. Bernie Sanders says it’s time to hit pause

From elsewhere — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 01:09:33 +0000

The Washington Post reports: Staff members at ChatGPT maker OpenAI didn’t notice for weeks after their AI systems made a chilling leap this spring. Instead of answering questions designed to test their cybersecurity capabilities, a group of AI models began colluding on how to cheat, the company said, setting up a secret internal message board where they swapped notes and ideas. The misbehaving bots used the secret forum throughout May and June, OpenAI said, eventually figuring out how to break...

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Forget DeepSeek. China’s real ‘Sputnik moment’ is happening on campus as U.S. universities lose their advantage

From elsewhere — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 01:09:14 +0000

Fortune reports: When DeepSeek unveiled an AI model last year that rivaled America’s best at a fraction of the cost, or when a Chinese hypersonic missile test caught U.S. intelligence off guard to the point where a top U.S. general called it “very close” to a “Sputnik moment”, the reaction each time was the same: that a handful of Chinese firms had suddenly pulled ahead. But a sweeping new National Bureau of Economic Research study of nearly 14 million Chinese...

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Backlash: The more familiar with AI Americans become, the more they hate it

From elsewhere — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 01:08:59 +0000

Reece Rogers writes: I was recently digging through my Instagram settings, trying to disable Meta’s now-defunct feature that allowed anyone to create AI deepfakes of me without consent. Anger bubbled up inside as I tapped through the Kafkaesque opt-out process. Rather than throwing my phone across the room, I blurted to my partner that we should leave San Francisco behind and be off-grid sheep farmers. Something analog. In that moment, anything sounded better than this ongoing, generative-AI-induced hell. Many Americans...

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Iran insists Strait of Hormuz will stay closed until U.S. complies with demands

From elsewhere — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 01:08:42 +0000

The New York Times reports: Iran said on Monday that any deal with Oman on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz would not lead to the waterway being fully reopened and that the route would remain closed until the United States agreed to demands including lifting a naval blockade. The comments were the latest sign that Iran sees its grip on the strait — which has driven up global energy prices, creating a political headache for President Trump — as...

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There’s no ‘middle’ between neofascist corporatism and democracy

From elsewhere — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 01:08:27 +0000

Robert Reich writes: The statements seem as belligerent as Pete Hegseth on a bad hair day. “We are preparing for the next war that is coming,” says Jonathan Cowan. Cowan is president of Third Way, described by The New York Times as a “leading centrist Democratic group.” Cowan’s Third Way is preparing a $15 million war chest to “discredit democratic socialism.” Pointing to Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in the Michigan Senate primary last week, Cowan warns that “it is deeply...

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Global warming is triggering earthquakes

From elsewhere — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 01:08:11 +0000

Science reports: Climate change is worsening many natural hazards, including droughts, heat waves, and storm surges. Now, a new one has joined the list: earthquakes. Researchers have found that as global warming accelerates melting of mountaintop glaciers, the meltwater, percolating underground, increases the risk of damaging earthquakes. The evidence comes from beneath Grandes Jorasses, a glacier-clad peak in the Alps that is part of the Mont Blanc massif, home to Western Europe’s tallest mountains. Precise seismic records show a heat...

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More than half of Earth’s migratory bird species are declining – here’s how we can still save them

From elsewhere — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 01:07:57 +0000

The spoon-billed sandpiper, a small wading bird, flies nearly 5,000 miles (8,000 km) on its annual migration. Tareq’s Photography/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA By Peter P. Marra, Georgetown University and Nathan W. Cooper, Smithsonian Institution Every year, billions of migratory birds connect the world’s continents, oceans and ecosystems as they undertake epic journeys between their foraging habitats and their breeding grounds. A bobolink (Dolichonyx oryzivorus) leaves its breeding grasslands of North America for the Pampas of South America. A Newell’s shearwater (Puffinus...

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Music: Nate Smith — ‘Eye Level’

From elsewhere — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 01:07:34 +0000

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This is what happens when the world is on fire

From elsewhere — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 23:58:14 +0000

John Valliant writes: Water bombers, the air cavalry of wildfire fighting, buzz the treetops like air show stunt pilots as they save the day with surgical drops of water or orange retardant. But what happens when those drops have no effect? When, as a pilot working the massive Gironde Fire just west of Bordeaux, France, described it, “The environment above the fire is so hot that my payload of 10,000 liters of water evaporates in the air.”? Mathieu Jomain, a...

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Amazon’s ‘climate pledge’ rings hollow as data center will have the most polluting power plant in the U.S.

From elsewhere — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 23:58:01 +0000

The New York Times reports: Amazon is investing in a natural-gas-burning power plant, as part of a huge data center in Texas, that could become the largest single source of climate pollution in the United States, the company confirmed Friday. The new gas-burning plant, if built to specifications, would be permitted to release more planet-warming gases than any other power plant in the country. Amazon has been struggling to meet its promise that it would effectively eliminate its planet-warming emissions...

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