Technology Archives - Attention to the Unseen

David Krakauer: ‘What we have to cultivate is amazing question-askers’

From elsewhere — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 01:12:09 +0000

Why did intelligence evolve in the universe? Neil deGrasse Tyson, Chuck Nice, and Gary O’Reilly explore the nature of intelligence, information theory, consciousness, and whether AI is actually intelligent at all with David Krakauer, evolutionary biologist and president of the Santa Fe Institute. Can you conceive of life without intelligence, or intelligence without life? We parse the difference between intelligence and being alive and whether you can be one without the other. What does it mean for something to...

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Africa has become the testing ground for an intrusive eye that never blinks

From elsewhere — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 01:10:44 +0000

Reporting from Kampala, Uganda, Megan K. Stack writes: Plainclothes thugs frog-marching a radio commentator from the microphone mid-broadcast. An opposition activist dying after reportedly being barricaded in his house, which was then set on fire. Security forces raiding a powerful independent media company, cutting electricity and imposing a monthlong closure. A reign of terror grips Uganda. Specifically, the reign of Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the country’s belligerent and erratic military chief, who also happens to be the only son of Yoweri...

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A Florida local newspaper ran an op-ed. It was an Iranian fake using OpenAI

From elsewhere — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 01:10:26 +0000

The Washington Post reports: “The bill will follow Americans beyond the fighting itself,” an opinion piece in the Port St. Joe Star, a tiny Florida weekly newspaper, warned of the Iran war last month. The article ran under the byline Ervin Hoskins, which has also appeared on articles critical of the war in larger publications including Daily Kos and Middle East Monitor, which together have more than 3 million followers on Facebook. But ChatGPT maker OpenAI said Thursday that Hoskins’s...

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Japan declares ‘a state of emergency in cyberspace’

From elsewhere — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 00:37:55 +0000

Gizmodo reports: We haven’t quite reached the cyber apocalypse that artificial intelligence companies have warned their technology could unleash on the world, but we’re getting uncomfortably close to a catastrophe on a national scale. According to a report from the Financial Times, Japan is being hammered by cyberattacks, prompting regulators to search for ways to protect financial institutions from potentially devastating disruptions and leading the country to declare “a state of emergency in cyberspace.” Per the report, Japan’s ruling Liberal...

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Jonathan Haidt: AI is the ‘neutron bomb for education’

From elsewhere — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 00:37:42 +0000

Long before he became famous as the author of The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt was a social psychologist whose work revolutionized the field. In this episode of The Permanent Questions, taped in front of a live audience at last month’s Atlantic Festival, David Brooks talks with Haidt about his biggest lessons from 40 years of studying human nature. David and Haidt discuss the role of the emotions in moral decision making, how to design a system that produces less...

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How Elon Musk’s delusions of grandeur became other people’s reality

From elsewhere — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 00:37:24 +0000

Megan Garber writes: In December 2021, Elon Musk sat for an interview with The Babylon Bee, a conservative satire site. Having covered the typical topics (wokeness, free speech, Elizabeth Warren) and finding themselves with a bit more time to fill, the outlet’s then–creative director closed out the chat with a request. “The Babylon Bee is a Christian organization, and we’re a ministry,” he reminded Musk. So “we’re wondering if you could do us a quick solid and accept Jesus as...

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AI firms prepare for a catastrophic AI event, such as a banking shut down, seen as inevitable in months

From elsewhere — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 00:48:55 +0000

Axios reports: Top executives at Anthropic, OpenAI and other AI companies are privately gaming out scenarios for a public and political revolt after a catastrophic AI event. Why it matters: These officials anticipate a large-scale event, most likely a cyberattack, that shuts down access to financial services, internet connectivity, or even power and water. The first example of significant real-world harm caused by unsafe AI would turn an already wary public further against the technology and its leaders, including Anthropic...

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‘Breathtaking,’ ‘devastating’: Mathematics reels after new OpenAI release

From elsewhere — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 00:47:13 +0000

The New York Times reports: “If a human did this, it would be an instant Fields Medal, no questions asked.” That’s how Alex Kontorovich, chair of the department of mathematics at Rutgers, responded to an A.I.-generated proof that OpenAI, the artificial intelligence giant, released on Tuesday. And that single proof — worthy, in Dr. Kontorovich’s assessment on social media, of arguably the highest honor in the field of mathematics — was just one among more than 350 findings that the...

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The myth of AI’s inevitability

From elsewhere — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 00:36:49 +0000

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

From elsewhere — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 01:07:08 +0000

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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