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Category: Technology

In Silicon Valley, eugenics is called ‘genetic optimization’ with breeding programs for smarter babies

In Silicon Valley, eugenics is called ‘genetic optimization’ with breeding programs for smarter babies

The Wall Street Journal reports: Tsvi Benson-Tilsen, a mathematician, spent seven years researching how to keep an advanced form of artificial intelligence from destroying humanity before he concluded that stopping it wasn’t possible—at least anytime soon. Now, he’s turned his considerable brainpower to promoting cutting-edge technology to create smarter humans who will be up to the task of saving us all. “My intuition is it’s one of our best hopes,” said Benson-Tilsen, co-founder of the Berkeley Genomics Project, a nonprofit…

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The excitement around AI chatbots is being driven by the people who stand to profit from promoting them

The excitement around AI chatbots is being driven by the people who stand to profit from promoting them

Mat Honan writes: My colleague Grace Huckins has a great story on OpenAI’s release of GPT-5, its long-awaited new flagship model. One of the takeaways, however, is that while GPT-5 may make for a better experience than the previous versions, it isn’t something revolutionary. “GPT-5 is, above all else,” Grace concludes, “a refined product.” This is pretty much in line with my colleague Will Heaven’s recent argument that the latest model releases have been a bit like smartphone releases: Increasingly,…

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Crypto’s richest man, Changpeng Zhao, campaigns for a pardon

Crypto’s richest man, Changpeng Zhao, campaigns for a pardon

The New York Times reports: In 2023, as Changpeng Zhao, the founder of the giant cryptocurrency exchange Binance, prepared to plead guilty to U.S. money-laundering violations, he fashioned a crash course for himself on clemency politics, reading books about business tycoons who had received pardons, including Marc Rich and Michael Milken. Two years later, Mr. Zhao, a Chinese-born billionaire, is out of prison and mounting a pardon campaign of his own, backed by a sophisticated influence operation worthy of those…

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As electric bills rise, evidence mounts that data centers share blame

As electric bills rise, evidence mounts that data centers share blame

The Associated Press reports: Amid rising electric bills, states are under pressure to insulate regular household and business ratepayers from the costs of feeding Big Tech’s energy-hungry data centers. It’s not clear that any state has a solution and the actual effect of data centers on electricity bills is difficult to pin down. Some critics question whether states have the spine to take a hard line against tech behemoths like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta. But more than a dozen…

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The Trump regime wants to go ‘all in’ on AI. There are big risks

The Trump regime wants to go ‘all in’ on AI. There are big risks

Science News reports: Under a newly released action plan for artificial intelligence, the technology will be integrated into U.S. government functions. The plan, announced July 23, is another step in the Trump administration’s push for an “AI-first strategy.” In July, for instance, the U.S. Department of Defense handed out $200 million contracts to Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI. Elon Musk’s xAI announced “Grok for Government,” where federal agencies can purchase AI products through the General Services Administration. And all that…

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‘A million calls an hour’: Microsoft storing Israeli intelligence trove used to attack Palestinians

‘A million calls an hour’: Microsoft storing Israeli intelligence trove used to attack Palestinians

Yuval Abraham reports: The Israeli army’s elite cyber warfare unit is using Microsoft’s cloud servers to store masses of intelligence on Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza — information that has been used to plan deadly airstrikes and shape military operations, an investigation by +972 Magazine, Local Call, and the Guardian can reveal. Unit 8200, roughly equivalent in function to the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), has transferred audio files of millions of calls by Palestinians in the occupied…

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Trump regime making plans to destroy NASA satellites designed for monitoring greenhouse gases

Trump regime making plans to destroy NASA satellites designed for monitoring greenhouse gases

NPR reports: The Trump administration has asked NASA employees to draw up plans to end at least two major satellite missions, according to current and former NASA staffers. If the plans are carried out, one of the missions would be permanently terminated, because the satellite would burn up in the atmosphere. The data the two missions collect is widely used, including by scientists, oil and gas companies and farmers who need detailed information about carbon dioxide and crop health. They…

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Plastic and other waste has penetrated our brains and virtually everything else on the planet

Plastic and other waste has penetrated our brains and virtually everything else on the planet

David Wallace-Wells writes: Everywhere they look, they find particles of pollution, like infinite spores in an endless contagion field. Scientists call that field the “exposome”: the sum of all external exposures encountered by each of us over a lifetime, which portion and shape our fate alongside genes and behavior. Humans are permeable creatures, and we navigate the world like cleaner fish, filtering the waste of civilization partly by absorbing it. There is plastic in salty sea foam freshly sprayed by…

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In the AI goldrush, Meta is now using tents to house giant data centers

In the AI goldrush, Meta is now using tents to house giant data centers

Fast Company reports: When Mark Zuckerberg announced on July 14 that his company Meta was embarking on a project to build massively power-hungry data centers to support its ambitions for advancing artificial intelligence, the imagery that accompanied his posts on Facebook and Threads was stark. The data centers he was announcing would have power requirements upwards of five gigawatts and, to show just how big that would be, Zuckerberg’s post included a visual of a gigantic rectilinear block covering a…

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Trump’s AI strategy is set to benefit American tech companies and investors

Trump’s AI strategy is set to benefit American tech companies and investors

The Washington Post reports: Silicon Valley’s risky bet on President Donald Trump is starting to pay dividends. Trump on Wednesday revealed the White House’s plan to help the United States lead a global race to develop artificial intelligence. He also signed three executive orders that will facilitate exports of U.S. technologies and boost the build-out of data centers — advancing the agenda of executives and investors seeking to cash in on an AI gold rush. Trump delivered the plan at…

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Silicon Valley AI startups embrace China’s grueling ‘996’ work schedule

Silicon Valley AI startups embrace China’s grueling ‘996’ work schedule

Wired reports: Would you like to work nearly double the standard 40-hour week? It’s a question that many startups in the US are asking prospective employees—and to get the job, the answer needs to be an unequivocal yes. These companies are embracing an intense schedule, first popularized in mainland China, known as “996,” or 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week. In other words, it’s a 72-hour work week. The 996 phenomenon in China gave rise to major…

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Techno-hubris: AI chatbots remain overconfident — even when they’re wrong, study finds

Techno-hubris: AI chatbots remain overconfident — even when they’re wrong, study finds

Carnegie Mellon University: Artificial intelligence chatbots are everywhere these days, from smartphone apps and customer service portals to online search engines. But what happens when these handy tools overestimate their own abilities? Researchers asked both human participants and four large language models (LLMs) how confident they felt in their ability to answer trivia questions, predict the outcomes of NFL games or Academy Award ceremonies, or play a Pictionary-like image identification game. Both the people and the LLMs tended to be…

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How the tech broligarchy is planning to use AI to destroy humanity

How the tech broligarchy is planning to use AI to destroy humanity

  Elon Musk and his racist billionaire friends are grooming J.D. Vance to install their dystopian plan for a techno-fascist future where they use AI to dominate and exploit humanity. What do the richest people on Earth want? More, according to author and astrophysicist Adam Becker, who has studied the ideology, motivations, and plans of the modern-day pharaohs. Instead of using their wealth to help humanity, they want control, dominance, and an exit strategy from Earth for themselves and their…

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Billionaires project their own grandiosity onto AI as they envision scientific breakthroughs

Billionaires project their own grandiosity onto AI as they envision scientific breakthroughs

Gizmodo reports: Generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok have exploded in popularity as AI becomes mainstream. These tools don’t have the ability to make new scientific discoveries on their own, but billionaires are convinced that AI is on the cusp of doing just that. And the latest episode of the All-In podcast helps explain why these guys think AI is extremely close to revolutionizing scientific knowledge. Travis Kalanick, the founder of Uber who no longer works at…

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The ‘enshittification’ of American power

The ‘enshittification’ of American power

Wired reports: For decades, allies of the United States lived comfortably amid the sprawl of American hegemony. They constructed their financial institutions, communications systems, and national defense on top of infrastructure provided by the US. And right about now, they’re probably wishing they hadn’t. Back in 2022, Cory Doctorow coined the term “enshittification” to describe a cycle that has played out again and again in the online economy. Entrepreneurs start off making high-minded promises to get new users to try…

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Can AI companies keep stealing books to train their large language models?

Can AI companies keep stealing books to train their large language models?

Alex Reisner writes: Should tech companies have free access to copyrighted books and articles for training their AI models? Two judges recently nudged us toward an answer. More than 40 lawsuits have been filed against AI companies since 2022. The specifics vary, but they generally seek to hold these companies accountable for stealing millions of copyrighted works to develop their technology. (The Atlantic is involved in one such lawsuit, against the AI firm Cohere.) Late last month, there were rulings…

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