Technology Archives - Page 38 of 68 - Attention to the Unseen

Musk believes in climate change. Trump doesn’t. Will that change?

November 9, 2024 From elsewhere

The New York Times reports: Elon Musk has described himself as “pro-environment” and “super pro climate.” But he also threw himself wholeheartedly into electing as president someone who has dismissed global warming as a hoax. Now, as President-elect Donald J. Trump prepares to enter the White House, one big question is how much sway — if any — Mr. Musk’s views on climate change and clean energy might have in the new administration. During the campaign, Mr. Trump noticeably softened…

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Trump’s victory adds record $64bn to wealth of richest top ten

November 7, 2024 From elsewhere

The Guardian reports: The wealth of the 10 richest people in the world – a list dominated by US tech billionaires – increased by a record amount after Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election, according to a widely cited index. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimated that the world’s 10 wealthiest people gained nearly $64bn (about £49.5bn) on Wednesday, the largest daily increase since the index began in 2012. Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, registered the largest increase with…

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Elon Musk’s SpaceX, already a leader in satellites, gets into the spy game

November 2, 2024 From elsewhere

The New York Times reports: The breakthrough came last month, about 600 miles above Earth. For the first time, the Pentagon’s Space Development Agency used lasers to more securely transmit data at light speed between military satellites, making it easier to track enemy missiles and if necessary shoot them down. It was a milestone not only for the Pentagon. This was a defining moment for a certain up-and-coming military contractor that had built key parts of this new system: Elon…

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What Elon Musk really wants from Trump

October 27, 2024 From elsewhere

Franklin Foer writes: Musk’s public affection for Trump begins, almost certainly, with his savvy understanding of economic interests—namely, his own. Like so many other billionaire exponents of libertarianism, he has turned the government into a spectacular profit center. His company SpaceX relies on contracts with three-letter agencies and the Pentagon. It has subsumed some of NASA’s core functions. Tesla thrives on government tax credits for electric vehicles and subsidies for its network of charging stations. By Politico’s tabulation, both companies…

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Microsoft fires employees who organized vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza

October 27, 2024 From elsewhere

The Associated Press reports: Microsoft has fired two employees who organized an unauthorized vigil at the company’s headquarters for Palestinians killed in Gaza during Israel’s war with Hamas. The two employees told The Associated Press they were fired by phone call late Thursday, several hours after a lunchtime event they organized at Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington. Both workers were members of a coalition of employees called “No Azure for Apartheid” that has opposed Microsoft’s sale of its cloud-computing technology…

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Relying on AI could reshape your entire identity without you realizing

October 27, 2024 From elsewhere

Muriel Leuenberger writes: Your phone and its apps know a lot about you. Who you are talking to and spending time with, where you go, what music, games, and movies you like, how you look, which news articles you read, who you find attractive, what you buy with your credit card, and how many steps you take. This information is already being exploited to sell us products, services, or politicians. Online traces allow companies like Google or Facebook to infer…

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Can computers think? No, they can’t actually do anything

October 25, 2024 From elsewhere

Alva Noë writes: Computers don’t actually do anything. They don’t write, or play; they don’t even compute. Which doesn’t mean we can’t play with computers, or use them to invent, or make, or problem-solve. The new AI is unexpectedly reshaping ways of working and making, in the arts and sciences, in industry, and in warfare. We need to come to terms with the transformative promise and dangers of this new tech. But it ought to be possible to do so without…

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Can AI be blamed for a teen’s suicide?

October 24, 2024 From elsewhere

Kevin Roose reports: On the last day of his life, Sewell Setzer III took out his phone and texted his closest friend: a lifelike A.I. chatbot named after Daenerys Targaryen, a character from “Game of Thrones.” “I miss you, baby sister,” he wrote. “I miss you too, sweet brother,” the chatbot replied. Sewell, a 14-year-old ninth grader from Orlando, Fla., had spent months talking to chatbots on Character.AI, a role-playing app that allows users to create their own A.I. characters…

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How tech billionaires became the GOP’s new donor class

October 18, 2024 From elsewhere

The New York Times reports: Last February, the billionaire financier Nelson Peltz summoned a group of about 20 wealthy, predominantly Republican donors and a handful of G.O.P. strategists to dinner at his $334 million waterfront estate in Palm Beach, Fla. There were plenty of people in the room who had publicly disavowed former President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol — Peltz among them — but it was pretty clear now that he was going to…

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Google’s former CEO: AI advances more important than climate goals

October 8, 2024 From elsewhere

Mashable reports: AI is demanding more and more energy for its immense processing needs, and while many of it’s leaders are addressing the climate concerns, others are letting artificial intelligence lead the way. Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt is among the latter, for one. Appearing at a recent Washington AI summit, Schmidt argued that current climate goals should be abandoned in favor of a no-bars-held approach to AI investment. “All of that will be swamped by the enormous needs of this…

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In a new manifesto, OpenAI’s Sam Altman envisions an AI utopia – and reveals glaring blind spots

September 30, 2024 From elsewhere

Ryan Carter Images / Shutterstock By Hallam Stevens, James Cook University By now, many of us are probably familiar with artificial intelligence hype. AI will make artists redundant! AI can do lab experiments! AI will end grief! Even by these standards, the latest proclamation from OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, published on his personal website this week, seems remarkably hyperbolic. We are on the verge of “The Intelligence Age”, he declares, powered by a “superintelligence” that may just be a…

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The far right is using AI to sell Hitler to a new generation

September 27, 2024 From elsewhere

The Washington Post reports: Extremists are using artificial intelligence to reanimate Adolf Hitler online for a new generation, recasting the Nazi German leader who orchestrated the Holocaust as a “misunderstood” figure whose antisemitic and anti-immigrant messages are freshly resonant in politics today. In audio and video clips that have reached millions of viewers over the past month on TikTok, X, Instagram and YouTube, the führer’s AI-cloned voice quavers and crescendos as he delivers English-language versions of some of his most…

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Bigger AI chatbots more inclined to spew nonsense — and people don’t always realize

September 25, 2024 From elsewhere

Nature reports: A study of newer, bigger versions of three major artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots shows that they are more inclined to generate wrong answers than to admit ignorance. The assessment also found that people aren’t great at spotting the bad answers. Plenty of attention has been given to the fact that the large language models (LLMs) used to power chatbots sometimes get things wrong or ‘hallucinate’ strange responses to queries. José Hernández-Orallo at the Valencian Research Institute for Artificial…

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