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Category: Technology

Elon Musk and tech elite back a pro-Trump super PAC

Elon Musk and tech elite back a pro-Trump super PAC

The Verge reports: Several close friends of Elon Musk, including Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale, venture capitalist Doug Leone, and investor and podcast host David Sacks, have donated lavishly to a super PAC backing former President Donald Trump — and The Wall Street Journal reports that Musk plans on donating as much as $45 million a month to America PAC. In a post on X, Musk replied to the Journal’s article with a meme claiming it was “fake gnus” (fake news),…

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AI supercharges data center energy use – straining the grid and slowing sustainability efforts

AI supercharges data center energy use – straining the grid and slowing sustainability efforts

A data center in Ashburn, Va., the heart of so-called Data Center Alley. AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey By Ayse Coskun, Boston University The artificial intelligence boom has had such a profound effect on big tech companies that their energy consumption, and with it their carbon emissions, have surged. The spectacular success of large language models such as ChatGPT has helped fuel this growth in energy demand. At 2.9 watt-hours per ChatGPT request, AI queries require about 10 times the electricity of…

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The president ordered a board to probe a massive Russian cyberattack. It never did

The president ordered a board to probe a massive Russian cyberattack. It never did

By Craig Silverman This story was originally published by ProPublica. After Russian intelligence launched one of the most devastating cyber espionage attacks in history against U.S. government agencies, the Biden administration set up a new board and tasked it to figure out what happened — and tell the public. State hackers had infiltrated SolarWinds, an American software company that serves the U.S. government and thousands of American companies. The intruders used malicious code and a flaw in a Microsoft product…

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What is machine learning?

What is machine learning?

John Pavlus writes: By now, many people think they know what machine learning is: You “feed” computers a bunch of “training data” so that they “learn” to do things without our having to specify exactly how. But computers aren’t dogs, data isn’t kibble, and that previous sentence has way too many air quotes. What does that stuff really mean? Machine learning is a subfield of artificial intelligence, which explores how to computationally simulate (or surpass) humanlike intelligence. While some AI…

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Is conscious AI possible?

Is conscious AI possible?

Andrew Maynard writes: It seems that barely a week goes by these days where there isn’t some degree of speculation that the current crop of large language models, novel AI systems, or even the internet, are showing signs of consciousness. These are usually met with a good dose of skepticism. But under the surface there’s often a surprisingly strong conflation between advanced artificial intelligence and conscious machines — to the extent that much of the current wave of AI acceleration…

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How AI revolutionized protein science, but didn’t end it

How AI revolutionized protein science, but didn’t end it

Yasemin Saplakoglu writes: In December 2020, when pandemic lockdowns made in-person meetings impossible, hundreds of computational scientists gathered in front of their screens to watch a new era of science unfold. They were assembled for a conference, a friendly competition some of them had attended in person for almost three decades where they could all get together and obsess over the same question. Known as the protein folding problem, it was simple to state: Could they accurately predict the three-dimensional…

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Could the global boom in greenhouses help cool the planet?

Could the global boom in greenhouses help cool the planet?

Fred Pearce writes: The world is awash with greenhouses growing fresh vegetables year-round for health-conscious urbanites. There are so many of them that in places their plastic and glass roofs are reflecting sufficient solar radiation to cool local temperatures — even as surrounding areas warm due to climate change. The extent of this accidental climate engineering is becoming ever more apparent as analysis of satellite images dramatically increases estimates of the area of the planet swathed in greenhouses. From southern…

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Chemicals from East Palestine, Ohio, derailment spread to 16 states, data shows

Chemicals from East Palestine, Ohio, derailment spread to 16 states, data shows

The Guardian reports: Chemicals released during the East Palestine train wreck fires in February 2023 in Ohio were carried across 16 US states, new research of federal precipitation and pollution data shows. Analysis of rain and snow samples collected from northern Wisconsin to Maine to North Carolina in the weeks following the crash found the highest levels of pH and some compounds recorded over the last ten years. That includes chloride, which researchers say was largely released during a controversial…

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Iran signals a major boost in nuclear enrichment at key site

Iran signals a major boost in nuclear enrichment at key site

The Washington Post reports: A major expansion underway inside Iran’s most heavily protected nuclear facility could soon triple the site’s production of enriched uranium and give Tehran new options for quickly assembling a nuclear arsenal if it chooses to, according to confidential documents and analysis by weapons experts. Inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed new construction activity inside the Fordow enrichment plant, just days after Tehran formally notified the nuclear watchdog of plans for a substantial upgrade at…

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Crypto industry aligns with Trump

Crypto industry aligns with Trump

The New York Times reports: Ryan Selkis, a cryptocurrency executive, was eating dinner at Mar-a-Lago last month when he got an unexpected invitation: Former President Donald J. Trump wanted him to come to the stage and say a few words. Mr. Selkis, who runs the crypto data firm Messari, was one of a couple hundred attendees at an event celebrating Mr. Trump’s series of nonfungible tokens, the digital collectibles known as NFTs. When he reached the lectern, Mr. Selkis turned…

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How AI surveillance threatens democracy everywhere

How AI surveillance threatens democracy everywhere

Abi Olvera writes: In 2018, Singapore planned to embed facial recognition cameras in lampposts for nationwide monitoring. But rapid advances in battery technology and 5G networks enabled a pivot to an even more powerful and nimble surveillance system—mobile sensors and cameras capable of observing citizens and catching them in the act of littering, with artificial intelligence handling the data analysis. Around the same time, Malaysia partnered with China’s Yitu Technology to provide police with an AI-powered facial recognition system linked…

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Campaigns can now see what you watch on TV. It’s changing everything

Campaigns can now see what you watch on TV. It’s changing everything

NOTUS reports: Political aide turned data guru Jesse Contario works in the shadows. His employer, MiQ, will never be mentioned at the end of a campaign ad, and it won’t show up on the disclosures campaigns must post to keep the public abreast of their work. Yet Contario works with some of the biggest campaigns in the country — and his firm might know a lot about you. MiQ specializes in harvesting data, including for political campaigns, and it increasingly…

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Microsoft chose profit over security and left U.S. government vulnerable to Russian hack, whistleblower says

Microsoft chose profit over security and left U.S. government vulnerable to Russian hack, whistleblower says

By Renee Dudley, with research by Doris Burke This story was originally published by ProPublica. Microsoft hired Andrew Harris for his extraordinary skill in keeping hackers out of the nation’s most sensitive computer networks. In 2016, Harris was hard at work on a mystifying incident in which intruders had somehow penetrated a major U.S. tech company. The breach troubled Harris for two reasons. First, it involved the company’s cloud — a virtual storehouse typically containing an organization’s most sensitive data….

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U.S. clears way for antitrust inquiries of Nvidia, Microsoft and OpenAI

U.S. clears way for antitrust inquiries of Nvidia, Microsoft and OpenAI

The New York Times reports: Federal regulators have reached a deal that allows them to proceed with antitrust investigations into the dominant roles that Microsoft, OpenAI and Nvidia play in the artificial intelligence industry, in the strongest sign of how regulatory scrutiny into the powerful technology has escalated. The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission struck the deal over the past week, and it is expected to be completed in the coming days, according to two people with knowledge of the matter,…

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The most downloaded U.S. news app has Chinese roots and ‘writes fiction’ using AI

The most downloaded U.S. news app has Chinese roots and ‘writes fiction’ using AI

Reuters reports: Last Christmas Eve, NewsBreak, opens new tab, a free app with roots in China that is the most downloaded news app in the United States, published an alarming piece about a small town shooting. It was headlined “Christmas Day Tragedy Strikes Bridgeton, New Jersey Amid Rising Gun Violence in Small Towns.” The problem was, no such shooting took place. The Bridgeton, New Jersey police department posted a statement on Facebook on December 27 dismissing the article – produced…

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Human culture is changing too fast for evolution to catch up – here’s how it may affect you

Human culture is changing too fast for evolution to catch up – here’s how it may affect you

frank60/Shutterstock By Jose Yong, Northumbria University, Newcastle Research is showing that many of our contemporary problems, such as the rising prevalence of mental health issues, are emerging from rapid technological advancement and modernisation. A theory that can help explain why we respond poorly to modern conditions, despite the choices, safety and other benefits they bring, is evolutionary mismatch. Mismatch happens when an evolved adaptation, either physical or psychological, becomes misaligned with the environment. Take moths and some species of nocturnal…

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