SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 20, 2023--

Summer driving season is here so it's time to evaluate EV progress. Barron's has taken and talked with EV drivers about long-distance trips with all-electric vehicles.

By Aditya Soni Sam Altman's return as OpenAI's chief executive will strengthen his grip on the startup and

Astronomers have seen the “afterglow” of two huge planets crashing into each other for the first time. Scientists watched as the heat and dust that were left behind from the crash swirled in front of their star, allowing them to see the aftermath of the explosion. The incident happened when two ice giant planets collided with each other, around a star like our own Sun. A blaze of light and dust resulted, which could be seen from Earth. Those effects were first spotted by an amateur astronomer social media, who noticed unusual light coming from the star. It had brightened up in infrared – getting lighter at those wavelengths for three years – and then the optical light began fading. Scientists then watched the star in an attempt to understand what was happening. They monitored for further changes at the star, named ASASSN-21qj, to see how the star’s brightness changed. “To be honest, this observation was a complete surprise to me. When we originally shared the visible light curve of this star with other astronomers, we started watching it with a network of other telescopes,” said co- lead author Matthew Kenworthy from Leiden University. “An astronomer on social media pointed out that the star brightened up in the infrared over a thousand days before the optical fading. I knew then this was an unusual event.” Their research suggested that the glow was the heat from the collision, which could be picked up by Nasa’s Neowise mission. Then the optical light began to fade when the dust covered the star, over a period of three years. “Our calculations and computer models indicate the temperature and size of the glowing material, as well as the amount of time the glow has lasted, is consistent with the collision of two ice giant exoplanets,” said co-lead author Simon Lock from the University of Bristol. The dust is then expected to star smearing out. Astronomers hope to confirm their theories by watching as that happens, since it should be visible both from Earth and with Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope – and they might see that dust begin its journey into something else. It will be fascinating to observe further developments. Ultimately, the mass of material around the remnant may condense to form a retinue of moons that will orbit around this new planet,” said Zoe Leinhardt, from the University of Bristol, who was a co-author on the study. The research is described in a paper, ‘A planetary collision afterglow and transit of the resultant debris cloud’, published in Nature today. Read More 1.2 mile-high ‘dust devil’ spotted on Mars by Nasa’s Perseverance rover Researchers capture first-ever afterglow of huge planetary collision Earth hit by a huge solar storm that would devastate civilisation, trees show

The Czech National Bank raised its investments in shares of Apple, Tesla, AT&T, and Microsoft by about 50% in the third quarter.

They are 22 words that could terrify those who read them, as brutal in their simplicity as they are general in their meaning: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” That is the statement from San Francisco-based non-profit the Center for AI Safety, and signed by chief executives from Google Deepmind and ChatGPT creators OpenAI, along with other major figures in artificial intelligence research. The fact that the statement has been signed by so many leading AI researchers and companies means that it should be heeded. But it also means that it should be robustly examined: why are they saying this, and why now? The answer might take some of the terror away (though not all of it). Writing a statement like this functions as something like a reverse marketing campaign: our products are so powerful and so new, it says, that they could wipe out the world. Most tech products just promise to change our lives; these ones could end it. And so what looks like a statement about danger is also one that highlights just how much Google, OpenAI and more think they have to offer. Warning that AI could be as terrible as pandemics also has the peculiar effect of making artificial intelligence's dangers seem as if they just arise naturally in the world, like the mutation of a virus. But every dangerous AI is the product of intentional choices by its developers – and in most cases, from the companies that have signed the new statement. Who is the statement for? Who are these companies talking to? After all, they are the ones who are creating the products that might extinguish life on Earth. It reads a little like being hectored by a burglar about your house’s locks not being good enough. None of this is to say that the warning is untrue, or shouldn't be heeded; the danger is very real indeed. But it does mean that we should ask a few more questions of those warning us about it, especially when they are conveniently the companies that created this ostensibly apocalyptic tech in the first place. AI doesn't feel so world-destroying yet. The statement's doomy words might come as some surprise to those who have used the more accessible AI systems, such as ChatGPT. Conversations with that chatbot and others can be funny, surprising, delightful and sometimes scary – but it's hard to see how what is mostly prattle and babble from a smart but stupid chatbot could destroy the world. They also might come as a surprise to those who have read about the many, very important ways that AI is already being used to help save us, not kill us. Only last week, scientists announced that they had used artificial intelligence to find new antibiotics that could kill off superbugs, and that is just the beginning. By focusing on the "risk of extinction" and the "societal-scale risk" posed by AI, however, its proponents are able to shift the focus away from both the weaknesses of actually existing AI and the ethical questions that surround it. The intensity of the statement, the reference to nuclear war and pandemics, make it feel like we are at a point equivalent with cowering in our bomb shelters or in lockdown. They say there are no atheists in foxholes; we might also say there are no ethicists in fallout shelters. If AI is akin to nuclear war, though, we are closer to the formation of the Manhattan Project than we are to the Cold War. We don’t need to be hunkering down as if the danger is here and there is nothing we can do about it but “mitigate it”. There's still time to decide what this technology looks like, how powerful it is and who will be at the sharp end of that power. Statements like this are a reflection of the fact that the systems we have today are a long way from those that we might have tomorrow: the work going on at the companies who warned us about these issues is vast, and could be much more transformative than chatting with a robot. It is all happening in secret, and shrouded in both mystery and marketing buzz, but what we can discern is that we might only be a few years away from systems that are both more powerful and more sinister. Already, the world is struggling to differentiate between fake images and real ones; soon, developments in AI could make it very difficult to find the difference between fake people and real ones. At least according to some in the industry, AI is set to develop at such a pace that it might only be a few years before those warnings are less abstractly worrying and more concretely terrifying. The statement is correct in identifying those risks, and urging work to avoid them. But it is more than a little helpful to the companies that signed it in making those risks seem inevitable and naturally occurring, as if they are not choosing to build and profit from the technology they are so worried about. It is those companies, not artificial intelligence, that have the power to decide what that future looks like – and whether it will include our "extinction". Read More Opinion: Age gap relationships might seem wrong, but they work. Trust me Hands up if you trust Boris Johnson | Tom Peck Boris’s ‘ratty rat’ rage against Sunak could bring the Tories down | John Rentoul Opinion: Age gap relationships might seem wrong, but they work. Trust me Hands up if you trust Boris Johnson | Tom Peck Boris’s ‘ratty rat’ rage against Sunak could bring the Tories down | John Rentoul

GEORGETOWN, Guyana--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 11, 2023--

BEIJING Chinese search engine giant Baidu launched on Wednesday a paid version of its ChatGPT-like product Ernie bot,

A Southern California school board at odds with state officials and local residents this summer over its rejection of social studies curriculum that includes gay rights is now being sued regarding a different policy decision.

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 19, 2023--

The Colonel won't be frying chicken as a Black Mage in the MMO.

This just in: Amazon is having a Labor Day Sale, with not-to-miss deals that are