The discovery of beautiful, ancient rock engravings has been a bitter-sweet experience for experts in Brazil’s Amazon. On the one hand, the carvings offer an exciting insight into the first people who inhabited the region. On the other, it is a worrying signal that the Negro River, which runs through the region, may soon cease to exist. An extreme drought in parts of the rainforest has led to a dramatic drop in river water levels – with the Negro’s flow reaching its lowest level for 121 years last week. The drop exposed dozens of normally submerged rock formations featuring carvings of human forms that may date back some 2,000 years. Livia Ribeiro, a longtime resident of the Amazon's largest city, Manaus, said she heard about the rock engravings from friends and wanted to check them out. "I thought it was a lie,” she told the AFP news agency. “I had never seen this and I've lived in Manaus for 27 years.” She admitted that whilst scientists and members of the public were delighted at the discovery, they acknowledged that it also raised unsettling questions. "We come, we look at (the engravings) and we think they are beautiful. But at the same time, it is worrying,” she said. “I also think about whether this river will exist in 50 or 100 years.” Drought in Brazil's Amazon has drastically reduced river levels in recent weeks, affecting a region that depends on a labrynth of waterways for transportation and supplies. The Brazilian government has sent emergency aid to the area, where normally bustling riverbanks are dry and littered with stranded boats. According to experts, the dry season has worsened this year due to El Niño, an irregular climate pattern over the Pacific Ocean that disrupts normal weather, adding to the effect of climate change. Jaime Oliveira, of the Brazilian Institute of Historical Heritage (Iphan), said the engravings comprise an archaeological site of "great relevance”. They are located at a site known as Praia das Lajes and were first seen in 2010, during another period of drought (which was not as severe as the current one). Most of the engravings are of human faces, some of them rectangular and others oval, with smiles or grim expressions. "The site expresses emotions, feelings, it is an engraved rock record, but it has something in common with current works of art," Oliveira said. For Beatriz Carneiro, historian and member of Iphan, Praia das Lajes has an "inestimable" value in understanding the first people who inhabited the region, a field still little explored. "Unhappily it is now reappearing with the worsening of the drought," she said. "Having our rivers back (flooded) and keeping the engravings submerged will help preserve them, even more than our work." Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings

Facebook parent company Meta is reportedly planning to internally release an artificial intelligence chatbot called “Gen AI Personas” aimed at younger users. The chatbot, similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, is set to be launched during Meta’s Connect Event on Wednesday. The tech giant is testing the chatbot, which comes in multiple “personas” aimed to engage young users, including a “sassy robot” persona inspired by Bender from Futurama,according to The Wall Street Journal. Meta is reportedly developing “dozens” of these chatbots, including some to help with “coding and other tasks” and improve productivity as well as a tool to help celebrities make their own chatbots for their fans. The development of some of these chatbots – including one with the personality of former US president Abraham Lincoln – are part of Meta’s attempts to boost engagement on its social media platforms, reports previously suggested. The development of these new chatbots are signs of Meta’s growing interest in the market for large language models (LLM) similar to ChatGPT. It launched a new version of its open-source model in July called Llama 2 for commercial use, becoming the first major tech firm to release its AI chatbot. Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg said at the time of Llama 2’s release that it would “drive progress across the industry” while the firm’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun said it will “change the landscape of the LLM market”. The tech firm’s development of “personas” also comes as tech industry leaders called for a balanced approach towards regulating AI at a historic gathering convened by US senate majority leader Chuck Schumer. At the meeting held earlier this month, Mr Zuckerberg said the two defining issues for AI are “safety and access.” He urged the US Congress should “engage with AI to support innovation and safeguards”. “New technology often brings new challenges, and it’s on companies to make sure we build and deploy products responsibly,” the Meta chief said. “This is an emerging technology, there are important equities to balance here, and the government is ultimately responsible for that,” he added. Read More Meta’s new end-to-end encryption ‘means thousands of criminals could go undetected’ Elon Musk warns of ‘civilisational risk’ posed by AI at historic gathering of tech giant chiefs WhatsApp update brings ‘channels’, allowing people to follow updates from celebrities and companies Facebook changes logo to ‘make F stand apart’ – but can you tell the difference? Elon Musk warns of ‘civilisational risk’ posed by AI at historic gathering Nasa just delivered a piece of a distant asteroid to Earth

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