BROOKLYN, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 16, 2023--

New York City, Long Island and New Jersey have been hit with air-quality alerts as another plume of

The probability of a “Terminator scenario” caused by artificial intelligence is “close to zero”, a University of Oxford professor has said. Sandra Wachter, professor of technology and regulation, called a letter released by the San Francisco-based Centre for AI Safety – which warned that the technology could wipe out humanity – a “publicity stunt”. The letter, which warns that the risks should be treated with the same urgency as pandemics or nuclear war, was signed by dozens of experts including artificial intelligence (AI) pioneers. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak retweeted the Centre for AI Safety’s statement on Wednesday, saying the Government is “looking very carefully” at it. Professor Wachter said the risk raised in letter is “science fiction fantasy” and she compared it to the film The Terminator. She added: “There are risks, there are serious risks, but it’s not the risks that are getting all of the attention at the moment. “What we see with this new open letter is a science fiction fantasy that distracts from the issue right here right now. The issues around bias, discrimination and the environmental impact. “The whole discourse is being put on something that may or may not happen in a couple of hundred years. You can’t do something meaningful about it as it’s so far in the future. “But bias and discrimination I can measure, I can measure the environmental impact. It takes 360 gallons of water daily to cool a middle-sized data centre, that’s the price that we have to pay. “It’s a publicity stunt. It will attract funding. It's a publicity stunt. It will attract funding. Professor Sandra Wachter “Let’s focus on people’s jobs being replaced. These things are being completely sidelined by the Terminator scenario. “What we know about technology now, the probability [of human extinction due to AI] is close to zero. People should worry about other things.” AI apps have gone viral online, with users posting fake images of celebrities and politicians, and students using ChatGPT and other “language learning models” to generate university-grade essays. But AI can also perform life-saving tasks, such as algorithms analysing medical images like X-rays, scans and ultrasounds, helping doctors to identify and diagnose diseases such as cancer and heart conditions more accurately and quickly. The statement was organised by the Centre for AI Safety, a non-profit which aims “to reduce societal-scale risks from AI”. It says: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” Senior bosses at companies such as Google DeepMind and Anthropic signed the letter along with a pioneer of AI, Geoffrey Hinton, who resigned from his job at Google earlier this month, saying that in the wrong hands, AI could be used to to harm people and spell the end of humanity. Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live ‘I feel lost’ – AI pioneer speaks out as experts warn it could wipe out humanity Cabinet approves Irish involvement in cyber-threat network Trust and ethics considerations ‘have come too late’ on AI technology

Coupang Inc., the South Korean e-commerce giant backed by SoftBank Group Corp., reported better-than-expected revenue growth after spending

Amazon’s profitable cloud business will invest roughly $7.8 billion by the end of 2029 to expand its data center operations in central Ohio

Apple Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said that their new high-yield savings account has reached $10 billion

SÃO PAULO & MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 22, 2023--

Scientists have found an explanation for a 'gravity hole' in the Indian Ocean. A gravity hole is an area where gravitational pull is low, causing the seafloor to sink. Deep beneath the ocean, there is one that is three million square kilometers in size and previously it has confused scientists. Now two researchers from the Indian Institute of Science, Debanjan Pal and Attreyee Ghosh, think they have solved the mystery. More than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) beneath Earth's crust, they found cold, dense remnants of an ancient ocean plunged into a 'slab graveyard' beneath Africa some 30 million years ago, stirring up hot molten rock. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Pal and Ghosh retraced the formation of the massive geoid by modeling how tectonic plates skimmed over Earth's mantle for the past 140 million years. They ran simulations and compared the shape of the oceanic low those models predicted with observations of the dent itself. The models that reproduced the Indian Ocean geoid low in its current form all had one thing in common: plumes of hot, low-density magma wafting up beneath the low. These plumes, as well as a distinctive mantle structure, are what created the geoid low; if they rise high enough, Pal and Ghosh reckon. "In short, our results suggest that to match the [shape and amplitude of the] observed geoid low, plumes need to be buoyant enough to come up to mid-mantle depths," the pair wrote. The first of these plumes appeared about 20 million years ago, to the south of the Indian Ocean geoid low, and around 10 million years after the old Tethys Sea sank into the lower mantle. As the plumes spread beneath the lithosphere and inched towards the Indian peninsula, the low intensified. But more research needs to be done to work out what is really going on as not all scientists are convinced. Science is crazy. 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.

Chinese regulatory authorities are fining Ant Group 7.123 billion yuan ($985 million), claiming the financial technology provider violated laws related to corporate governance and consumer rights

The crypto industry notched a crucial win in its battle with regulators Thursday when a judge ruled that Ripple Labs did not violate federal securities law by offering its XRP token on public exchanges — undermining a key argument made by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Artificial intelligence poses a major threat to humanity and the world – but also has a range of positive uses, experts have said. Those positive uses include the development of new kinds of life-saving drugs, revolutionary new educational technologies and ways to make media and art more accessible to people. But the potentially liberating and exciting uses of AI risk being overshadowed by the fear and panic over the potential problems of the technology, the experts warned. That was the conclusion of The Independent’s latest premium live event, which saw experts discuss the question: “How much of a threat does AI really pose?” To attempt to answer the question, The Independent’s technology editor, Andrew Griffin, was joined by deputy technology editor Anthony Cuthbertson and two world-recognised experts in their field. Andrew Rogoyski is director of innovation and partnerships at the Surrey Institute for People-Centred AI, and Catherine Breslin is a machine learning scientists and consultant who previously worked on Amazon Alexa and at other companies, and now runs Kingfisher Labs, an artificial intelligence consultancy. All panelists agreed that one of the most pressing issues about artificial intelligence is it being used to fill the internet with “sludge”: “automatically generated noise”, as Rogoyski described it, that could make it difficult to tell humans from artificial intelligence systems. “If you think of how much we depend on information on the internet, the idea that it's filled with rubbish – it's bad enough as it is,” he said. “But the idea that it's automatically generated, I think, is the most real extant threat of the misuse of AI.” Catherine agreed and noted that “sludge” could be made up of not only text but also “images and video and audio as well”, warning that people are not aware of just how easy it is to create convincing audio and video that pretends to be somebody else. “We won't necessarily be able to trust what is real and what is not real and without better ways of validating where images and video and audio come from,” she said. “So I think that this being able to generate media quickly, convincing media quickly, and then being able to send it out on the internet and the speed and scale at which information disseminates there – I think those two things combined will make for interesting times in the future when we have to grapple with the realities of validating our media.” But even amid that fear, the experts said that there were many very exciting possibilities being offered by technology. “Some of the biggest problems humanity faces could potentially be solved by an advanced artificial intelligence,” said Cuthbertson, pointing to its use in medicine and elsewhere. Rogoyski said that many of the benefits of AI are already being “taken for granted”. The technology is already used in science, medicine, to moderate the internet and to improve manufacturing and logistics, he said, and in every day ways such as the organisation of photos on our phones and information in our search engines. Even the fear that people could lose their jobs to artificial intelligence might be misplaced, the experts said, if companies instead use the technology to augment rather than replace their employees. Already, legal professionals are using artificial intelligence to navigate court audio, and doctors are using it to transcribe medical notes – freeing those people up to do helpful work for their clients and patients, Breslin noted. The entire conversation – which included discussions on the military use of artificial intelligence, its effects on the arts, and much more besides – can be viewed above. Read More Google may soon roll out AI ‘personal life coach’ ‘I’m scared’: Snapchat’s AI posts image that terrifies users How much of a threat does AI really pose? Get your ticket for our free event

Young students who were hit hardest by the pandemic are entering the upper grades of elementary school