Crown Castle stock pointed up after the owner of wireless towers was the target of renewed activist attention.

How to redeem your BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023 Souvenir Tokens during the CS:GO tournament and when they expire.

Google has earned more than $10 million over the past two years by allowing misleading advertisements for "fake" abortion clinics that aim to stop women from having the procedure, according to an estimate from a report released Thursday from the non-profit Center for Countering Digital Hate.

JD.com Inc.’s revenue accelerated in the second quarter after its signature 6.18 festival scored with shoppers, helping the

The early-morning fire at an e-bike store in lower Manhattan that left four dead was caused by lithium-ion batteries, the city's fire commissioner said Tuesday.

STAFFORD, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 8, 2023--

By Foo Yun Chee LUXEMBOURG EU competition regulators appealed to the bloc's highest court on Tuesday to override

MrBeast has become the latest celebrity to tackle AI deepfakes, calling on social media to do more. "Lots of people are getting this deepfake scam ad of me… are social media platforms ready to handle the rise of AI deepfakes? This is a serious problem," the famed YouTuber posted to X/Twitter. MrBeast included a clip that has been circulating online, that shows an AI version of him saying he's giving away iPhones. "You’re one of the 10,000 lucky people who will get an iPhone 15 pro for just $2," the deceiving clip said. "I’m MrBeast and I am doing the world’s largest iPhone 15 giveaway." The clip then encouraged viewers to follow a link to "claim yours now!" It comes after Tom Hanks was targeted by artificial intelligence after one company featured him in a dental advert without his consent. The Hollywood actor was forced to speak out about the fake ad, writing: "There's a video out there promoting some dental plan with an AI version of me. I have nothing to do with it." The surge of AI scams is nothing new, following an alarming – and more sinister rise – in AI-generated porn, mostly targeting female influencers and celebrities. Billie Eilish previously fell victim to the fake tech in one NSFW incident – which saw a video eventually removed from social media after being viewed 11 million times. A separate incident saw popular Twitch streamer Sweet Anita horrified to learn her face had been used in X-rated material. Worryingly, there's not much legal action that can be taken either. Cybersecurity expert and What the Hack podcast host Adam Levin told Indy100 that "as long as every party involved is a legal adult, there aren’t very many laws on the books to prevent or punish the distribution of illicit content". He claimed "it’s nearly impossible to remove any content published online, pornographic or otherwise," before adding: "That said, if all the parties are known, there may be legally actionable kinds of deepfake porn content." 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.

By Raphael Satter WASHINGTON Microsoft Corp is expanding its suite of free security tools for customers, the software

An artificial intelligence system has achieved a key milestone by winning multiple races against three world-class drone-racing champions, marking the first time AI has beat humans at a physical sport. The AI system called Swift, developed by researchers from the University of Zurich in Germany and Intel, could prove its mettle in first-person view (FPV) drone racing – a sport in which pilots fly quadcopters at speeds exceeding 100kmph. Until now AI systems have achieved a number of remarkable victories over humans in a range of strategy-based games, including IBM’s Deep Blue winning at chess against Gary Kasparov in 1996 and Google’s AlphaGo defeating top Go champion Lee Sedol in 2016. However, physical sports are more challenging for AI as they are less predictable than board or video games. “We don’t have a perfect knowledge of the drone and environment models, so the AI needs to learn them by interacting with the physical world,” Davide Scaramuzza, one of the authors of the study from the University of Zurich, explained. AI-driven autonomous drones have until now taken twice as long as those piloted by humans to fly through racetracks unless an external position-tracking system was used to precisely control their trajectories. But the new Swift AI drone, described in a new study in the journal Nature, has demonstrated that it can react in real-time to the data collected by an onboard camera, just like the one used by human racers in the sport. Sensors on the drone measure acceleration and speed while the AI system uses data from the camera to locate the drone in space and detect the gates along the racetrack. A control unit in the drone, also based on AI, a control unit, then chooses the best action to finish the race circuit as fast as possible. Researchers say the Swift drone trained itself to fly in a simulated environment by trial and error. Using simulations, scientists could avoid destroying multiple drones in the early stages of learning when the system often crashes. “To make sure that the consequences of actions in the simulator were as close as possible to the ones in the real world, we designed a method to optimise the simulator with real data,” study first author Elia Kaufmann said. During the testing phase, the drone flew autonomously using very precise positions provided by an external position-tracking system, while also recording data from its camera. By comparing the two data sets, Swift could learn to autocorrect errors it made in interpreting information from the onboard sensors, scientists say. The AI was soon ready to challenge some of the world’s top human drone pilots – the 2019 Drone Racing League champion Alex Vanover, the 2019 MultiGP Drone Racing champion Thomas Bitmatta, and three-time Swiss champion Marvin Schaepper. In races that took place between 5 and 13 June 2022, on a special track designed in a hangar of the Dübendorf Airport near Zurich, Swift achieved the fastest lap, with a half-second lead over the best lap by a human pilot. The special track – about 25 by 25 meters in dimension – was built with seven square gates that had to be passed in the right order to complete a lap. Drones had to execute challenging maneuvers to successfully finish the track, including an acrobatic “Split-S” feature that involves half-rolling the drone and executing a descending half-loop at full speed. While Swift could record the fastest lap, humans are more adaptable than the AI drone, which failed when the conditions were different from what it was trained for, scientists say. However, they add that the new breakthrough in AI flight is an important way beyond drone racing. “Drones have a limited battery capacity; they need most of their energy just to stay airborne. Thus, by flying faster we increase their utility,” Dr Scaramuzza said. The new research, according to scientists, may lead to better drones for forest monitoring or space exploration, and in cases where flying fast is important to cover large spaces in a limited time. They say fast AI drones could also be used for shooting action scenes in movies and may also “make a huge difference” for rescue drones sent inside a burning building. Read More Ukraine launches ‘massive’ drone strikes on six regions of Russia – destroying war planes Ukraine-Russia war live: Kyiv’s huge drone attack as Putin floods frontline with ‘poorly trained troops’ To stop wildfires, residents in some Greek suburbs put their own money toward early warning drones Google launches AI to go to meetings for you Behind the AI boom, the armies of overseas workers in ‘digital sweatshops’ Nvidia sales hit record high as AI chip demand soars

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OpenAI boss Sam Altman has finally signed up for his own Worldcoin cryptocurrency, four years after founding the controversial venture. The tech boss, whose AI startup created ChatGPT, recently raised $100 million to finance his crypto side project, which involves scanning millions of people’s eyeballs in order to trade their biometric data for free cryptocurrency. Until this week he had been unable to join the project due to it being unavailable in his native US. On a trip to Europe on Tuesday, where the technology is not restricted, Mr Altman signed up to the venture through a silver orb that uses iris scanning technology to capture user data. This data is used to verify an individual’s “unique personhood”, which entitles them to a free share of Worldcoin tokens when it officially launches. More than 1.5 million people have already signed up for the project, according to the company’s own figures, with the launch expected to take place in the coming weeks. The company describes the cryptocurrency as a “new, collectively owned global currency that will be distributed fairly to as many people as possible”, claiming that everyone in the world is eligible for a free share of it. The Worldcoin tokens, called WLD, is similar to other cryptocurrencies in that it can be used as a store of value or to make payments, with the project’s website stating that it can be used for “remittances, [to] tip artists, [and] buy and sell goods and services”. Worldcoin has generated controversy for collecting biometric data from people in developing countries in exchange for free gifts and cash, but the company claims this unique approach to crypto means it can be distributed fairly and inclusively After scanning a person’s iris with the spherical device, which the company calls the “chrome orb”, a user is given their allotted share of Worldcoin. This means no one is able to get more than their individual free share of the digital currency, though it will still possible to buy and trade it separately, just like any other cryptocurrency. “Nothing like this has ever been done before and the outcome is uncertain,” Mr Altman wrote in a blog post in 2021, alongside other Worldcoin co-founders. “But we are obsessed with the idea that revolutionary new technologies like blockchain and cryptography can let us do something collectively that even governments have not been able to: increase individual empowerment and equality of opportunity on a global scale.” Read More What is superintelligence? How AI could replace humans as the dominant lifeform on Earth