By Valerie Volcovici and David Stanway BEIJING (Reuters) -U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said more work was needed to iron

As backlash to Florida's new Black history education standards grows, teachers say they are struggling to navigate what they can and cannot say inside their classrooms, while some parents are turning to alternative methods to educate their children about Black history.

The last parts of the old Twitter branding are seemingly being removed from Elon Musk’s “X” site. In recent weeks, Mr Musk has announced that he would be rebranding the company he bought last year as “X”, as part of a plan to turn the product into an “everything app”. Mr Musk has had an interest in the letter for much of his career, and has used it across his other companies. That rebrand appeared to have been launched rapidly and initially faltered. When Mr Musk attempted to install an “X” on top of the company’s San Francisco offices, for instance, local authorities objected and it was later removed. Mr Musk now appears to be making progress with that plan, however, removing the Twitter branding from many of the central parts of the website. The logo that appears in the corner of the site had already been swapped from the Twitter bird into the “X” glyph that Mr Musk chose in an online contest, for instance. And in recent days, the company has swapped the “tweet” button that a user presses to make a new post for the more traditional “post” option. Now, Twitter appears to changing the URL of posts from Twitter.com into X.com. For now, that appears to be only happening in limited instances – sharing a post from the Twitter app for iOS generates the new addresses, but doing so on the web still shows the old one – but it is likely that the company will switch to the new branding across sites eventually. Users can also open up any profile by typing it as “X.com” rather than the old branding, though it does for now redirect to the Twitter version of that profile. Still, much of Twitter’s documentation has not been changed at all. The “help” sites on Twitter’s pages still include entirely Twitter branding: the “How to Tweet” article, for instance, has been changed to include some references to “X” but uses the word “tweet”, and “Twitter” liberally. Read More Mark Zuckerberg hits out at Elon Musk for wasting time over cage fight Elon Musk reveals more dramatic details of fight against Mark Zuckerberg UFC boss in talks to stage Musk vs Zuckerberg at Roman Colosseum

In the ‘Unfinished Fable of the Sparrows’, a group of small birds come up with a plan to capture an owl egg and raise the chick as their servant. “How easy life would be,” they say, if the owl could work for them, and they could live a life of leisure. Despite warnings from members of their flock that they should first figure out how to tame an owl before they raise one, the sparrows devote all their efforts to capturing an egg. This tale, as its title suggests, does not have an ending. Its author, Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom, deliberately left it open-ended as he believes that humanity is currently in the egg hunting phase when it comes to superhuman AI. In his seminal work on artificial intelligence, titled Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, the Oxford University professor posits that AI may well destroy us if we are not sufficiently prepared. Superintelligence, which he describes as an artificial intelligence that “greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest”, may be a lot closer than many realise, with AI experts and leading industry figures warning that it may be just a few years away. On Monday, the creator of ChatGPT echoed Professor Bostrom’s 2014 book by warning that the seemingly exponential progress of AI technology in recent years means that the imminent arrival of superintelligence is inevitable – and we need to start preparing for it before it’s too late. OpenAI boss Sam Altman, whose company’s AI chatbot is the fastest growing app in history, has previously described Professor Bostrom’s book as “the best thing I’ve seen on this topic”. Just a year after reading it, Mr Altman co-founded OpenAI alongside other similarly worried tech leaders like Elon Musk and Ilya Sutskever in order to better understand and mitigate against the risks of advanced artificial intelligence. Initially launched as a non-profit, OpenAI has since transformed into arguably the leading private AI firm – and potentially the closest to achieving superintelligence. Mr Altman believes superintelligence has the potential to not only offer us a life of leisure by doing all the majority of our labour, but also holds the key to curing diseases, eliminate suffering and transforming humanity into an interstellar species. Any attempts to block its progress, he wrote this week, would be “unintuitively risky” and would require “something like a global surveillance regime” that would be virtually impossible to implement. It is already difficult to understand what is going on inside the ‘mind’ of AI tools currently available, but once superintelligence is achieved, even its actions may become incomprehensible. It could make discoveries that we would be incapable of understanding, or take decisions that make no sense to us. The biological and evolutionary limitations of brains made of organic matter mean we may need some form of brain-computer interface in order to keep up. Being unable to compete with AI in this new technological era, Professor Bostrom warns, could see humanity replaced as the dominant lifeform on Earth. The superintelligence may then see us as superfluous to its own goals. If this happens, and some form of AI has figured out how to hijack all the utilities and technology we rely upon – or even the nuclear weapons we possess – then it would not take long for AI to wipe us off the face of the planet. A more benign, but similarly bleak, scenario is that the gulf in intelligence between us and the AI will mean it views us in the same way we view animals. In a 2015 conversation between Mr Musk and scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson, they theorised that AI will treat us like a pet labrador. “They’ll domesticate us,” Professor Tyson said. “They’ll keep the docile humans and get rid of the violent ones.” In an effort to prevent this outcome, Mr Musk has dedicated a portion of his immense fortune towards funding a brain chip startup called Neuralink. The device has already been tested on monkeys, allowing them to play video games with their minds, and the ultimate goal is to transform humans into a form of hybrid superintelligence. (Critics note that even if successful, the technology would similarly create a two-tiered society of the chipped, and the chipless.) Since cutting ties with OpenAI, the tech billionaire has issued several warnings about the imminent emergence of superintelligence. In March, he joined more than 1,000 researchers in calling for a moratorium on the development of powerful AI systems for at least six months. That time should then be spent researching AI safety measures, they wrote in an open letter, in order to avert disaster. It would take an improbable consensus of leading AI companies around the world, the majority of which are all profit-seeking, in order for any such pause to be impactful. And while OpenAI continues to spearhead the hunt for the owl’s egg, Mr Altman appears to have at least heeded the warnings from Professor Bostrom’s fable. In a 2016 interview with the New Yorker, he revealed that he is a doomsday prepper – specifically for an AI-driven apocalypse. “I try not to think about it too much, he said, revealing that he has “guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water [and] gas masks” stashed away in a hideout in rural California. Not that any of that will be much use to the rest of us. Read More 10 ways AI will change the world – from curing cancer to wiping out humanity Photoshop unveils ‘extraordinary’ AI that transforms your pictures with a text prompt ChatGPT creator issues stark warning on AI ‘RIP photoshop’: New AI can alter any photo with the click of a mouse

Streamer xQc finds himself in the Deep vs Heard Netflix trailer, igniting actor speculation during a live stream

YOKNEAM ILLIT, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 18, 2023--

Whether you call it mini golf, putt putt, or a cheap date, miniature golf has been popular since the 19th century.

IRVING, Texas & TAIPEI, Taiwan--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 31, 2023--

xQc then mocked her and reuttered her words, 'You do own it. I'm dropping it off. The papers, the titles, everything'

U.S. officials say the FBI and its partners in Europe infiltrated and seized control of a major malware network that was used for more than 15 years to commit a gamut of online crimes including crippling ransomware attacks

Though it shares a nearly identical name and some physical attributes with the Lenovo Legion

SpaceX is ready to launch its next-generation Starship rocket, according to Elon Musk, pending regulatory approval. Starship is the most powerful rocket ever built, measuring 121 metres in height and capable of producing 5,000 metric tons of thrust. Once testing is complete, the craft will form part of Nasa’s Artemis mission to return astronauts to the Moon. Mr Musk also plans to use the rocket to transport people and cargo around the solar system, eventually using fleets of Starships to establish a permanent human colony on Mars. The next launch will be the second attempt at an orbital flight test, with the only previous effort ending in an explosion just three minutes into the 90 minute flight earlier this year. Each launch attempt requires approval from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), while also requiring favourable weather conditions. “Starship is ready to launch, awaiting FAA licence approval,” Mr Musk posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Wednesday. A spokesperson for the FAA previously told The Independent that the launch licence application for Starship depends on various requirements being met, including reviews on policy, payload, safety, airspace integration, financial responsibility and environmental impacts. “The FAA will make a licence determination only after the agency is satisfied SpaceX meets all licensing, safety and other regulatory requirements,” the spokesperson said. SpaceX typically only reveals the date for rocket tests a few days before they take place, though numerous factors can still delay them. Weather at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Texas is currently favourable for a launch, though the area can be prone to storms and hurricanes between June and November. SpaceX performed its 62nd orbital rocket launch of 2023 earlier this week, breaking its own record for the most number of launches in a single year. The private company has delivered roughly 80 per cent of all Earth payload mass to orbit in 2023, with Mr Musk predicting that this figure will rise to more than 99 per cent once Starship is in operation. “These magnitudes are madness to consider, but necessary to make consciousness multiplanetary,” he posted on X on Sunday. Read More SpaceX smashes rocket launch record as Musk eyes historic Starship mission SpaceX abandons YouTube for live streams of launches in favour of X/Twitter