List of All Articles with Tag 'eppersons'

LSU gymnast Olivia Dunne created a Labor Day buzz by posting a video on TikTok by playing Tim McGraw's 'Something Like That'

Synthetic viruses could be generated through the misuse of artificial intelligence and potentially spark pandemics, a former Google executive and AI expert has warned. Google DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman expressed concern that the use of AI to engineer pathogens to cause more harm may lead to a scenario like a pandemic. “The darkest scenario is that people will experiment with pathogens, engineered synthetic pathogens that might end up accidentally or intentionally being more transmissible or more lethal,” he said in a recent episode of a podcast. Similar to how there are restrictions in place to prevent people from easily accessing pathogenic microbes like anthrax, Mr Suleyman has called for the means to restrict access to advanced AI technology and software that runs such models. “That’s where we need containment. We have to limit access to the tools and the know-how to carry out that kind of experimentation,” he said in The Diary of a CEO podcast. “We can’t let just anyone have access to them. We need to limit who can use the AI software, the cloud systems, and even some of the biological material,” the Google DeepMind co-founder said. “And of course on the biology side it means restricting access to some of the substances,” he said, adding that AI development needs to be approached with a “precautionary principle”. Mr Suleyman’s statements echo concerns raised in a recent study that even undergraduates with no relevant background in biology can detail suggestions for bio-weapons from AI systems. Researchers, including those from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found chatbots can suggest “four potential pandemic pathogens” within an hour and explain how they can be generated from synthetic DNA. The research found chatbots also “supplied the names of DNA synthesis companies unlikely to screen orders, identified detailed protocols and how to troubleshoot them, and recommended that anyone lacking the skills to perform reverse genetics engage a core facility or contract research organization”. Such large language models (LLMs), like ChatGPT, “will make pandemic-class agents widely accessible as soon as they are credibly identified, even to people with little or no laboratory training,” the study said. The study, whose authors included MIT bio risk expert Kevin Esvelt, called for “non-proliferation measures”. Such measures could include “pre-release evaluations of LLMs by third parties, curating training datasets to remove harmful concepts, and verifiably screening all DNA generated by synthesis providers or used by contract research organizations and robotic ‘cloud laboratories’ to engineer organisms or viruses”. Read More China’s ‘government-approved’ AI chatbot says Taiwan invasion is likely Government urged to address AI ‘risks’ to avoid ‘spooking’ public Scientists give verdict on Harvard professor’s claim of finding materials in sea from outside Solar System Google boss says he wants to make people ‘shrug’ Why is Elon Musk obsessed with the letter X? Elon Musk ‘borrowed $1bn from SpaceX’ at same time as Twitter acquisition

James Kuffner is leaving his post as chief executive officer of Toyota Motor Corp.’s automotive-technology unit, Woven by

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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s green pitch to the Group of 20 this week will include new calls

The flagship event of the international cricket calendar is fast approaching. The ICC Men's Cricket

GameStop Corp. reported second-quarter sales that narrowly beat analyst’s estimates in its first report since the retail chain

Alphabet Inc. tentatively settled claims that Google Play abuses its control over Android mobile applications, potentially resolving complaints

Google hopes that people in decades to come “shrug” at the technology it is working on, according to its chief executive. Sundar Pichai, the boss of both Google and parent company Alphabet, revealed the importance of making technology go from “extraordinary to ordinary” in a memo to staff written to celebrate the company’s 25th anniversary. Traditionally, Google celebrates its birthday on 27 September, for largely arbitrary reasons. The company undertook a number of firsts through the summer and autumn of 1998, meaning that it has a range of options to choose as its official launch date. This year, however, Google appears to be celebrating throughout the whole month. Mr Pichai’s note was intended as a way of kicking off those celebrations, according to an editor’s note attached to it. Mr Pichai said that it is a “huge privilege to reach this milestone, made possible by the people who use our products and challenge us to keep innovating, the hundreds of thousands of Googlers past and present who have given their talents to building those products, and our partners who believe in our mission as much as we do”. And he looked forward to the future technology that the company is building, which revolves largely around artificial intelligence. But it hopes that those technologies become normal, Mr Pichai said. “Ideas my dad marveled at as science fiction — taking a call from your watch, or telling your car to play your favorite song — make my children shrug,” he wrote. “Those shrugs give me great hope for the future. They set a high bar for what the next generation will build and invent... and I can’t wait to see what will make their children shrug, too. “An essential truth of innovation is that the moment you push the boundary of a technology, it soon goes from extraordinary to ordinary. That’s why Google has never taken our success for granted.” Concluding the note, he said that he hoped that the contested questions of artificial intelligence will eventually elicit the same kind of response. He noted that the technology has undergone sustained questioning and criticism in recent months, but indicated that he hopes it becomes ordinary in the same way. “As these new frontiers come into view, we have a renewed invitation to act boldly and responsibly to improve as many lives as possible, and to keep asking those big questions,” he wrote. “Our search for answers will drive extraordinary technology progress over the next 25 years. “And in 2048, if, somewhere in the world, a teenager looks at all we’ve built with AI and shrugs, we’ll know we succeeded. And then we’ll get back to work.” He also revealed the importance of lobsters to Google. The first company to use its advertising platform was a “mail-order business selling lobsters”, he said – and that platform has since gone on to contribute the vast majority of Google’s revenues. Read More Why is Elon Musk obsessed with the letter X? Elon Musk ‘borrowed $1bn from SpaceX’ at same time as Twitter acquisition Sonos releases Move 2, its chunky speaker for the outdoors Why is Elon Musk obsessed with the letter X? Elon Musk ‘borrowed $1bn from SpaceX’ at same time as Twitter acquisition Sonos releases Move 2, its chunky speaker for the outdoors

Elon Musk formally renamed Twitter “X” in July, cementing the rebrand by bolting the symbol to the top of the social network’s San Francisco headquarters and replacing Larry the Bird, its mascot since 2012, with a grungy black logo soon afterwards. Linda Yaccarino, X’s new CEO, declared at the time of the rebrand: “X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities. Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine.” Mr Musk had already renamed the company itself X Corp in March, six months after acquiring it for $44m, a purchase he described at the time as “an accelerant to creating X, the everything app”, his vision for a multipurpose competitor to China’s WeChat. The decision was just the latest example of the entrepreneur’s preoccupation with the 24th letter of the alphabet: his first business venture was X.com, he shortened the name of Space Exploration Technologies Corp to SpaceX, he launched the Tesla Model X and has a new artificial intelligence startup named xAI. He even calls his son X Æ A-12 just X for short. So what is the obsession about and where did it begin? His first venture, X.com, was an online banking and financial services platform launched in Palo Alto, California, in 1999 that would ultimately be merged with Confinity to become PayPal, which was in turn then sold to eBay for $1.5bn in 2002, Mr Musk using some of the capital he earned as its largest shareholder to found SpaceX. Julie Anderson Ankenbrandt, a former PayPal executive, explained how Mr Musk’s platform got its name in a Quora post in 2016. “Elon, the other founders of the company that was X.com… and I sat around a backroom table at a long-defunct bar called the Blue Chalk in Palo Alto, trying decide what the name of the company should be… and the question at hand was whether to be Q, X or Z dot com,” she wrote. “Finally, when the waitress/female server brought the next round of drinks Elon asked her what she thought, and she said she like[d] X.com. Elon pounded the table and said ‘That’s it then!’ and everyone laughed, but in the end that was pretty much how it was decided.” Not everyone was happy with the decision, according to Mr Musk’s biographer Ashlee Vance, who told NPR: “Everyone tried to talk him out of naming the company that back then because of the sexual innuendos, but he really liked it and stuck with it.” He liked the name so much he bought the X.com domain back from PayPal in 2017 and thanked the company in a tweet, explaining that it had “great sentimental value” to him. The domain now redirects to the social network that has since taken on its old moniker. Elsewhere, the Tesla Model X – a midsize luxury crossover SUV with falcon wing doors – was named so that, with three other models, the range would spell out “S3XY”, giving you an insight into Mr Musk’s gawky sense of humour. As for his son, the boy’s mother Grimes explained in a tweet of her own that the symbol is used in algebra to denote any unknown variable, perhaps suggesting the child is free to grow up to be whatever they choose to be. The rebranding of Twitter to X sparked a great deal of musing about the letter’s possible significance (or lack thereof), with Lora Kelly of The Atlantic writing: “The letter is associated with such varied contexts as Christian symbolism, middle-school-math equations, gender neutrality, pornography, a kiss.” In Psychology Today, Leon F Selzer discussed its “nihilistic” values, noting that it has associations with everything from the Nazi swastika to a skull-and-crossbones danger warning on a bottle of poison to Roman numerals, voting and Christmas (at least when abbreviated to “Xmas”) and therefore can mean everything and nothing. Meanwhile, in The New York Times, Stella Bugbee suggested the choice was arguably a bit dated and perhaps represented a case of Mr Musk showing his age as a member of, appropriately enough, Generation X. “For marketing purposes in the 1990s, X had a certain cool,” she explained. “It conferred a rejection of authority.” While that observations rings true of such turn-of-the-millennium cultural detritus as, say, the arrival of Microsoft’s XBox in 2001 or Vin Diesel’s action film XXX (2002), it has also been used in the same way before and since: think of country star Loretta Lynn’s notoriety-courting 1972 single “Rated X” or the cult 1980s Los Angeles punk band X, for instance, or the more recent Ti West horror film X (2022). As Lora Kelly observed: “X both reinforces absence and electrifies objects with meaning. It is sacred and profane.” Read More Elon Musk ‘borrowed $1bn from SpaceX’ at same time as Twitter acquisition SpaceX abandons YouTube for live streams of launches in favour of X/Twitter Elon Musk threatens to sue the Anti-Defamation League over lost revenue on X Elon Musk ‘borrowed $1bn from SpaceX’ at same time as Twitter acquisition Starship ‘ready to launch’, Elon Musk says Elon Musk vows to sue ADL for calling him antisemitic over X campaign

Two Binance executives overseeing regions including Eastern Europe and Russia have left the world’s largest crypto exchange, which

Elon Musk reportedly took out a $1bn loan from his company SpaceX the same month that he acquired Twitter, now known as X, according to theWall Street Journal. SpaceX approved the loan – which was secured by some of his stock in the company – in October 2022, according to the Journal. That same month, Mr Musk drew all of it down. The SpaceX founder returned the $1bn – with interest – to the company one month later, the Journal reported. It’s unclear why the richest person in the world now and in October 2022, when he took over the social media giant, took out the loan. He bought the social media company for $44bn, which seemed to contribute to him losing that top slot, until he was renamed the world’s richest person in June 2023. The publication also noted that in November 2022, when he repaid the loan, Mr Musk sold $3.95bn in shares in another one of his companies, Tesla. The following month, he sold another $3.58bn in Tesla stock. That year in total, Mr Musk had sold nearly $23bn worth of Tesla stock since April – fuelling speculation that the funds were likely going toward his social media platform acquisition. This isn’t the first time that Mr Musk has taken out money from one of his ventures to aid another. In 2009, Mr Musk reportedly borrowed $20m from SpaceX to support Tesla. More recently, in 2015 and 2016, SpaceX poured $330m in bonds into his solar panel company SolarCity. Tesla ended up acquiring SolarCity in 2016. SpaceX has recently come under fire, as the Justice Department sued the company last month for alleged hiring discrimination practices. SpaceX’s “discriminatory hiring practices were routine, widespread, and longstanding, and harmed asylees and refugees,” the filing stated. The Independent has reached out to SpaceX for comment. Read More Starship ‘ready to launch’, Elon Musk says Elon Musk calls Burning Man ‘best art on Earth’ amid chaos that saw thousands stranded and one dead Elon Musk vows to sue ADL for calling him antisemitic after he promoted antisemitic campaign on X