Elon Musk sat down in April for an on-stage interview with Christine Yaccarino, the advertising executive he named as Twitter's new chief executive on Friday

One of the pioneers of artificial intelligence has warned the Government is not safeguarding against the dangers posed by future super-intelligent machines. Professor Stuart Russell told The Times ministers were favouring a light touch on the burgeoning AI industry, despite warnings from civil servants it could create an existential threat. A former adviser to both Downing Street and the White House, Professor Russell is a co-author of the most widely used AI text book and lectures on computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. He told The Times a system similar to ChatGPT – which has passed exams and can compose prose – could form part of a super-intelligence machine which could not be controlled. “How do you maintain power over entities more powerful than you – forever?” he asked. “If you don’t have an answer, then stop doing the research. It’s as simple as that. “The stakes couldn’t be higher: if we don’t control our own civilisation, we have no say in whether we continue to exist.” In March, he co-signed an open letter with Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak warning of the “out-of-control race” going on at AI labs. The letter warned the labs were developing “ever more powerful digital minds that no one, not even their creators, can understand, predict or reliably control”. Professor Russell has worked for the UN on a system to monitor the nuclear test-ban treaty and was asked to work with the Government earlier this year. “The Foreign Office… talked to a lot of people and they concluded that loss of control was a plausible and extremely high-significance outcome,” he said. “And then the Government came out with a regulatory approach that says: ‘Nothing to see here… we’ll welcome the AI industry as if we were talking about making cars or something like that’.” He said making changes to the technical foundations of AI to add necessary safeguards would take “time that we may not have”. “I think we got something wrong right at the beginning, where we were so enthralled by the notion of understanding and creating intelligence, we didn’t think about what that intelligence was going to be for,” he said. We've sort of got the message and we're scrambling around trying to figure out what to do Professor Stuart Russell “Unless its only purpose is to be a benefit to humans, you are actually creating a competitor – and that would be obviously a stupid thing to do. “We don’t want systems that imitate human behaviour… you’re basically training it to have human-like goals and to pursue those goals. “You can only imagine how disastrous it would be to have really capable systems that were pursuing those kinds of goals.” He said there were signs of politicians becoming aware of the risks. “We’ve sort of got the message and we’re scrambling around trying to figure out what to do,” he said. “That’s what it feels like right now.” The Government has launched the AI Foundation Model Taskforce which it says will “lay the foundations for the safe use of foundation models across the economy and ensure the UK is at the forefront of this pivotal AI technology”. Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live TikTok ‘does not want to compete with BBC for Eurovision final viewers’ Eurovision’s preparations for potential Russia cyberthreat ‘in good place’ UK-based tech company claims quantum computing ‘breakthrough’

A former executive at TikTok’s parent company ByteDance accuses the tech giant of serving as a “propaganda tool” for the Chinese government

A Delaware judge has ruled in favor of Oracle founder Larry Ellison in a shareholder lawsuit alleging that he coerced the company into paying a grossly inflated price to acquire software corporation NetSuite

This week’s new entertainment releases include albums from Kesha and Dave Matthews Band, while rapper Jack Harlow stars in a remake of “White Men Can’t Jump” and wilderness expert Bear Grylls tests contestants on their survival skills, physicality and gross-out tolerance with "I Survived Bear Grylls.”

Elon Musk is welcoming a veteran ad executive to the helm of Twitter

RICHMOND, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 12, 2023--

David Risher had a rocky first week at his job.

Microsoft has made the world’s first purchase agreement for nuclear fusion energy, betting that the next-generation technology will be capable of producing electricity at a commercial scale by 2028. The US tech firm made the deal with fusion research firm Helion Energy, which is aiming to have a 50MW nuclear fusion power plant set up within the next five years. This is despite several significant research hurdles that still need to be overcome before it becomes a viable source of clean energy. “This collaboration represents a significant milestone for Helion and the fusion industy as a whole,” said Helion chief executive David Kirtley. “We still have a lot of work to do, but we are confident in our ability to deliver the world’s first fusion power facility.” Nuclear fusion promises near-limitless energy by mimicking the natural reactions that occur within the Sun. It has been referred to as the “holy grail” of clean energy, as it requires no fossil fuels and leaves behind no hazardous waste. Scientists have made several major breakthroughs with the technology in recent years, with researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California announcing the first ever fusion ignition last year. This meant that they had achieved a net energy gain for the first time using nuclear fusion, marking “one of the most impressive scientific feats of the 21st century”, according to US Energy Secretary Jennifer Graham. At the time, scientists said that commercial nuclear fusion was still likely to be a decade a way due to the complicated and expensive nature of scaling up the process. Microsoft’s bet that it can be achieved in half that time marks the latest phase of the company’s 2020 pledge to be carbon negative by 2030. If achieved, Microsoft could become the first major tech firm to remove more carbon from the environment than it emits, while a longer term goal aims to eliminate all carbon the firm has ever emitted since it was founded in 1975. “We are optimistic that fusion energy can be an important technology to help the world transition to clean energy,” said Microsoft president Brad Smith. “Helion’s announcement supports our long term clean energy goals and will advance the market to establish a new, efficient method for bringing more clean energy to the grid faster.” Read More Nuclear fusion breakthrough holds promise of ‘near-limitless’ clean energy

WASHINGTON Google, a unit of Alphabet, has agreed to pay $8 million to settle claims it used deceptive

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