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Meet the Gods of AI Warfare

WIRED

In its early days, the AI initiative known as Project Maven had its fair share of skeptics at the Pentagon. Today, many of them are true believers. The rise of AI warfare speaks to the biggest moral and practical question there is: Who--or what--gets to decide to take a human life? And who bears that cost? In 2018, more than 3,000 Google workers protested the company's involvement in "the business of war" after finding out the company was part of Project Maven, then a nascent Pentagon effort to use computer vision to rifle through copious video footage taken in America's overseas drone wars. They feared Project Maven's AI could one day be used for lethal targeting. In my yearslong effort to uncover the full story of Project Maven for my book,, I learned that is exactly what happened, and that the undertaking was just as controversial inside the Pentagon. Today, the tool known as Maven Smart System is being used in US operations against Iran . How the US military's top brass moved from skepticism about the use of AI in war to true believers has a lot to do with a Marine colonel named Drew Cukor. In early September 2024, during the cocktail hour at a private retreat for tech investors and defense leaders, Vice Admiral Frank "Trey" Whitworth found his way to Drew Cukor. Now Project Maven's founding leader and his skeptical successor were standing face-to-face. Three years earlier, Whitworth had been the Pentagon's top military official for intelligence, advising the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and running one of the most sensitive and potentially lethal parts of any military process: targeting.


Three charged in the US with smuggling AI chips into China

Al Jazeera

Three people associated with artificial intelligence server maker Super Micro Computer, including its cofounder, have been charged with helping smuggle at least $2.5bn-worth of United States AI technology to China in violation of export laws, according to the US Department of Justice. US prosecutors did not name Super Micro in the complaint, referring only to a "US manufacturer", but San Jose, California-based Super Micro said it was informed by federal prosecutors of the indictment on Thursday. The Justice Department said it had charged Yih-Shyan Liaw, Ruei-Tsang Chang, and Ting-Wei Sun in an indictment unsealed in federal court in Manhattan on Thursday, on allegations of a complex scheme to send US-made servers through Taiwan to other countries in Southeast Asia, where they were swapped into unmarked boxes and sent on to China. The US has had export restrictions on China for advanced AI chips since 2022. In a release, FBI Assistant Director in Charge James Barnacle said the defendants used fabricated documents, staged bogus equipment to pass audit inventories, and used a pass-through company to conceal their misconduct and true clientele list.


Inside China's robotics revolution

The Guardian

An engineer at the AgiBot factory in Shanghai, China, where the 5,000th mass-produced humanoid robot had rolled off the production line. An engineer at the AgiBot factory in Shanghai, China, where the 5,000th mass-produced humanoid robot had rolled off the production line. How close are we to the sci-fi vision of autonomous humanoid robots? C hen Liang, the founder of Guchi Robotics, an automation company headquartered in Shanghai, is a tall, heavy-set man in his mid-40s with square-rimmed glasses. His everyday manner is calm and understated, but when he is in his element - up close with the technology he builds, or in business meetings discussing the imminent replacement of human workers by robots - he wears an exuberant smile that brings to mind an intern on his first day at his dream job. Guchi makes the machines that install wheels, dashboards and windows for many of the top Chinese car brands, including BYD and Nio. He took the name from the Chinese word, "steadfast intelligence", though the fact that it sounded like an Italian luxury brand was not entirely unwelcome. For the better part of two decades, Chen has tried to solve what, to him, is an engineering problem: how to eliminate - or, in his view, liberate - as many workers in car factories as technologically possible. Late last year, I visited him at Guchi headquarters on the western outskirts of Shanghai. Next to the head office are several warehouses where Guchi's engineers tinker with robots to fit the specifications of their customers. Chen, an engineer by training, founded Guchi in 2019 with the aim of tackling the hardest automation task in the car factory: "final assembly", the last leg of production, when all the composite pieces - the dashboard, windows, wheels and seat cushions - come together. At present, his robots can mount wheels, dashboards and windows on to a car without any human intervention, but 80% of the final assembly, he estimates, has yet to be automated. That is what Chen has set his sights on. As in much of the world, AI has become part of everyday life in China . But what most excites Chinese politicians and industrialists are the strides being made in the field of robotics, which, when combined with advances in AI, could revolutionise the world of work.


Robot goes BERSERK at a restaurant in California as desperate staff try to drag it away from customers - as one viewer asks 'why isn't there a big red power off button?'

Daily Mail - Science & tech

Meghan unveils new As Ever line with Lilibet... amid claims Netflix has been left with huge $10m surplus of her unsold products after'split' with streamer Outrageous full story of scandalous affair that's the talk of Manhattan's exclusive private schools: Family insiders reveal humiliating sex secrets... shock'confession' letter... and the furious relative who exposed it all Sinister truth about explosive resignation of Trump's top counter-terror chief Joe Kent... and his shock claim Israel is manipulating the president: MARK HALPERIN Ugly new Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban divorce fight ERUPTS: Her friends share humiliating details of'midlife crisis'... and reveal brutal REAL reason daughter Sunday Rose'snubbed' him Kim Kardashian takes a VERY dramatic tumble in towering $80 'stripper heels' and accidentally grabs an'old lady' as she falls on her way out of Vanity Fair Oscars party USA baseball stars slammed over'disgraceful' national anthem gesture before WBC final vs Venezuela Israel says Iran's intelligence chief has been killed in overnight airstrike in latest attack on regime: Live updates Canada's ultimate revenge on Trump over tariffs gathers pace I ran America's only Supermax jail: What history's most notorious terrorists and serial killers told me as they waited to die Fox News anchor issues blistering takedown of liberal media's delusional take on Iran: 'A stalemate? How I lost 8st in my 50s and now finally have the figure of my dreams. I've been large my whole life, but I now feel happier than I ever did in my 20s. Presidential hopeful JB Pritzker's bold defiant bet against black caucus pays off Everything JFK Jr told friends about his love affair with'sexual dynamo' Madonna... her unprintable pillow talk... and his perverse incest request that she couldn't go through with Mamdani forces New York beloved preschool to hike annual fee to $36,000... and parents are fuming Heath Ledger's lookalike daughter Matilda steps out days after 17 year anniversary of late actor's Oscar win Supreme Court's top judge issues chilling warning as Trump targets his own appointees Robot goes BERSERK at a restaurant in California as desperate staff try to drag it away from customers - as one viewer asks'why isn't there a big red power off button?' This is the shocking moment a dancing robot goes berserk at a restaurant, sending food flying while staff try to drag it away.


My Tesla Was Driving Itself Perfectly--Until It Crashed

The Atlantic - Technology

This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. T he smell was strange . The concrete wall was too close. One of my kids was standing on the sidewalk next to our car--not crying, just confused. The seat belt had held. The crumple zone had crumpled.


Tennessee minors sue Musk's xAI, alleging Grok generated sexual images of them

The Japan Times

Tennessee minors sue Musk's xAI, alleging Grok generated sexual images of them Governments and regulators around the world have launched probes into xAI, imposed bans and demanded safeguards in a growing push to curb illegal and offensive material. Three Tennessee plaintiffs, including two minors, sued Elon Musk's xAI on Monday, alleging that it knowingly designed its Grok image generator to let people create sexually explicit content by using real photos of others. The lawsuit, filed in the San Jose, California federal court, is seeking class-action status for people in the United States who were reasonably identifiable in sexualized images or videos generated by Grok based on real images of themselves. The artificial intelligence company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. After an outcry over sexually explicit content generated by the chatbot, xAI said in January that it had blocked all users from editing images of real people in revealing clothing and from generating images of people in revealing clothing in jurisdictions where it's illegal. Governments and regulators around the world have also since launched probes, imposed bans and demanded safeguards in a growing push to curb illegal and offensive material.


Instance-SpecificAsymmetricSensitivityin DifferentialPrivacy

Neural Information Processing Systems

While the inverse sensitivity mechanism was shown to be instance optimal, it was only with respect to a class of unbiased mechanisms such that the most likely outcome matches the underlying data.



These aren't AI firms, they're defense contractors. We can't let them hide behind their models

The Guardian

We can't let them hide behind their models From Gaza to Iran, the pattern is the same: precision weapons, chosen blindness, and dead children. There is an Israeli military strategy called the "fog procedure". First used during the second intifada, it's an unofficial rule that requires soldiers guarding military posts in conditions of low visibility to shoot bursts of gunfire into the darkness, on the theory that an invisible threat might be lurking. It's violence licensed by blindness. Shoot into the darkness and call it deterrence. With the dawn of AI warfare, that same logic of chosen blindness has been refined, systematized, and handed off to a machine.